S Nanthikesan: Learning from Sivaram – Politics of Counter-terrorism
Many lives and untold sufferings later, Sri Lankan Tamils and their allies are trying to make sense of the power wielded by labels such as “traitors”, “martyrs” , “liberation”, etc. The singular experiment with globalized militant nationalism has gone through a full life span. Sivaram’s life in many ways is a metaphor for the nationalist struggle itself – the early vibrancy and creative drive to launch the militant struggle against oppression, context-driven compromised strategies morphing into entrenched exclusionary politics viz dissent and other communities, ultimate demise being embedded in the trappings of consolidated success, etc. As experience has taught us, reductive labels like “hero”, “terrorist”, “brilliant”, “opportunist” do great injustice to fully appreciating and drawing lessons from this unique organic intellectual. Whitaker fully recognizes this and his book presents a textured view of Sivaram’s thinking from the perspective of a sympathetic fellow-traveler. Going beyond the emotive rationalizations of those who practice Sivaram’s brand of nationalism (during his TamilNet phase) and theorizing these nationalist views is indeed a great service to those who wish to take-on these views.
Having said that, I also feel that to learn politics from Sivaram, a more in-depth critical engagement is vital. At the risk of oversimplification, the main argument of the paper is that the book is more engaged with the breadth of the intellectual dimensions of Sivaram’s activism rather than presenting a full-throated interrogation of his politics, which admittedly is complex. Among other things, the paper will explore Sivaram’s views on the counter-terrorism measures of GOSL and argue that these views were nothing more than justifications of LTTE’s claim as sole-representatives and for LTTE’s policy of crushing dissenting views. Indeed, it seems evident that to fully learn politics from Sivaram, one needs to go beyond Sivaram and seek voices of dissent in Sri Lanka.
Biographical Statement:
Nanthikesan is a founder co-editor of the online magazine Lines. Lines emerged out of an interest in creating a space in the blogosphere for deliberation and dissent in engagement with political debates in Sri Lanka and the diaspora. Nanthi was born in Sri Lanka and did his undergraduate degree at University of Peradeniya (1977-1981) and taught there from 1981- 1983 August before leaving for graduate studies. He currently resides in New York City, USA and focuses mainly on matters related to development.
