By Che Ran
Every year, on May 18, Tamils remember Mullivaikkal.
And every year, like clockwork, the circus arrives.
From Sri Lanka, we get the professional denialists — men who look at bombed hospitals, mass graves, disappeared families, surrendered civilians who never came home, and say, with the confidence of a man selling fake Rolexes in Pettah, “No, no, no. Nothing happened.”
From India, we get the bargain-bin patriots — politicians who hear “Tamil civilian massacre” and immediately start shouting, “Rajiv Gandhi! Rajiv Gandhi!” as if they have discovered fire.
It is almost impressive. Not intelligent. Not moral. But impressive in the way a goat climbing onto a roof is impressive. You don’t admire the goat’s politics. You just wonder how it got there.
Now they are attacking Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay for remembering May 18 and standing with Sri Lankan Tamils. Their great argument is this: “He is supporting Rajiv Gandhi’s killer.”
Please.
This is not political analysis. This is WhatsApp uncle logic after two bad whiskies.
May 18 is not Prabhakaran Day. It is not LTTE Appreciation Night. Nobody is handing out tiger-striped cupcakes and singing revolutionary karaoke.
May 18 is the day Tamils remember the civilians trapped in the final killing fields of Sri Lanka’s war: the families told to move into “No Fire Zones” that were then shelled; the hospitals hit after their coordinates were known; the children, the elderly, the injured, the starving, the surrendered, and the disappeared.
But the denialists have a routine.
First, they say it never happened.
Then, if you show them evidence, they say it was exaggerated.
Then, if you show them more evidence, they say the LTTE was there.
Then, if you ask about hospitals, they change the subject.
Then, if you ask about surrendered civilians, they suddenly become legal scholars.
Then, if you mention Channel 4, the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, survivor testimony, satellite imagery, doctors, journalists, photographs, and videos, they say, “Western conspiracy.”
Of course. Everything is a Western conspiracy.
Shelling? Western conspiracy.
Hospitals? Western conspiracy.
Disappearances? Western conspiracy.
Mothers still searching for children? Also, a Western conspiracy.
At this point, if a crow flies over Mullivaikkal, some fellow in Colombo will say it was funded by Norway.
The Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist denial industry has become one of the most embarrassing political performances in South Asia. Not Sinhala people — let us be clear. Many Sinhala people know the truth. Many are decent. Many are tired of being represented by men whose entire moral vocabulary consists of “terrorism,” “sovereignty,” and “foreign agenda.”
The problem is the denial crowd. The flag-waving experts in selective memory. The people who can recall every LTTE crime in HD but suddenly develop cataracts when asked about what the state did in 2009.
They are like people who burn down the kitchen, then complain that everyone keeps talking about smoke.
And then we have the Indian politicians.
Ah, Indian politicians. Masters of the ancient art of saying everything except the thing that matters.
A Tamil leader says, “We remember the dead.”
They reply, “But Rajiv Gandhi!”
A Tamil family says, “Our son surrendered and vanished.”
They reply, “But Prabhakaran!”
A mother says, “My child was killed.”
They reply, “But national security!”
This is not politics. This is moral ventriloquism. They keep throwing the same dead names into the room so nobody has to look at the living wound.
Yes, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was a crime. Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it cannot be justified.
But here is the part these geniuses pretend not to understand: remembering Tamil civilians killed in 2009 is not the same as celebrating Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
This should not be difficult.
A schoolchild can understand it.
A Labrador can understand it.
A reasonably alert coconut can understand it.
But somehow, an Indian politician with three phones, four assistants, and a convoy cannot.
Because the outrage is not real. It is performative. It is election-season theatre. They are not defending Rajiv Gandhi’s memory. They are using his death as a political broom to sweep Tamil grief under the carpet.
And what a filthy carpet it is.
Under it lies Mullivaikkal.
Under it lie the No Fire Zones.
Under it lie the hospitals.
Under it lie the people who surrendered.
Under it lie the missing.
Under it lie the videos nobody wants to discuss.
Under it lie the photographs that still make the stomach turn.
Under it lies that terrible image of a child in custody, alive in one moment, dead soon after — a symbol so damning that the denialists would rather argue about camera angles than ask what kind of state produces such an image.
This is why they want May 18 to be about Prabhakaran.
Because if May 18 is about Prabhakaran, they can argue.
If May 18 is about civilians, they have to answer.
And they have no answer.
So they perform.
The Sri Lankan denialist performs sovereignty.
The Indian politician performs patriotism.
The Colombo apologist performs outrage.
The television panelist performs balance.
Everyone performs.
Only the dead remain honest.
Seventeen years have passed since 2009. Long enough for politicians to hope memory would become soft. Long enough for the world to move on. Long enough for reports to gather dust, for files to disappear, for witnesses to age, for mothers to die without answers.
But not long enough for Tamils to forget.
How can they?
How do you forget a war that ended with civilians packed into a strip of land and shelled?
How do you forget hospitals hit again and again?
How do you forget people waving white flags and never returning?
How do you forget families who still carry photographs of the missing like passports to a country called grief?
You do not forget.
You remember.
That is what May 18 is.
It is not a security threat. It is not extremism. It is not terrorism nostalgia. It is not a secret handshake for militants hiding behind coconut trees.
It is memory.
And memory is dangerous only to people who built their politics on forgetting.
So yes, Vijay was right to remember. Any Tamil leader with a spine should remember. Any Indian leader with a conscience should remember. Any Sinhala citizen who wants a country built on truth instead of mythology should remember too.
The denialists can continue their annual circus.
They can shout “Prabhakaran” until their throats collapse.
They can wave flags.
They can blame Norway, Channel 4, the diaspora, the West, the weather, the moon, and possibly Taylor Swift.
But the truth remains.
May 18 is not about worshipping one man.
It is about refusing to erase a people.
And if that makes the clowns uncomfortable, let them sweat under the lights.
The show is theirs.
The memory is ours.
