by Sachi Sri Kantha; March 15, 2004
Col.Karuna: The Tamil Hero who turned into a Zero
By fortuitous circumstances, I found myself a guest of Kilinochchi people for a little over four days (March 2nd to 6th and again on 8th), when the Col.Karuna affair flared up in the open. Thus, unlike the contemporary hacks of the harkara system put in practice by the stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy [Note: harkara system originally used by India’s Moghul rulers basically consisted of two groups of news providers; high caste writers and low caste news runners who carried verbal or written messages over long distances at high speed.] from distant locations like Toronto, Chennai and Colombo, I was relatively privy to the sentiments expressed in Kilinochchi by fellow Tamils. In sum, the message was ‘Col.Karuna the Tamil Hero had turned into a Zero.’ Initially there was a mild shock, then a disappointment, followed by the overall verdict of ‘betrayal to the Tamil cause.’
I was an invited guest of Kilinochchi people. Thus, I was offered the privilege of a trusted and ranking LTTE warrior (porali in Tamil; and this word, porali has a special reverence in Eelam Tamil country) as an escort. My escort is in his early 30s, still single, and with a Clark Gable mustache. He solicited my views on why a much respected porali like Col.Karuna jumped ship, and why Karuna’s statements which appeared routinely from March 3rd to March 8th seemed so incoherent and insane. This was not the Col.Karuna whom he knew in the battlefield of the 1990s. I asked my warrior friend whether he has heard of the Seven Year Itch (1955) movie, starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell? It was one of Billy Wilder’s comedy classics, encapsulating the entrapment of a happily married husband who was torn between the loyalty to his wife (sent off for the summer) and his inner desire for tasting the ‘forbidden fruit’ who had landed in the apartment upstairs. Being born to a generation in Eelam after Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1961, my warrior friend was oblivious to Wilder’s take on marital infidelity.
I briefed my warrior friend on the ‘Seven Year Itch’ theme, and opined that similar to the ‘Seven Year Itch’ in Holywood portrayal, there is a curse of ‘Fifteen Year Itch’ among notable Eelam Tamils. Remarkably talented individuals who gain public notice disgrace themselves after fifteen years of (plus or minus two to three years) adulation. Col.Karuna is not the first and will not be the last. Who were his notable predecessors? First, there was the talented genius G.G.Ponnambalam, who entered the Ceylon State Council in 1934 as a champion of Tamil rights and raised the Tamil consciousness, only to somersault on his principles in 1948 by embedding himself with the D.S.Senayanayke Cabinet. The second example among politicians, was Col.Karuna’s predecessor from the East Eelam, the one-and-only Chelliah Rajadurai who received notice in 1956 as a fiery orator of the Tamil Federal Party. Though he joined the UNP Cabinet of J.R.Jayewardene in 1979 [15 plus 8 years], Rajadurai’s heart had left the Federal Party by 1972. He was even flirting to join Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s SLFP Cabinet in 1974 [15 plus 3 years], and possibly out of respect to his mentor S.J.V.Chelvanayakam, Rajadurai postponed his mental exit to 1977.
The third Tamil to do a Benedict Arnold was LTTE’s then deputy leader Mahataya. He joined LTTE in late 1970s, and established himself as an able LTTE warrior in campaign against the Indian army, between 1987 and 1989. But, by 1992 [after 15 years of joining the Movement], Mahataya’s morality collapsed and turned against the Movement which made him a man. He paid the price of betrayal. Now, Col.Karuna has followed Mahataya’s example. Col.Karuna joined LTTE as a foot soldier in 1982, gained stature in LTTE’s campaign against the Indian army by 1989, and after fifteen years lost his sanity against the wile of stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy.
Why this happens recurrently? There is a plausible psychological explanation. It’s the ‘mid life crisis’ of dominant males. In all four examples cited, the individuals gained early reputation in mid 20s or early 30s and after 15 years of adulation by the Tamils, they felt that something was ‘missing’ in their lives. They wanted ‘prestige’ as a Cabinet minister (in case of G.G.Ponnambalam and C.Rajadurai) which they couldn’t have achieved if they remained true to their principles which brought them public recognition. Even twenty five years ago, a cabinet minister position was a prestigious crown for an elected Tamil politician following a decade-old career as a legislator in Ceylon. This had been cheapened by the deflation of cabinet minister nominations in 1990s.
In the case of Mahataya and Col.Karuna, it is not difficult to infer that they succumbed to enticement of power by devious means; entrapped by the stinking skunks who pledged ‘instant leadership position’ to the LTTE’s nominal No.2s. There is no question that both Mahataya and Col.Karuna could have attained LTTE’s leadership position, if they had waited and served the objectives for which LTTE was established. But, they fell prey to foolish temptations from the skunks and pawned the trust Eelam Tamils had on them for shekels of short-term free publicity in the international media. What will be their ultimate plights? In the annals of Tamil history, their names will be as tainted as the trust betrayers Benedict Arnold and Count Rumford in American history.
