The Hunted Tiger
May 21. It is 18 years since former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at an election rally in Sriperumbudur. Is it a coincidence or an irony that his nemesis Velupillai Prabhakaran has been found dead just a couple of days before the anniversary? Incidentally, the question needs to be asked whether thenews of the LTTE chief’s death before the poll here on May 13, would have given Amma the sweep everyone predicted for her AIADMK alliance instead of bringing back TN CM Karunanidhi as top dog, who now wants to put his son (Azhagiri),daughter (Kanimozhi) and grand nephew (Dayanidhi Maran) into the union cabinet. And would Vaiko who had threatened that there would be a "bloodbath" in Tamil Nadu if Prabhakaran was killed, have won hands down instead of losing by a mere 15,000-odd votes to a complete outsider called Manik Tagore, a youth Congress leader, whose mailing address for the last seven years has beenDelhi? While all that will be in the realm of speculation, what is old is the drama by various protagonists of the political stage, who had turned the Sri Lankan Tamil tragedy into a soap opera just to get votes. Karunanidhi, who some weeks ago shocked the nation with his "Prabhakaran is my good friend, he is not a terrorist" quote, choseto say, "I don’t want to say anything based on unconfirmed reports" when asked about Prabhakaran’s death.
Urban Legends
Cult figures have always spawned urban legends -- Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, some believe, went to Burma pre-independence and is still alive, the John F Kennedy shooting is still awhodunit, Che Guavara’s death swirls in mystery, and, closer home, Bhindranwala’s killing by the army in the Akal Takht in 1984 was not believed by many. Why, there are conspiracy theoriesabout man landing on the moon as well. And Prabhakaran’s death is no exception.
"Prabhakaran is alive, he will lead the movement. Rajapakse should be tried in the international criminal court," says the new MP from Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Thol Thirumavalavan. Incidentally, Thiruma, who considered the LTTE chief as one of his idols, was seen at the high table, in a manner of speaking, this week when he accompanied Karunanidhi and his entourage to meet PM-designate Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Vaiko too has said, "People shouldn’t believe the news on Prabhakaran," while Dravida Kazhagam’s Veeramanimaintains that Prabhakaran’s death was "a media-created sensation to help the Rajapakse government to get away with the genocide of 25,000 Tamils in the past few months."
But one of the fall-outs of the end of Prabhakaran could also mean that extreme Tamil outfits like the Tamil National Movement of P Nedumaran’s will have no agenda. The army chief of Sri Lanka Sarath Fonseca had got Vaiko all ruffled last December by calling him a "political joker" and accusing him of being on the payroll of the LTTE. The pro-LTTE outfits and even PMK’s S Ramadoss (who said the death of Prabhakaran had been "cooked" up by North Indian channels) upped the ante on the Sri Lankan, hoping to leverage it politically. But the election results tell another story because Vaiko and the PMK were whitewashed. AIADMK chief Jayalalitha who joined the bandwagon, even promising to send the army to get Sri Lankan Tamils a homeland, got her come-uppance from voters. Of course the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils is an emotive issue, but the average Tamil here voted for bijli, sadak, paani issues.