{"AuthorName":"Sharika Thiranagama","Description":"

Seventeen years ago, I began fieldwork on the civil war in Sri Lanka. It took me deep into a world of photographs in people’s houses and temporary rooms—photographs that inextricably wove together the domestic and the political. The most common photos, as in my own house, were those of the dead and the disappeared. Proliferating as the war went on, the photos of lost ones also began to inhabit a new public landscape of mourning and protest, where families displayed photographs to stand in for the dead and the disappeared. In protests, in newspaper and magazine images, women and men clutch pictures of their dead, their disappeared, in front of them. They ask us to look at their child, spouse, sibling (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 01: Mahilaruppiam and Alvapillai Rajasingam, parents of Rajani Thiranagama, holding a picture of her following her assassination in Jaffna. Originally featured in the article ‘The Battle for No Man’s Land’ by John Merritt (Observer<\/em> magazine, London, April 20, 1990, pp. 46–52).
\r\nPhotograph taken by Roger Hutchings and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 01<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 02: Family holding pictures of lost ones, Valvettithurai, Jaffna, September 1989.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 02<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 03: Photos of the disappeared. Associated Press 2020. People’s Dispatch.org.
\r\nhttps:\/\/peoplesdispatch.org\/2020\/03\/12\/families-of-missing-persons-in-sri-lanka-demand-justice\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 03<\/a>). These images illustrate the ubiquity and the intimacy of death and disappearance within families. The families of most of those who died and disappeared in the war never had the bodies of their loved ones returned to them—their photographs consecrate those lost. The image of the family member holding up a photograph of their loved one now lost is a visual spectacle that many Sri Lankans recognize and can imagine themselves taking part in.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 01: Mahilaruppiam and Alvapillai Rajasingam, parents of Rajani Thiranagama, holding a picture of her following her assassination in Jaffna. Originally featured in the article ‘The Battle for No Man’s Land’ by John Merritt (Observer<\/em> magazine, London, April 20, 1990, pp. 46–52).
\r\nPhotograph taken by Roger Hutchings and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 01<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 02: Family holding pictures of lost ones, Valvettithurai, Jaffna, September 1989.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 02<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 03: Photos of the disappeared. Associated Press 2020. People’s Dispatch.org.
\r\nhttps:\/\/peoplesdispatch.org\/2020\/03\/12\/families-of-missing-persons-in-sri-lanka-demand-justice\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 03<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

I begin with these photos because they are an important part of the ‘image worlds’1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> in which the images of Prabhakaran, the now deceased leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), actually circulate and therefore have to be understood in relation to. The visual iconography of the LTTE, that I will discuss here, sits within this domestic political life of the war which produces endless spectres and images of lost bodies, people, and houses. This essay is focused on the relationship of Sri Lankan Tamils to Prabhakaran’s images: The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 04: Tamil diaspora demonstration, with members of the crowd holding up Prabhakaran posters.
\r\nhttps:\/\/firstpost.com\/world\/sri-lanka-still-wary-of-possible-ltte-revival-us-report-848283.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 04<\/a><\/span>Tamils holding up posters of Prabhakaran (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 04: Tamil diaspora demonstration, with members of the crowd holding up Prabhakaran posters.
\r\nhttps:\/\/firstpost.com\/world\/sri-lanka-still-wary-of-possible-ltte-revival-us-report-848283.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 04<\/a>) as an endlessly reproduced singularity that purports to stand for the multitude of people. In The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 04: Tamil diaspora demonstration, with members of the crowd holding up Prabhakaran posters.
\r\nhttps:\/\/firstpost.com\/world\/sri-lanka-still-wary-of-possible-ltte-revival-us-report-848283.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 04<\/a>, the posters of Prabhakaran are labelled Thambi<\/em>—younger brother. The use of the word Thambi<\/em> marks this as a demonstration in the earlier years of Prabhakaran when he was still called Thambi <\/em>among the Tamil diaspora, as opposed to later when he began to be captioned in semi-divine terms as Suriya Thevan<\/em> (Sun God). Identifying this through a glance is less about my analytical skills and more about being a Sri Lankan Tamil who inhabited a political world which became increasingly constituted around LTTE aesthetics. I explore these aesthetics through a combination of images of Tamil demonstrations and marches displaying Prabhakaran’s posters, photographs of Prabhakaran displayed within new Tamil public spheres, and those meant to be displayed within houses and indoor spaces. All these photographs are understood as those to be reproduced: for example, photographs of marches and rallies are designed as images<\/em> to be circulated rather than only as documenting the demonstrations.
\r\n
\r\nThis essay thinks through images of Prabhakaran in relation to what Jens Eder and Charlotte Klonk call ‘image operations’.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It discusses the ways in which, as they suggest, ‘persons and organizations use images as tools with certain functions that conform to specific possibilities and constraints of different media in certain political situations’, while acknowledging that ‘images themselves also act[. T]hey have an important dynamic of their own, suggest certain operations and crucially shape them.’3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The essay traces Prabhakaran in relation to the LTTE and its armature, imaginaries, and mediation strategies which sought to constitute Tamilness around the LTTE through forms of circulation and restriction. I examine Prabhakaran, famously reclusive, as only <\/em>existing as an image himself. While LTTE cadres and informers had a rumoured presence everywhere, either disguised as Tamil civilians or visibly displayed in uniform, Prabhakaran was mostly present by virtue of his image. His embodiment was through this visual regime. Prabhakaran, I suggest here, is at the heart of the LTTE’s visual iconography; and in doing so, I also shape around his image and one’s response to it (whether positive or negative) the very possibility of being Sri Lankan Tamil.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In Sri Lanka, the circulation of images of Prabhakaran and the LTTE marked (before the LTTE’s elimination) the territorial grounding and sacralizing of the LTTE in their areas of control, never circulating outside of these areas as displaying these images would have ensured state arrest, disappearance, and elimination. In contrast, these images proliferate in the Tamil diaspora, in public, political, commercial, and domestic spaces, displaying how people marked being Sri Lankan Tamil—a testament to the LTTE’s success in remaking the diaspora around its political project couched as a cultural frame.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In the Tamil diaspora, Prabhakaran stands as if for the LTTE and Tamilness, and also cathecting them. In contrast, the enthusiastic circulation of Prabhakaran’s image within Tamil Nadu, South India, places Prabhakaran very differently within a visual iconography of exalted lower-caste martial masculine Tamilness.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Through contrasting these different circulations around death and the ‘Leader’, I show how the image of Prabhakaran explicitly positioned the viewer in relation to it, emphasizing the specific political, historical, and social institutions and practices that form and are formed through the circulation of images of the leader.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In that sense, in this essay I also ask what it is that makes it possible to look<\/em> at<\/em> and be looked at<\/em> by Prabhakaran. I begin with the man himself, then the complex set of associated images and concepts of sacrifice, Tamil Eelam (the putative ‘Tamil homeland’), death, Tamil martyrdom, self-determination, and civil war that he brings together, while reflecting on this in relation to different audiences—Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka, in the diaspora, and then, briefly, Tamils in Tamil Nadu.
