Tamil Nadu's new Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and Opposition Leader M K Stalin should continue with the same policy of p

MDMK leader Vaiko was today acquitted by local court of charges of sedition and supporting unlawful activities in connecti

Several pro-Tamil outfits and political parties took out a rally here demanding release of seven convicts in the Rajiv Gan

President Maithripala Sirisena has vowed to "eradicate the LTTE ideology" which is still present locally and globally to e

The Madras High Court bench today further extended the suspension of the sentence awarded to three convicts, who were char

Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated Northern province today commemorated the civilians who died during the civil war between the L

Four former LTTE operatives have been arrested by police in Sri Lanka on suspicion of trying to revive the banned group's

As Sri Lanka today withdrew the army from the security detail of Mahinda Rajapaksa, his son accused the government of carr

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has asked the Sinhala extremists to understand the need for achieving ethnic rec

Seven years after the end of civil war, Sri Lanka today decided to ban land mines describing it an "important" move for th

K.P. Nayar in the Telegraph on how India will pay a heavy price for abdicating a Sri Lanka policy:

The death of Velupillai Prabhakaran brought back a flood of memories. If history is to determine the day when India’s pre-eminence in all of South Asia began its decline, it would be November 17, 1986. Prabhakaran, the founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, would be one of the characters who set in motion a process that brought about this decline. And if history is to fix the responsibility on a single individual for triggering the onset of that decline, it would be P. Chidambaram, who was then the naïve minister of state for internal security in Rajiv Gandhi’s government.

M K Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat who served in Sri Lanka in the 1980s in rediff.com:

A long time ago, we created Prabhakaran. We picked him up as an urchin from nowhere. What we found charming about him was that he was so thoroughly apolitical -- almost innocent about politics. He was a simpleton in many ways, who had a passion for weapons and the military regimen. He suited our needs perfectly. 

Which was to humiliate the J R Jayewardene government in Sri Lanka and teach it a hard lesson about the dangers of being disrespectful to India's status as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean. Jayewardene was too Western-oriented and behaved as if he never read about the Munroe Doctrine when he read history in Oxford. We didn't like at all his dalliance with the Israelis and the Americans in our very backyard. 

So, we fostered Prabhakaran and built him up as a pinprick on Jayewardene's vanities -- as a Bhindranwale of the Deccan.

More here

B. Raman writes:

A picture of Prabakaran supposedly alive watching with a smile Sri Lanka TV showing him dead is circulating in the Internet.

For example, here.

Clearly, a bad, amateur photoshop job:

Muzamil Jaleel in the Indian Express:

The rise and fall of the Tigers, in fact, is a lesson for insurgent groups across the world... But the Tigers failed to understand that war alone is never enough. And at the height of their military success when they forced Colombo to enter into a peace process, Prabhakaran and his group didn’t understand the necessity of the transition from terror tactics to pure politics...

...Like the Tigers, the Kashmir insurgency also had several opportunities to understand the world’s changing political realities, halt violence and take a moral high ground on a negotiating table. But each time, the opportunity provided by a military success was lost with a complete underestimation of the power of the state.

More here

R. Jagannathan in the DNA:

For India, which faces several insurgencies and revolts, the first lesson to learn is this: it must display determination and muscle early in any war. Otherwise, the adversary is likely to conclude we are weak. 

...The second lesson is to spot and isolate the ideological and spiritual mentors of the insurgents.

...The third lesson is about cutting off the source of funding as soon as possible.

Arundhati Roy in the Times of India

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern. 

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.

More here

Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower. Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood ...

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience ...