Photos by A. Priyakumar
It feels like yesterday. As a student, I remember flipping through Amuthu, a Tamil-language magazine published by Lake House. One day, I came across an article about Dr. Rajani Thiranagama—her brilliant career, and how she was cowardly and mercilessly assassinated. More than the tragedy of that brave woman, what seared itself into me was the image of her two young daughters standing beside their mother. Even as a boy, I felt a deep and overwhelming compassion for them. That night, I hugged my mother tightly, whispering questions to the God I was raised to believe in: How could anyone kill the mother of two small children?
Years later, I found myself sitting across from one of those children—Sharika Thiranagama—interviewing her in detail for Jaffna Monitor. As we spoke, what struck me repeatedly was not only her brilliance as an academic but also the warmth, composure, and clarity that radiated from her. That evening, I watched as she disagreed with some of my friends. The way she objected—polite, firm, and unshakably precise—made me realize that though her life was marked by loss at the most vulnerable age, she had absorbed her mother’s humility, bravery, and steady mind. It was in that moment I understood how personal tragedy had forged not bitterness, but intellectual rigor—how the child who once heard gunshots from her doorstep had grown into a scholar determined to dissect the very forces that create such violence.
At ten, most children wrestle with multiplication tables. Sharika was forced to confront the cruel arithmetic of politics. A childhood like that can twist a heart into hate, resentment, and rage.
But Sharika refused. She did not weaponize her pain; she disciplined it. She chose the harder path—study over sloganeering, evidence over vengeance, clarity over noise. Today, she is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Her landmark book In My Mother's House and the co-edited volume Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building cut through myth and martyrdom to expose the intimate machinery of war, displacement, and reconciliation.
Cambridge-educated and Edinburgh-trained, with fieldwork spanning post-war Jaffna to Kerala’s agrarian heartlands, Sharika writes with linguistic precision and moral steel—perfect English and a manageable Tamil on her lips. She carries hard truths in her pen. More importantly, by continuing her mother’s unflinching legacy, she delivers a message to the world: you cannot silence a voice with bullets.
This is our exclusive interview with her.
I see your life as a story of human resilience — or perhaps more broadly, the resilience of Sri Lankan Tamils. Your mother, Rajani Thiranagama, was killed when you were very young, at an age when you could hardly have processed what was happening. Yet today you are an Associate Professor at Stanford University. In the short time she was with you, how did her presence — though brief — shape the person you have become?
My mother had a tremendous impact on me, even though I was only ten when she passed away. All my formative years were spent with her, so her influence on me was very deep.
I grew up in Jaffna until her death. Apart from a year and a half in the UK, when my mother was finishing her PhD, we lived with my grandparents here. My father, Dayapala Thiranagama, who is Sinhalese, was often underground because of his political activities, so we did not see him much in those years. Jaffna was my home, and like many children here in the 1980s, I grew up cut off from the rest of the island. My experience was one of being constantly bombed — by the Sri Lankan state, by the Indian army, and also living amidst the violence of different militant groups, including the LTTE as it rose to dominance. Those years left a permanent trace on me.
Later, when I returned between 2002 and 2004 to do research, I began to evaluate my own childhood differently. Interviewing displaced Northern Tamils and Northern Muslims in Puttalam, as well as Tamils in Colombo, was humbling. I realized how fortunate I was that, despite the war, my family still had a home. Many others had been displaced multiple times. On a few occasions, we sheltered in a church, but mostly we were able to remain in our house.
Talking to displaced Northern Muslims also expanded my understanding. Listening to them made me see how people from the same place, speaking the same language, could nonetheless have very different trajectories. In the 1990s, Northern Tamils experienced the 1995 exodus, while Northern Muslims were expelled in 1990. Both were marked by violence, but shaped differently — politically and socially.
I came to think of it this way: Tamils in Jaffna had the right to belong here, but not the right to speak. Everyone lived in fear — fear of the state, fear of the LTTE, fear of being informed on. People would often tell me, “Among us Tamils there is no nambikkai (trust) anymore.” By contrast, Northern Muslims had lost their right to belong in the North, but they never lost their right to speak. In refugee camps in Puttalam, when I was doing my research, they spoke openly and publicly about their experiences — something Tamils rarely dared to do.
Doing this research showed me that resilience is not a single story. Class, caste, and community shaped people’s vulnerabilities. For example, many of those who died in 2009 were disproportionately from Dalit or Panchamar communities, as well as from the Malaiyaha Tamil community settled in the Vanni. We often fold all of this into a single Tamil nationalist narrative, but the truth is more complex: not everyone had equal access to escape, to resources, or to survival. The diaspora is overwhelmingly Vellalar caste, while those who remained and bore the brunt of displacement, child recruitment, and loss were often from marginalized castes.
Even my own refugee experience in London shaped me. We were lower-middle-class in Jaffna, but in Britain we started again at the bottom, like many Tamil refugees. My father eventually rebuilt his life through menial jobs before returning to university and becoming a social worker. Those years taught me humility and what it meant to grow up in a working-class immigrant neighbourhood. Later, when I went to Cambridge, the biggest shock wasn’t about being Sri Lankan, but about class — coming from East London into a very posh world. That sense of difference taught me to always pay attention to how social position shapes experience.
I think my mother instilled in us a passion for people, for life, for engagement. She never simply sat back; she wanted to act, to make a difference. That was the ethos my sister and I grew up with: if you understand something, and if you feel empathy, you don’t just leave it — you try to do something with it.
And as a woman, she taught us something even more important. In conservative Jaffna society, she was often gossiped about — for marrying a Sinhalese, for raising two daughters on her own, for refusing to conform. But she showed us that Tamil women did not have to live within narrow, conservative definitions. She was a mother, a teacher, an activist, and a woman full of joy and sorrow, conviction and doubt. She taught us that there are many ways to be a woman, and that women should support one another rather than pull each other down.
Because of her, we met many other Tamil women — through the Poorani Women’s Forum, through her students, through her networks — who also lived full and difficult lives, breaking norms and enduring pain. That was perhaps the most lasting lesson: that our stories are never only our own, but are always connected to the struggles and resilience of others.
You mentioned there was gossip about your mother. Why was that?
Jaffna society is quite gossipy, isn’t it? And at that time, it wasn’t only gossip — it was also a climate of violence. There was violence not just from the state and the Indian army, but also from the militant groups, including the LTTE.
For my mother, Jaffna was home. She always wanted to return here. She never thought of living anywhere else. But in Jaffna, people not only had opinions about how you should live — they also had violent ways of enforcing those opinions.
At Jaffna University, she stood out. She had married a Sinhalese. She was raising two children on her own. My eldest aunt, Nirmala, had been to prison. All of this only fueled the gossip around her.
She really had two choices: either shrink herself and become a smaller version of who she was, or live fully as herself. She chose the latter — but it came with enormous pain, and ultimately with her death. For many women in Sri Lanka, that is the reality: either you endure and carry so much, or you shrink yourself.
Your mother once reportedly said, “Maybe my children will be angry with me if I die. But when they grow up, they will know that they are the strong women they are because of me.” Have you ever felt anger toward her — for choosing activism, for exposing bitter truths, and for ultimately being killed because of it?
My mother was a very idealistic person. She used to say, “As long as there are people in the world, as long as there is truth and justice, my children will be taken care of.”
I don’t feel anger toward her. In fact, I think she did the opposite of what many Sri Lankan Tamils did at the time. She didn’t leave the country. The day after completing her thesis in London, she returned to Jaffna. She even brought us back from London because she wanted us to experience life here — this was where she felt she belonged. And I don’t think I would have wanted it any other way.
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been angry with my mother. Sometimes you only have a few years with someone, and the years I had with her were incredibly valuable. What I have felt is sadness that she isn’t here anymore. My anger has been directed more at the war, at the state, and at the LTTE for killing so many people. I feel anger at the circumstances that made her death possible.
But toward her, no — because she deeply believed in what she was doing. She always knew there was a possibility of being killed. She wasn’t sacrificed by others against her will; she made a choice, and she lived meaningfully through that choice. I do feel anger that she was killed by the LTTE, but I also know she was a very real person whom I was fortunate to know for the time I had.
I feel sadness and anger for the ordinary people — the rank-and-file cadres, the civilians — who were killed by both the state and the LTTE. But with my mother, I feel something different. She would not have found meaning in another way. I wish it hadn’t happened, of course, but I also know that was where she found her purpose.
And in that sense, maybe she was right. We did not grow up to reject her. We grew up to treasure her.
Do you see it as a cruel irony that while Sri Lankan Tamils were fighting against a Sinhala majoritarian state, within our own community we maintained a deeply oppressive caste system — and even went so far as to evict the entire Muslim population from the North, a minority under us? How do you understand this contradiction?
