Inside the LTTE

Book review of In The Shadow of a Sword: The memoir of a woman leader in the LTTE

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was responsible for the assassination of two prime ministers, around nine ministers, more than a dozen MPs, at least six journalists (a majority of them Tamil), and the attempted assassination of two prime ministers during the war for Tamil Eelam (homeland) in Sri Lanka that began in the 1970s, saw tens of thousands of civilians dead and ended (kind of) with the killing of supreme leader Prabhakaran in 2009.

In this unpretentious, simply-written account of her life as a member of the Movement (as the LTTE is referred to, through the book) Thamizhini, who rose to become one of the top leaders of the LTTE’s women’s wing, records her life: 18 years as a combatant in a movement she joined at age 19. The account is overlaid with sorrow and remorse as she recounts her role in forced conscription that erased the life of thousands of young Tamils and tore families apart. But it also chronicles the crest of exuberance and joy at military victories, however short-lived.

Many, many books have been written about the war in Sri Lanka. Most are military evaluations of the most dreaded guerilla group in the world — indeed, Peru’s Shining Path and other groups pale into insignificance against the fierce and steely determination of the LTTE to achieve their aim: “People’s democracy under our dictatorship,” as an LTTE cadre told this reporter sometime in the 1980s in an interview conducted in a cave near Jaffna. The greatest value of this book is that it helps you understand the LTTE from the perspective of the cadre.

Thamizhini describes her simple, uncomplicated childhood in a farm family in Paranthan, away from the culturally sophisticated Jaffna, in the Kilinochchi district, which is close to Elephant Pass, the narrow isthmus of water and land that separates the Tamil dominated northern province from the rest of Sri Lanka. In 2000, in one of the worst debacles for the Sri Lankan Army, the LTTE captured Elephant Pass and the areas nearby, like Chavakachcheri. Thamizhini was there and she records the electrifying military battle but also the misery that followed. Inevitably, the Sri Lankan Army resolved to reverse the battle outcome and that led to the retaking of the pass in 2009, the fighting in the jungles nearby in which Prabhakaran and his son Charles Antony were killed.

In The Shadow of a Sword: The memoir of a woman leader in the LTTE

Author: Thamizhini

Publisher: Yoda Press Sage Select

Price: Rs 496; Pages: 192

In any organisation, for an ordinary member, the worst part is coming to terms with the internal betrayal, treachery and resultant punishment. Prabhakaran’s deputy and organiser of the political wing, Mahattaya, was one of the first to rebel. The LTTE described it as treachery and he was killed. Mahattaya was always appreciative of Thamizhini’s work as a woman cadre and she says all that the lower reaches got to know was what their “seniors” told them: “That Mahattaya had become an agent for the Indian intelligence organization R&AW and had plotted to kill the Leader and become the head of the Movement himself”. This was confusing: Till yesterday there were big posters everywhere of the Leader with  Mahattaya and now he was a traitor? She writes: “It was a time of ‘silent confusion’ in the Movement as waves crashed about in our minds then”.

The “defection” of comrades from the eastern province led by Karuna Amman, along with 6,000 fighters was the second most traumatic movement in the history of the Movement. Again, all that the lower reaches got to know was that the Batticaloa-Amparai Colonel was called in for an enquiry concerning misappropriation of funds and a “personal disciplinary issue,” that he had refused to come in and had announced he was leaving the movement. The effective loss of the east was a cataclysmic setback for the struggle for Eelam. But it also meant that challengers to Prabhakaran existed.

Thamizhini describes Prabhakaran’s relationship with his immediate lieutenants, specifically Anton Balasingham and his Australian wife, Adele, the split from lieutenant Balakumar and the ferocity and ruthlessness with which the LTTE dealt with other “freedom fighter” groups that were, after all, fellow Tamils and fighting for the same cause. She chronicles the brutality with which those from the Karuna faction were treated when they “surrendered” to the Movement in good faith.

There was another anomaly: The defence to Prabhakaran’s son Charles Antony. She quotes a comrade, “Brig” Vithusha as saying that in meetings Charles Antony would “humiliate the most experienced brigadiers” and that she felt uncomfortable witnessing it. “Even though it was for a short time, Charles Anthony created a role for himself in the Movement with no concern for anything else,” she says.

All these infirmities exist in any movement. But abandoned by crucial lieutenants, forced to conscript and with the assaults of the Sri Lankan Army becoming harsher, the crumbling of LTTE resistance was inevitable. Thamizhini records in poignant detail how she surrendered, was imprisoned in the dreaded Welikada prison and later in a rehabilitation camp. Much later, she married a fellow Tamil and wrote her memoirs, until she died of cancer in 2015.

This is a searingly honest and compelling account of how a liberation movement grows and wanes, why people join it, the humanity of those who have very little to give but are ready to part with even that for the cause. The book must be read by those who want to understand society — and how to change it.