Chapter 2:
A Parlous Quest to Live in Truth
Subsequently Rajani played a leading role in reopening the University
after the devastating war of October 1987. She worked shoulder to shoulder with
lab assistants and employees to get the university open and ready for teaching.
For Rajani and others close to her the University
would be the voice of the people standing up to all armed actors, who would
rather have the University serve their ends. This effort to regain a
functioning university was in fact supported by the Indian Army as they wanted
to show that they were restoring normalcy. From the first however, we in the
university community made it clear that we had a will of our own.
Brigadier Manjit Singh of the Rajput Rifles
was then in charge of the University. Near the Railway Station in
Jaffna
Town
,
Manjit Singh had called out the residents for a cup
of tea and had warned them that should one shot be fired from their area he
would flatten the place. Rajani firmly told officers
of the Indian Army where we stood, using expressions such as ‘the terror of the
LTTE and terror of the Indian Army’. Like most others she did not try to
pretend that only the LTTE was to blame. Rajani
evoked respect as someone who was not playing games. An exceptional officer at
the University was Major Bhatt of the Sikh Regiment, a graduate from
Lucknow
.
They had been sent with next to no idea of what they were meant to accomplish.
It was a
treacherous environment where the LTTE provoked them repeatedly, not to get the
Indian Army out but to invite maximum reprisals against civilians, and too
often the Indians took the bait. Unlike most officers, Bhatt did not talk down
to others as though he knew all about his job. He was anxious to learn and
never was a voice raised in talking with him. It was new for us to see officers
of the major and captain ranks leading foot patrols, as we frequently saw Bhatt
doing.
Major Bhatt and
Colonel Chatterjee, who too frequently came to the
University, were part of the force that took
Jaffna
Town
.
One wonders if these officers thought back on aspects of their operations that
left deep scars on the people. It is likely that their intelligence briefing
was very poor and ordinary soldiers had been sent into Jaffna Hospital in the
tragically mistaken belief that it was an LTTE fortress, a belief the LTTE
encouraged by having a handful of cadres firing at them and running away. Chatterjee was friendly but perhaps a little suspicious of
us. He said in the course of a conversation that his brother was a surgeon.
Sritharan responded jokingly, “You are
both in the killing business aren’t you?” Chatterjee
laughed, the joke was well taken. Chatterjee was
proud to recite for us Tagore’s poem ‘Where
the mind is without fear…Into that heaven of
freedom, my Father, let my country awake’
Sritharan was
very restless during that period. During night curfews he paced up and down,
his lightning sharp intellect trying to pierce the fog of hopelessness and
figure out initiatives the community could take and their possible
consequences. By day he rode about on his bicycle at considerable risk with a
cane basket hung on a handle, as though looking for food, but trying to find
out what was really going on. It was his idea that he and I should go to the town commandant’s office and
ask for permission to inspect the University, an action that expedited its
reopening.
On one occasion
late in the evening there was a tense encounter at the Science Faculty with
Brigadier Manjit Singh, when Dr. Sritharan charged
Indian soldiers of willfully damaging several computers. Manjit
Singh made legalistic denials. Both voices rose to a crescendo. The lateness of
the hour with Manjit’s bodyguard of half a dozen Sikh
soldiers looking on inscrutably added to the tension in the atmosphere.
Thankfully it ended and the interlocutors parted company. It had a funny
sequel. Some days later Sritharan passed Manjit
Singh’s vehicle on the road near the Nallur Education
Office. Manjit Singh was not in it. The vehicle
reversed fast and braked near a startled Sritharan. Manjit’s
bodyguard grinned and gave Sritharan a friendly wave. They were seemingly
pleased that someone told their boss off…
Some of us at
the University, especially Sritharan and Rajani, felt
that if we were to have some normality and a functioning civil life, we should
demand that the Indian Army observed certain norms in dealing with the
civilians and instituted some accountability; the damage the LTTE was doing
could also be minimised. We sent a letter in early
1988 and received an invitation to the Jaffna Kacheri.
Rev. Dr. Guy Rajendram was the most senior among us.
Only Rajani came from the Medical Faculty and was the
only woman in the group. The Indians took the meeting seriously even if it was
only to tell their point of view. Their team was led by Major General Sardeshpande, the officer commanding the
Jaffna
Peninsula
.
Rajani who was in a white sari
expressed very powerfully the plight of the civilians, her dismay at the way
the Indian Army took
Jaffna
Hospital
and at the plight
of the women, many of whom were killed or raped by the Indian Army. Neither did
she mince her words about what she thought about the LTTE. Sardeshpande,
whom we later learnt had several misgivings about the Indian intervention, did
his best at public relations and spoke about the psychology of the soldier
under stress. Rajani responded strongly that
psychology could not be an excuse for harming defenceless
civilians, adding that our women are not objects for soldiers to relieve their
stress. Many years later Sardeshpande, who had by
then retired, told a friend of ours in Delhi that he had been highly impressed
by Rajani. She
was among the exceptional civilians in Jaffna to make it clear to the Indian
Army, the LTTE and other actors that the ordinary people had an independent
voice and their dignity to defend and uphold. Her loss underscores what we miss
today.