\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Thambi<\/strong><\/em>, Annan<\/em>, Thailavar<\/em>, Suriya Thevan<\/em>: Younger Brother, Elder Brother, Leader, Sun God<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Prabhakaran was the founder-leader of the LTTE, one of many Tamil militant groups set up in the 1970s and ’80s as a response to continued state discrimination and a series of riots against the Sri Lankan Tamil minority community. The LTTE was famous for its excessively disciplined and highly militarized cadre, its use of suicide bombings, and the cyanide capsules all cadres wore. It became supreme in 1986 when it brutally banned some Tamil militant groups and absorbed others as allies.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> From 1990 onwards, it controlled large swathes of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, even establishing a quasi-state with full coercive and commercial powers: judiciary, police, traffic system, full taxation, military, and prisons, along with services such as road transport, rest houses, banks, food import and export, among others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The LTTE’s military forces consisted of a land army, an elite suicide corps, a navy, a shipping fleet, a small air force, and two kinds of intelligence wings—internal and external, i.e. to operate within the cadres and within the civilian population. Men and women were both represented across the different corps, though men dominated the leadership. In addition, there were specialized children’s corps, frequently used for massed frontal attacks;7<\/sup><\/a> <\/span>most famously the ‘Leopard Brigade’\/<\/em>Siruthai Puligal<\/em>, the leopard being an animal actually native to Sri Lanka (unlike the tiger) and one that Prabhakaran was frequently depicted with (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 05: Prabhakaran and his pet leopard.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 05<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 06: Prabhakaran and leopard.
\r\nhttps:\/\/behindwoods.com\/tamil-movies-cinema-news-16\/velupillai-prabhakarans-film-titled-as-the-ranging-tigers.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 06<\/a>). Large-scale conscription meant that most families had a member in the LTTE or connection to one. At the same time, intelligence cadres infiltrated life and mobilized or coerced people to inform on their neighbours<\/span>, kin, and fellow cadres. Uniformed young men and women patrolled the area or demanded taxes from you in your home. Thus a sense of surveillance pervaded Tamil society,8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> which seemed to be embodied in Prabhakaran’s gaze emanating from the ubiquitous images of him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 05: Prabhakaran and his pet leopard.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 05<\/a><\/span>      The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 06: Prabhakaran and leopard.
\r\nhttps:\/\/behindwoods.com\/tamil-movies-cinema-news-16\/velupillai-prabhakarans-film-titled-as-the-ranging-tigers.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 06<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 07: LTTE flag—a roaring tiger with crossed guns, in the LTTE colours, yellow and red.
\r\nhttps:\/\/www.wallpaperup.com\/306764\/2000px-Tamil-tigers-flag_svg.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 07<\/a><\/span>From the 1990s onwards, the LTTE ritualized itself within the civilian population in Sri Lanka and within the diaspora, developing a whole set of sacral practices around its cadres, living and dead, and in particular around Prabhakaran. The journalist Shyam Tekwani in his recollection of his meetings with Prabhakaran suggests that the leader was acutely conscious of the power of image and photograph. Tekwani recalled the LTTE asking him for copies of his photographs for circulation, and Prabhakaran self-consciously styling himself in fatigues in one photography session with him (see The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 11: A widely circulated image of Prabhakaran posing in military fatigues and aiming a gun.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a>) (personal communication). In 1990, the LTTE set up an Office of Great Heroes which would develop a martyrology for the organization. It had a propaganda unit which filmed most of its battles and produced videos,9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and it developed a fully-fledged film unit to produce feature-length movies. LTTE diaspora TV stations broadcast these and other programmes, including light programmes of music and chat, across the Tamil diaspora.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Alongside the active pursuit of media technology was the proliferation of photographs of martyrs as well as of massacres of Tamils, the red and yellow LTTE flag (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 07: LTTE flag—a roaring tiger with crossed guns, in the LTTE colours, yellow and red.
\r\nhttps:\/\/www.wallpaperup.com\/306764\/2000px-Tamil-tigers-flag_svg.html<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 07<\/a>), and of course images of Prabhakaran.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This making of an LTTE aesthetic was part of the very instantiation of the LTTE’s legitimacy to represent Tamils.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Prabhakaran, the man himself, made very rare public appearances, offset by an incredibly dense circulation of his images.12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> His images thus provide us not with a glimpse into the real Prabhakaran, whoever that might be, but instead an approach into the complex institution that is Prabhakaran, a singularity constituted through repetition and circulation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Starting as a teenager, Prabhakaran was first nicknamed Thambi <\/em>(younger brother), later Annan<\/em> (elder brother), then Thailavar <\/em>(leader) or more formally Thesiya Thailavar<\/em> (national leader). Towards the end before he died, he was hailed as Surya Thevan<\/em> (Sun God) by the Tamil diaspora though this was less common in Sri Lanka. As Thailavar<\/em>, <\/em>he symbolized and was the very embodiment of the LTTE, both example and yet exception. He was reputed to carry a gun and wear a dog-tag pendant inscribed with the numbers ‘001’ indicating his primus inter pares<\/em> status. He stood for<\/em> the LTTE and was more<\/em> than the LTTE, never just simply from<\/em> the LTTE, which would have subordinated him to the organization. Famously disciplined and forceful, he came to exemplify a purifying motif in Tamil militancy, a figure that represented the restraint of excess even as the LTTE’s political violence was spectacular and unrestrained.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 08: Prabhakaran in manly pose.
\r\nhttps:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/76\/4a\/4a\/764a4a3bad5cd1d691bc4623c074a1a3.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 08<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 09: Young Prabhakaran examines his weapon. Labelled ‘Our Leader’ on Twitter feed of Eelam Archives.
\r\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/EelamArchives\/status\/1093001894337933313\/photo\/1<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 09<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 10: Prabhakaran takes aim.
\r\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/EelamArchives\/status\/1043112846408736768\/photo\/1<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 10<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 11: A widely circulated image of Prabhakaran posing in military fatigues and aiming a gun.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a><\/span>The transition in his poses and images mapped the shifting institutionalization of the LTTE. Early photos emphasize close-ups of him in a virile strongman pose. In these photos, the often playful but manly nature of his poses, the presence of weapons and wild animals, establish the early phase of the LTTE as a heroic guerilla group (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 05: Prabhakaran and his pet leopard.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 05<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 08: Prabhakaran in manly pose.
\r\nhttps:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/76\/4a\/4a\/764a4a3bad5cd1d691bc4623c074a1a3.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 08<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 09: Young Prabhakaran examines his weapon. Labelled ‘Our Leader’ on Twitter feed of Eelam Archives.
\r\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/EelamArchives\/status\/1093001894337933313\/photo\/1<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 09<\/a>). Of these, most iconic are those of him taking aim with his gun—a constant feature of early representations of Prabhakaran (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 10: Prabhakaran takes aim.