It’s very complicated, and it is a problem we have to face. In fact, there are two ironies here.
First, let me be clear: none of this excuses the way successive Sri Lankan states have treated minorities. Enormous violence was unleashed against minorities, and that remains the state’s responsibility. But while that is widely discussed, our internal issues are not.
The first irony is how Sri Lankan Tamils have treated minorities within our own community — particularly Muslims. Tamils have long argued that the Sinhalese should grant us equal rights in the North and East, yet we ourselves refused to recognize the same rights for Muslims who had lived there for generations, who spoke Tamil, and who were deeply integrated with us. We denied them the very rights we demanded from the Sinhalese.
This contradiction is particularly stark in the diaspora. Many young Tamil activists abroad speak of Islamophobia in Canada or the UK, yet have little awareness that Tamil nationalism itself carried within it an exclusion of Muslims. That is the real test: when we fight for minority rights, how do we behave toward minorities among us? Our inability to recognize even the basic equality of Muslims shows that Tamil nationalism has too often been about rights for “us alone” — not as a principle, but as a selective demand.
In the East, the scars are especially deep because of the cycle of massacres and counter-massacres. There were killings on both sides, and that history has left wounds which remain unhealed. Added to this are disputes over land, with many Muslim farmers prevented from returning to their lands during the war. These are not easy conversations, but they are ones we must begin ourselves; the South will not do it for us. Our politicians must have the courage to initiate them.
And this challenge extends beyond Tamils and Muslims. Consider also the Malaiyaha Tamils in the Wanni. On the one hand, they are embraced as part of the Tamil nation, but on the other hand, they face constant discrimination on caste and linguistic grounds. They embody how caste and minority exclusion intersect within Tamil society itself.
So you mean to say there is still a deep-rooted caste problem in the North and East?
Absolutely. In both the North and East, it persists, but it is especially accentuated in Jaffna, and it is fundamentally a Vellala problem.
The structure here differs from South India because here there are no Brahmins dominating; instead, it evolved more around kingly orders. But the Vellala retained dominance, and even within them there were hierarchies — periya vellala, sinna vellala, and so on. Everyone knows these distinctions, even if people rarely speak them aloud.
During the war, some believed militancy erased caste: LTTE cadres claimed caste was irrelevant inside the movement. But in everyday life, it remained. The LTTE itself often appeased Vellala elites. So while non-Vellala youth fought and died for Tamil nationalism, their everyday lives were still marked by exclusion — lack of access to land, toilets, or schools where teachers discriminated openly.
I recall, in 2001–2002, one set of displaced Dalit families in Jaffna had no access to toilets in local neighborhoods; they were forced to use the disused railway station toilets because others would not allow them entry. This was long after the rhetoric of equality was being proclaimed by Tamil nationalism.
Resettlement after the war has only reopened these fractures. During displacement, caste boundaries blurred somewhat; even inter-caste marriages became more common. But now, as people return to their villages, old divisions resurface. Education and migration have transformed things to an extent, yet local power structures — schools, universities, administration, temples, and churches — remain dominated by Vellala.
We could learn from South India’s anti-caste movements, which openly name and challenge these structural inequalities. Here in Jaffna, however, caste critique is constantly silenced in the name of Tamil nationalism. Bread-and-butter issues — water, land, sanitation — are all entangled with caste, yet nationalism provides no tools to address them.
So yes, caste remains deeply rooted in Jaffna. And unless we openly acknowledge and confront it, the promise of Tamil nationalism will remain hollow for many within our own community.
Have you done any research on Arumuga Navalar and the way he institutionalized the caste system in Jaffna?
No, I haven’t done direct research myself. But there is an excellent book by Bernard Bate, who sadly passed away, that touches on this subject. His work is focused on South India, but it also explores the impact of Arumuga Navalar and the Christian Church in Jaffna, and how their influence transformed Tamil speech, narration, and even the way the Tamil language was used in South India.
So, how do you see Navalar’s role in reinforcing caste in Jaffna?
One thing we often fail to confront is just how deeply caste-oriented Arumuga Navalar really was. He is even cited as saying that the Parai drum (a reference to the community) and women are the same — both born to be beaten. That stark remark illustrates the harshness of his worldview.
