https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/eyes-%E2%80%98gouged-out%E2%80%99-mockery
Eyes ‘gouged out’ in mockery
29 July 2006
(5th August 1983) It is the massacres in the Welikade gaol which are attracting the most attention. There is a particular interest in circumstances in which two alleged guerrilla leaders were killed.
The two men, Sellarasa “Kuttimani” Yogachandiran, leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and a political writer, and Ganeshanathan Jeganathan had been sentenced to death last year for the murder of a policeman.
In speeches from the dock, the two men had announced that they would donate their eyes in the hope that they would be grafted on to Tamils who would see the birth of Eelam, the independent state they were fighting for.
Second hand reports from Batticaloa gaol, where the survivors of the Welikada massacre are now being kept, say that the two men were forced to kneel and their eyes gouged out with iron bars before they were killed.
One version has it that Kutimani’s tounge was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: “I have drunk the blood of a Tiger.”
The two men were among the 35 Tamils killed in the Welikada gaol on July 25. Another 17 were killed in the gaol two days later and the Guardian has obtained a first hand account of part of the fighting in this incident, including the circumstances in which Sri Lanka’s Gandhian leader, Dr. Rajasunderam, died.
Gloriosa Superba
.JPG)
Brainstorm of Ideas
Researching History, Politics and Reality of Eelam & the Tigers
National Struggle:
Tamil National Liberation Struggle and National Leader Prabhakaran
Why did LTTE use a tiger as their symbol?
Why did LTTE use a tiger as their symbol?
It was the symbol of Tamil nationalism, reacting to Sinhalese nationalism.
Sri Lanka’s lion flag was the product of Sinhalese nationalism that began in the 19th century. Contrary to the widespread perception, the lion flag was not derived from the last Sinhalese Kandyan kingdom, which was ironically ruled by Tamil-speaking Nayak kings from Madurai. In fact, no Sinhalese king ever used a lion flag. The lion symbol was a modern fabrication carefully crafted to represent an imagined national past. Ironically it was designed by a commercial artist in London, UK, after the European Heraldic Lions. (see: Karava of Sri Lanka) According to Sinhalese national chronicle, the Mahavamsa, Sinhalese originate from a union between a lion and a princess, which is why they are known as the people of the lion. To represent this myth the lion symbol was adopted. When Sinhalese politicians had decided on it as the national flag, Tamils were opposed to it, feeling they had been excluded.
Without the approval of Tamils, the lion flag was hoisted on the country’s Independence Day, to which Tamil officials responded by hoisting the bull flag of the Jaffna kingdom. A Tamil politician, G.G. Ponnambalam, proposed a compromise, to include two stripes to represent rest of the country’s population, Tamils and Muslims.
However, another Tamil politician, Senator S. Nadesan, advised against the flag, prophetically arguing it posed threat to national unity:
“In my view, this design if adopted far from being a symbol of national unity will be symbol of our disunity. Once the committee agreed that the national flag should be devised by modifying the Lion Flag, one would have thought that any strips adopted for the purpose of satisfying the minorities will be integrated with the Lion Flag and that these strips will not be an appendage to the Lion Flag. Anyone looking at the proposed flag will see that the Lion Flag is preserved in all its integrity and outside that Flag two strips are allotted to represent the minorities. After all a flag is a symbol and the symbol must at least effectively show the unity and strength of the nation”.[1]
Since 1956 Tamils began observing the country’s Independence Day as a day of mourning and hoisted black flags to express their grievances. In 1957 when a Tamil man by the name Natarajan climbed the Trincomalee clock tower to hoist a black flag he was shot dead by a Sinhalese gunman.
The flag issue served as a symptom of much larger problems affecting the country, such as Sinhalese ethnocracy, refusal of power-sharing with Tamils and violence and discrimination against Tamils.
Discriminatory university education policies in the 1970s radicalised many Tamil youth who were in turn subjected to state repression by arbitrary arrest and detention. These disgruntled young Tamil men pressured the Tamil United Front (TUF) for a separate Tamil state. As a result, the TUF made Tamil Eelam its goal and adopted the rising sun as the flag of this proposed state.
However, by the time the Tamil Tigers rose to the prominence, they had their own militant vision, unrestrained by the traditional Tamil leadership. The Tigers, under Prabhakaran, decided upon the tiger emblem:
I named the movement ‘Liberation Tigers’ since the tiger emblem had deep roots in the political history of the Tamils, symbolizing Tamil patriotic resurgence. The tiger symbol also depicts the mode of our guerrilla warfare.[2]
Likewise, the LTTE’s newspaper, Viduthalai Pulikal, declared in 1991:
The Tiger insignia is an image rooted in Dravidian civilisation. It is a symbol that illustrates the martial history and national upheaval of the Tamils. Our national flag is the symbol of the independent state of Tamil Eelam to be created, rooted in the martial traditions of the Tamils.[3]
By this martial heritage, the Tigers were referring to the legendary Chola dynasty of southern India. The Cholas were known for using the tiger as their insignia. Here’s a seal of Rajendra Chola I, with a tiger representing the Cholas. The other symbols include two vertical fish, a bow at the bottom and a boar, symbolising Cholas’ conquest and dominance over the Pandyas, the Cheras and the eastern Chalukyas, respectively.
The royal seal of Rajendra Chola I (1014-1044 CE)
There had been repeated invasions of Sri Lanka by the Cholas. The first Chola king to invade the island was Ellalan, also known as ‘Manu Needhi Cholan’. He ruled the Anuradhapura Kingdom from 205-161 BCE. Raja Raja Chola I conquered the northern half of the island which became a province of the Chola kingdom in 993 CE. His son, Rajendra Chola I, annexed the entire island in 1017 CE and ruled until 1077 CE. According to the epigraphical evidence from this time, the Chola kings claimed annexation of illamandalam, an old Tamil word for the island from which the modern term Eelam derives.
