Fear and Exile in Lanka

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A 10-foot-high golden-hued Sri Lankan soldier in full combat gear emerges from the centre of a mirror-calm artificial lake in Mullaitivu district, north-eastern Sri Lanka. The fierce Soviet-style soldier waves a Sri Lankan flag in his left hand, a Chinese-made Type 56-2 assault rifle in his right, mouth open in orgiastic exultation. The war memorial, unveiled by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in December 2009, stands less than 2 km north of the shores of Nanthikadal lagoon where Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was gunned down by the Sri Lankan military on May 19, 2009.

The Tiger chief's death signalled the end of the war. Today his four-storey underground bunker, training facilities and wasteland of burnt out civil and military vehicles are on display for thousands of Sri Lankan tourists. But for an estimated 500,000 Tamil civilians heading back to the war-torn north to pick up pieces of their shattered lives, the monuments represent Sinhala triumphalism. "They are treating Tamils like a defeated race and celebrating our subjugation," says a small business owner who recently returned to Mullaitivu town.

Normalcy is returning to the former Tiger-held town of Puthukkudiyirippu on the A35 highway. Women ride bicycles and chatter on mobile phones, buses teeming with passengers lurch past on the dusty unmetalled gravel road. But this normalcy hides a silent rage. In front of a small wayside restaurant stocked waist-high with soft drink bottles and glass shelves with stale pastries, a young man says he cannot forget the horror of the civil war. "The government tells us to forget the past and move on," he says as he kick-starts his motorcycle, "only the Tamils are supposed to forget."

For nearly a quarter century, Prabhakaran's LTTE ran a brutal proto-Fascist state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, areas it claimed as an independent Tamil 'Eelam'. The Tigers conscripted child soldiers, perfected suicide bombings, even using pregnant women and handicapped persons. They ran kangaroo courts, murdered dissenting Tamils and waged a savage 26-year war with the government. The Tamil civilians trapped between LTTE and the Lankan army were silently relieved when Prabhakaran was killed. Four years later, however, their fear of one dictator has been replaced by another.

This is an excerpt from India Today Cover Story dated April 8, 2013. To read more, subscribe to the magazine.

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