Part of his campaign in Jaffna’s temples involved removing traditional nautch statues and placing a large clock at the Nallur Kandaswamy temple. In doing so, he was “reforming” the varied practices of Jaffna into what he regarded as Agamic Hinduism — a more standardized and orthodox version, but one that was also more caste-oriented than the plural and diverse forms of worship that had existed earlier.
This legacy is not confined to Jaffna. In Eastern Sri Lanka, Hindu right-wing groups from India are now attempting to impose similar notions of orthodoxy. Yet historically, temples there — and likely in Jaffna as well — embodied far more diverse practices. Under Navalar and his followers, there was a deliberate effort to standardize not only worship but also language, recitation, and even the very definition of what it meant to “be Hindu.” This project indirectly echoed a Brahminical ethos from India, but in practice it was profoundly Vellala in both orientation and execution.
As an anthropologist, how do we explain to non-Sri Lankans and to Christians worldwide that Christianity in Jaffna often mirrors the caste-based structures of Hindu society?
To explain this, it helps to contrast Jaffna with South India. In Tamil Nadu and Kerala, missionaries were largely unsuccessful in converting the upper castes. Instead, Dalit communities converted in significant numbers. As a result, Christianity there came to be viewed almost as synonymous with Dalitness. For example, if someone identifies as CSI (Church of South India), people often assume they are Dalit. Christian conversion in South India was closely tied to anti-caste struggles, and some of the most powerful anti-caste writings and movements emerged from Dalit Christian communities. In that context, Christianity was embraced as a religion of equality and resistance to caste oppression.
In Sri Lanka, however, the story unfolded very differently. Missionaries—particularly American missionaries who were barred from working in South India—focused their efforts in Jaffna. They placed strong emphasis on education, and by the 1830s and 1840s, virtually every village in Jaffna had an American mission school. This missionary education transformed opportunities for employment and literacy, which is why observers like Denham could remark in 1911 that “Jaffna Tamils are the pen-pushers of empire.” But unlike in South India, conversion in Jaffna disproportionately attracted upper-caste groups.
From the very beginning, caste tensions permeated the church and its schools. Vellalars, for instance, frequently protested the policy of equal seating in Christian schools, insisting that Dalits remain segregated. Records as late as the 1930s show petitions from upper-caste groups demanding separate treatment. Mission schools tried to enforce equality but also feared losing their Vellalar students, leading to a constant tug-of-war between the Christian ideal of equality and the entrenched hierarchies of caste.
In South India, because large numbers of Dalits converted, Christianity developed a strong egalitarian ethos, even though contradictions persisted in practice. There, being Christian often meant standing against caste dominance, and Christian identity carried an association with equality and resistance.
In Jaffna, by contrast, conversion cut across caste lines. Both Vellalars and Dalits became Christian, but the church never developed a unified anti-caste identity. For upper-caste Christians, caste was simply regarded as “our culture.” As a result, Christianity in Jaffna did not become a vehicle for dismantling caste; instead, it mirrored and reinforced existing social divisions. To this day, Jaffna Tamil Christianity retains that fractured character—shaped less by a broad Dalit embrace of equality and more by the entanglement of upper-caste culture with Christian practice.
Do you think the caste system is still present within Jaffna’s education system, even if it cannot be expressed openly?
Yes, I do. At the University of Jaffna, for example, many of the students come from non-Vellala communities, but a large number of lecturers are still from Vellala backgrounds. I do not always believe that these students are educated or treated fairly by such lecturers. I also observe similar issues in the treatment of Muslim students — particularly Muslim women.
One of the major problems lies in school education. When teachers work in areas they are from, and know the caste background of their students, discrimination can occur. Beyond instances of active discrimination — which may be more subtle under current circumstances — students from rural Jaffna face additional challenges. Poverty and marginalization make it difficult for them to access education and remain in school.
These are the undercurrents we witness, and they are deeply troubling.
What do you see as the role of a university in this context?
As university academics, our responsibility is not to reinforce society’s oppressive categories. Education should mean access, the broadening of horizons, and not only teaching but also learning from our students. A university plays a vital role in its local community — it is the institution that prepares young people to step out into the world and take up different kinds of work. We cannot afford to fail in that responsibility.
In Jaffna, this task is especially difficult. Because of the war, many students have experienced disrupted schooling, while many lecturers themselves have been displaced or have gone abroad. Some students are older, having had children, while others carry the heavy burdens of traumatic childhood experiences in the Vanni. They need support. Education in such a context is both indispensable and profoundly challenging. But what it should never become is a space where we decide who belongs and who does not, or where some students are made to feel inferior.
