Chennai: Eighty-nine-year-old P. Nedumaran is in news for his claim that Velupillai Prabhakaran — a Sri Lankan Tamil guerrilla leader and chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — who was declared dead in 2009, was still alive and would soon “announce a plan for the liberation of the Tamil race”. Prabhakaran, who led an extensive campaign for a Tamil state in Sri Lanka, had been killed by the island nation’s army in 2009.
But who is Nedumaran, “the official unofficial spokesperson of the LTTE” — a banned terrorist organisation — whose claims have been rejected by the Sri Lankan government itself?
“Nedumaran was a forgotten footnote in Tamil Nadu politics. By resurrecting Prabakaran, he has resurrected himself,” Kalyan Arun, a political analyst and professor at Asian College of Journalism, told ThePrint.
At a press conference Monday, Nedumaran said: “I am happy to reveal a truth which would dispel doubts about Prabhakaran. We will like to tell all the Tamil people that LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran is healthy and fine.”
He further credited his revelation to the changed geopolitical situation in Sri Lanka and the uprising against the nation’s Rajapaksa government.
The Print reached Nedumaran on call for comment, but received no response till the time of publication of this report.
Born in Madurai, Nedumaran is a Tamil nationalist leader, a writer with several books to his credit —including a biography on Prabhakaran — and editor-in-chief of the biweekly Tamil magazine, Then Seidi.
Nedumaran is also a former Congressman who began his career in 1969.
“The former chief minister of Madras (Province), K. Kamaraj, really liked Nedumaran for his fieldwork. He was made a general secretary in the state Congress,” said S. Ramaswamy, a second senior political analyst.
After the demise of Kamaraj, Nedumaran got close to then Congress president and former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.
According to G.C. Shekhar, also a political analyst, when Gandhi had come to Madurai for an event in 1979, “Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) protested by showing black flags at Indira Gandhi and her convoy was attacked. Nedumaran ensured that not a single stone hit Indira Gandhi (by shielding her).”
Soon after, however, Nedumaran was thrown out of the party when he questioned the decision of the Congress high command to join hands with the DMK for the 1980 Lok Sabha polls. He then went on to form his own party, the Tamil Nadu Kamaraj Congress (TNKC), which promised to work for Tamils.
In the 1980 legislative body polls, Nedumaran, in alliance with the M.G. Ramachandran-led AIADMK, contested from Madurai central constituency and won, recall the analysts.
“Nedumaran defeated DMK’s P.T.R. Palanivel Rajan, father of the present finance minister of Tamil Nadu, P.T.R. Palanivel Thiagarajan,” said Ramaswamy, adding that “Nedumaran’s party contested from four seats and they won all”.
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‘Pro-LTTE’
Nedumaran has been closely associated with the Tamil Eelam (independent Tamil state) issue in Sri Lanka right from the beginning.
“In 1983, when (anti-Tamil) riots started in Sri Lanka, Nedumaran started a long yatra from Madurai to Kanyakumari with his followers,” said Shekhar.
The LTTE had been formed in 1976 amid ethnic tensions between Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese population and the Tamil minority and began to campaign for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north and east, where most of the Tamil population was concentrated. In July 1983, the LTTE ambushed a Sri Lankan Army convoy, killing 13 soldiers and triggering riots in which around 3,000 Tamils died.
According to Shekhar, Nedumaran and his supporters had decided to take a boat and sail to Sri Lanka to join the LTTE’s fight against the Sri Lankan Army. “But both the Tamil Nadu government and central government had given instructions that no boats should be given to Nedumaran and his followers,” Shekhar explained.
In an interview in 1999, Nedumaran had said: “When the Indian Army killed Tamils in Sri Lanka in 1987, our (Tamil Nadu Kamaraj Congress) general body met.”
“We decided we did not need ‘Congress’ in our name. We changed our name to Tamil Desiya Ekkam,” added Nedumaran, which translates to the ‘Tamil National Movement’.
In the same interview, Nedumaran also acknowledged collecting money from people to lead the legal battle for those convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The former PM was killed in Tamil Nadu in 1991 by a suicide bomber linked to the LTTE.
“Tamil National Movement of Nedumaran was more of a party for the Tamil Eelam than the Tamil people of Tamil Nadu,” said Kalyan Arun.
According to critics, Nedumaran has been close to the Tamil diaspora across the globe. “He became the official unofficial spokesperson of the LTTE and has attended several conferences on behalf of the LTTE abroad,” said Ramaswamy.
He has also been vocal on the Tamil Eelam issue and “blamed the Congress government at the Centre for the destruction of the LTTE”, he added.
Shekhar also claimed, “Prabhakaran himself used to take political advice from Nedumaran and he later became quite close to the LTTE”. “Nedumaran had also visited Sri Lanka once to meet Prabhakaran,” he added.
For his pro-LTTE speeches, Nedumaran was charged with sedition on multiple occasions, and was also booked under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2002. When he was arrested that year, more than 2,000 copies of his book Kaviyanayakan Kittu (Epic Hero Kittu) were seized. For the sedition case, Nedumaran had to spend 15 months in prison before being acquitted in 2003.
Nedumaran is also credited to have played an important role in getting Kannada matinee star Rajkumar released from the clutches of the notorious bandit Veerappan in 2000.
“Nedumaran had gone to the forest and met Veerappan on the request of DMK chief M. Karunanidhi who was then the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu,” claimed Arun.
In May 2022, BJP’s Tamil Nadu president K. Annamalai said at a Mullivaikkal function to remember those who had died in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, “If Pala Nedumaran was born in Eelam, he would have been celebrated as Mahatma Gandhi of Eelam”.
Nedumaran’s son N Palani Kumanan won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for investigative journalism as part of The Wall Street Journal.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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