I never imagined that two years later I would arrive in Colombo to contribute to the successful realization of this peace process.īut first I went to the beach. He spoke optimistically and at length about the negotiations between his government and the Tamil rebels, and though talk of a new era of peace in such a troubled state impressed me, I mentally filed Sri Lanka away in the part of my brain labeled 'one less thing to worry about”. In the summer of 2002, while interning at a counter-terrorism consulting firm in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to attend a speech given by the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. Here is a compilation of Michael's blogs.

Meera.srinivasan /A_T/ thehindu.AP interns were asked to post diary entries (web logs) directly onto the site. The Orders Were to Rape You: Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle Meena Kandasamy, Navayana Publishing, ₹250. But Kandasamy’s stubbornly romantic rather than critical view of Tamil nationalism falls short in its reckoning of women’s emancipation in the Tamil struggle. The accounts of the ex-combatant and the wife of a militant in Kandasamy’s essay lay bare the enduring patriarchal character, sexism, and moral policing in Tamil society. Much like Kandasamy’s interviewees, she holds a mirror to Tamil society, which so readily rejected and stigmatised women like herself who fought for the cause, while extolling the LTTE. On the other hand, in her autobiographical Oru Koorvaalin Nizhalil, Thamilini, who led the women’s political wing of the LTTE, offers an insider’s account of how the movement that she once saw as the agent of women’s liberation, in fact regulated women’s desires, sexuality, and bodies. But curiously, the women’s testimonies notwithstanding, Kandasamy does not question her own embrace of Tamil nationalism. She admits that meeting a female Tiger in flesh broke her own “naïve carnivalization of war”, and “shattered” her image of female militancy, as liberated, gun-wielding women embodying empowerment. Her crisp and vivid prose, though highly readable, centres too much on herself, at times overshadowing the women’s stories. If the Sinhalese army sought to crush their resolve and resilience, the Tamils whose liberation they fought for virtually banished them.Įarly in the book, Kandasamy declares her political affinity to and emotional investment in the Tamil self-determination struggle. Equally distressing, as the former combatant recounts, is Tamil society’s cruel gaze on women like her, who are part of the very movement it venerates. The women’s accounts point readers to the very male, violent core of the military, which asserted its “heroism” by targeting Tamil women with abject brutality and perversion. That rape was used as a weapon of war, as a stamp of domination is rejected in disbelief by the people, and categorically denied by the state.

The southern Sinhala psyche cannot accept that their “war hero” engaged in a “humanitarian operation” could unleash sexual violence. The account of the Tamil Tigress, of being repeatedly raped by soldiers and treated like a trophy of war, is gut-wrenching. She speaks of having contemplated death by suicide but decided against it for the sake of her child. The woman married to the LTTE member had no direct connection with the movement, but had to cope with regular questioning, harassment, and torture by military personnel. They are not grateful to be alive, after facing recurring torture and sexual violence at camps and “rehabilitation” centres, and unceasing judgement by their own people following their release. She meets them in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2013, just four years after the war ended. Its second part is a collection of resistance poems by female guerrillas and militants.ĭrawing upon interviews for a documentary project that did not materialise, Kandasamy records the gruesome experiences recounted by the two survivors of war in chilling first-person accounts. Meena Kandasamy’s The Orders Were to Rape You: Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle, is in part an essay, with narratives of three Tamil women - the wife of an LTTE fighter, a female combatant from the LTTE, and the author herself. Often invoked in the depiction of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, the image of a Tamil militant woman challenged some prevalent social norms, but could it overturn the entrenched biases in society?

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