\r\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/EelamArchives\/status\/1043112846408736768\/photo\/1<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 10<\/a>). Tekwani recalled one photo-session where, in response to a question about his ‘sharpshooter skills’, Prabhakaran immediately pulled out his loaded gun to pose in front of a map of Sri Lanka\/‘Eelam’ (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 11: A widely circulated image of Prabhakaran posing in military fatigues and aiming a gun.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a>).13<\/a><\/span><\/sup> While all photographs of Prabhakaran were meant for circulation, some were explicitly marked with slogans to be transferred onto posters and postcards. For example, <\/span>some photos are inscribed with the LTTE slogan: ‘The thirst of the Tigers is for the Tamil motherland’ (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 12: Pulikalin Taakam Tamililat Taayakam<\/em> (The thirst of the Tigers is for the Tamil motherland\/Tamil Eelam).
\r\nhttp:\/\/m.mediatly.com\/cards\/view\/286380<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 12<\/a>). The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 12: Pulikalin Taakam Tamililat Taayakam<\/em> (The thirst of the Tigers is for the Tamil motherland\/Tamil Eelam).
\r\nhttp:\/\/m.mediatly.com\/cards\/view\/286380<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 12<\/a><\/span>Note that in The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 12: Pulikalin Taakam Tamililat Taayakam<\/em> (The thirst of the Tigers is for the Tamil motherland\/Tamil Eelam).
\r\nhttp:\/\/m.mediatly.com\/cards\/view\/286380<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 12<\/a>, which is explicitly propaganda to be shared and displayed, his necklaces are prominently visible, from one of which would have potentially hung his cyanide capsule. It is never clear from any of the photographs whether he has a cyanide capsule at the end of the necklace, as it is always tucked into his shirt pocket.
\r\n
\r\nThroughout his LTTE life, the images of Prabhakaran present him within the conventional idea of an attractive Tamil man in northern Jaffna: most often with a neatly trimmed luxuriant moustache (or sometimes cleanshaven), broad and well-built, fair-skinned, and always neat. His hair is always in place, his skin clear. His clothes are buttoned and unwrinkled. Neatness is a much-valued Jaffna Tamil cultural aesthetic for men, it signals control and is aligned with the figure of the upper-\/middle-class government servant or clerk, which was historically a male ideal in northern Jaffna. The LTTE placed heavy emphasis on the wearing of the uniform. Hair and jewellery for women, for example, were well regulated. Messiness could only be tolerated if attached to righteous anger or combat that led to temporary abandonment of order and control. Shyam Tekwani noted that in addition Prabhakaran banned photographs of himself eating.14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Restraint and controlled aggression were to be at the fore. Upper-caste Jaffna Tamil aesthetics positions permanent disorderliness as having deep lower-class and -caste connotations.
\r\n
\r\nMany The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 13: Smiling Prabhakaran. D.B.S. Jeyaraj, ‘Life and Times of Tiger Supremo Prabhakaran: 60th Birth Anniversary of LTTE Leader on Nov 26’, 1 December 2014.
\r\nhttp:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/archives\/35148<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 13<\/a><\/span>of Prabhakaran’s images present him either looking directly at us—the viewer—or at something outside the frame. His gaze is thus central to the reproduction of his image: either his eyes are framed as central to the image (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 11: A widely circulated image of Prabhakaran posing in military fatigues and aiming a gun.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 13: Smiling Prabhakaran. D.B.S. Jeyaraj, ‘Life and Times of Tiger Supremo Prabhakaran: 60th Birth Anniversary of LTTE Leader on Nov 26’, 1 December 2014.
\r\nhttp:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/archives\/35148<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 13<\/a>) or his face is the focus even as he looks at something else (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 08: Prabhakaran in manly pose.
\r\nhttps:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/76\/4a\/4a\/764a4a3bad5cd1d691bc4623c074a1a3.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 08<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 09: Young Prabhakaran examines his weapon. Labelled ‘Our Leader’ on Twitter feed of Eelam Archives.
\r\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/EelamArchives\/status\/1093001894337933313\/photo\/1<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 09<\/a>). Most images draw us to look at him as a face. I’ll return to this looking<\/em> and being looked at<\/em> later in the essay.
\r\n
\r\nBy the late 1990s and early 2000s, Prabhakaran was no longer a young man of action but a stout, middle-aged patriarch squeezed into combats, still sporting his trademark moustache. Later shots show him in still poses, marked not by the possibility of his motion but by the grip of his fixed regard. He frequently poses in uniform, with a backdrop of the Tamil Eelam flag, or map, or both (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 14: Prabhakaran posing in front of flag and map. ‘LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s deputy was a RAW agent, claims new book’, India TV News Desk, New Delhi, 16 August 2016.
\r\nhttps:\/\/indiatvnews.com\/news\/india-ltte-chief-prabhakaran-s-deputy-was-a-raw-agent-claims-new-book-343898<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 14<\/a>), or with photographs of martyrs (see The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 32: Prabhakaran with photos of martyrs on Mavirar Naal<\/em>.
\r\nhttp:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/archives\/12790<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 32<\/a>), or as a cut-out figure ready to be transposed onto a variety of virtual backgrounds (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 15: Prabhakaran photo cutout superimposed on virtual background.
\r\nhttps:\/\/puliveeram.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/28\/leader-v-prabakaran-wallpapers\/leader-v-prabakaran-11\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 15<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 16: Prabhakarn photo cutout superimposed on virtual background.
\r\nEelamposters.com, https:\/\/in.pinterest.com\/pin\/634937247453017001\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 16<\/a>). The one departure from this standard image was in the course of the 2002 peace talks, where he emerged in civilian clothes (a safari suit) and cleanshaven (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 17: Prabhakaran at peace talks in 2002. Frontline<\/em>, 22 May 2009.
\r\nhttps:\/\/frontline.thehindu.com\/cover-story\/article30186884.ece<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 17<\/a>). This civilian ‘man of peace’ image was remarked upon in news coverage. When Sri Lanka headed towards war again, he returned to military garb presenting himself again as a commander.15<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 14: Prabhakaran posing in front of flag and map. ‘LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s deputy was a RAW agent, claims new book’, India TV News Desk, New Delhi, 16 August 2016.
\r\nhttps:\/\/indiatvnews.com\/news\/india-ltte-chief-prabhakaran-s-deputy-was-a-raw-agent-claims-new-book-343898<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 14<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 15: Prabhakaran photo cutout superimposed on virtual background.
\r\nhttps:\/\/puliveeram.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/28\/leader-v-prabakaran-wallpapers\/leader-v-prabakaran-11\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 15<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 16: Prabhakarn photo cutout superimposed on virtual background.
\r\nEelamposters.com, https:\/\/in.pinterest.com\/pin\/634937247453017001\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 16<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 17: Prabhakaran at peace talks in 2002. Frontline<\/em>, 22 May 2009.