You are currently teaching at Stanford University, one of the leading universities in the world. In comparison, what do you see as the main challenges faced by the University of Jaffna? Could you elaborate on those problems?
Yes, I teach at Stanford, which is indeed one of the leading universities globally. But I also have concerns about the way private institutions like Stanford operate. In the U.S., you have both public and private universities. For instance, right next to Stanford is the University of California, Berkeley — a public institution. Berkeley has a far more diverse student body compared to Stanford.
Private universities in the U.S. face a major problem: education is extraordinarily expensive. Students and families often go into significant debt. While low-income students do sometimes receive large scholarships, the cost remains a huge barrier. That said, in recent years Stanford has reported that about 18% of its undergraduate intake are first-generation university students — the first in their families to access higher education.
Now, in Sri Lanka, we have an advantage: our universities are public. That means they play a crucial role in providing high-quality education that is accessible to Sri Lankan students. Public universities should not only equip students with knowledge for employment but also train them to think critically, ask questions, and understand the world. Some disciplines may not directly prepare students for jobs but instead cultivate their capacity to read, think, and engage critically, which is also important.
The real challenge, I think, is that the University of Jaffna and Sri Lankan universities more broadly need to emphasize this mission of high-quality, critical education. There are several issues:
The system is very hierarchical. Senior lecturers often demand deference from junior staff, and junior lecturers are discouraged from raising questions, even in faculty meetings. This hierarchy extends to decisions about hiring and promotions. Instead of fostering open debate and new thinking, it tends to silence younger academics.
We also need to ask, what kind of history, sociology, and knowledge are we teaching? Education shouldn’t be about transmitting only one narrative. For example, studies of history textbooks in Sri Lanka have shown that Sinhala-language texts often glorify national history, whereas minority experiences are marginalized. That’s a serious problem. Education should encourage students to think critically about history and archaeology, not just repeat official narratives.
What other new challenges do you see Jaffna facing today?
Another rising challenge is the influence of Hindu nationalist organizations from India in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Their strategy is not to begin with politics but to build networks in civil society, shaping everyday cultural and religious practices. In recent years, they’ve increasingly sought to tie Tamil nationalism to Hindu nationalism, which was not historically the case. For instance, in the past, Tamil nationalism was not anti-Christian — many Tamil Christians were active in the movement. Today, however, there is a growing effort to equate being Tamil with being Hindu, and to portray Christians and Muslims as outsiders.
Who do you think these Hindu nationalist groups see as their main adversary?
It’s interesting—because their focus is more on Tamil Christians. Christians have a significant presence in Tamil life, and these groups want to redefine Tamil identity in narrowly Hindu terms. Their goal is not just about being Hindu, but about being a particular kind of Hindu, with standardized practices that fit into their ideology.
This shift is visible in small organizations—like Shiv Sena-inspired groups—emerging in Tamil areas, and even in the way leaders like Modi have tried to appeal directly to Malaiyaha Tamils. We must not underestimate these smaller organizations, because they are often the first step in reshaping ordinary opinions and everyday life.
In the past, Tamil nationalism and Christianity were not seen as contradictory; one could be both Tamil and Christian without conflict. Today, however, there is a deliberate attempt to present being Christian as somehow “less Tamil.” That is a serious concern because it undermines the pluralism that has always existed within Tamil identity.
You have written and spoken critically about the LTTE and Tamil nationalism. How do you see the state of Tamil nationalism today?
Because I have been studying this for many years, I can clearly see how attitudes have shifted over time. That change itself is an important form of knowledge. Today, many researchers might assume that the LTTE enjoyed enormous popularity. But in reality, towards the end of the war, people felt deeply ambivalent about them.
Even during the war, when I was conducting research, I found that people were not enthusiastically supportive. Rather, they accepted the LTTE as the authority under which they had to live. The Sri Lankan state felt distant, so people adapted to LTTE rule as the reality of daily life. But this did not mean they admired them. People were bitterly angry about forced recruitment, taxation, and extortion, though they often felt powerless to resist.
The end of the war was catastrophic. The state’s actions—cluster bombs, massacres, and mass internment camps—amounted to genocide. I remain profoundly angry at the state for what it did. But I am also angry with the LTTE. I don’t believe the senior leadership had the right to demand that thousands of cadres and civilians die simply to protect one man. They must also be held accountable. Of course, the state bears ultimate responsibility.
