Your question as to what Gandhi may have done
in Pirabakaran's timespace is an interesting and important one. I can only conjecture. Given Gandhi's deep commitment to non violence, I would imagine
that he would have sought to mobilise the Tamil people to disobey the unjust laws that
discriminated against them and he would have launched a civil disobedience movement to
secure freedom from alien Sinhala rule.
Initially, he would have been attacked in the same way as
the Tamil satyagrahis in Colombo were attacked in 1956 when they protested against the
Sinhala Only act:
"What happened on 6 June 1956
when the Sinhala Only Bill was being debated in Parliament? The members of the Federal
Party, exercising their undoubted constitutional right, wanted to protest against the
imposition of (the Sinhala Only) Bill. The Members of the Federal Party said that they
would sit in silence on the Galle Face Green... It was a silent protest which they were
entitled to make. What happened? Hooligans, in the very presence of Parliament House,
under the very nose of the Prime Minister of this country, set upon those innocent men
seated there, bit their ears and beat them up mercilessly. ...
"Thereafter on that day, 6 June,
every Tamil man was set upon and robbed. He was beaten up. His fountain pen and wristlet
were snatched away. He was thrashed mercilessly, humiliated and sent home. The police were
looking on while all this was happening before their very eyes. Shops were looted... but
the police did nothing... These (hooligans) were instigated by some members of
Parliament... they were heading the gang of hooligans. The Prime Minister made a
remarkably wonderful speech on that occasion. He came, he smiled and he told the crowd,
'Don't do that. Rain is coming down. They will be cooled in no time.' That was the type of
appeal he made. If Sinhalese men were being thrashed by Tamils and their ears bitten, I
wonder whether the Prime Minister would have adopted the same attitude."
(Senator S.Nadesan Q.C., Sri Lanka Senate Hansard 4 June 1958)
Again, Gandhi may have led a salt march from Jaffna to the
shores of Batticaloa to establish the sovereignty of the Tamil homeland and he may have
been attacked by Sinhala mobs in the same way as those travelling to the Tamil Federal
Party convention in Trincomalee were attacked in 1958:
"The (Tamil) Federal Party's
annual public meeting was called for late May (1958). The conclave was to decide whether
or not to undertake a Satyagraha campaign now that the (Sinhala) Prime Minister had
withdrawn his support from the agreement he had endorsed a year before (the Bandaranaike
Chelvanayagam Pact).
"The outbreak of violence began
when a train, presumed to be carrying Tamil delegates to the meetings, was derailed and
its passengers beaten up by ruffians. The next day Sinhalese labourers set fire to Tamil
shops and homes in nearby villages where they lived intermingled with Sinhalese...
"Arson and beatings spread
rapidly to Colombo. Gangs roamed the districts where Tamils lived, ransacking and setting
fire to homes and cars, and looting shops. Individual Tamils were attacked, humiliated and
beaten. Many were subjected to torture and some killed outright... "
"Some ten thousand Tamils were
reported to have fled their homes to seek safety in improvised refugee camps... Many fled
to the North by sea.."
(Professor Howard Wriggins: Ceylon - Dilemmas of a New Nation, Princeton University Press)
And as Gandhi persisted in his struggle, he may have been
imprisoned. But, the one thing that Gandhi would not have done would have been to contest
a Parliamentary seat. One can hardly see Mahatma Gandhi taking office as the Leader of the
Opposition in Sri Lanka's Parliament.
But, as Gandhi's non violent campaign secured more and
more adherents, the Sinhala dominated Sri Lanka government may have unleashed a 1983 type
genocidal attack on the Tamil people:
"Clearly (1983) was not a
spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people.. It was a series of
deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organised
well in advance.... Communal riots in which Tamils are killed, maimed, robbed and rendered
homeless are no longer isolated episodes; they are beginning to become a pernicious
habit."