The notion of an
independent voice was anathema to the LTTE. They tried repeatedly to provoke a
clash with the Indian Army and to
close down the University. On
1st
February 1989
, Indian soldiers, in pursuit of an LTTE man who ran
through the University, opened fire injuring some students. A demonstration at
the main entrance by students the following morning moved towards the army camp
at Parameswara Junction, despite stern threats issued
by Major Nautyal, officer in charge at Tinnevely, whose experience
included having fought Naxalites in Andhra. Two
students died in the firing by the Army. Rajani was a
notable exception to the Medical Faculty’s attitude that they were in a
different world from the rest of the University. She quickly cycled over from
the Medical Faculty and she and Sritharan were at the lead in taking the
injured students to hospital.
Within a short time the Town Commandant, Brigadier
R.I.S. Kahlon, arrived at the University. Behind his
tough exterior he was obviously upset. Significantly, he repeatedly asked why
we waited so long and failed to contact him at the outset when trouble was
imminent. Rajani and Sritharan protested vehemently
that the Army opened fire at a peaceful, unarmed demonstration. While field
officers might have felt differently, a normally functioning university was
important for the military administration.
Active staff members like Rajani
extracted promises from officers, such as Kahlon, to
not harass unarmed persons for their political views. Thus the University was
able to challenge the Indian Army over arrests of students and demand their
release. The Indian Army had been known to harass and threaten individual staff
members, too. But this was challenged and in general limits were observed. The
UTHR(J)’s documentation of violations by all parties was in the same spirit of
standing up for the community…
Piecing together Rajani’s
subsequent assassination revealed to us the large network of political
advisors, intelligence operatives and student spies that the LTTE maintained
within the University, particularly the Medical Faculty…
Although the
controversy about private medical colleges came to be mixed up in lethal power
play, the differences between the LTTE and JVP on the matter point to the
different social classes whose support each considered crucial. The NLMC was a
misadventure tied up with Rajani’s fate.
2.3 The NLMC Fiasco, a Compromised Faculty and the
Isolation of Rajani
…Alarm bells
started ringing when the Senate of the University of Colombo in a controversial
vote allowed NCMC students to sit for the same examinations as medical students
of the university and hold degrees of the University of Colombo. Protests by
Colombo
medical students
became increasingly acrimonious and lethal once the JVP too capitalised
on the issue and killed Vice Chancellor Prof. Stanley Wijesundara
in 1989.
The NLMC was
established in
Jaffna
in the mid 1980s following the NCMC precedent, and the plan was to give
University
of
Jaffna
degrees to the students. Partly
owing to the disturbed conditions after July 1983, worsening the exodus of
doctors, the NLMC did not have anything like the professional expertise or
financial commitment that the NCMC had. The innovations done to
Moolai
Cooperative
Hospital
– that was to function as the teaching hospital – were widely regarded as
inadequate. The venture had the support of several teachers of paramedical
subjects at the
University
of
Jaffna
led by the
professors of biochemistry and physiology. The proposal to award
University
of
Jaffna
medical degrees to NLMC students
was however turned down by a senate committee, which found the admission
requirements below the national minimum. This was when Rajani
was away doing her PhD.
Having paid
large sums of money, the NLMC students were left in the lurch as teaching
virtually ground to a halt. There were
two desperate parties – the students themselves and the organisers of the venture. In a climate of civil war where gun culture provided a short cut
to getting things done, even a crisis among the elite was bound to take
unpredictable turns. In university circles it was said that the directors of
the NLMC were prevented at gunpoint from closing up and going away. The next
move in the matter came in early 1989 when Rajani was
back.
In late 1987,
after the Indian Army offensive, Rajani had worked
hard to reopen the Medical Faculty with the vision that the University would
become the centre of revival for a society torn apart, torn asunder by social
strife and violence. She strongly disagreed with her faculty colleagues who
kept it closed for six months as a means of drawing attention to the shortage
of staff. She wanted them to do a job, earn respect and persuade Tamil doctors
living abroad to help them by doing short tours of teaching…
Rajani was the only member of the
medical staff who openly objected to the incorporation on the grounds that even
the Jaffna Medical Faculty was grossly understaffed and for the few available
teachers to do a second job at the NLMC would adversely affect standards. Rajani moreover pointed out that Anatomy was the most
substantive pre-clinical subject and being the sole qualified anatomist at the
Department (one among perhaps four qualified anatomy teachers in the whole
country at the time) she could not physically handle three batches
simultaneously. The Dean repudiated her with vehemence at faculty and senate
meetings. Many agreed with her but chose not to confront authority.
