"PERFORM YOUR duty without regard to the fruits of action, says the Bhagavad Gita. I grasped this profound truth when I read the Mahabharata," said V Prabhakaran 15 years ago in an interview given to 'Velicham' (Light), a Tamil literary magazine, which used to be published from Jaffna. No doubt, the fruits of actions by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under his leadership have turned bitter for now.

 

LTTE, which has managed to maintain websites across the world to communicate developments in real time, paid ‘official’ last respects to senior LTTE leaders including the head of the political wing, Balasingham Nadesan; of the Peace secretariat, Pulidevan (Seevaratnam Prabaharan) and of the International secretariat, Castro (V Manivannan), on May 18. They took their lives rather than face capture by the Sri Lankan armed forces – typical trait of the rebel cadre who wear pendants with embedded cyanide capsules for the purpose. They had ‘silenced their guns’ after finding it the only option to stop mass slaughter of Tamils while the world looked on. Ready ever since joining the struggle to free the Tamils from oppression by Sinhalese rule to lay down the life, it must have made little different to them personally when end came.

 

In the Velicham interview, Prabhakaran reflected on the events and circumstances during his early life that inspired him to take up arms and join the liberation struggle. He revealed that he was a voracious reader and had cultivated the habit of immersing himself totally in didactic works and “was becoming one with the books” he read and added, "Above all, Subhash Chandra Bose's life was a beacon to me, lighting up the path I should follow. His disciplined life and his total commitment and dedication to the cause of his country's freedom deeply impressed me and served as my guiding light.”

 

It is quite likely that the LTTE chief himself had followed his trusted aides soon after. According to the Sri Lanka military spokesman Udaya Nanayakaran, “He (Prabhakararn) is definitely dead (because) the soldiers have captured the whole territory held by the rebels.” The government has ruled out any DNA identification to establish the identity of some 300 bodies of rebels slaughtered with heavy gunfire in a 3000 sq foot patch, marking the grand finale of the barbaric campaign. Maybe, he has gone underground but, just like his ‘beacon’, who was presumed to have died August 18, 1945, he will most certainly not lead the struggle anymore.

 

Prabhakaran recalled in that 1994 interview that SC Bose exhorted his followers, ". . . It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength. Freedom is not given, it is taken…. One individual may die for an idea; but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives. That is how the wheel of evolution moves on and the ideas and dreams of one nation are bequeathed . . .”

 

It is history that the Indian revolutionary was betrayed by self-serving leaders who even managed to oust him from the party of which he was to become president. Bose appeared at the 1939 Congress meeting on a stretcher. Though he was elected president again, over MK Gandhi's preferred sycophant Pattabhi Sitaramayya, differences with the propounder of Nehru dynasty led to Bose's resignation. No wonder, the mantle bearers of those manipulators in India backstabbed the liberation movement in Eelam.

 

New Delhi chose to covertly overtly aid the massacre by supplying military hardware and logistics, like the 'Axis powers' had done during Nazi heydays. It must be noted that the hands of the other 'Axis powers' in this particular case, China and old friend Russia, are dripping with blood of the people of Tibet and Chechnya.

 

Of course, LTTE conceded defeat in the current war but insisted that it was only ready to lay down arms to the international community but not to surrender to oppressors. But, this is in no way the end of liberation struggle. The barbaric genocide ably abetted only by India, China, Russia and Pakistan, despite severe strictures from the international community, is sure to have radicalised numerous victims. It will hardly be possible to forever suppress the inherent desire to taste liberty in thousands of kids, who will be housed in Sri Lanka’s concentration camps.

 

The Jews, who too had a wide Diaspora to draw resources from, could not be decimated by the gas chambers of Hitler. They too had to face a number of backstabbers within the community who connived with powers-that-be in their own narrow self interests.

 

It is worth noting that Subhash Chandra Bose is the only person to be recognised as Netaji - at a time when others have made the term Neta a four letter word. Such people never die!