Its amazing that you include me among those who criticise the LTTE as ” boys from the lower castes”. i actively supported the EPRLF when it was the first to organise the so-called lower castes, and was condemned in jaffna as a movement of those castes ( though its leaders were from the so-called high castes). I was also a prominent supporter of presdent premadasa. so if anyone can be accused of caste-ism, it ain’t me. by the way my mother came from the so-called karawe caste, though my father was goigama.

as for education and literacy, that’s another matter. it counts. just recently fidel castro made much of the fact that john mccain by his own admission, came fourth from the bottom in his class at the naval academy.

isn’t it amazing, dear Amazing, that after 35 years of being in the liberation struggle business, mr prabhakaran and the Tigers have not achieved recognition as a fraternal movement by a single national liberation movement anywhere in the world?

isn’t it also amayzing that the most successful guerilla leader in the south asian region, prachanda, (pushpa kumar dayal) now prime minister of nepal, said on the recod to the hidu, that his orgnasation has nothing in common with the tigers which has no “political programme”?

My comment back at Mr. Dayan was that his view is one that is common to the colombo, pseudo-intellectual elites, especially those from the colombo 7 tamil community such as Mr. N. Thiruchelvam, Mr. L. Kadigamma, and others, who have privately (to me in stark terms) and publicly (in more refined terms) stated that the LTTE leaders do not/did not have the intellectual capacity or educational background to really know what was “good for the tamil people” and that they were “uneducated boys from the lower castes” (envision the snooty facial expression, wrinkling of the nose etc) and it was best that now that they have made their point with the armed struggle they let the “intellectuals” negotiate the political solution.

Whether many like to admit it or not much of the criticism over the years of the LTTE by Tamils has come from the “higher caste” and must be viewed in this context… this war is not only an ethnic conflict but also a conflict of class and caste.

so, dayan’s criticism of Mr. P as being uneducated and not “well-read” falls into this category.

“can anyone pl. tell me why Dr Dayan Jayathilake has turned into a someone who glorifies and justifies war, especially under a regime that is infamous for its corruption?”

Yes. The LTTE killed off just about every Tamil leader who could’ve worked with Sinhala progressives to reach a political solution, most recently his old friend Ketesh Loganathan.

Then later in life, I met him as an impressive intellectual, but can anyone pl. tell me why Dr Dayan Jayathilake has turned into a someone who glorifies and justifies war, especially under a regime that is infamous for its corruption?

as for federalism, the truth is that balasingham wrote a tract and then a book ( war and peace) which denied that there had been any agreement to explore federalism. at which point, the royal norwegian govenment produced the minutes of the december 2002 meeting, and disproved his assertion.

there is a reason that Prachanda is PM of nepal and prabhakaran is unsure where he’ll be on his upcoming birthday. the former is educated, well-read, articulate, politically savvy and realistic, while the other wasn’t/isn’t…and he killed off all who were.

ok, if secession doesn’t succeed at first , let them try again. but before that let whoever look at the statistical results to the aspirant seceding community of this recent attempt at secession. prof ratnajeevan hoole’s recent speech sets them out. what would be the demographic cost of another attempt?