The medical
students in the
University
of
Jaffna
were fervently
opposed to the incorporation of the NLMC. About July 1989 when Rajani was in
England
, the students locked up the
Dean to prevent him from attending an NLMC function. The faculty members closed
the faculty for three weeks until the students came crawling back with letters
of apology. When Rajani returned from
England
, her
faculty colleagues justified the closure to her on the grounds that the
students were breaking the rules. Rajani asked them
whether they followed the rules requiring them to get permission from the
University before taking lectures at the NLMC? She was upset with her
colleagues for imposing their authority over the students by humiliating them,
using sheer power rather than reason that should be the common currency in an
academic institution.
Besides, the
ethics of the NLMC were mired in a serious conflict of interest. The students
who worked hard and made it into the state-funded university system would be in
competition not with products of an independent university, but with those of a
commercial establishment purporting to be a private university, but using the
same teachers from the state-funded system and paying them twice of what they received
from their principal affiliation, the University of Jaffna.
Students from
the NLMC, including several of those involved with the LTTE, called regularly
at the Medical Faculty for discussions with members of the staff who supported
the NLMC. According to the student we shall refer to as L whom the LTTE installed as president
of the Medical Students’ Union (more of him later), the Dean had importuned him
to sign a letter purportedly from the Union to the parliamentary select
committee, certifying that the Jaffna medical students supported the
incorporation of the NLMC into the Eastern University. He added that some LTTE
members interested in the matter had said at the Medical Faculty that whoever
opposed the scheme for incorporation of the NLMC into
Eastern
University
would be “dealt with”.
Hardly any
members of the Faculty were LTTE supporters in any but a wishy-washy sense;
many were just nationalists of the TULF mould. Like the students admitted to
the NLMC, they too were desperate and were willing to pull any string that came
to hand whether in the North or the South. They were desperate and angry. One
instance gives an idea of how it possibly compromised the University. The
course of events suggest that the Indian Army had their own informants in the
University and knew what was going on inside and used it to arm-twist members
of the university community.It is not
unlikely that the Indian Army knew that the LTTE dealt with a section of the
medical dons, even if they did not know it was about the NLMC. The incident
described below illustrates this point well.
During July
1989, Neethirajah, a second-year medical student, was
assaulted by an Indian officer when he tried to intervene on behalf of another
student. He reported this to the Dean of Medicine who was briefly Acting Vice
Chancellor. The Dean promptly and confidently complained by letter to General Kalkut, GOC Indian Forces in
Sri Lanka
. This was contrary to the
usual practice of contacting the local commander Colonel Sashikumar,
who was very particular about maintaining a clean record. The letter to Kalkut was redirected to Sashikumar.
For about two
nights Major Nautyal from Tinnevely
Junction, with another officer, visited the Dean and had apparently searched
his place. Major Nautyal in due course called on the
Vice Chancellor, Prof. Thurairajah, who had returned,
and told him that the Dean had several live bullets at home, which was a
serious offence. Nautyal added that he was prepared
to overlook the offence if the Vice Chancellor would withdraw the complaint
about the assault. Prof. Thurairajah asked the Dean
of Medicine about this, and out of concern for his safety, advised him to go
abroad for some time. The Dean admitted to having the bullets and was not
interested in going abroad. Thurairajah could get no
more clarification from him about what had really happened, and reluctantly withdrew
the complaint.
In this affair,
the Faculty became compromised partly on account of the intrigues concerning
the NLMC in which it had the LTTE’s support. On this count too Rajani became isolated. LTTE cadres took advantage of this
situation and hid arms on the premises and even slept there. In this murky
situation, the Indian Army too had its sources of information and Rajani despaired of what might happen if they decided to
act.
The significance
of the NLMC affair for Rajani’s killing is that her
principled stand on issues and her interest in the welfare of the University
and the larger community had thoroughly isolated her within the Faculty, as
would be seen in the sequel on how indifferently the Faculty reacted to her
murder. The LTTE knew of her isolation and it helped them enormously to dampen
the effect of her loss. Had they thought that the Faculty would firmly stand up
and condemn the killing and highlight the irreparable loss, it would have acted
as a strong deterrent to killing Rajani. Yet the
Faculty, which was closed for six
months the previous year to protest the lack of staff, carried on almost as
though her loss was of meagre significance. Her loss
as a teacher of Anatomy, who could also train others to succeed her cannot be
overestimated. To this day, the medical faculty has found no adequate
replacement for her...
2.4 Power of the Powerless: The Broken Palmyra and the formation of the UTHR (J):
The next opportunity for change came when Prof. A. Thurairajah of the Open University, who was Co-Chairman of
the national UTHR, was appointed Vice Chancellor of the
University
of
Jaffna
in September 1988. This was a boon to academics who wanted the University to be
more democratic and active in the wider community. With Prof. Thurairajah’s backing, additional structures were formed to
deal with problems everyone was facing owing to the unsettled conditions –
particularly the LTTE trying repeatedly to steer the University on a collision
course with the Indian Army. These structures included the Staff, Students and
Employees’ Consultative Committee. There were also informal initiatives such as
the remarkable document Laying Aside
Illusions, signed by 50 academics in November 1988 (http://www.uthr.org/BP/volume2/Appendixiv.htm).