\r\nhttps:\/\/frontline.thehindu.com\/cover-story\/article30186884.ece<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 17<\/a><\/span>As such, Prabhakaran was rarely represented as the father of the nation. In songs sung about him, he is an elder brother and leader, the two becoming interchangeable. Prabhakaran in his later incarnation within the LTTE is Annan<\/em>—the wiser elder brother who ‘expresses the group and its destiny’.16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It is never paternal authority which is invoked. The vocabulary of leadership that surrounded Prabhakaran was that of love. Official propaganda represented cadres’ dedication to Prabhakaran and Tamil Eelam as a language of a choice that was not a choice—Annan<\/em>’s words made such sense that loving and dying for the leader was the same as loving and dying for the nation. The song ‘Engal Annan Pirabagaran<\/em>’ (Our Elder Brother Prabhakaran)17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> sung by Kutty Kannan illustrates this well. The image on the website for the song collection shows a nearly full figure of Prabhakaran in front of a hidden LTTE Tiger symbol (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 18: ‘Eelam Songs’ album art.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamileelamsongs.com\/kutty-kannan\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 18<\/a>). Here, the ubiquitous map of Tamil Eelam is missing (otherwise common on official propaganda), but Prabhakaran’s full figure invokes the map’s presence. Prabhakaran stands for Eelam as a slogan, Eelam as a map, the LTTE, and himself—as all of those things, and more than them—at the same time.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 18: ‘Eelam Songs’ album art.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamileelamsongs.com\/kutty-kannan\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 18<\/a><\/span>    The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 19: LTTE cadres taking their daily oath at a training camp.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 19<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Loyalty and love of the leader was understood as the architecture of the LTTE. Vijitharan, a former LTTE cadre, paraphrased the daily oath of the organization (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 19: LTTE cadres taking their daily oath at a training camp.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 19<\/a>) in an interview with me in 2005:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Our leader is Velupillai Prabhakaran, to Velupillai Prabhakaran we give our bodies, spirit, and lives. Whatever he says we shall obey. That was our oath, and we were made to say it properly.18<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

This self-presentation was accompanied by a military enforcement of Prabhakaran’s authority at every level. Vijitharan had joined in the early 1980s as a young teenager in an early batch of the LTTE, and was part of an early desertion of the movement. He explained to me the way in which he came to leave the LTTE:19<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

That we were there for the purpose of bringing Tamil Eelam, on a socialist path, believing Marx, we didn’t know these things. We didn’t even have knowledge about these things. We could only talk about the experiences of being inside, issues of the organization. What kind of organization is it? What does it do? What kind of future is there for this organization? That is what we were interested in. For that there was no clarification. The answer was, do what Prabhakaran tells you and remain quiet. That was the order and career. He will tell someone; they will tell another person and then they will tell us. We were soldiers and we had to do what we were told. You can’t ask back about what you were doing. You had to listen to me and what I tell you to do. That was the system.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Following the sociologist Alberoni’s (1984) adaptation of Freud, I have in my other work suggested group identification as fundamentally based on love, and the militant movement as a love object. In joining such a militant group, an individual has to break with a previous group, a previous set of obligations and love, such as the family. Not only does the individual have a sense of guilt about this, when in the group he\/she also feels guilty about longing for the life outside.20<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This doubled guilt and feeling of betrayal, Alberoni proposes, is resolved<\/em> through the love of the leader<\/em> who comes to straddle this ethical dilemma and infuse it with meaning. The leader as a love object then comes to present demands that must be obeyed, that are more important than anything else. Thus, Alberoni says, ‘the person whose demands were accepted as being more important than anything else becomes himself more important than any other thing. He who has destroyed the source of authenticity becomes the arbiter of ethical judgment.’21<\/sup><\/a><\/span> I suggest that Prabhakaran is exactly this love object who comes to condense the complex emotions of those who acknowledge him as such, and who comes to represent values and authenticity in himself.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 20: Prabhakaran with Sencholai orphans. https:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/praba-chensolai-40.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 20<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 21: Prabhakaran greeting an elderly woman.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/prapaharan-2-e1416926838563.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 21<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 22: Header for Prabhakaran Gallery website.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/07\/cropped-tt-0511.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 22<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Outside of the movement, LTTE ideology increasingly promoted Prabhakaran to the Tamil community in general as a larger-than-life hero, a military genius whose life, however, as the 001, had to be protected and maintained in ways that naturally were not the same for the other cadres. The 001 had to be unattainable; no other could replace him as the leader. The power here rested not only on Prabhakaran’s capacity to give voice to Tamil virility and masculinity, but in an odd way to bracket it and sublimate it into an abstract principle. He represented a tough rugged masculinity that in this context was not sexual (though it could be and was as a husband, but only in a hidden way), but as an elder brother, leader, ascetic that embodied forms of love that did not supplant but were larger than the sexual familial call of the husband and father. In addition, Prabhakaran represented not the transgression of rules, but the fundamental principle of purity. He was always seen as more<\/em> pure, more<\/em> ascetic, and more<\/em> incorruptible than any other. The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 23: I Love Thalaivar mug—Thalaivar Products from SH Fashion | Teespring.
\r\nhttps:\/\/teespring.com\/shop\/I_Love_Thalivar_copy_2?pid=527&cid=101949ig.28<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 23<\/a><\/span>In contrast, I often found that ordinary people projected qualities of unworthiness, corruption, fear, and terror onto the intelligence chief Pottu Amman.22<\/sup><\/a><\/span>
\r\n
\r\nIt is this image of purity that then allows Prabhakaran in his later years to become hailed as ‘Sun-God\/Surya Thevan<\/em>’ in the diaspora—his divinity and standing above had become implied even in his brotherly phrase, along with his being beloved. This standing above and beloved quality can be seen in numerous images on the Prabhakaran Gallery website23<\/sup><\/a><\/span> which reproduce the leader in a variety of poses either by himself—not least on the website header (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 22: Header for Prabhakaran Gallery website.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/07\/cropped-tt-0511.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 22<\/a>)—or with little children, elders, and other cadres (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 20: Prabhakaran with Sencholai orphans. https:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/praba-chensolai-40.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 20<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 21: Prabhakaran greeting an elderly woman.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/prapaharan-2-e1416926838563.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 21<\/a>). These are clearly designed to project him as an inspirational and bracketed figure. In its most trivial form, one can see the reproduction of this love economy in the commercial products which reproduce Prabhakaran as a Che Guevera-like figure, as on a website selling products like mugs, cellphone covers, and T-shirts that proclaim ‘I HEART Thalaivar’ (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 23: I Love Thalaivar mug—Thalaivar Products from SH Fashion | Teespring.
\r\nhttps:\/\/teespring.com\/shop\/I_Love_Thalivar_copy_2?pid=527&cid=101949ig.28<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 23<\/a>).
