A dirge penned by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi as a tribute to LTTE’s political wing leader S P Tamilselvan, who was killed in a Sri Lankan air raid at a militant hideout has raised many questions.

Translated by pro-LTTE website Tamilnet, the dirge reads in part thus:

A commander seasoned in the line of the old lion Balasingam
The virtuous youth who with determination
offered himself to the war for rights —
His soul hasn’t gone extinguished
He hasn’t gone brotherless
A beloved son who wrote his fame
all over the earth, wherever Tamils live —
Selva, where have you gone?

The first question is whether showing one’s scholarship on an occasion like this is dignified.

Letting it pass, Tamil daily Dinamalar has reacted tongue-in-cheek to Karunanidhi’s rhetorical question, “Selva where have you gone?” It has said, “Don’t worry, our beloved leader, he has gone the way of Rajiv Gandhi”.

The second question, raised by AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, concerns the propriety of a chief minister condoling the death of a leader of an organisation that has remained banned since it assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi way back in May 1991, and using the government’s information department to circulate the poem to the media. Jayalalitha has said Karunanidhi has violated the Constitution.

Pointing to the release on bail of a Dalit Panthers of India activist arrested for trying to supply high-speed boat parts to the LTTE, she has asked the Centre to probe how far Karunanidhi had helped that outfit during the last 17 months of his rule.

“Whenever he comes to power, he ends up supporting terrorist groups,” she has said. Swamy has asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi how her party is continuing its alliance with the DMK, which is praising the killers of Rajiv Gandhi. In answer to this, Union Minister and senior Congress leader from Tamil Nadu G K Vasan has said, “we have not forgotten Rajiv Gandhi and we shall convey our anguish to the high command”.

The third is whether mourning the death of Tamilselvan is the same as expressing anguish over the killing of Tamil civilians in air raids, as had happened when Sencholai orphanage was bombed in the rebel-held territory.

The Supreme Court, in the case of Vaiko’s detention under POTA, has said “lending moral support to a banned outfit is not wrong”. Even so, Karunanidhi has so far refrained from directly backing the Tigers. In fact, at the height of the battle for the east in Sri Lanka, Karunanidhi told the State Assembly that in reacting to the unfolding happenings, “we have to make a distinction between pre and post-Rajiv Gandhi phase and be restrained”. It’s, therefore, a mystery as to why Karunanidhi has come out openly in support of the LTTE. He has justified it as an expression of kinship for a fellow Tamil.

Not that it means anything tangible to the Tamil cause. Though the DMK is a key constituent of the UPA government at the Centre, he has refrained from calling upon India to help defuse the situation in Sri Lanka.

Even this token support has warmed the cockles of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, supporting the Tigers. As the Tamilnet has noted, “the chief ,inister’s emotion-filled condolence gains significance in the background of a prevailing impression that the Government of India is fully  backing the efforts of the government of Sri Lanka aiming for a military solution to the ethnic crisis”.

When Karunanidhi leads the pack, can other pro-LTTE leaders be far behind? So it is no surprise that PMK’s S Ramadoss, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam leader Vijayakant and All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi chief Sarath Kumar have called on India to play a more active role.

The point that has been lost sight of is that Tamilselvan was no peacenik, though the LTTE has said “a peace dove” has been killed by the Sri Lankan “hawk”. Before heading the political division, he was a military commander of the LTTE and had taken part in many a battle.

But then, even peace broker Norway sees him in this light.  Jon Hanssen Bauer, the Norwegian special envoy for the peace process in Sri Lanka, has said Tamilselvan was a moderate person within the LTTE, one who sought political alternatives. Little do they know that in the LTTE, it is Velupillai Prabhakaran, who calls all the shots. The only leader whose hands were not stained with blood was the late Balasingham because he was a civilian and a pure ideologue.