may 19th, 2009
even though he was a brutal dictator, in death prabhakaran has achieved some sort of martyrdom.
prabhakaran goes off 'gentle into that good night', but not 'raging, raging against the fading of the light'. i expected from him some act of 'savage, spectacular suicide'.
with his wide-open, accusing eyes, bloated face, and the top of his cranium shot away (why didn't he consume cyanide, preferring instead to shoot himself or have an associate shoot him point-blank?) there is a certain dignity about prabhakaran's corpse.
it seems to say: this is not over. unless the tamils are treated fairly, we shall return.
the sinhalese had better listen.
and once again, shame to the government of india, for not looking after the interests of diasporic hindus. examples:
burma
fiji
malaysia
5 comments:
Well, we too did it wrong from the beginning:
http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/may/19/guest-blood-on-our-hands-but-this-too-shall-pass.htmHopefully, Singhalese will see a need to introspect, and take a hard look at what they've done.
yeah, thats right. slowly this horrible murderous meglomanic is being turned into a martyr. the logic is, "ok, he was bad but he did it all for the tamil cause."
this is the man who killed more tamil leaders than even the sinhalese. so much so that today their is nobody of note to speak for the poor sri lankan tamils.
rajeev speculates that he was hidden christo. i personally suspect that like all past meglomaniacs, prabhakaran only worshipped himself. thats why he insured that the tamil movement fused into his personality. thank god he is dead.
ambassador bhadrakumar -- whom i know personally -- is too ready to blame india for everything. mea culpas need to be within reason. but the ambassador is at heart a good person, although he is a second-generation communist. his father was a CPI MP, and a family friend.
i think india's foreign ministry has no idea about strategic planning. their lives are centered around appeasing pakistan, so that everything china does is a complete surprise to them, although it should not be. they are following sun tzu. if only the MEA bought a few copies of the arthashastra and made it compulsory bedtime reading for ambassadors and suchlike!
indian foreign policy in sri lanka was not hard-headed enough. we got sentimental.
incidentally, that's precisely what we're doing in burma now. aung san suu kyi is all very nice and all, and we can mouth sentimental platitudes about her, but the power is with the junta formerly known as slorc. we should be chumming up to them, as the chinese have been doing.
there is a character flaw (well, many) in india. we compete not to win, but just to be there. as in the olympics. no, when you do foreign policy, it is not to be nice guys, but to win, goddamit! no point being gracious losers.
S glad u mentiond mr. bhadrakumar's communist leanings. i have been reading his articles in asia times for some time now. he appears to be another hindu-baiter (nothing which India does is good enough in the eyes of Mr. bhadrakumar). See how his article on the LTTE starts, that uncalled for snide remark on worshipping ganesha. he keeps harping on how "hindus ferociously decimated buddhists" etc, a pernicious lie. whats it with these commies: hindus have to be the villains!! why dont these jokers immigrate to china. they are basically a bunch of fifth columnists.
The Lanka rAkshasAs say they cremated Prabhakaran's body and threw the ashes into the Bay of Bengal. Prabhakaran was a Christist, and international norms required that he should have been buried according to Christist rites. I say Lankans did what they did for destroying all evidence of torture and brutal murder. It is even possible that Prabhakaran was never captured. Lankans could have put a mask on a dead body and said it was Prabhakaran's. Now there is no DNA evidence possible. Also, if Prabhakaran had been allowed to live and stand trial for war crimes, a LOT of information extremely unpleasant for Lankans (and for some "Dravidian" and other Indian political parties) might have come out. So, the easy way out was to kill him and destroy his body.
"At the end of the day", "the bottom line is" (as most English Language TV news channels would have said) that Tamils in Lanka will continue to suffer and Dravidian parties and the cOnGRESS party will continue to enjoy the show.
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