Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 19 December 2015, where it appears under a different title. Note that the images deployed here are not found in the CT version, where the Bibliography is also less expansive. Do also attend to the reasons why I have expanded the Bibliography: viz., a desire to elaborate the concept of “sacrificial devotion” ……. ……. = http://sacrificialdevotionnetwork.wordpress.com/ … a tool used extensively in my studies of Tamil Tiger devotion to cause and suicide attacks plus defensive suicide on capture as one facet of this commitment.
Way back in the 1960s the scholar Sinnappah Arasaratnam noted that in Sri Lanka two (communal) extremisms were feeding off each other and thereby sharpening conflict (1967, 1974 & 1979). This was, of course, just one factor contributing to a developing crisis that requires a careful analysis that identifies the multiple factors aggravating division. The tragic tale remains true today: Sinhalese and Tamil extremists continue to stir the pot and gain vigour by attacking each other (and others too).
The vehemence is all the greater because the vanguard of such fervour resides among migrants in Western lands who are encouraged by the freedom of the internet to ride the waves of communication with slander and sarcasm as their principal weapons. Among the Sri Lankan Tamils of the diaspora, of course, this venom has been grounded in the bitter experiences that induced so many to leave Sri Lanka in the last three decades of the 20th century.
Via familial stories as well as the vast propaganda machinery built up by the LTTE over the last 25 years this fervour has been transmitted to some of the second/third generation migrants brought up in these lands. As with so many Tamils living in Sri Lanka in the 1990s and 2000s Velupillai Pirapāharan, the talaivar of Thamilīlam, was more or less a deity among these migrant peoples. In fact, he was likened to a Sun God (Jeyaraj 2009).
Figs 1 & 2 
Pirapāharan in his early days as freedom fighter … Fig 3 
Fig 3–Pirapāharan pays homage to Black Tigers on 5th July 2005, with garlanded image of Miller, the first Black Tiger suicide bomber, as principal symbol — Pic from TamilNet. Note that Miller’s target on 5 July 1987was a SL Army compound at Nelliyadi and cannot in any way be considered an act of “terrorism”
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