Velupillai:Martyr or Maniac?

In 1973 four people killed the Jaffna mayor, the police killed three of them and the fourth is "PRABHAKARAN". I never heard his name without the prefix "VELUPILLAI". when I first heard of him in my school days I thought he is another one like Veerappan!! but later in my 7th-8th classes I made a detailed study about his history and other things happened in the Emarald's Isle(courtesy: India Today special edition, sometime in 1996-1997). I used rate him as one of the greatest warriors world has ever seen, becasue he took the audacious step of taking responsibility for his race at the age of '17'. By doing so, he became Robinhood for the Tamil diaspora across the world. If LTTE became so huge an organization, went on maintaining its own navy and airforce its not because of the capability of Prabhakaran alone but strength of Tamil Diaspora across the world. As I observe Tamil diaspora is stronger than most other races (I would say only Islamic diaspora is stronger than this). Coming to Prabhakaran, in the early stages of the violent struggle he appointed very young people as commanders or leaders of his ranks and it worked very well be it due to the adrenalin they carried or due to the support of the Indian governement. But with time passing on, his "BLACK TIGERS" became notorious for their murders and attacks on innocent people. Despite all the attacks he remained as the sole representative of the Tamilians in SriLanka. When dealing with an issue as sensitive as racial conflict, even one sigle blunder can change the tables and thats what happened in the case of LTTE.

Like many other so called great leaders Prabhakaran also kept his personal or organisational vandetta before the interests of tamilian community and that made him to order for their biggest blunder:Rajiv's Assassination. Rajiv Gandhi's assassination remains as their worst mistake without which they would have had a shelter zone on the other side of Indian Ocean.By doing so LTTE moved away from the sentiments of their Tamilian brothers in India. The hostile stance taken by India proved very costly for the LTTE.

Despite of all the killings LTTE made, I could not help but appreciate the way Prabhakaran motivated his members and thats really great motivational skills. But he forgot the fact that interests of the people should be interests of the leader and so remained on the loosing side. Even peopl like Gandhi committed the same mistake and that costed India dearly in the freedom struggle. This is the reason why I dont consider Gandhi as a great leader but nonetheless I carry huge respect to Gandhi as an individual. Prabhakaran's ideology about the carrying cyanide is a real trend setter in the modern guerella warfare.

personally, I neither support Prabhakaran nor hate him. This is just my observation.

sarvejana sukhinobhavantu

-Karthik