Equally important is how the war’s ending and the years of militarization that followed, reshaped memory. The complex, ambivalent attitudes many Tamils once held toward the LTTE were gradually converted into nostalgia. As state violence and repression continued—and because the LTTE no longer existed as a daily coercive presence, with no more forced recruitment or extortion—people began to remember them differently and romanticize them.
In this way, the LTTE became a kind of dream. When they were in power, people feared them. Now that they are gone, they can be remembered as a force that supposedly kept society in order—whether against crime, drugs, or social vices. Today, when people worry about drugs or alcohol, they often say, “If the LTTE were here, this wouldn’t be happening.” The LTTE can now be reimagined as whatever people wish them to be.
This shift is also tied to the Rajapaksas and the way they conducted the war and its aftermath. Their brutality, combined with the discrimination that followed in 2009, reinforced this nostalgia. Researchers who interview people today sometimes conclude that the LTTE were universally loved, but this is misleading. Such perceptions reflect present frustrations more than the reality of how people actually felt at the time. Those of us who have conducted research for over two decades know just how profoundly these attitudes have changed.
And what do you think this mentality of romanticizing the LTTE means for the Tamil people today?
I think it’s a real problem. Because it prevents us from facing our real social issues. It glorifies violence and turns our greatest tragedy—the mass death and disappearances of our people—into a story of “lost greatness.” But that was not greatness; it was devastation. To retell that as our proudest moment is dangerous, especially for young people growing up today.
We need new messages—of equality, democracy, and the value of life—not just stories of martyrdom. The LTTE years placed so much emphasis on death and sacrifice, and so little on living. Tamils deserve more than to be told constantly to die for the nation. What was the life they were supposed to live? It was never made clear.
So this nostalgia gives us the wrong moral framework. It teaches young people that our community’s worth lies only in the willingness to die, not in building lives, families, and futures. That is deeply damaging.
What can we do as a society to change this mentality?
I think change has to come on many fronts. But first, we cannot place the entire burden on ordinary people. Sri Lanka needs genuine political and economic reform. Underdevelopment in the North and East is severe, and there are also deep pockets of poverty in the South. Unless institutions change, ordinary people cannot be expected to carry this load alone.
Right now, people’s lives are precarious. In one generation, diaspora remittances will dry up. There is no sustainable future in imagining salvation from abroad or through money sent home. The change has to happen here, on the ground.
There are also urgent social issues. For me, gender is a huge concern. In the North and East, many women are heads of households. They are the breadwinners, or grandparents raising children. Yet instead of being supported, they are often treated as a social problem. We should recognize them as resilient families finding ways to survive, and create programs that support them meaningfully.
We must also hold our politicians accountable. In most of Sri Lanka, change happens locally because politicians deliver something to their constituents. In the North, however, politicians spend more time competing to prove who is the most nationalist, while ignoring people’s everyday needs. That has to change.
Ultimately, the biggest challenge is to stop using the absence of the LTTE as the explanation for why things are wrong today. Instead, we need to confront the realities of the present—economic hardship, social inequalities, gender issues, and political failures. Tamils, like anyone else in Sri Lanka, deserve democratic rights and the ability to choose their leaders democratically; those in the south have always had the right an exercise it even if those leaders turn out to be bad ones. That basic right to have civilian non military rule is itself a form of dignity we have been denied.
A vast number of Tamil people were killed by Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE, in the name of “traitors.” Some estimates suggest the number could be as high as 20,000. As the author of Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building, could you elaborate on how the very idea of the “traitor” ultimately damaged — even ruined — the Sri Lankan Tamil community?
The idea of the traitor became as central as the idea of the martyr. Yet people — researchers and others — rarely talk about that. They spent a lot of time discussing the concept of the thiyagi (martyr) and how central martyrdom was, but in fact, the traitor was just as central to LTTE ideology as the martyr. Raghavan has covered much of what I will say in his recent Jaffna Monitor piece, and I learned a lot from interviewing him and many other ex-LTTE cadres from the early batches.
The LTTE did not invent the idea of the “traitor.” It was already present in Tamil nationalism and within the broader militant movements. But the LTTE turned it into a weapon of action. You can’t say they were the first to label people as traitors; you could already see it with the TULF and the Federal Party (FP). Leaders on stage would accuse others of being traitors.