\r\n    <\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Iconography of Death<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 24: LTTE funeral.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 24<\/a><\/span>In LTTE ideology, the celebration of the life and love of the leader came hand-in-hand with exaltation of the death of LTTE cadres as the gift by which Tamil Eelam, the homeland-to-come, would be gained. The major public events and spectacles of the LTTE in its institutional quasi-state form were all concerned with the celebration and glorification of death in war. An example is the children’s playground constructed in Jaffna to memorialize Kittu, the former LTTE commander of Jaffna, with its seesaws in the shape of machine guns. Major calendrical events of the LTTE year such as Mavirar Naal<\/em> (Great Heroes Day, when Prabhakaran delivered his annual speech which also laid down the policy for the year to come) and Karumpuli Naal <\/em>(Black Tigers Day) were centred around the celebration of martyrs’ deaths. LTTE funerals were developed around military themes; whether Hindu or Christian, LTTE funerals combined coffins and wreaths with military details such as the draping of the LTTE flag (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 24: LTTE funeral.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 24<\/a>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The most mundane symbol of sacrifice was the cyanide capsule that all LTTE cadres wore around their necks, the kuppi<\/em>. The LTTE adopted the practice of wearing cyanide capsules—a trademark that distinguished it from all other Tamil militant groups who never adopted the practice. Suicide or thatkolai<\/em>, the killing<\/em> of oneself, was renamed by the LTTE as thatkodai<\/em>, <\/em>the gifting<\/em> of oneself,24<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/em>thus reversing the anomic sense of self-destruction into the fruitful and productive gift of one’s life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This seemingly banal object, the cyanide capsule, worn by all LTTE cadres and not just the notorious Black Tigers (the suicide squads), marked them as already prospectively dead, or in the process of dying for the nation. The cyanide capsule, along with the photograph of Prabhakaran, that most cadres carried, emphasized how their lives were seen to be in the hands of the leader to dispense with as he wished (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 25: LTTE man displays the cyanide capsule he always carries.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 25<\/a>).25<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 25: LTTE man displays the cyanide capsule he always carries.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 25<\/a> represents an earlier period of the LTTE showing a relaxed cadre with cyanide capsule displayed, a rare representation of leisure. Most images of the kuppi<\/em> are on uniformed cadres—it is a sign of being at work, and a sign of duty (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 26: LTTE uniformed cadre with cyanide capsule.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Sriyantha Walpola and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 26<\/a>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 25: LTTE man displays the cyanide capsule he always carries.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 25<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 26: LTTE uniformed cadre with cyanide capsule.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Sriyantha Walpola and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 26<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Among the most spectacular manifestations of the LTTE aesthetics of death were the Black Tigers, the LTTE’s elite suicide squads (comprising both men and women). The only cadres that were guaranteed to meet Prabhakaran were the Black Tigers—before a suicide mission, one was rewarded by a meeting with the leader. After the successful completion of their mission, their photographs with Prabhakaran could be circulated (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 27: Black Tigers with Prabhakaran.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnet.com\/pic.html?path=\/img\/publish\/2007\/10\/ltte_22_08_07_01a.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 27<\/a>). The aesthetics surrounding the Black Tigers heightens the special chosen<\/em> nature of death in the LTTE world. For example, one collection of songs dedicated to the achievements of the Black Tigers contains both a song set to a marching beat chorusing of the onward fight of the Black Tigers, and a moving and rather chilling song about a cadre musing on the transience of her own fragile life that can be put to a greater cause. The video for the song ‘Nilavil Puthiya Kavithai<\/em><\/a>’ is labelled as a song dedicated to the empowerment of Tamil women and is about the giving up of worldly pleasures for death in the cause of the nation; a woman goes from adorning herself in the mirror to bowing to Prabhakaran in Black Tiger costume alongside displays of cadres marching.26<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Karumpuli Naal<\/em> (Black Tigers Day) was celebrated on 5 July in LTTE territories and was a major event in their calendar (though celebrated less among the diaspora as that would have involved an acknowledgement of suicide bombing, a banned terrorist activity post-9\/11, as a major feature of the LTTE). While The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 28: Display of images of garlanded Black Tigers for Karumpuli Naal <\/em>in 2005.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 28<\/a> shows garlanded photos of Black Tigers who had died\/completed their missions, displayed in LTTE territory on 5 July 2005, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 29: Banana-sellers carry on their business in front of a wall on which posters of martyred cadres are pasted.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 29<\/a> shows banana-sellers sitting in front of a wall plastered with posters of LTTE martyrs, exhibiting both the mundaneness and marked quality of the LTTE’s visual economy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 27: Black Tigers with Prabhakaran.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnet.com\/pic.html?path=\/img\/publish\/2007\/10\/ltte_22_08_07_01a.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 27<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 28: Display of images of garlanded Black Tigers for Karumpuli Naal <\/em>in 2005.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 28<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 29: Banana-sellers carry on their business in front of a wall on which posters of martyred cadres are pasted.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 29<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 30: Prabhakaran observing Mavirar Naal<\/em>, poster image.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/tamileelam-heros-day-2015.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 30<\/a><\/span>The visual propaganda material released by the LTTE is heavily concerned with these forms of martyrdom. The Indologist and LTTE ideologue, Peter Schalk (1997),27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> argues that the LTTE considered martyrs as the foundation of a future Eelam, around whom public celebrations and memorials were generated. Only LTTE cadres and those associated with them would be called Tiyaki\/Mavirar<\/em> and celebrated as such. Unlike in Palestine, where anyone killed by Israeli action may be considered a martyr, the LTTE incorporated very few civilians into martyrdom. Cadres from Tamil militant movements other than the LTTE were also not considered martyrs.
\r\n
\r\nThe biggest day of the LTTE calendar was the annual Mavirar Naal <\/em>(Great Heroes Day) celebrated simultaneously in LTTE-controlled areas and in the diaspora. Pictures of martyrs were displayed, and their families were allowed to come and mourn their dead. The propaganda image in The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 30: Prabhakaran observing Mavirar Naal<\/em>, poster image.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/tamileelam-heros-day-2015.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 30<\/a> is typical. The words in Tamil spell out Mavirar Naal<\/em>, the Great Heroes Day. The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 31: Mavirar Naal <\/em>martyr assemblage including a lifesize cutout.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnet.com\/pic.html?path=\/img\/publish\/2007\/11\/27_11_07_04.jpg&width=650&height=406&caption= <\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 31<\/a><\/span>The superimposed images of Prabhakaran in front of the sacred flame and the LTTE national flower Karthigaipoo<\/em> (Gloriosa superba<\/em>) in the foreground, with the LTTE map and flags, a monument, and the roaring tiger in the background, create a sombre yet triumphant image. Its stylization plays up the monumental—it is a moment in time reinterpreted as an eternal one. While there were multiple cultural events, the highlight of Mavirar Naal<\/em> was the speech made by Prabhakaran, which implicitly and explicitly put him at the centre of these deaths. In the diaspora, Prabhakaran’s speeches were heard and watched alongside the cultural events. The assembling of multiple photos in Mavirar Naal<\/em> displays drives home the sacrifice of the individual martyr as well as the totality of sacrifice and death for the nation (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 31: Mavirar Naal <\/em>martyr assemblage including a lifesize cutout.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnet.com\/pic.html?path=\/img\/publish\/2007\/11\/27_11_07_04.jpg&width=650&height=406&caption= <\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 31<\/a>). Here the insistence on the martyrs being shown in uniform emphasizes their LTTE cadre status rather than their individual and familial lives—the LTTE colours, along with the roaring tiger feature prominently in their assemblage. In depictions of celebration of the day, Prabhakaran features prominently (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 32: Prabhakaran with photos of martyrs on Mavirar Naal<\/em>.
\r\nhttp:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/archives\/12790<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 32<\/a>), often in front of the sacred flame (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 33: Prabhakaran with the sacred flame on Mavirar Naal<\/em>. Peter Schalk, copyright Temenos<\/em> (Vol. 33, 1997).
