By Veeraragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, February 8: The Sri Lankan Tamil polity has lost two of its senior most leaders in a short span of time. Despite a ten-year age gap between them, they had devoted more than six decades of their lives to the democratic struggle for the political rights of Sri Lankan Tamils.
Mavai Senathirajah passed away on Wednesday, January 29, 2025, two days short of the seven-month mark of Rajavarothayam Sampanthan’s death in June 30, 2024. His funeral was held last Sunday in his hometown Maviddapuram in Jaffna district with the participation of a large number politicians from various parties and the public.
Although Senathirajah and Sampanthan were different in many respects, there was a commonality between them as leaders of the main political movement representing the Sri Lankan Tamils for more than fifteen years following the end of the civil war.
Another similarity between the two was that they spent their last days in agony, as the Tamil polity was more fractured than ever before and in crisis without a responsible leadership. But, in fact, both of them were responsible for such an unfortunate situation.
Not speaking ill of the dead is considered a traditional value in our societies. We are all born to die one day. But what is important is what legacy we are going to leave behind through our life and actions. For political leaders, this is even more important.
No one will dispute the fact that a critical examination of the directions that political leaders may have left behind for their followers to continue their political journey and the lessons that can be drawn from their attitudes and actions will help determine the right path for the future.
Having worked closely with great leaders of yesteryears such as S.J V. Chelvanayagam, Appapillai Amirthalingam and Murugesu Sivasithamparam, Senathirajah had long been a symbol of the Tamils’ struggle for political rights against majoritarian hegemony.
In an article written last week after Senathirajah’s death, his friend DBS Jayaraj, a senior journalist and prominent political analyst who had known the late leader for more than half a century, wrote that those who remembered the young Senathirajah for his sacrifices would hesitate to condemn or criticize him, and that they continued to sympathize with him by remembering the past despite the unpleasant change in him later in his life.
It is important to note that most of the Tamils are of the opinion that Senathirajah should be remembered only for his past sacrifices and not for his subsequent political career.
No matter what sacrifices politicians made at the beginning of their political career, their legacy will be based on the nature of the movement they had led in the entirety of their career.
After the end of the civil war, the political leadership of the Sri Lankan Tamils automatically fell on the lap of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA ).The political legacy of Sampanthan, as its leader, will be remembered for the extent to which he devoted himself to building the TNA as a strong democratic political movement of the Tamils in the post-war period and the extent to which he provided leadership to carry forward the political struggle of the Tamils in a practical manner consistent with contemporary domestic and international conditions.
After a long period of hibernation, the Illankai Thanizharasu Katchi (ITAK) was revived when the TNA was compelled to contest the 2004 Parliamentary elections under former’s House symbol due to a legal wrangle. It was only after that the party was able to reassert itself as an active constituent party of the TNA. Apart from Sampanthan and Mavai Senathirajah, who led the ITAK, one after another for the last twenty years, who else could be held responsible for the disintegration of the TNA and the present sorry state of the the ITAK?
It seems that there is no other party in Sri Lanka today that is as tormented by internal conflicts as the ITAK. The election held in the General Council of the party to choose the new leader of the party, after ten year tenure of Mavai Senathirajah, early last year, was the key reason for this sorry state of affairs.
Never before in the 75-year-old history of the ITAK, has an election been held to choose a leader. The founder leaders of the party followed the tradition of electing the leader unanimously in the General Council, as they were well aware that holding a competitive election would create dissensions within the party. In the early 1970s, when former Batticaloa MP Chellaiah Rajadurai tried to compete with Amirthalingam for the position of leader of the ITAK, the late Chelvanayagam convinced him to make a compromise and paved the way for Amirthalingam’s unanimous election.
Neither Sampanthan nor Senathirajah was able to prevent the leadership election , despite persistent appeals from those who had the party’s future in mind. In a sense, both of them were interested in using the situation to protect their political interest.
At the same time, they showed no interest in grooming future leaders and preferred to remain in office till the end. As a result, their prestige and respect within the party began to decline. They did not act in a mature and non – partisan manner appropriate to their experience and age. Rather, they adopted an approach that encouraged conflicts within the party.
Sampanthan and Senathirajah prioritised their political interests and positions over the interests of the Tamils. It seemed as if the leadreship election was not between two MPs from the same party, but between two political opponents with competing ideologies.
The manner in which Senathirajah behaved over the past seven months after Sampanthan’s death was in no way in accord with his decades-long political experience. As a result, he was unable to exert any influence in determining his status within the ITAK and also those who identified themselves as his loyalists. The latter remained mere spectators, unable to defend him.
The ITAK has not learnt any lessons from the Senathirajah episode. It is only natural that funerals of political leaders are expected to be an opportune moment for factions to forget their differences and work unitedly in honor of the departed.
But last week’s events in Maviddapuram was an example of how the funeral of a political leader should not be held. It seemed that those who were in charge of the funeral arrangements were determined to deepen divisions.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)
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