The fate of the Tiger is a political morality tale. The LTTE heaped a calamitous defeat on itself and unimaginable devastation on the people it claimed to represent, because it did not know when and where to stop. The tale of the Tiger is the story of an organisation and of a leader who, intoxicated by the heady brew of fanaticism, gambled with the future of an entire community, and lost. That story is embodied in the stripped corpses of Tiger leaders, who were once looked up to as heroes and worshipped as demigods by millions. That story is also reflected in the faces of the wretched men, women and children, coming out of the war zone, on their way to internment camps which would be their meagre and unfree homes for the foreseeable future.

Vellupillai Pirapaharan could have become the saviour of his people. The LTTE could have won for the Tamils a substantial degree of devolution up to and including federalism. From 1987 until the Tiger-assisted victory of Mahinda Rajapakse in the Presidential election of 2005, a political solution to the ethnic problem was a realistic possibility. It did not happen because Mr Pirapaharan scorned moderation as weakness and abjured compromise as betrayal; he was wedded not only to his goal but to his road, his way of doing things. Like Adolf Hitler he believed in ‘going for the broke’ and like Adolf Hitler he ended up an ‘epitome of suicide and murder’ for himself and his people.

Herr Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich would still be in existence had he stopped with the dismembering of Czechoslovakia and refrained from the seminal mistake of invading Poland. Mr. Pirapaharan had his own moment of Anschlu? and Munich in the last peace process. With the Wickremesinghe administration bending over backwards to appease him, he could have obtained a de facto Eelam with power of life and death over Lankan Tamils. Adolf Hitler did not see Munich as a victory because he wanted War. Similarly, for Mr. Pirapaharan, the long peace process was an irritant and an obstacle rather than an achievement. He did not want to be presented with de facto Eelam at the negotiating table; he wanted to win de jure Eelam on the battlefield. Scorning limits, he suffered the fate which comes to all maximalists, sooner or later.

Vellupillai Pirapaharan began his astounding career espousing the cause of Tamils alienated by Sinhala supremacist legislations and frightened by intermittent mob violence. Along the way his goal metamorphosed, from winning power for the powerless Tamils to winning power for the Tigers and then to winning power for himself. He commenced his armed struggle against the Lankan state for Tamil rights; en route he turned his weapons against fellow Tamil militants in order to become the sole representative of the Tamils and against fellow Tiger leaders to enthrone himself as a divine potentate. And by anointing himself as a ‘Superhuman’, Mr. Pirapaharan turned his people into ‘Subhumans’, a populace schooled or forced into unquestioning, slavish obedience to his every diktat.

To a community which had been humiliated and terrified by repeated acts of discrimination and violence (beginning with the Sinhala Only of 1956 and culminating with the Black July of 1983), the military successes of the LTTE was a balm, restoring a sense of pride and dignity. Unfortunately this understandable appreciation blinded and desensitised many Tamils to the LTTE’s gradual descent into barbarism. The same LTTE which imposed many a defeat on the Sri Lankan armed forces also killed venerable Tamil political leaders, conscripted Tamil children and wallowed in suicide bombings. Instead of realising the corrosive effects of these perversions, many Tamils, especially in the Diaspora, sought to excuse them with specious arguments. This ‘carte blanche’ created a permissive atmosphere which encouraged rather than discouraged abuses, until the unregenerate LTTE became intolerable to India and the West, despite their genuine sympathy and support for the Tamil cause.

The Tamil Diaspora, given the relative immunity it enjoyed from the punitive actions of the Tiger, could have acted as the conscience of the Lankan Tamils. It could have stood up to the Tigers when they acted in a manner contrary to civilised norms and inimical to the enlightened self interests of the Tamil people. But the Diaspora, with a few honourable exceptions, opted to become cheerleaders for the Tigers. By doing so it abdicated its responsibility towards its brethren in Sri Lanka. Even at the bitter end, when the LTTE was holding hundreds of thousands of unarmed Tamils as human shields (intentionally exposing them to bombing and shelling by the Lankan Forces), the Diaspora, failed to raise its collective voice against this outrage.

The defeat of the LTTE has left a vacuum in Tamil polity and society, within and outside Sri Lanka. The TNA has discredited itself with its slavish backing for the LTTE while the EPDP and the TMVP have degenerated into ciphers of the Rajapakse administration. The Tamil community still has a handful of principled entities (such as the UTHR) and courageous individuals, but whether they can provide the political leadership that is the need of the hour is debatable. The continued existence of a leadership vacuum can spell danger (especially if the South succumbs to Sinhala supremacism), as it can be filled by either a regenerated LTTE or a Tiger-like organisation. Such a development will not only endanger Lankan peace; it will also prevent the maimed Tamil community from emerging from the rut it is in. Thus, the importance of a Tamil leadership that is anti-LTTE but independent of Colombo, self critical of the monumental errors of the LTTE as it is critical of the mistakes and excesses of the regime, a leadership which, unlike Mr. Pirapaharan, understands the importance of moderation and abides by the values of democracy.