( Paul Sieghart: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International
Commission of Jurists, March 1984)
Gandhi himself may have been charged for sedition under
Sri Lanka's 6th Constitutional Amendment for advocating a separate state, even though such
advocacy was by peaceful non violent means:
"...The key to its (the 6th
Amendment's) effect is paragraph (1) which runs as follows:- 'No person shall directly or
indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or
advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka'. Anyone
who contravenes that provision becomes liable to the imposition of civic disability for
upto 7 years, the forfeiture of his movable and immovable property... the loss of his
passport... the right to engage in any trade or profession. In addition if he is a Member
of Parliament, he loses his seat."
"The freedom to express
political opinions, to seek to persuade others of their merits, to seek to have them
represented in Parliament, and thereafter seek Parliament to give effect to them, are all
fundamental to democracy itself. These are precisely the freedoms which Article 25 (of the
International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) recognises and guarantees - and in
respect of advocacy for the establishment of an independent Tamil State in Sri Lanka,
those which the 6th Amendment is designed to outlaw.
"It therefore appears to me
plain that this enactment constitutes a clear violation by Sri Lanka of its obligations in
international law under the Covenant ..."
(Paul Sieghart: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in January 1984 on behalf of the
International Commission of Jurists, March 1984)
Gandhi may have been sentenced to prison for sedition and
may have been killed in a convenient 'prison riot' in the same way as Thangathurai and
Kuttimuni were killed inside Welikade jail in 1983:
"Selvarajah Yogachandran,
popularly known as Kuttimuni, a nominated member of the Sri Lankan Parliament... one of
the 52 prisoners killed in the maximum security Welikade prison in Colombo two weeks ago,
(on July 25) was forced to kneel in his cell, where he was under solitary confinement, by
his assailants and ordered to pray to them. When he refused, he was taunted by his
tormentors about his last wish, when he was sentenced to death. He had willed that his
eyes be donated to some one so that at least that person would see an independent Tamil
Eelam. The assailants then gouged his eyes...He was then stabbed to death and his
testicles were wrenched from his body. This was confirmed by one of the doctors who had
conducted the postmortem of the first group of 35 prisoners."
(Madras Hindu, 10 August 1983)
And, of course, if Gandhi had fasted, the fate that befell
Thileepan and Annai Poopathy may have fallen on him - and Gandhi would have been allowed
to die, and labelled as an unreasonable trouble maker, who had not accepted the compromise
of Provincial Councils instead of insisting on freedom, and who by his actions was
fomenting unrest which would spiral out of his control.
And Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar (to use
the 'temperate' language that he has recently used in respect of Pirabakaran) may have
called Gandhi a "suicidal, maniacal kind of a man who would ultimately prefer to
bring his whole house down rather than give in."
But in his death, Gandhi would not have failed - just as
much as Thileepan and Annai Poopathy have not failed in their deaths. As Aurobindo wrote
many years ago on ideas such as freedom:
"The idea creates its martyrs.
And in martyrdom there is an incalculable spiritual magnetism which works miracles. A
whole nation, a whole world catches the fire which burned in a few hearts; the soil which
has drunk the blood of the martyr imbibes with it a sort of divine madness which it
breathes into the heart of all its children, until there is but one overmastering idea,
one imperishable resolution in the minds of all besides which all other hopes and
interests fade into significance and until it is fulfilled, there can be no peace or rest
for the land or its rulers.
It is at this moment that the idea
creates its heroes and fighters, whose numbers and courage defeat only multiplies and
confirms until the idea militant has become the idea triumphant. Such is the history of
the idea, so invariable in its broad outlines that it is evidently the working of a
natural law."
And Gandhi, perhaps, would have said of Pirabakaran, as he
had said of Baghat Singh: "His way is not my way, but I bow my head before one who is
prepared to give his life for the freedom of his people."
And, here I may be wrong, (and as I have said, I can only
conjecture) I believe that Gandhi would have also recognised that the cyanide capsule in
the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was evidence not of a simple minded
willingness of a suicide to die but of a fierce determination that cried out: ''I will not
lose my freedom except with my life'' and that it was this determination and this
willingness to suffer, this thyagam, which had found an
answering response in the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Tamils living in
many lands and across distant seas.