\r\nhttps:\/\/velupillaiprabhakaran.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/16\/tamils-great-heroes-day-the-revival-of-martyr-cults-among-ilavar-part-2\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 33<\/a>) or delivering his annual speech, anchoring the deaths to a proper object—Tamil Eelam—through his presence. An enormous spectacle of sacrifice and death thus coalesced around his figure, both as that which is sacrificed for and<\/em>, thus, that which embodies this sacrifice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 32: Prabhakaran with photos of martyrs on Mavirar Naal<\/em>.
\r\nhttp:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/archives\/12790<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 32<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 33: Prabhakaran with the sacred flame on Mavirar Naal<\/em>. Peter Schalk, copyright Temenos<\/em> (Vol. 33, 1997).
\r\nhttps:\/\/velupillaiprabhakaran.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/16\/tamils-great-heroes-day-the-revival-of-martyr-cults-among-ilavar-part-2\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 33<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 34: Montage: the leader Prabhakaran, cadres as living dead, and their sacrifice.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/15202535_1167787993312317_1463851451445496260_n.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 34<\/a><\/span>These photos of Mavirar Naal<\/em>, along with images of cadres marching in parades and in action, were designed for circulation and consumption as the very means of actualizing Tamil Eelam, the Tamil homeland. The LTTE’s networks circulated these images and videos of LTTE cadre actions and dying Tamils, along with other media, across the world to its diaspora. The montage in The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 34: Montage: the leader Prabhakaran, cadres as living dead, and their sacrifice.
\r\nhttps:\/\/prabakarangallery.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/15202535_1167787993312317_1463851451445496260_n.jpg<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 34<\/a> is peculiarly poignant, it begins with an image of Prabhakaran speaking, moves to him with the sacred flame, then to the cadres, then to their graves. This, more than any other image, illustrates the peculiar economy of death—the cadres as spectral lives whose only purpose was to be sacrificed.
\r\n
\r\nRelatives are passive mourners. Those who actively mourn are prospective martyrs spurred to action by the departed—LTTE cadres mourning their dead LTTE siblings or other cadres more generally. This effacing of the familial relations of the dead is reinforced in the rituals surrounding commemoration and memorial structures. LTTE cadres were memorialized within LTTE cemeteries in stones engraved with their LTTE name and rank (not their birth names), and families were allowed to enter and mourn them on the designated martyrs’ day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Within Sri Lanka, Tamils only displayed and were engaged in this iconography and image production in LTTE-controlled areas, given that openly displaying Prabhakaran’s image elsewhere in the country would have resulted in arrest and detention by the state. As such, what these displays communicated to others about Sri Lanka was the groundedness<\/em> of image production within LTTE areas (see again The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 29: Banana-sellers carry on their business in front of a wall on which posters of martyred cadres are pasted.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Shyam Tekwani and reproduced with his permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 29<\/a>): the very visibility of the image of Prabhakaran stood for and performed LTTE territorial <\/em>sovereignty. In contrast, in the diaspora, the unceasing flow of these images and display of photos of Prabhakaran, powerful in their proliferation<\/em> and replication<\/em> rather than in their groundedness, constituted the idea of the LTTE not as a political project but as a cultural background.
\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Prabhakaran in a Civilian Field: The Diaspora<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 35: Screenshot of TRO website showing its different diasporic locations.
\r\nReproduced with the permission of Shyam Tekwani.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 35<\/a><\/span>The LTTE’s money-making ventures wreathed diasporic community life, not only through the organization’s business ventures (its fronting of local businesses and its own food distribution networks) but also its network of contributions, collections, and taxes. Human Rights Watch (2006) documented that the LTTE’s money collection drives were often launched at temples and other public events, especially on Heroes Day.28<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Thus, the LTTE’s circulation of its images of cadres and of Prabhakaran came to infiltrate the everyday landscape in diasporic Tamil communities which had to constitute themselves as Tamil outside of geographical referents, and where the LTTE came to index Tamilness and provide this form of naturalized reference.29<\/sup><\/a><\/span> For example, the LTTE-backed organization TRO (Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation) stretched across multiple diasporic communities and advertised itself on its website through such overarching identity (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 35: Screenshot of TRO website showing its different diasporic locations.
\r\nReproduced with the permission of Shyam Tekwani.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 35<\/a>). All kinds of ordinary cultural activities, framed rhetorically around the LTTE, inscribed the LTTE indelibly into the enjoyment and maintenance of Tamil life in far-flung countries.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Almost all large Tamil community gatherings in Toronto, Canada, where I did some fieldwork, were LTTE-organized events. At those events, the LTTE flags and paraphernalia were displayed as cultural rather than political items. Pictures published in national Canadian newspapers, showing stalls outside some Hindu temples where images of Prabhakaran were seen on collecting cans for monetary donations, and miniature LTTE flags adorned with the roaring tiger symbol were on sale, were greeted with outrage in the larger press.30<\/sup><\/a><\/span> However, they were a normal feature of any Tamil cultural event when I was in Toronto in 2003. The events of the LTTE calendar were routinized in children’s memories simply as community events; the Heroes Day celebration where Prabhakaran’s speech was broadcast was equally an occasion to dress up and meet others. The temple and church visits in which young people were introduced to each other and possible marriages were planned while rebellious relationships developed on the side, were also likely to be casually linked to LTTE-affiliated organizations. Tamil grocery shops had garlanded pictures of Prabhakaran next to similarly garlanded Hindu gods. His face was everywhere: in framed photographs, on calendars, in newspapers—reproduced heavily within homes and in commercial establishments.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In the celebration of Pongu Thamil<\/em>, a recent cultural festival originating in the Tamil diaspora (and now celebrated at Jaffna University in Sri Lanka), constant reference is made to the LTTE, most prominently in the presentation of the festival across different diasporic locations in the LTTE’s red and yellow colours. Prabhakaran’s image is the centrepiece in these celebrations, the backdrop for dances, speeches, and all other kinds of performances (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 36: Pongu Thamil<\/em> celebrations in Canada, 2004. Prabhakaran’s image forms a backdrop to the young dancers. On the website this image is superimposed on an image of a gathering of people—emphasizing the projection of the image of Prabhakaran onto the lives of Tamil people.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnation.org\/diaspora\/canada\/040916ponguthamizh.htm<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 36<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 37: Pongu Thamil<\/em> celebrations in Jaffna, 2003.
\r\nReproduced with the permission of Shyam Tekwani.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 37<\/a>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 36: Pongu Thamil<\/em> celebrations in Canada, 2004. Prabhakaran’s image forms a backdrop to the young dancers. On the website this image is superimposed on an image of a gathering of people—emphasizing the projection of the image of Prabhakaran onto the lives of Tamil people.
\r\nhttps:\/\/tamilnation.org\/diaspora\/canada\/040916ponguthamizh.htm<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 36<\/a><\/span>     The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 37: Pongu Thamil<\/em> celebrations in Jaffna, 2003.
