9 years after massacre, Eelam dream lives on

Bengaluru/Chennai: Nine years after the Tamil Tigers were annihilated, gunned down to the last man in the village of Mullivaikkal in Sri Lanka’s Mullaittivu district in May 2009,  and 24 years after a LTTE suicide bomber assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 in Sriperumbudur, after giving this correspondent his last ever interview,  LTTE sympathizers continue to believe – mistakenly - that India has not completely given up on the Tamil Eelam option.

“Its not off the table, India will carve out a Tamil homeland for the Tamil diaspora one day. If Delhi could give birth to Bangladesh, they must do the same thing in Sri Lanka and create an Eelam,” said a senior member of the Liberation Tigers who, along with hundreds of other Sri Lankan Tamils continue to live in refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, reluctant to return home.

A close associate of Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the Tiger sympathizer who maintains a shrine of sorts to the fallen leader in his home, said India and the Tamils of northern Sri Lanka shared a common heritage, a common language and the same ethnic roots.

“India will lose its only bargaining chip over Sri Lanka, if it gives up on Eelam,” he insisted. “The Sri Lankan government is essentially Sinhalese and Buddhist, and their sympathies will always be with the Chinese, as Mahinda Rajapakse’s government demonstrated, while the Muslims of Sri Lanka which forms the other ethnic group will look to Pakistan for support and sustenance,” he said.

When reminded that it was the sustained attacks on Indian peacekeeping forces when they were deployed in the Tiger held north, and the assassination of  Rajiv Gandhi that was personally ordered by Prabhakaran that lost the separatists, the sympathy and support it had once enjoyed in south India, the LTTE sympathizer said “The brothers are not dead.

The ‘pullikal’ (Tigers) maybe scattered all over the world but our goal is the same – the creation of a Tamil nation. You tell Narendra Modi this, don’t trust Colombo. The only way to stop the Chinese is to strengthen our hands.”

(On the night of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Neena Gopal had travelled with the former prime minister from Guindy airport to Sriperumbudur and was only a few feet away when the suicide bomber bent down to touch his feet and blew herself up.)