Young active
staff members and students became unusually visible in the University.
Understandably, it made some older academics unhappy and nervous (as we were to
learn). The academic community in Lanka had come a long way from its halcyon
days of the 1930s to 1960s when it appeared to stand for intellectual freedom
and open discourse. The fact that its complacency had not been shaken by the
passage of the Citizenship Bills of 1948-1949 which virtually made serfs of the
Hill Country Tamil plantation labour, was a
disturbing sign portending its impending surrender to ethnic chauvinism and the
brutality dictated by class interest during the JVP-led Sinhalese youth
uprisings of 1971 and 1987…
In November 1986
the university student Arunagirinathan Vijitharan, from Batticaloa, was
abducted by the LTTE and killed apparently for the reason that in boyish
fashion he had poked fun at a medical student, the girlfriend of LTTE leader Kittu. The student protest by the University drew in the
schools and a large segment of ordinary people who had grave reservations about
the direction that the LTTE was taking. The academics largely stayed on the
fence. A few were openly contemptuous of the students. Some seniors came in as
honest brokers between the students and the LTTE and persuaded the students to
call off their protest on verbal assurances from the LTTE for the safety of
their leaders and a promise that they would look for Vijitharan.
Once the students called off their protest and the LTTE began hunting the
student leaders (one of whom it later killed), the academics remained silent.
It must be placed on record that the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Vithiananthan,
conducted himself with dignity and with
genuine concern for the students.
Vimaleswaran was then the student
leader who led the protest when the leaders undertook a fast. A rural youth
from Pooneryn, Vimaleswaran
was politically astute, having been a member of the PLOTE; he left the group in
the wake of its internal killings. Leading members of churches and of the elite
who came to make peace thought they scored a coup when they persuaded LTTE’s
Jaffna
leader Kittu to put in an appearance and talk to the student
leaders. They were impatient when Vimaleswaran was
adamant on continuing the protest in spite of Kittu’s
smile. Vimaleswaran’s words remained an indictment of
the kind of elite arrogance that held time and again that the LTTE’s opponents
had rebuffed the graciousness of the LTTE that genuinely wanted peace.
Vimaleswaran said that Kittu’s conciliatory gestures had no meaning when the
reality behind the scenes was that student protesters were being hounded and
harassed by the LTTE. After the protest, with few means at his disposal, Vimaleswaran became a helpless fugitive. In 1988, he tried
to make a meagre living for himself and his family,
giving tuition. On 18th July the LTTE shot him dead after a class on
Sattanathar
Kovil Rd.
, Nallur (UTHR(
Jaffna
)
Rep.1, Ch.1).
Rajani then had just returned from
England
to a
society characterised by fear, cynicism, mutual
distrust and moral decay under the LTTE’s authoritarian regime. Vaclav Havel’s
collection of essays, Living in Truth,
published about this time, made a tremendous impact on Rajani
and the circle around her, and influenced her actions. In that book were ideas
to wean society away from deadening conformity.
Havel
’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless”, influential
in the recent Velvet revolutions in
Egypt
and
Tunisia
,
examines the momentous consequences of speaking the truth.
Havel
begins with the example of a greengrocer who displays political slogans that he
does not believe in but realises that he has to act
as if he does in order to ensure his own survival.
Havel
instead takes the point at which the green grocer may indeed one day revolt
against this complicity:
“Let us now imagine that one day something in
our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate
himself…And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with
those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the
greengrocer steps out of living within the lie…He discovers once more his
suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance.
His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth…
“The system, through its alienating presence
in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic
of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not
committed a simple individual offence isolated in its own uniqueness, but
something incomparably more serious…He has upset the power structure by tearing
apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a
lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the
real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked.”
Where Rajani drew most from
Havel
was in the need to create small institutions at local level to provide a firm
foundation and mutual support for people to live in truth:
…Rajani
played a leading role in several important local initiatives, apart from the
writing of The Broken Palmyra and the
work of the UTHR (Jaffna). These included the founding of Poorani Illam, a home for abused and destitute
women, several structures and initiatives at the University, including the
Staff, Students and Employees Consultative Committee, and her mobilizing of the
non-academic staff to reopen the Medical Faculty after the war in 1987. She was
part of a women’s drama group to bring out the situation of women living under
multiple oppressions which produced Aduppadi Arattai (Musings
by the kitchen hearth) staged at the University’s Kailasapathy
Auditorium. Further, she played an active role in initiating a system organised within the teachers’ unions to go to the relevant
army camp immediately and challenge the arrest or harassment of any university
person. This broke down after she was killed and the LTTE asserted control.
After her assassination
there were scores of arrests, incidents of torture, assault and disappearance,
especially of university students, first by the LTTE and then by the Sri Lankan
forces. In its inability to articulate civic responsibility as a body, the
University largely ended up accepting the status quo laid down by the powers
that be – one that was brutal and demeaning. Any challenge carried a high price…
The UTHR
(Jaffna) acted with considerable autonomy. The reports once compiled were shown
to Prof. Thurairajah, who readily consented, before
release. Prof. Thurairajah was under much pressure.