\r\nReproduced with the permission of Shyam Tekwani.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 37<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Thus, rather than occupying an explicitly military or overtly political role in people’s lives, the LTTE was woven into the cultural life of the Tamil diaspora in Toronto. Tamil <\/em>Eelam became institutionalized in Canadian Tamil imaginations as a cultural and social formation,31<\/sup><\/a><\/span> even when in Sri Lanka it remained a highly contentious, exclusivist military goal. While most Canadian Tamils did not explicitly espouse LTTE ideology, inasmuch as the LTTE came to be the backbone of community life and the consequences of stepping out of line were clearly marked, people came to be complicit with and reaffirmed the LTTE project of defending ‘Tamilness’ militarily in Sri Lanka and culturally in Toronto. This was anchored around the figure and figurations of Prabhakaran. Many diasporic Tamils who had had deeply traumatic lives in Sri Lanka, nonetheless were conscious that their diasporic children did not have to fight for Tamil Eelam. It was indeed others, those Tamils stuck in Sri Lanka, who were to die for the nation. Within this ambiguous zone of pain, guilt, love, shame, admiration, Prabhakaran loomed as a symbol of strength and pride in being Tamil.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This was very different from how Prabhakaran was imagined in Tamil Nadu in South India, though here too Prabhakaran steadily grew central to the symbolization of Tamilness.
\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Prabhakaran—the ‘People’s Leader’<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 38: Blue billboard announcing wedding, with images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 38<\/a><\/span>In India, Prabhakaran’s Tamilness is a celebration of martial non-Brahmin heroism, a caste identity which in Sri Lankan Tamil depictions is often played down given the affiliation of so many upper-caste Sri Lankan Tamils to a Tamilness which is rendered as above caste. I turn now briefly to this martial non-Brahmin Prabhakaran, one I have gotten to know as I step outside of upper-caste-coded Sri Lankan Tamilness rather than through it.
\r\n
\r\nIn The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 39: Detail of Fig. 38, showing images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar.<\/h2>\">Fig. 39<\/a><\/span>2015–16 when I visited Chennai regularly, I started to see posters with Prabhakaran’s image next to the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, Periyar or Thiruvalluvar, or all three in one. While Thiruvalluvar is coded in his Tamilness, Periyar and Ambedkar are coded in relation to their anti-caste struggle. Prabhakaran is a regular feature in the posters of some of the major Dalit political organizations in Tamil Nadu. Photographs that the anthropologist Dennis McGilvray took in Tamil Nadu (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 38: Blue billboard announcing wedding, with images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 38<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 39: Detail of Fig. 38, showing images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar.<\/h2>\">Fig. 39<\/a>, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 40: Wedding announcement poster using red and yellow colours, with images of Prabhakaran and Thiruvalluvar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 40<\/a>) show Prabhakaran incorporated into a common form: marriage announcements that commonly include exemplary figures that give blessings. The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 38: Blue billboard announcing wedding, with images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 38<\/a> is a billboard advertising a marriage celebration sponsored by the VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Liberation Panther\/Leopard Party) headed by T. Tirumavalavan, a powerful Dalit leader and a known supporter of the LTTE. VCK is electorally strong in Chingleput, North & South Arcot, and Salem districts. In The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 38: Blue billboard announcing wedding, with images of Prabhakaran and Ambedkar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 38<\/a>, the blue is clearly a nod to the Ambedkarite colour which is also associated with VCK, and Ambedkar’s face is depicted slightly larger and higher than Prabhakaran’s face. Here, Prabhakaran’s presence relates to questions of caste.The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 40: Wedding announcement poster using red and yellow colours, with images of Prabhakaran and Thiruvalluvar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 40<\/a><\/span> In The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 40: Wedding announcement poster using red and yellow colours, with images of Prabhakaran and Thiruvalluvar, Tamil Nadu, 2015. Collection: Dennis McGilvray.
\r\nPhotograph taken by Dennis McGilvray and reprinted with his kind permission.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 40<\/a>, the red and yellow used are Hindu auspicious colours as well as LTTE colours. Prabhakaran’s face is larger than Thiruvalluvar’s whole figure, and is placed directly above the couple to be married—clearly it is his blessing that is to be sought. Here Prabhakaran in association with Thiruvalluvar is being hitched to Tamilness, and a defence of Tamilness. This could be an announcement of a Sri Lankan Tamil couple’s marriage in India.32<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The first speaker mentioned in the poster is the film director V. Gautaman, a Prabhakaran supporter. Dennis McGilvray notes that he is listed as Thambi<\/em>’s Thambi<\/em> (the younger brother’s [Prabhakaran’s] younger brother). The second speaker, P. Abdulsamadu, is a Muslim official in the TMMK (Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, a Muslim NGO). The venue is Muttu Amina Fatima Mahal; however, the couple to be married are clearly Tamil Hindus.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

On social media, The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 41: Film poster for Raging Tiger<\/em> starring Bobby Simha. ‘First Look: Bobby Simha as Velupillai Prabhakaran in Raging Tiger’ by Antara Chakraborthy, Indian Express<\/em>, Chennai, 26 November 2018.
\r\nhttps:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/entertainment\/tamil\/raging-tiger-first-look-bobby-simha-velupillai-prabhakaran-5465891\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 41<\/a><\/span>there are endless pictures of Prabhakaran tattoos which sit next to other political tattoos and are undertaken to express one’s love of one’s Tamil heritage. Thus, Prabhakaran has become co-opted into a pantheon of Tamil heroes, in ways that underscore his specific appeal and specific form of masculinity and which at the same time are couched in the most general terms by which Prabhakaran becomes Tamil at large. This Tamilness celebrates a kind of masculinity which is filmic—it is of a man of action constituted around images of non-Brahmin virility. Unlike the bookish Ambedkar, or the rationalist Periyar, Prabhakaran as a fighting military figure has carved out a unique place for himself within this pantheon, which also aligns him to a world of action celebrated in Tamil cinema, of men violently roused to defend their homes, their women, their community. Thus, it is unsurprising that a new movie Raging Tiger: Rise of the People’s Leader<\/em> has been filmed in Tamil Nadu, starring Bobby Simha, directed by Venkatesh Kumar G. (due for release in October 2020 but yet to be screened at the time this essay was finalized). The title of the film was announced on 26 November 2018, Great Heroes Day and Prabhakaran’s birth anniversary, along with a promotional poster (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 41: Film poster for Raging Tiger<\/em> starring Bobby Simha. ‘First Look: Bobby Simha as Velupillai Prabhakaran in Raging Tiger’ by Antara Chakraborthy, Indian Express<\/em>, Chennai, 26 November 2018.
