Dr Muralidaran Ramesh Somasunderam, whose chosen title is “The Liberation Ttigers of Tamil Elam.”
The LTTE was the worst thing that destroyed Sri Lanka and its people for nearly forty years.
The LTTE killed many high caste Tamils, including Sinhalese and Muslims. They believed in children and women soldiers and suicide killing.
In fact, the 1983 ethnic riots were blamed rightly or wrongly because the LTTE killed about twelve to thirteen army soldiers in the North of Sri Lanka. Anyway, when innocent Tamils like me faced the brunt in Colombo in July 1983 the LTTE never came to our rescue. Many thousands of innocent Tamils were killed and their properties destroyed totally. In fact, my father Mr Rama Krishna Somasunderam was Senior Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Mahaweli, but our family home located at no 16 Elvin Place, Nugegoda was totally burnt, including a magnificent private library of ancient books and teak furniture was totally destroyed or looted all together.
The 1983 ethnic riots and the burning of the Jaffna Library is what gave popularity and support for the LTTE by moderate Sri Lankan Tamils like me after the 1983 ethnic riots against Tamils in Colombo and where the Tamils had settled in Sinhala infiltrated areas around the country.
The LTTE was not only an ethnic ordinated organization but was infiltrated predominantly by lower caste Sri Lankan Tamils from the fishing caste community.
The LTTE and its leader late Mr Prabhakaran wanted Sri Lankan Tamils to have no caste system and wanted higher caste villages to be infiltrated predominantly with lower caste Sri Lankan Tamils in the North and East of Sri Lanka. He and his organization were the same like the JVP who were also fighting a caste and class battle in Sri Lanka. But the key factor that late Mr. Prabhakaran was emphasizing was the ill treatment of [the Tamils meted ou– t by the majority Singhalese voted governments carrying out ethnic riots in 1958, 1977 and the 1983 ethnic riots against the Tamils – [in a context where]e the police and army also supported the looters and gave the impression that it was a government-sponsored ethnic riots against the Tamils.
This was used by late Mr. Prabhakaran or his political yardage, but the real issue was caste and class based. This is why he got arms from the government of Sri Lanka Ranasinghe Premadasa who himself was not from the majority caste of Singhalese to use to kill the traditional Tamil leadership in Colombo when peace talks engineered by the Central Government of India were taking place in Colombo in 1989. Late Mr Prabhakaran realized that he will not be able to defeat a Vellalar leader and that if he wanted the lower castes to dominate in leadership in the North and East, which is the traditional homelands of Sri Lankan Tamils even today, has to done by the barrel of the gun and not by democratic vote.
This is why the LTTE killed the late Mr Rajeev Gandhi after he had done and given so much to the Sri Lankan Tamils based on the Gandhi/Jayewardene pact of 1987.
Many moderate Sri Lankan Tamils thought that after the LTTE defeat that, apart from peace, a political solution will be brought between the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils in the North and East of the country based on the 13th Amendment which the Indian governments always speak about, but nothing has been achieved in this regard to date.
In conclusion, I believe if the relations between the majority Sinhala people and the Sri Lankan Tamil people in the North and East of Sri Lanka is [sic] not solved, the Indian government will always play on the differences for their political and strategic interests.
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Ramesh Somasunderam lives at 254 Vahland Avenue, Willetton 6155, Western Australia.
A NOTE from Michael Roberts, 7 January 2025: He is the son of Rama Somasunderam, a Peradeniya Arts graduate who secured entry to the prestigious Sri Lankan Civil Service and served in the dry zone for many years. Rama was senior to me at Ramanathan Hall in 1957 et seq. Our depths of friendship deepened when he hosted my wife and myself at Polonnaruwa during one of our trips to the dry zone in the 1960s or early 1970s.
The Somasunderam’s resided in a house at Elin Place in Nugegoda within Colombo. This house was attacked, ransacked and burnt by a gang of racist hooligans (presumably Sinhalese for the most part) during the 1983 pogrom. Apart from the economic blow, Rama lost a valuable stock of books. But we must also consider that which is immeasurable: the searing blow to the “Sri Lankanness” within their being.
The Somasunderam’s migrated to Perth at some point thereafter.
ALSO NOTE
Michael Roberts …..https://thuppahis.com/2023/07/24/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-a-pogrom
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/massacres
Hoole, R. et al., 1990, The Broken Palmyra, Claremont, CA: Sri Lanka Studies Institute. Also available at: http://www.uthr.org/BP/Content.htm
Mcgowan, W., 1992, Only Man is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Piyadasa, L. 1984, Sri Lanka: The Holocaust and After, London: Marram Books.
Senaratne, J. P., 1997, Political Violence in Sri Lanka, 1997-1990: Riots, Insurrections, Counter-insurgencies, Foreign Intervention, Amsterdam: VU University Press.
Sri Lanka Co-ordination Centre, 1983, Sri Lanka- ‘Paradise’ in ruins, Kassel: Sri Lanka Co-ordination Centre.
Tambiah, S. J., 1986, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fracticide and the Dismantling of Democracy, London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
Wilson, A. J., 1988, The Break-Up of Sri Lanka, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.