Death by Fire - Tigers' End-Game (updated)

Author: Rover

- update of my last post -

After 30 years of self-destruction of its cadre with the intention of terrorizing innocent civilians by creating suicide bombers, LTTE is now encouraging self destruction of their remaining cadre in protest (to gain sympathy) of being annihilated for being suicide bombers and terrorists! Seriously, how smart is this? Here I analyze generally why people resort to death by fire, the explicit message the LTTE is trying to convey by this, and the futility of this primitive practice.

People practice self-immolation for two major reasons: renouncement and devotion.

Self-immolation for renouncement: In the modern context, the most common form of self-immolation for renouncement is as a political protest. Usually, someone from the weaker political entity would burn oneself in protest of the practices of a stronger and deviant political force. This was the case when Thich Quan Duc, a Mahayana Vietnamese Buddhist monk burned himself in protest of the mal-treatment that was inflicted upon the clergy by the Ngo Dinh Deim’s government. In another case, a University of California (at San Diego) student burned himself in protest of the active presence of US troops in Vietnam. There are numerous cases of self immolation to express renouncement.

Self-immolation for Devotion: The most famous example of self immolation for devotion is the archaic Hindu practice of Sati, where a new widow jumps into the burning pier of her dead husband. This practice has now been banned in India; and was never condoned by Mahabarata (a prominent Hindu religious text). In another case of devotion, with the schism of the Russian church, entire villages of the orthodoxy (Russian Orthodox Church) burned themselves and termed it “Baptism Fire”. This is just one example out of many, especially by fundamentalist religious sects, for who practiced mass self immolation to express devotion. Self-immolation is also prevalent in India for hard to believe more mundane reasons to do with public figures. For example, a man burned himself when Tamil movie superstar Rajinikanth’s marriage was not doing well in the 1980s. In another instance when Muthuvel Karunanidhi the present chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu was arrested by his rival M.G. Ramachandran in 1981, eleven Tamil people burned themselves to express devotion to Karunanidhi. Though these men burned themselves predominantly in devotion to the leader, they were also renouncing his arrest - so both devotion and renouncement can sometimes be interwoven, and hard to be distinguish from each other. LTTE now seems to be targetting this self-burning tendency of especially the uneducated oppressed masses of South India to further its propaganda.

Curiously, some Hindus and some sects of Christians practice localized immolation to show devotion to their respective gods. A sect of French Jesuits burn pars of their bodies (thigh, foot, palms ect.) in devotion for the pain that Jesus felt when he was crucified.

Importantly, however there are two more reasons for death by fire, which are usually not much talked about. These are forced burnings and self-immolation for cursing.

Forced burnings (by others) - It is known that during the time of the historical Rus' people (mostly ancient Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians), when a slave owner died a loyal female slave was burnt with the master. In India, forced burnings of wives who didn’t want to perform Sati when their husbands died, are reported. In the old west, infidels and witches were burned at a stake. Usually a witch hunt ended in burning of a few innocents that behaved differently from others. Though “forced burnings” is not strictly a practice of self-immolation, I include it here, as you see later, because someone can be MENTALLY forced to do this.

Self-immolation to curse someone – This is little known, but at least two groups of people in India, the Charans and Rajputs self immolate to bring a curse upon someone who had perpetrated a foul deed upon them (or their people). Both these groups are North Indian Aryan (not South Indian Dravidian) sects that are renowned for their martial abilities. Interestingly, they perform self-immolation only against a closely related entity; faced with a distantly related foe, they always wage violent war. This character is important in what I am going to talk in relation to the LTTE.

Several hardcore LTTE supporters, and perhaps these were even former suicide cadre of the LTTE, recently self-immolated: one person in Switzerland and two in Tamil Nadu died, and one man in London was injured. Anyway, these acts were in support of the LTTE who is now facing an imminent military annihilation at the hands of the Sri Lanka defense forces.

The LTTE self-immolations, I argue, are a combination for all the four reasons (renouncement, devotion, forced burning and self immolation for cursing). Through these, it disparages the government’s military campaign against the LTTE, where the Tigers have lost significant amounts of land (which they fanatically revere and call Eelam) and cadre. These immolations are clearly a message to the west and the Tamil community in general to join in greater protest. But protest for what?! It must be the first time in contemporary history that supporters are setting themselves alight in the hope of saving an INTERPOL absconding terrorist chief and an internationally proscribed terrorist organization.