So, the idea of the traitor has a longer trajectory in Tamil nationalist politics. But what did it mean to be a “traitor” when the community was not even fully at war? What was there to betray? Shouldn’t Tamils have been allowed to hold different opinions and still remain within the fold of Tamil identity? Yet the dominant view was that if you did not follow Tamil nationalism in the prescribed way, you could be accused of being a Tamil traitor.
The term also extended to Muslim politicians. Many had begun in the Federal Party and later, with leaders like Ashraff, moved towards southern parties. They were then branded thoppi piradi — a variation of the “traitor” label. So the Tamil traitor was not necessarily someone collaborating militarily with the enemy, but anyone who thought differently. That is important to understand.
This meant that even within broad similarities of opinion, people could call one another traitors. And in Tamil society, the word “traitor” carried enormous moral condemnation — worse than being an open enemy. Once labeled a traitor, you were placed in another category altogether.
Militant groups used this against one another and even within their own ranks. PLOTE, for example, killed many of its own members as “traitors.” This was not about fighting outsiders but about killing those with slight variations of opinion. And once someone was labeled a traitor, they could be killed without hesitation.
The LTTE then took this much further. As a primarily military organization without a strong political consciousness, they elevated “traitor” into an article of faith. For them, anyone who opposed the LTTE was a traitor. This was reinforced by two structures. First, their intelligence cadres, who policed ordinary people: villagers, townsfolk, anyone who might dissent. Second, their internal intelligence, which monitored cadres themselves. Both could imprison or kill people as traitors.
Prabhakaran himself, in one of his Maveerar Naal (Heroes’ Day) speeches, declared, “The traitor is worse than the enemy.” That meant a Tamil dissenter was worse than the Sinhalese. This shows how central the idea of the traitor became in LTTE policing and surveillance.
Ordinary people were terrified of being branded traitors. At the end of the war, even civilians who tried to flee LTTE control were called traitors and killed. The term also allowed people to settle personal scores by denouncing rivals as traitors, knowing the LTTE would act.
Inside LTTE “traitors’ prisons,” the situation was even more telling. I interviewed a former EPRLF member — a civil servant imprisoned by the LTTE. He was forced to record the charges against other prisoners. Many were not dissidents or militants; some were just ordinary people who had failed to pay the LTTE’s “National Defence Fund.”
So the traitor category was vast — it encompassed dissidents, rival militants, cadres who wanted to leave, and even civilians. This was not only a moral category; it was the backbone of LTTE policing and surveillance, both internal and external.
The damage continues today. When someone is branded a traitor even now, it carries the same historical weight: the implication that they deserve to be eliminated. That is why I felt compelled to write about it. Academics had written extensively on martyrdom, but not on this other side — the side that fueled fear and violence within the Tamil community.
Some people have even embraced the label. I have met Tamils who said, “If opposing the LTTE makes me a traitor, then I am okay with being a traitor — because it means I stand with people, not with the LTTE.”
I myself come from what would be considered a “traitor’s family,” because of early involvement in the LTTE and then leaving. Even leaving was considered treachery. Families of martyrs could instantly be recast as families of traitors if their loyalty faltered.
So this category of “traitor” was ordinary, pervasive, and devastatingly violent. The tragedy is that it was not about the external enemy — it was turned inward, against our own people. That is why it ruined the Tamil community.
You wrote a very critical piece, The Names of the Leader: The Political Deification of Prabhakaran. Setting aside the deeply personal fact that he ordered your mother’s assassination, how do you think history will remember Prabhakaran?
As you have mentioned, in the piece I write, I am very critical of Prabhakaran and of his deification. I analyze his various depictions and examine how the LTTE carefully managed a visual structure with him at the center, and how central his figure was to humanizing and moralizing the LTTE. Sometimes, even when people admitted that something very wrong had happened, they would nonetheless insist that the Leader did not know of it. The LTTE needed such a heroic portrayal, and Prabhakaran ruthlessly sustained it. He turned the LTTE’s power structure into a one-man show, with everything ultimately answering to him.
It is difficult to say anything definitive about the personal character of such a figure when his image was so thoroughly stage-managed. Unlike many, I do not try to ascribe a desire to know Prabhakaran “the person” or speculate about his private qualities. I judge him by the LTTE: its organization, its ethos of purity, violence, and death, its pyramidal structure, its obsession with killing and policing Tamils and Muslims.