Another issue which need emphasis is that LTTE has been constantly in war since 1983. The popular scenario [as painted by paid media hacks] of war is overt war fought in the battle fields. Now, LTTE guns are silent in the battle field, since the 2002 Ceasefire. But covert war against LTTE has been going on uninterrupted in multiple theaters. LTTE’s adversaries in the covert war are the stinking skunks belonging to more than four nations; including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Israel. By design, media hacks (quite a number of them being indirect paid participants themselves) do not describe the covert wars truthfully. There is no denying of the fact that Col.Karuna was an LTTE hero in the overt war against the Sri Lankan and Indian armies. But, once the overt war came to a halt, he felt a cropper in the covert war against the stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy. The signal that Col.Karuna was a tempting target in the covert war between stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy and LTTE appeared in the Chennai’s Frontline magazine of June 22, 2002, in the form of a feature by Bandula Jayasekara. It was entitled, ‘A major force within the LTTE’. The concluding paragraph had the following ‘take note’ pointers, indicating that the stinking skunks had begun to coddle him. Excerpts:
“…No one knows what Karuna is up to. It is Karuna that Sri Lanka’s Minister of Defence, Thilak Marapona, and even Prabakaran have got to watch closely. Karuna may prove people wrong, people who believe that everything will end the day Prabhakaran goes to ‘heaven’. In fact Karuna is emerging as a formidable leader of the LTTE though he hails from the East. He could be even more ruthless than Prabakaran. Karuna may even tell Prabakaran one day: ‘I will look after the East and you look after the North.’”
When I read this piece by Jayasekara initially (before the peace parleys in Thailand, Oslo and Tokyo of which Col.Karuna was an LTTE participant), I had a hunch that the stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy had begun to inject ego boosters to Col.Karuna. In the photo-ops which accompanied these peace parleys, Col.Karuna received his Warholian ‘fifteen minutes of world fame’. It appears that my guess was not wrong. Karuna, the LTTE hero of overt war had turned into a zero in the covert war. Was it naïve of Prabhakaran that he couldn’t notice the coddling limbs of stinking skunks around Col.Karuna? I presume that the LTTE leader was too trusting on Col.Karuna that he would not do a Mahataya. But Col.Karuna, gripped with avarice and showered by proverbial 30 shekels from stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy foolishly betrayed that trust.
In the guest house I stayed at Kilinochchi, I saw a framed photograph entitled ‘The Foundation Stones of Thamil Eelam’ [Thamil Eelaththin Adikkarkal]. It provided details of 17 LTTE heroes who embraced heroic deaths from 1982 to 1997. Following is the list, with their enshrined date of deaths.
1. Lieut. Sankar [S.Sathiyanathan] of Kambarmalai; Nov.27, 1982.
2. Lieut. Seelan [L.Charles Anthony] of Trincomalee; Nov.27, 1982.
3. Veera Vengai Ananthan [E.Arulnathan] of Myliddy; July 15, 1983.
4. Lieut.Sellakili [S.Selvanayakam] of Kalviyankadu; July 23, 1983.
5. Capt.Lala Ranjan [K.Gnanenthiramehan] of Point Pedro; July 13, 1984.
6. Capt.Pandithar [S.Ravindran] of Kambarmalai; Jan.09, 1985.
7. Capt.Reji [S.Maheswaran] of Karainagar; Dec.02, 1985.
8. Major Albert [K.Rubanithi] of Achuveli; Dec.21, 1985.
9. Capt.Lingam [S.Selvakumar] of Valvettithurai; Apr.24, 1986.
10. Lieut.Col.Victor [M.Fiyuslas] of Pankaddikoddu; Oct.12, 1986.
11. Major Ganes [S.Sittampalam] of Kantalai; Nov.05, 1986.
12. Lieut.Col.Ponnamman [Y.Kugan] of Kaladdy-Jaffna; Feb.14, 1987.
13. Lieut.Col.Pulendran [K.Dharmarajah] of Trincomalee; Oct.05, 1987.
14. Lieut.Col.Kumarappa [B.Ratnapalan] of Valvettithurai; Oct.05, 1987.
15. Lieut.Col.Santhosam [K.Umainesan] of Ariyalai; Oct.21, 1987.
16. Col.Kiddu [S.Krishnakumar] of Valvettithurai; Jan.16, 1993.
17. Lieut.Col.Appaiah [I.Rasiah] of Manipay; Dec.24, 1997.
Between the deaths of Col.Kiddu and Lieut.Col.Appaiah, Mahataya lost his life. But, by betraying the Movement which catapulted him to fame, his name has faded. Similarly, by his recent betrayal, Col.Karuna, despite his gallantry in overt battles, on behalf of Eelam Tamils, had turned out to be a zero for the Eelam Tamils in the 21st century. This indeed is a pity.
Journalist sooth-sayers like D.B.S.Jeyaraj [one of the Eelam pioneers, who embedded himself to the harkara system of Chennai] laboriously to paint a view that Col.Karuna’s defection is detrimental to LTTE’s future and Mahataya’s betrayal was nothing compared to Col.Karuna’s posse. He bases his argument on the fact that Col.Karuna holds ‘territory’. My LTTE warrior friend in Kilinochchi rebutted this argument with a page from recent Eelam history. He told me: “Annai, Sri Lankan army was holding territory in Vanni in mid 1990s. Now, they are beyond the checkpoints. You wait and see, how our Leader is going to tackle Col.Karuna. This is a headache for our Leader. But that’s all. These idiots are just twiddling the tail of a calm Tiger and they are going to pay for it.”
Last but not the least, the information provided by knowledgeable Chennai analyst B.Raman to the rediff.com media outlet should deserve notice. In a commentary dated, March 11, 2004, Raman had noted, “Media reports that Karuna had at his disposal 6,000 fighters from the east seem somewhat exaggerated. A more reasonable estimate would be 1,200 plus.” When I was in Kilinochchi, my porali friend told me on March 5th, that according to the then reliable estimates, the fighters under Col.Karuna should number around 2,000. This means, in a week’s time, nearly 800 had deserted Karuna. And Chennai analyst Raman is not a lightweight. His designation tail reads as “a former additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and currently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.”; in short, Raman is rather close to the stinking skunks of sewer diplomacy!
Originally published March 17, 2004