Burning trump

"The police will try to lay my body to rest. Don't allow them to do that! Capture my dead body, don't bury it, and use it as a trump card to sharpen your struggle!" said K Muthukumar in a four-page written statement in Tamil that he left at the site of his public self-immolation in Madras on 29 January. Muthukumar, a young journalist, was protesting the inaction of the Tamil Nadu government in the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in Sri Lanka, as the Colombo military continued to pound the area controlled by the Tigers. All the while, over 100,000 civilians are thought to have been herded together by the LTTE into a tiny, 20-sq-km 'No-fire zone' in the Vanni (see accompanying story, "And the war continues"). In the end, Muthukumar's exhortations went unheeded. The students and youths to whom his final remarks were primarily addressed were eventually persuaded otherwise by local political leaders. Just two days after Muthukumar's death, the last rites were performed on his body, and he was given a martyr's funeral.

Timing has been a significant factor in the lead-up to the Lok Sabha elections, slated for 13 May in Tamil Nadu. Just as the violence in Sri Lanka had the potential to affect the state polls, Muthukumar's self-immolation and the subsequent public anger had carried the possibility of bringing the humanitarian tragedy in the LTTE-controlled areas of Sri Lanka to the forefront of the national electoral battle. The ground reality, however, turned out to be rather different. "Muthukumar's death started a fire, but this has been doused by the politicians," says Bala, a longtime political observer and cartoonist with Kumudam, a popular Tamil magazine. "So while the issue is uppermost in the minds of a number of educated urban youth, it has been more or less pushed out of sight in the general discourse."
Many agree with Bala's frustration. "Students did respond, and started a statewide protest immediately after the immolation," says activist Sherin Asha. "But some of the politicians were successful in manipulating the youth to give up Muthukumar's body, and the main rallying point of the protests was lost." The current sentiment in the state seems to be: When Sri Lankan Tamils bleed, it hurts in Tamil Nadu. It is for this reason that the social protest that began with Muthukumar has since claimed the lives of ten others. In mid-April, a group of women began a fast-unto-death at the site of Muthukumar's funeral, calling on Sonia Gandhi to "stop the war … against Eelam Tamils".