While his course of promoting a more democratic university ethos had a support
base within the University and could negotiate the rocks, there was no problem.
As we discuss later, Rajani’s murder ended this
period and signalled the reassertion and punitive
vengeance of the old establishment.
The controversy
that UTHR (J) reports would excite became clear after the publication of our
second report in March 1989 on the developing situation after the parliamentary
elections and issues confronting the Tamils. To compile this report, UTHR(J)
had obtained help from Mr. Selvendra, Chairman of the
Valvettithurai Citizens’ Committee, to meet victims
of violence from that area and in particular the victims of an incident at Udupiddy. Mr. Selvendra had a
liberal education and was a professional, and we sent him our first two reports
through an engineer whom we will call Anandan, also
of VVT origin. Anandan was two years the writer’s
senior at university and was helpful to us with information. It was our hope
that the reports would be treated in the spirit in which they were written. We
were critical of all violations and their perpetrators, along with the LTTE’s
child recruitment, but tried our utmost to be impartial with facts.
About a month
later Prof. Thurairajah sent for one of us and gave
without a word the copy of Report No.2 we had sent Mr. Selvendra.
The report had copious comments penned on it, especially on our criticism of
the LTTE recruiting children and using them in lethal tasks. A particular bone
of contention was on our reporting of the incident in Udupiddy
(4.6 of http://www.uthr.org/Reports/Report2/Report2.htm).
On
February 16th
1989
, an Indian Army convoy transporting ballot boxes from the
parliamentary election just concluded stopped just outside Udupiddy.
Then some excited Sikh soldiers rushed into the family home of Rev. Tharmakulasingam of the Church of South India and in the
sequel, when an order was barked out, two soldiers turned and opened fire
killing two of Tharmakulasingam’s sisters, one of
whom was to give birth the next day.
We then had no
explanation for why the convoy had stopped. We learnt from a university lady
from the locality that the LTTE had been in the area, and withdrew after firing
a token shot to demonstrate their opposition to the elections. The people of
the area had at that time moved out sensing trouble. Subsequent to the shooting
of the two ladies, Rev. Tharmakulasingam observed a
Sikh soldier seated on the ground, weeping aloud. We pointed out that this was
not the only incident when a Sikh soldier was found weeping after such a tragedy,
perhaps recalling disturbed conditions in their own villages back home in
Punjab
, which too was caught up in a bitter insurgency.
Including this detail was far from mitigating the criminal behavior of an army
tasked with upholding the law…However, Selvendra
apparently felt that we had distorted the story by introducing a fictitious
LTTE presence.
We heard no more
until Anandan paid the writer a visit and related Selvendra’s objections. Anandan,
who was always affable and, besides, somewhat naive, changed tone at one point
and said severely of our reports, “If you
want to write this kind of thing, you have to do it from [the protection of] an
army camp.” Anandan stiffened involuntarily when
he added that the kind of work the UTHR(J) was doing ‘would not be allowed’! The menace in these words became plain in
the months and years to come. Anandan was simply
repeating words of the LTTE-supporting elite among his contacts. The words were
also an indication of how the UTHR(J) would be assailed by LTTE-supporters in
the future. Contrary to our uncritical
hopes, once bitten by the bug of extreme nationalism, the maxim “facts are
sacred” has little resonance even among those with a good liberal education.
It was April
1989 and the LTTE was about to embark on talks with the Premadasa
government. Anandan further said, “The LTTE is entering talks just to get the
Indian Army out. Once that happens there would be a long and final battle for Eelam.” The full import of that statement seemed to be
lost on him: the imposition of yet another war on a battered and weary
population.
Anandan was at pains to say that the
VVT elite, like those in the VVT Citizens Committee, were distinct from the
LTTE although they supported its aspirations. He explained that the LTTE had
recently given public offence by abducting a goldsmith for ransom while he was
worshiping at the major Sellasannathy
temple festival. The Citizens Committee urged the LTTE to release him, but they
kept him until they got the last gold ingot demanded. He said the LTTE had a
mind of its own and no one could influence it. Their relationship to the LTTE,
one gathers, resembled that of devotees to an extremely harsh and capricious
tutelary deity, whose will was not theirs to question. The visit was a sincerely
meant friendly warning.
Anandan had earlier objected to our
coverage in Report No.1 of the murder on 21st October 1988 of Mr. Sivanandasundaram, a senior citizen from Vadamaratchy who led the Tamil Makkal
Manram, of whom our report stated, “His organisation is known to have taken the stand that the LTTE
were the legitimate heirs of the Tamil National cause, and the other groups
were even termed ‘traitors’.” He was returning from a meeting commemorating
a dead LTTE cadre in Ariyalai, when his bus was stopped
in Vallai Moor and he was taken out by three gunmen
and shot dead, as the Indian Army provided cover for the killers. Anandan found our reference disrespectful of the man.
