R Chandrasoma

With the rise of vehicular traffic in congested road-systems, accidents are common and the injuries incurred are often horrific. Amputation of a whole limb is not uncommon and such ‘amputees’ are restored to good health except that there are bereft of a part of the body that was once intimately tied to their personhood. After a complete recovery, the victim feels unusual twitches and pains in the non-existent appendage – called a ‘Phantom Limb’. The victim senses pain in a limb that does not exist – he says that it (the phantom limb) is being ‘twisted’ by an imagined enemy and implores help from those around. The pain is real – but it is in the head rather than in an imagined limb.

At first, the analogy between the Phantom Limb and Tamil Politics will seem farfetched but let us flesh-out the details. The Eelam of the Tamils governed by the redoubtable Prabhakaran  was ‘removed’ physically by MR and his forces. This defeat can be compared to the surgical removal of a cancerous limb that – if allowed to remain attached – would have destroyed the whole body. While disaster has been miraculously averted, the body-politic feels ‘phantom pains’ which are the dying cries of the Eelamists who shout about the ‘injustice’ done to the Tamils. This ‘injustice’ is fictitious and is the political equivalent of pain in a phantom limb. There a fools – of the political kind –  who speak of a ‘National Question’ that remains unresolved. Such difficulties did exist when the ‘dissident limb’ was intact and attached to the ‘political’ body. Its removal by the heroic forces of MR and other nationalists has annulled the problem – but the phantom pains persist and the cries of the decaying forces of Eelam are heard world-wide.  Astonishingly, the Ruling Yahapalana  pipsqueaks are cocking their ears.