Over the years, people have assumed I dislike him simply because he ordered my mother’s death, and they are more than willing to tell me so—as if that were merely my personal problem. But there are too many deaths and disappearances for this to be seen only in personal terms. Everyone has experienced the violence of fear, extortion, recruitment, and death, and we are expected to accept it simply because the state was worse. That we cannot ask for more is both personal and political.
I think Prabhakaran was a clever military politician who managed his own representation very carefully and held on to power through deep ruthlessness and an absolute willingness to sacrifice everyone except himself. What history makes of that is up to us.
As an anthropologist, do you think Prabhakaran came to embody the Tamil collective psyche — with its intolerance of criticism, the making of a folk-hero figure and culture of veneration, deep suspicion of dissent, and a strong sense of historic victimhood — or was he ultimately a figure shaped more by his own unique traits?
I tend to study society and culture with an emphasis on constant historical and social shifts, not as such the collective psyche. In that regard, I believe the LTTE and Prabhakaran actively sought to shape these features in a deliberate, multi-pronged manner. In the 1990s, they established the Office of Great Heroes to develop a coherent martyrology and mythology—one that academics and commentators later misinterpreted as rooted in deep Tamil traditions. They also built a punitive carceral system of prisons, punishment for dissent, and a vast network of informers, which fostered deep suspicion within Tamil society itself.
Tamils are indeed victims of grave injustice and violence, but the LTTE insisted on monopolizing that victimhood: no one else could be a victim. Killings and the ethnic cleansing of other communities, as well as violence against ordinary Sri Lankans, could then be justified on the grounds of Tamil victimhood. This raises a difficult but important question: could we have imagined a Tamil struggle that did not require the denial of others’ suffering? Is such a vision even possible within the framework of nationalism?
This exclusivity was also evident in how the LTTE defined martyrdom. Only military figures—its cadres and a few select civilians—were allowed to be considered martyrs. Those from rival militant groups, or even most civilians, were excluded. It was only after 2009, in the commemorations of Mullivaikal, that civilians who perished began to be recognized as martyrs. With the LTTE no longer gatekeeping whom we can mourn, we now see the possibility of grieving for everyone who died or disappeared.
As for Prabhakaran himself, he shaped the movement in his own image: ruthless, authoritarian, and obsessed with embodying the role of the Great Leader. Instead of building a democratic and egalitarian force, he imposed his personal values on the struggle. What remains with us today is the enduring legacy of that choice.
The NPP was not only overwhelmingly elected nationwide but, for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, also won significant support from Tamil voters. Do you think this unprecedented moment will translate into genuine progress for Tamil communities? What is your honest assessment of the NPP government when it comes to addressing the ethnic question?
First and foremost, the most striking feature of last year’s election was that Sri Lankan voters decisively rejected the old political establishment. They wanted change, and more than two-thirds of former parliamentarians lost their seats. I found this outcome encouraging. The NPP managed to ride this wave of discontent and desire for renewal—a sentiment that was visible even in the North. I would like to believe this could translate into genuine progress.
My major concern, however, is that the election marked the first large-scale outreach to minority communities by the NPP. Before seeking office, the party had not consistently engaged with minority voters, nor had it worked to address issues in former war-affected areas. The JVP’s legacy is also troubling: historically, it was driven by ethnic chauvinism and violent militarism, and later, in Parliament, it repeatedly aligned with the Rajapaksas and others to maintain the securitization of minority regions. In short, the NPP has much to prove to the voters who entrusted them with the hope of change.
What is required now is the consistent fulfillment of promises: abolishing the PTA, dismantling the Executive Presidency, enforcing and implementing language policies, and making real investments in the North and East, which remain economically marginalized and continue to suffer the long-term effects of war.
I remain doubtful that these goals will be achieved. The JVP’s inner core does not consistently acknowledge even the existence of the so-called “ethnic question.” Meanwhile, the NPP government must address serious issues involving the military. For instance, the gazette authorizing high-security zones has not been repealed, and several thousand acres of land in the North and East remain under army and navy control. Some of this land, belonging to numerous families, is being developed for military use instead of being returned to its rightful owners. Similar concerns apply to the ongoing encroachment on Tamil and Muslim lands in these regions.
As long as the NPP tiptoes around the army and navy, it cannot fully address the ethnic question. Action matters. When Tamil and Muslim voters switched to the NPP in large numbers after its presidential victory, they demonstrated their hope that a new government might finally bring meaningful change. But given the party’s history, the NPP must do far more to prove that this hope was not misplaced.