These Chola invasions during this time period left a strong Tamil mark in the island:
“Rule of Cholas in the 11th century which lasted for nearly seven decades played a vital role in giving a Tamil identity to the north-eastern provinces (Pathmanathan 1980; Silva 1981: 73). Referring to areas of Tamil settlements K. Indrapala (1969: 57) observed:
Hence, as descendants of this great empire, the Tigers were only eager to reclaim the former glories. Prabhakaran’s nom de guerre was even named after the great Chola king Karikala. The Cholas had a powerful navy and were the greatest maritime power in the ancient Indian history. The Tigers were the first non-state group to pioneer the sea force. In that sense the Sea Tigers were, or at least portrayed themselves to be, the reincarnation of the Chola Navy.
The North-Eastern littoral has yielded more Tamil inscriptions and Saiva ruins providing definite evidence of Tamil settlement in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In addition, Tamil chronicles furnish for the first time some information relating to these settlements. The transformation of the present Eastern province into a Tamil area may well be said to have begun in the eleventh century.”[4]
In an LTTE cassette with songs dedicated to six well-known Sea Tigers fallen in battle, we find the following opening speech:
In those days all the deep seas were ruled by the Chola kings. The ships flying the Tiger flags spread the news of Tamil heroism to the world. All these things were washed away by the flood of time, and the Tamils became slaves and refugees [akathi]. Now the Sangam period has come back. The Liberation Tigers make the world focus on Tamil Eelam. The boats of Sea Tigers flying Tiger flags are anew roaming in the seas … [Neithal]
In one of the songs from the same cassette it says:
Then the great Chola kings ruled the deep seas
Now our Karikalan is climbing over our Eelam ocean
Dance as the day is breaking
Dance as the Sangam period is coming back …
This is the sea of our ancestors
this coast is the lap from which we were born …
Who come to drink our sea?
Who come to burn our land?
No country can touch our soil,
No hand can touch the flag raised by the Tiger
We never hesitate to face the wind and rain
We are not afraid to face the battalions coming across the sea
We sing our praise to our able leader
When the time of Tambi’s rule comes we will dance[5]
Because of LTTE’s tiger symbolism, Tamils became synonymous with the Tigers (kotiya in Sinhala). For a people who had been called ‘Para Demala’ (Tamil outcastes) in Sinhala, the new ethnic slur would have been an upgrade, a badge of an honour even, if it wasn’t accompanied by rape, torture and murder.
From the anti-Tamil pamphlet titled Kavuda kotiya? (Who is the Tiger?) disseminated by racist Sinhalese politician Cyril Mathew during the Black July pogrom, which shows a caricature of the Tamil leader of TULF, A. Amirthalingam, with his reflection being represented by a tiger.
Though now the tiger symbolism may have been suppressed in the country, Tamils up north continue to mourn their losses by hoisting black flags while Sinhalese down south celebrate their war victory by hoisting the lion flags. Sometimes Sinhalese nationalists hoist the lion flag with the two coloured strips representing minorities removed, symbolising their ethnocratic vision for the country. One country. Two nations.
It must be noted that even before or apart of the Cholas, the tiger imagery was associated with valour in Tamil culture. As the Eelam Tamil nationalist politician, V. Navaratnam, wrote:
TAMIL custom in the heroic age of the ancient Tamils required that a suitor for the hand of a maiden must provide himself with a thali (symbol of wedlock) mounted with two of the canine teeth of a tiger he has killed. Only then can he win her hand, and only such a thali will she consent to be hung round her neck. The thali which a modern Tamil society woman wears is a modified replica of the same tiger’s tooth thali, but it is made of gold. Somehow courage and manly valour and the tiger are inextricably associated and interwoven in the Tamil mind to represent the quality required of a man to serve the community. At first, in primitive times, he needed it for the protection of his lady and his offspring against the depredations of jungle life, but as civilisation developed and communal life expanded it has come to be needed in wars for the protection of his country, of his culture, of his language, of everything he values above life. That is why the Tamil race has always laid great store by it, and that is why their ancient books always picture the tiger as representing the intrepid fighter in the Tamil warrior and his ever-ready eagerness to maul and tear through every foe that crosses his path. The thali around his lady’s neck is a daily reminder.[6]
Footnotes[1] Untitled Document[2] Pirapaharan, Chapter 28: The First Interview[3] Violence Expressed[4] Pathways of Dissent[5] https://books.google.com/books?id=IUVuAAAAMAAJ&q=In+an+LTTE+cassette+with+songs+dedicated+to+six+well-known+Sea+Tigers+fallen+in+battle,+we+find+the+following+opening+speech&dq=In+an+LTTE+cassette+with+songs+dedicated+to+six+well-known+Sea+Tigers+fallen+in+battle,+we+find+the+following+opening+speech&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y[6] https://books.google.com/books?id=jEduAAAAMAAJ&q=TAMIL+custom+in+the+heroic+age+of+the+ancient+Tamils+required+that+a+suitor+for+the+hand+of+a+maiden+must+provide+himself+with+a+thali&redir_esc=y
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-LTTE-use-a-tiger-as-their-symbol
Who are Chozha
The Chola dynasty was a Tamil thalassocratic empire of southern India, one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the world’s history. The earliest datable references to the Chola are in inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE left by Ashoka, of the Maurya Empire (Ashoka Major Rock Edict No. 13).
What is Kumarikandam (Lemuria) ?
Similar theme:
Software Research
haranworks 