This was a case at the heart of our work. As a man,
the deceased and his family were socially close to some of us. The problem was
how normally amiable people changed and became totally unable to see the other
side, once bitten by the bug of LTTE ideology. They became obsessed by blind
hatred – the universal hallmark of gentleman chauvinists. Many LTTE-supporting
elite saw in Sivanadasundaram – who was spouting venom against
other militant groups – a great man.
They could not see that they made the old man a hero after encouraging him to
make intemperate speeches, which they had better sense not to deliver
themselves.
We clearly condemned these killings as a perpetuation
of blind intolerance by both sides. The killer in this instance was a member of
the EPRLF from Valvettithurai (later EPDP), who was
badly mauled and narrowly survived the Welikade
prison massacre of July 1983. Such a man must have felt deeply offended when,
after what he had been through, others who retired from hum drum government
service, and had taken no comparable risks, should call him a traitor. From the
start the UTHR(J) pleaded that our common stakes were too high for us to drown
ourselves in such intolerance.
Anandan’s visit was the first sign
that we were entering tempestuous waters…Meanwhile, gambling on the strength of
assurances and weapons given by the Sri Lankan government, the LTTE ratcheted
up the harshness of its actions, deliberately provoking a blood sacrifice in Prabhakaran’s birth place. It was Prabhakaran’s
protege Pottu Amman who was
in charge of the area.
2.5 A Deadly Sequel in VVT
Indeed, as was
revealed, Anandan was in possession of knowledge of
the LTTE’s long-term intentions. The LTTE did indeed go to peace talks only to
remove the Indian Army, as he predicted, and did go to war with the Premadasa government in 1990. It was a drama in which
neither the Government, the VVT CC nor the LTTE quite knew where they were
headed except for wanting the Indian Army out for disparate reasons. They were
all out of their depth.
In mid-1989, the LTTE
regularly provoked the Indian Army in all other parts of Vadamaratchy
bringing about regular reprisals against the people. There was anger among the
people in Vadamaratchy that Valvettithurai
was allowed to enjoy peace for several months because it was the home town of
Prabhakaran
.
LTTE cadres from other areas too must have felt it. Just past the middle of
1989, the story got about in
Jaffna
that the Premadasa government had given the LTTE a
consignment of weapons towards their common objective of getting the Indian
Army out. This was a cue for another fiendish turn of events. In early August
1989, the LTTE launched treacherous attacks on the Indian Army stationed at Mannar and
Adampan
Hospitals
anticipating reprisals on the hospitals and their environs.
In both these
instances the Indian Army showed creditable restraint. In Adampan,
on the night of 31st July a large group of the LTTE came into the
jungle behind the hospital and fired missiles at the Madras Regiment on the
other side of the hospital near Giant’s Tank. The officer in charge immediately
contacted the doctor at the hospital and asked all of them to vacate as they
were going to retaliate. Thus civilians escaped any harm. On 9th
August, the Indian Army lost several men at
Mannar
Hospital
. The attackers, who came by
boat from Vankalai stole in to the hospital by night
and fired from an upstairs window of the OPD building, overlooking Indian
troops sleeping in a tent below. Other Indian troops who arrived calmed the
people and preserved the dignity of their dead.
A week earlier,
on 2nd August, three days after the attack on
Adampan
Hospital
, the LTTE hid behind a wall in Valvettithurai and reportedly fired their new RPGs gifted
by the Sri Lankan government, and killed six soldiers of an Indian patrol. The
Indian Army reacted in anger killing about 40 civilians. This seemed a
self-defeating action for the Indian Army just when India was responding to the Sri Lankan government’s demand that
the Indian Army pull out, by raising concern for the future of Tamils in
that eventuality.
By attacking the
Indian patrol, the LTTE killed two birds with one stone. It made the Indian
government look foolish, and neutralised the charge
of LTTE’s favoritism toward Valvettithurai (VVT). In
a grotesque reversal of the tide of the Tamil militant struggle, during the
Indian Army’s reprisals in Valvettithurai (Report
No.3)President, many people from VVT sought shelter at the local Sri Lankan
army camp; and the VVT CC prepared documents with necessary affidavits and
details of the dead and sent them to President Premadasa,
who in turn sent his deputy defence minister Ranjan Wijeratne to commiserate
with the people of Valvettithurai over the Indian
Army’s killings, even as the twosome presided over mass killings in the South
to suppress the JVP.
It was much later
that we learnt of the sleazy side of the affair. The VVT CC had, acting on
behalf of the LTTE, forged a gentlemen’s agreement with the Indian Army to the
effect that the two sides would not exchange fire in VVT. During those months
in 1989, both sides passed each other along parallel lanes or alleys showing no
signs of alarm. By breaking the truce with its calculated attack on the Indian
soldiers, killing them, the LTTE successfully provoked the Indian Army; it
reacted with anger and force against the people of Valvettithurai.
