Building cemeteries, constructing identities: Funerary practices and nationalist discourse among the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka

Contemporary South Asia

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 287-301

  Natali, Cristiana ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL TRADITION; PERCEPTION; RELIGION;

ASIA; EURASIA; SOUTH ASIA; SRI LANKA;

EID: 49349091241     PISSN: 09584935     EISSN: 1469364X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09584930802271323     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Fieldwork in Sri Lanka was conducted over the following periods: July 2002-September 2002, November 2002-January 2003, July-October 2005, December 2005-January 2006. Most of the research was performed in the LTTE-controlled area of Vanni, with some periods spent also in the districts of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, in Vavuniya, Jaffna and Colombo. I carried out participant observation, conducting both qualitative interviews and informal talks with civilians and fighters. Since 2000, I have interviewed Tamil Diaspora people in Italy.
2. The conflict started in July 1983 when, after the killing of 13 soldiers of the Sri Lankan Army by the LTTE in the north, a pogrom against Tamil civilians in Colombo and other areas of the island took place. For a recent and critical analysis of the causes of the conflict, see Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, 'Socio-economic inequality and ethno-political conflict: Some observations from Sri Lanka', Contemporary South Asia, Vol 14, No 3, 2005, pp 341-356.
3. Regarding the LTTE state-building efforts and the effective size of the LTTE-controlled areas, see the paper by Kristian Stokke, 'Building the Tamil Eelam state: Emerging state institution and forms of governance in LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka', Third World Quarterly, Vol 27, No 6, 2006, pp 1021-1040
4. and the rejoinder by Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, 'In pursuit of a mythical state of Tamil Eelam: A rejoinder to Kristian Stokke', Third World Quarterly, Vol 28, No 6, 2007, pp 1185-1195.
5. Christians are sometimes buried close to the area where Hindus perform cremation.
6. Personal interview, Puthukudiyiruppu, 7 December 2002.
7. In passing we may observe that the leader of the movement Prabhakaran is supposed to make all central decisions regarding the fighters. The LTTE members themselves explained to me that, although many decisions are joint resolutions, it is actually better to ascribe them to the leader, so that the people will accept them more easily.
8. In line with the ethics codes of the main associations of anthropologists, names of my informants are not reported to guarantee anonymity; see, for example, the American Anthropologist Association Code of Ethics, 〈http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ ethrpt.htm〉, accessed 20 December 2007.
9. Although a detailed description of all possible interpretations is beyond the scope of this article, I should mention that to some fighters (but not to civilians) the burial of dead fighters is considered a return to the practices of the ancient Tamils, who buried their fallen warriors. References to the customs of the Cankam period are also quoted in some of the LTTE publications. As Øvind Fuglerud points out, 'The ideological project of the LTTE is directed towards homologising the pre- and post-colonial situation, of linking the present claim for statehood with the restoration of authentic Tamil culture'; see Øvind Fuglerud, Life on the Outside. The Tamil Diaspora and Long Distance Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p 203.
10. With regard to the presence of images from Cankam and Bhakti literature in the LTTE poems, see Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, 'And heroes die: poetry of the Tamil Liberation Movement in northern Sri Lanka', South Asia, Vol 28, No 1, 2005, pp 112-153
11. but for a discussion of traditionalism and revivalism in LTTE ideology, see also Peter Schalk, 'Historisation of the martial ideology of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)', South Asia, Vol 20, No 2, 1997, pp 35-72.
12. The last two statements remind the attitude to also see western civilians cemeteries as places of cultural transmission and reinforcement of generational obligations. See, for instance, D. Francis, L. Kellaher and G. Neophytou, 'The cemetery: A site for the construction of memory, identity, and ethnicity', in J.J. Climo and M.G. Cattel (eds) Social Memory and History. Anthropological Perspectives (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2002), pp 95-110.
13. Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (eds), Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p 36.
14. David M. Knipe, 'Sapindikarana: The Hindu rite of entry into heaven', in F.E. Reynolds and E.H. Waugh (eds) Religious Encounters with Death (London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), pp 111-124.
15. It must be remembered that the destruction of the Tuilum Illam is not officially acknowledged either by Sri Lankan government or by international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
16. M.R. Narayan Swamy, Tigers of Lanka. From Boys to Guerrillas (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2002/03), p 355.
17. George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p 80.
18. Quoted in the 1995 LTTE diary.
19. For further details on the ceremonies outside Sri Lanka: For the Canadian case, see R. Cheran, 'The sixth genre: Memory, history and the Tamil diaspora imagination', Marga Monograph Series on Ethnic Reconciliation, Vol 7, 2001, pp 1-30
20. and for the Italian case, see C. Natali, 'Uno spazio scenico per la memoria: La commemorazione dei caduti tamil attraverso la danza' ['On stage for remembrance. To commemorate Tamil war dead through dance'], in A. Destro (ed.) Antropologia dello spazio [Anthropology of Space] (Bologna: Patron, 2002), pp 77-11.
21. The ceremony I attended in Sri Lanka in 2002 took place in Tunukkai (Vanni area), and I estimated the participants to be around 10,000. In the same year in Kilinochchi, participants were around 30,000 (Sunday Leader, 1 December, p 8).
22. Cheran, op cit, Ref 16, p 17.
23. Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts. The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p 130.
24. Mosse, op cit, Ref 14, p 85.
25. This does not necessarily mean that the body is buried: Sometimes it is set adrift on a river. Children are also often treated in this way.
26. See Veena Das, 'The uses of liminality: Society and cosmos in Hinduism', Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 10, No 2, 1976, pp 245-263
27. and Charles Malamoud, Cuire le monde. Rite et penseé dans l'Inde ancienne (Paris: La Découverte, 1989).
28. The complex ceremony which marks one's entry into 'renunciation' consists of allowing one's sacrificial fires to extinguish after having incinerated one's sacrificial utensils, as an ultimate fuel source, in a final oblation. One's fires are not abolished for all this: They are rather internalized, inhaled; they are made to 'mount back' into oneself [...]. Because he is cooked from the inside while still alive, the samnyasin [ascetic] has no need of being cooked after his death: He is therefore not burned, but buried [...]. By internalizing their fires, they have also abolished the possibility of being borne upwards to a divinity located outside of themselves. By establishing themselves as offerings from the outset, and by adhering to this role down to the very end, they have transformed their own persons, their atmans identified with the universal Self, into their divinity. Malamoud, op cit, Ref 22, p 65.
29. Quoted in J. Schrijvers, 'Fighters, victims and survivors: Constructions of ethnicity, gender and refugeeness among Tamils in Sri Lanka', Journal of Refugees Studies, Vol 12, No 3, 1999, p 316.
30. Michael Roberts, 'Filial devotion in Tamil culture and the Tiger cult of martyrdom', Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 30, No 2, 1996, p 256.
31. Peter Schalk, 'The revival of martyr cults among Ilavar', Temenos, Vol 33, 1997, p 160.
32. When referring to the Maaveerar, many civilians refuse to use the verb 'to bury' and prefer the verb 'to seed'. The LTTE also introduce this terminological distinction. In a LTTE booklet in Tamil describing the ceremony of 27 November, we found these assertions: 'We call these bodies "seed bodies". They are sowed in the Tuilum Illam and a stone is laid in memory of the Maaveerar. We don't believe that the Maaveerar are dead. We believe that the Maaveerar are the seeds of independence. So they are not buried, they are sowed. And the body is not called a dead body, it is called Viththudal [seed body]'. See also Peter Schalk, op cit, Ref 8, pp 49-50
33. and Hellmann-Rajanayagam, op cit, Ref 8.
34. A deeper analysis of this complex connection is carried out in C. Natali, Sabbia sugli déi. Pratiche commemorative tra le Tigri tamil (Sri Lanka) [Sand over Gods. Commemorative Practices among Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka)] (Turin: Il Segnalibro, 2004).
35. A.J.V. Chandrakanthan, 'Eelam Tamil nationalism. An inside view', in J.A. Wilson (ed.), Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism. Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Hurst, 2000), p 164.
36. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 6.