There was a time when Mahinda Rajapaksa was hailed as a national hero, today he has been edged out of the political landscape

It was in 2015 that I made my first visit to Sri Lanka and that too as a journalist. I was the lone media representative from India to be invited to the Defense Seminar organized by the island nation’s Ministry of Defense. It was an event held by the Sri Lankan defence forces to share with the world that country’s experience in waging a three-decade-long war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Tamil militant outfit, that demanded a separate Tamil country bifurcating (or even trifurcating) Sri Lanka. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives or maimed in the civil war fought between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army.

What started as a small protest by Tamils over the Sri Lankan Government’s decision to switch over to the Sinhala language the registration number of vehicles in the island nation turned out to be an all-out civil war. The entire moderate political leaders on both sides of the spectrum were wiped out by the LTTE itself. An analysis by the Sri Lankan Government reveals that LTTE murdered most of the Tamil leaders to pave the way for the rise of Prabhakaran.

The civil war on the island of Emerald turned into a teardrop in the Indian Ocean. In the 1960s, the situation in Northern Sri Lanka was so peaceful that Colombo did not feel it necessary to post hard taskmasters as police chiefs in the region. The secessionists made use of this opportunity and amassed weapons and made a grand plan to liberate northern and the northeast from mainland Sri Lanka. 

The civil war in Sri Lanka had its repercussions in India too. Chennai’s international airport came under attack by the LTTE and this claimed the lives of 33 persons. The internecine fight between various Tamil groups extended to Chennai and in one of such shootouts, a prominent Tamil leader Padmanabha was shot down by the Tigers in 1990 and the assassins escaped back to Jaffna with the support of the then rulers of Tamil Nadu. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 was the culmination of this warfare. By 2009, the Sri Lankan forces had finished off Prabhakaran, the despot and the LTTE was given an official burial.

By 2015, Sri Lanka was back to the “happy days are here again syndrome”. The road leading to the capital city from the Bandaranaike International Airport was dotted with posters of Mahinda Rajapakse, the then President who did not leave any stone unturned in the fight against LTTE. Throughout the two-day-long seminar, civil and military officers were vying with each other in showering encomiums on Mahinda Rajapaksa. “Mahinda Chintana”, the philosophy of President Rajapaksa, was being spoken about all over the country. It was Rajapaksa’s chosen path to make the island nation the “green emerald” and “El Dorado” in the Indian Ocean. He had the status of an iconic figure all over the country and this made Mahinda Rajapaksa order for an early poll. Pollsters had forecast a clean sweep by Rajapaksa but the result turned out to be a shocker. Mythripala Sirisena, the challenger, walked away with the cup as the Rajapaksas were left shocked.

During my second trip to Sri Lanka in 2016, I did not see any pictures of Mahinda Rajapaksa anywhere. The persons who had waxed eloquence on “Mahinda Chinthana” were not to be seen. There was no Mahinda or Chinthana. Rulers who go by the words of court jesters and palace advisors get vanished within days, according to Jnanappana, a poetic work by Poonthanam, the great Kerala poet of yore years. Poonthanam, a devotee of Lord Krishna, wrote in Jnanappana (The song of divine wisdom) that if Lord wishes, a King can become a beggar! 

(Writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer. Views expressed are personal)