The VVT CC of
course knew danger in collaborating with the LTTE, knowing well its methods and
the unreliability of its word. The game of on-off war and peace for transient
gains, forced on the Valvettithurai people the
indignity of refuge in the Sri Lankan army camp – at a time when it was killing
Sinhalese people and would return to killing Tamils in less than a year.
It was all
meaningless, even as the VVT CC followed the LTTE’s prescription for useful
human rights activism. Who would have dreamt that the LTTE would in ten months
provoke the Government by killing hundreds of surrendered policemen, the way it
did the Indian Army in VVT; that soon afterwards Deputy Defence
Minister Wijeratne who commiserated in VVT would
preside over an orgy of killing thousands of Tamil civilians in the East
enforcing the President’s boast of putting down the LTTE as they had done the
JVP, or that the LTTE would kill its allies of convenience: Ranjan
Wijeratne in 18 months and Premadasa
in four years?
Had we been more
alert, we would have realised that the desperation
and nastiness in the LTTE had reached a point where they saw any restraint as
inimical to their interests. The Indians had blundered in their arrogance and
the Sri Lankan government was contemptuous of the Tamils. The constellation of
forces that had given Tamil dissent some room to manoeuvre
by taking modest risks had broken down. If the LTTE went this far in harming
the people of VVT in a desperate game of power, what chance did those like Rajani have against their compulsive desire to achieve
totalitarian control? Intuitively or otherwise Rajani
felt it, but tried not to alarm the rest of us…
2.6 Prepublication issue of The Broken Palmyra
The Broken
Palmyra
and the Indian Army
The
pre-publication edition of The Broken
Palmyra was released in May 1989 and Rajani went
to
England
during the vacation in June for a research stint. Having been tipped off about
the book, Major Nautyal raided Rajani’s
house on 27th July and obtained a copy. The next day he sent word to
Sritharan demanding another copy. He told us that the Indian Army had appointed
two teams to review the book. Sritharan and I delivered a copy saying that they
should return it. On Sunday 30th
July, Major S.K. Singh, deputy commander of Kondavil
division, and Major Nautyal called at my mother’s
residence. Singh said that the facts in the book were correct and he
appreciated the analysis, but added that the authors had been unfair by the
soldiers whose difficulties and anxieties they had not appreciated. He
suggested that we might say something about it when the book is finally
published. I said that the book would stand or fall by whether or not the
readers find it truthful. There was no hint of the slightest threat during the
visit…
Colonel Sashikumar of the Gurkha
Regiment, who hailed from Kerala, had dealt with the University from 1988. In
his own way he tried to maintain a clean record, especially with the
University. When a university don’s house was raided in November 1988, probably
on a tip off about a book in compilation,
the Vice Chancellor made a complaint to Brigadier Kahlon,
and in turn General Dhilon who was at Jaffna Fort,
called the vice chancellor’s office and wanted the don to call on the local
commander Colonel Sashikumar. As was then the
practice this don was taken to the Tinnevely camp by
fellow members of the staff, including Rev. Dr. Guy Rajendram.
The conversation
was frank and in a way friendly. The purpose of the meeting from the Army’s
point of view was to be better informed about the ground and to build cordial
relations with the don whose home was raided. All materials removed from the
don’s home were filed and returned, including photographs of civilians killed
by the Indian Army in 1987 (obtained from Arasu).
When confronted
with the fact of the dirty war, which took the form of getting rid of LTTE
supporters, Sashikumar responded obliquely by giving
his perception of
Jaffna
society. He said that in his own area covering Kondavil
and surroundings, he found that several hundreds had
been killed when the LTTE eliminated the TELO in 1986. He perceived that the
people had come to terms with it passively in return for order. Likewise he
said that the society would come to terms with getting rid of LTTE supporters
too.
We may note here the care Colonel Sashikumar
took in dealing with the University. The Indian Army may not have lost any
sleep over humbler civilians killed, but were very sensitive to bad publicity
arising from incidents involving members of the elite. It is evident in the
bureaucratic manner in which the Indian Army dealt with complaints. There would
be queries and calls for reports down the line. The Indian Army knew that the
Medical Faculty, the university students’ centre and canteens were being used
and arms were being stored in the premises, but never once raided the place.
They watched the place closely and kept their fingers crossed. In the course of
the Indian pullout, Sashikumar ignored a warning from
an LTTE sentry and drove into Ariyalai East to rescue
a group of the ENDLF who were surrounded by the LTTE. Colonel Sashikumar was killed about
20th January 1990
.
While the Indian
Army had no intention of physically harming any of us, being an intelligence
man however, S.K. Singh could not get out of his head the suspicion that
someone paid big money to have The Broken
Palmyra written, but that is a different matter.
The Broken
Palmyra
and the LTTE
The LTTE had obtained a pre-publication copy
of the The Broken Palmyra and translated sections
of the book for their own authorities in order to make a decision on what to
do. Our suspicions that this had happened were corroborated in 1997 when we
were given direct confirmation by an editor privy to the events.