Through self-burning, LTTE cadre also show devotion to the cause (attaining Tamil Eelam) and the "demi-god" Prabhakaran. It is well known that LTTE have a culture very much different from the other Dravidian Hindus. The true Tigers venerate their leader and land more than anything else, even more so than Hinduism (Hinduism embodies Indian cultural aspects as well and is not only a religion), which they consider to be a pariah concept; lack of respect for Hinduism is shown by the killing of several Hindu priests, desecrating Hindu temples (for example the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah was killed by the Tiger leader at point blank inside a Hindu temple), and constant Eelamization of names associated with the LTTE (for example, Eelam is now called Ezham, and Prabhakarana is called Paripaharan ect.). Interestingly, though normally Hindus prefer to cremate (burn) the bodies of their dead and float the resulting ashes in a sacred river, LTTE prefer to bury their dead so that they can build cemeteries that can later be glorified. This too is a deviant practice from Hinduism.

There is an enormous and constant social pressure from the LTTE leadership towards its members to support the LTTE; and this includes facilitating (or forcing) self-immolation. This too has been prevalent throughout its history. One of the main reasons for the west to ban this organization was the harassment of the Diaspora by the LTTE (illegal taxation ect.). One might protest the third claim, but one must remember that LTTE is not a group of freedom fighters but a world renowned group of terrorists; who have pioneered and mastered the self-destruction of human beings, the suicide bombings. So self-immolation of the LTTE is not recent if you consider self-destruction through suicide bombing (where there is also burning involved) as a form of self-immolation where you also kill other people; forced self immolation after all, is only small deviation from the psychology that is involved in suicide bombings; and Tigers are well known to brainwash people to become suicide bombers.

From some of the letters that were found at some of the immolation sites and immolated persons, it is evident that the LTTE hate Buddhism and Sinhalese deeply, and that the people who immolated themselves prominently cursed these two aspects. But unlike the Charnas and Rajputs of India, who are North Indian Aryans, it seems it is the first time that Dravidians that indulged in this practice of cursing through immolation to a significant level. So LTTE is yet again innovative in an unenviable way, in giving the Dravidians a foul name.

Now a rumor is spreading around that the LTTE leaders and its cadre entrapped in Wanni are going to commit suicide (by fire or otherwise). Fire has fascinated the first ape-men since they first started walking upright. So the death of these primitive LTTE terrorists too could very well be by fire. But I urge others LTTE supporters, especially the LTTE supporting diaspora not to get distracted by the LTTE efforts to play to the lower instincts of man. Think through your head, before setting yourself alight for a guy who thought only about himself. In addition this rumor is spread, I think, to encourage mentally forced self-immolation, especially targeting the oppressed masses of Tamil Nadu.

It is however very interesting to note that out of the three people who died so far, two are Indians from Tamil Nadu (the nationality of the person who died in Siwtzerland remain unknown). Sri Lankans are usually considered to be more educated than the Tamil Nadu Indians (literacy rate is higher in Sri Lankans than Tamil Nadu), and so it maybe harder to convince Sri Lankan Tamils to burn themselves for a lost cause. This is indeed an encouraging sign.

There are other reasons why self-immolation is a defeatist paradigm. Even from an evolutionary viewpoint, burning oneself is counter productive as one can't pass on ones genes to the next generation, or successfully raise ones children if they already have any. It is also known that, unlike in India, the Western society considers self-immolation as a problem to the society, and hence a crime. This is exemplified by the British Police charging the man who got half-burned in London, with arson. So getting fully or half-burned for Eelaam or Prabhakaran through self-immolation is, for many reasons, the silliest thing that one could do.

Finally anyway, thousands of Sri Lankan and Indian civilians and soldiers, including two heads of states (one from India and the other from Sri Lanka), who died by the fire of the LTTE suicide bombers will undoubtedly not object to the last few of these suicide cadres (or those who are closely associated with them) attaining death by fire, if they must (!), without dragging other innocents around them to go to the fiery hell hole with them.