"There are not two Germanies, a good one and a bad one, but only one whose best turned into evil through devilish cunning. Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in misfortune, in guilt and ruin", said Thomas Mann in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat at the Second World War (Germany and the Germans). That analysis is apposite for every nation. A nation, like an individual, can lose its way and stray into killing fields or wastelands when it succumbs to the dark side of its national psyche. That process of contamination and corrosion may have seemingly unexceptionable beginnings; it may happen so gradually, that its progress passes unnoticed. For all that, its end will be calamitous. That was the fate of the Tiger. It could be the fate of the Lion too, if, intoxicated with triumphalism, we succumb to delusions of infallibility and invincibility, as Mr. Pirapaharan did, once upon a time.

Extremism is not the sole birthright of the Tiger. Sinhala supremacism throve when Vellupillai Pirapaharan was a boy killing birds with his catapult. And, as the example of the LTTE demonstrates, extremism is more than a political error; it is a psychological habit which is addictive and unbreakable, even when its ill effects are manifest.

The ICRC has announced that it is halting its relief activities in the North because the Lankan authorities ‘have imposed additional restrictions’ on it, post war. The UN Human Rights Council is to hold a special session on Sri Lanka next week. The US, the UK, the EU and the UN Secretary General are advocating an independent investigation into alleged ‘war crimes’ by the LTTE and the Lankan Forces during the last months of the war. The US has made public its intent of delaying the IMF loan to Sri Lanka and the EU has indicated that the extension of the GSP+ will depend on the government’s human rights record. The victory over the LTTE carries with it a politico-economic cost and the magnitude of that cost is yet to be determined.

Understandably buoyed by its historic victory, the Rajapakse administration seems to be in a confrontationist mood. The President in his victory speech gave notice that external advice, plans and concerns will be unwelcome. The Prime Minister said, in an interview with the ITN, "Then they (‘foreign bigwigs’) ask what we are going to do next. I said we would develop those areas. Then they say they have very good plans. I pointed out that we won the war with our own plans and we have plans for the future too. They can help us in them. What plans from those who do not wash their bottoms?" (Lankanewspapers.com – 20.5.2009). The regime continues to stigmatise as ‘Tiger supporters’ any international actor expressing concern about civilian Tamils; it also obviously permitted an unruly demonstration outside the British High Commission (which is located in a high security zone). Some government allies are advocating a Kulturkampf, against alien (Western) socio-cultural influences, a permanent ‘national’ revolution. There is more than a whiff of xenophobia in the air, and a hankering after an autarkic Shangri La, even as we seek monetary assistance from the West to build it!

Rhetoric apart, the critical factor would be the manner in which the government treats the Tamil community in general and the displaced Tamils in particular. The President’s decision to include a couple of paragraphs in Tamil in his Victory Speech is a welcome gesture of conciliation. That apart, his offering to the Tamils amounted to the usual platitudes about unity and equality. The reiteration of the ‘zero casualty’ lie denotes either amazing naivety or horrendous cynicism. A few words of common human sympathy for the displaced Tamils, bereft of homes and families and facing an uncertain future in internment camps, were conspicuous by their absence as was any admittance of past errors in managing inter-ethnic relations. Instead the President said, portentously, "We have removed the word ‘minorities’ from our vocabulary three years ago. No longer are there Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, Malays or any other minorities. There are only two peoples in this country. One is the people that love this country. The other comprises the small groups that have no love for the land of their birth" (quoted in Defence.lk).

An ethnic divide cannot be made to disappear by a Presidential fiat, however well meant. Most Sinhalese rejoiced at the defeat of the Tigers; most Tamils did not. Those antithetical responses demonstrated, yet again, that psychologically Sri Lanka remains a land divided, even in the moment of its geographic reunification. A Sri Lankan nation is something that can emerge only as the outcome of a long process of reconciliation characterised by moderation and a spirit of compromise. It cannot be created by an order, especially at the culmination of a long and bitter internal conflict, in an atmosphere characterised by gloating. In such a context, denying the existence of minorities can be tantamount to denying the reality of minority fears and grievances as well the need for any concrete measures to address these. The Manichean divide of patriots vs. non-patriots can be used to deal with opposition and dissent in extra-democratic ways.