During 1997 the
government with the help of the Sri Lankan Army organised
seminars in
Jaffna
to explain the Neelan-G.L. Peiris
constitutional proposals. A journalist from the South had occasion to have a
private chat with a courageous veteran journalist in
Jaffna
who had received commendations from
Western missions in
Colombo
for carrying on with his task of reporting undaunted. The visitor asked the
veteran why the media in
Jaffna
avoided discussing the proposals, even if only to criticise
them?
To the visitor’s
surprise the veteran began with an outburst of wariness and trepidation, “You
don’t understand. We could write 99 things they (the LTTE) want us to write,
but then if we write just one thing they disapprove of, that would be the end.”
The veteran continued, “You may know that the Rajasingam
sisters worked untiringly for the LTTE and did so much through very difficult
times. But then, see, they killed Rajani without any
mercy.” The visitor’s ears pricked up and he urged the veteran to continue.
The following is what the veteran journalist from
Jaffna
said, with subsequent clarifications
we obtained from him in person:
In late August
1989, the veteran was given a copy of The Broken Palmyra by Major Shastri of the Indian Army in charge of a camp near Chundikuli and was asked as a favour
to make a copy for him, as the Major knew that he had a copying machine. While
copying, the veteran was told of references to his paper by the person handling
the copying; he became interested and had an additional copy made. This was
seen by his brother-in-law, a news paper proprietor, who began reading it.
Subsequently, the Assistant Chemist, Chemical Lab, at the Cement Corporation’s
KKS cement factory from Vadamaratchy visited this
proprietor. The latter, with no harmful intention, told him about the book to
be published and that it would expose the LTTE. A couple of days later, Pottu Amman, who was then LTTE’s area leader for Vadamaratchy, sent some of his men to the veteran
journalist with paper and made a copy which they took to Vadamaratchy.
The Assistant
Chemist then lived in Pt Pedro. The LTTE then approached Mr. Rudra, a senior lawyer in Pt Pedro, to translate The
Broken Palmyra for them. The lawyer, who knew the family, wriggled out of
it but later told Rajani’s father Mr. Rajasingam, also a native of Pt Pedro and an old boy of
Hartley
College
. Pottu
Amman was in the course of a few months promoted to the position of Chief of
Intelligence.
Subsequently,
about early September 1989, a son of Saloysius, a
sworn translator in Nelliady, Vadamaratchy,
who worked for the journalist, rushed to him with the news that that a party
working with the Indian Army had abducted his father, the translator. He wanted
the matter given press publicity. Before the next edition went to press, he
came back and told the veteran to take the item out because it was the LTTE
that had taken the translator. After mid-September the LTTE released the
translator, and the veteran learnt that his job under custody had been to
translate excerpts from The Broken
Palmyra. Within a few days of his release Rajani
was assassinated.
Having obtained
the copy, the LTTE would have taken it to someone conversant in English to tell
them what was in it, perhaps to the Chemist himself who alerted them in the
first place, to point out extracts for translation, for dispatch to their
superiors in the Vanni.
It is apparent
that Pottu Amman wanted to keep this operation within
a closed circle. For example, the Valvettithurai
Citizens’ Committee was a window for the LTTE in sensitive matters and
continued to function, chiefly because the LTTE and the Indian Army found its
existence useful as a channel. Other citizens’ committees had been closed down
by the LTTE, either by intimidation or by killing their leaders, notably
Principal Anandarajah of the Jaffna Citizens’
Committee.
Having the
translation done in Valvettithurai would have been
easy for Pottu Amman, but he decided otherwise. This
brings us to undercurrents of divisions and competing interests and furtive manoeuvrings within the LTTE, which came to the surface in
1990, which make it difficult to trace the chain of decision making that led to the killing of Rajani.
Mahattaya was in charge of field
operations at that time even as moves were under way to cut him down to size. Pottu Amman, who may have known in 1989 that Prabhakaran was grooming him for the job of intelligence
chief, was, not long after, used to edge Mahattaya
out and strike the final blow against him. His increasing authority is further
evident from the fact that the LTTE used him to provoke an Indian Army massacre
in Valvettithurai on 2nd August 1989,
described above, which created considerable resentment among the local folk. Pottu Amman was an outsider and both Mahattaya
and Prabhakaran were from Valvettithurai.
In early May the
LTTE team was in
Colombo
for talks with the Premadasa government. Both Mahattaya and Balasingam were in
the team. Mahattya had attempted during this period
to contact Dayapala, Rajani’s
husband (see Chapters 4&5). There were no doubt discussions afoot within
the LTTE about how to deal with activism in the University. Killing Rajani or someone else was normal to the LTTE’s way of
thinking, but there would also have been opposition considering what it would
cost. Rajani enjoyed the affection and goodwill of
even students who were LTTE members, and she was irreplaceable for the wider
community…If the acquisition of The
Broken Palmyra played any role at all, it was to reinforce a process
already set in motion.