\r\nhttps:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/entertainment\/tamil\/raging-tiger-first-look-bobby-simha-velupillai-prabhakaran-5465891\/<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 41<\/a>). As someone who has worked on Sri Lankan Tamils and the LTTE, I find it hard to recognize the grammar of the poster for this film. It echoes the placing of Prabhakaran in many LTTE images, but in relation to a real tiger rather than the Tiger in the flag, it couches its masculinity in a slightly scruffy image of Prabhakaran (stubble is rare in Sri Lankan Tamil images of him). It draws upon the iconic moustache, masculine pose, and wristwatch, but there is no gun-belt or dog-tag\/cyanide-capsule necklace. It looks like him, but yet I am conscious that it is not a Sri Lankan Tamil image.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

It is here I want to emphasize the specific political, historical, and social institutions and practices that form, and are formed through, the circulation of images of Prabhakaran.33<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Prabhakaran as an image has circulated through LTTE techniques and operations, but has created audiences around himself that emphasize different forms of generality and specificity within each loop of visuality.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Within Sri Lankan Tamil circuits, Prabhakaran’s specificity as a Karaiyar caste man is effaced in favour of elevating him as a supreme leader towards whom love is directed. Prabhakaran’s image anchors a deeply specific history of militancy, loss, language, and experience for LTTE supporters as well as dissidents like myself. Prabhakaran’s image is always more than him as a man, it evokes the specificity of Sri Lankan Tamil life and our long war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In South India, Prabhakaran presents a deeply abstract and romantic conception of the civil war in which Sri Lankan Tamils represent a primordial form of Tamilness under siege, and the LTTE the plucky defenders of Tamil life and culture. More specifically, though, Prabhakaran is not positioned as above caste, as in Sri Lanka, but he is celebrated as exhibiting a lower-caste martial masculinity. It matters here that he is from a lower caste. This means that in Tamil Nadu Prabhakaran mainly appears next to other exemplary figures (e.g. Thiruvalluvar, Periyar, and often Ambedkar)—he is anchored in a larger web of reference. In Sri Lankan settings, Prabhakaran anchors others—there, he is a singular reference.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This singularity of Prabhakaran as a figure for Sri Lankan Tamils, a figure that stands for the LTTE and its massive surveillance network and institutions, its ever-present militant history, means that—while in South India, Prabhakaran was to be looked at<\/em>—in Sri Lanka and among the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Canada, images of Prabhakaran are not only to be looked at but also to look at you<\/em>, to give you a sense that you are being regarded by Prabhakaran.
\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n

What Does PRABHAKARAN Want? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

In May 2009, the civil war’s brutal end and the LTTE’s elimination culminated in the killing of Prabhakaran. The circumstances were mysterious. The proof of his death was immediately circulated in the media by the Sri Lankan state: photographs of his body and face, and the information that his dog-tags inscribed with the letters ‘TVP: 001’ had been found.34<\/sup><\/a><\/span> With the demolition of the LTTE’s memorials, cemeteries, and institutions by the state, and the incarceration of ex-cadres after Prabhakaran was captured and killed, the LTTE completely collapsed, a reflection of the pyramidal nature of its symbolic as well as military economy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Immediately after Prabhakaran’s death, doctored photos circulated on the internet of Prabhakaran seemingly viewing his own dead face on TV in the state news (The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 42: Doctored photo showing Prabhakaran alive.
\r\nhttps:\/\/observers.france24.com\/en\/20090521-tamil-tiger-leader-still-alive-velupillai-prabhakaran-sri-lanka<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 42<\/a>). In the original photo shown in The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 42: Doctored photo showing Prabhakaran alive.
\r\nhttps:\/\/observers.france24.com\/en\/20090521-tamil-tiger-leader-still-alive-velupillai-prabhakaran-sri-lanka<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 42<\/a>, Prabhakaran sans moustache addresses Anton Balasingham, the LTTE ideologue (who had died of natural causes in December 2006). In the second, edited image, he is still in fatigues and with a gun in his waistband, but with moustache, holding a newspaper with a contemporary date, and smiling seemingly at the gullibility of those of us who believed in public announcements of his death. The caption reads, ‘Prabhakaran is still alive\/with life.’ The doctored photo is macabre with the exchange of the glances between the dead and the living. The dead Prabhakaran’s eyes, wide open, gaze upwards. The exchange of gazes within the photograph is thus closed within itself—we are invited to witness but not to be looked at by Prabhakaran. In the original photo that is provided for comparison in The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 42: Doctored photo showing Prabhakaran alive.
\r\nhttps:\/\/observers.france24.com\/en\/20090521-tamil-tiger-leader-still-alive-velupillai-prabhakaran-sri-lanka<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 42<\/a>, Anton Balasingham returns The Leader as Image: Prabhakaran and the Visual Regimes\r\nof the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam<\/h4>Sharika Thiranagama<\/span>

Fig. 42: Doctored photo showing Prabhakaran alive.
\r\nhttps:\/\/observers.france24.com\/en\/20090521-tamil-tiger-leader-still-alive-velupillai-prabhakaran-sri-lanka<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 42<\/a><\/span>Prabhakaran’s gaze; it is a staged example of an at-ease Prabhakaran who is nonetheless never at ease from the battle for Tamil Eelam, gun still at the ready.
\r\n
\r\nThese doctored photos declaring Prabhakaran alive had a limited afterlife. They are an awkward new genre that never caught on. Instead, what continues to circulate are the more characteristic images of Prabhakaran that emphasize his face and his gaze, now in messianic pose visible on the Prabhakaran Gallery website<\/a>. It is perhaps ironic, given the visual economy of the dead martyrs that Prabhakaran instituted (where he was to be more living than the cadres), is now how his<\/em> images circulate. Photographs of Prabhakaran continue to be those where a look can be exchanged between the beholder and Prabhakaran. The leader should not contemplate his own visuality, but rather constitute himself around the concept of gaze.
\r\n
\r\nIn 2006 (three years before the war ended and Prabhakaran was killed) I interviewed Rajan in the UK. He picked me up at the train station and brought me to the house of his Tamil landlord where he stayed with his wife and two little kids in rented rooms. Rajan and his wife had been members of the Sea Tigers, the navy branch of the LTTE. He had joined in the late 1980s when he was 15, partly, as he reflects now years later, because the Sri Lankan Army and the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (during IPKF occupation during 1987–90) and others continually took him for a militant and harassed him, and partly because there was something in him that was attracted to the military. Rajan and his family had lived in central Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka in a Sinhalese-majority area and Rajan spoke Sinhalese fluently. They moved as a result of the 1977 anti-Tamil riots to Tamil-majority Vavuniya, and Rajan told me of how it was the riots and the racism that they faced that radicalized him.35<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Otherwise, he mused, he might have even grown up speaking Sinhalese and joined the Sri Lankan army.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Upon joining the LTTE, Rajan found himself trapped. Resigned to his fate, he decided to fulfil the mandatory ten years’ service required by LTTE cadres before they can leave. After ten years, during which Rajan had risen rapidly in rank, he found that he was not allowed to leave as he knew too many secrets. He was imprisoned and tortured in one of the LTTE’s traitor prisons for three years.36<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He told me that now when he saw blood, he found himself faint and trembling. While in the LTTE he had kept to his own standards of military honour the best he could. But he found his doubts were many. As he told me, whispering,37<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

They call the leader [Prabhakaran] a god now. I would never call him that. I don’t have that feeling. That only one man should be that high.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

One cannot say that this is all because of him. The leader only plans. Those who do it are 1,000. It is because of those that he was able to come ahead. It was not because of only him. It’s because of all those that died and sacrificed themselves that he is in this situation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

I will never accept that it is because of him only. I knew this by the time I was 24, 25. What could I do about it? We couldn’t discuss these things. We are sitting and talking about this. Then you [implying another cadre] will write a letter saying, this man came and talked to me like this. The next day they will come and shoot me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This is how it happens. That’s why nobody talks. There is a basic reason why people inform. If you tell about me, about the terrible things I have said, then you are given a boost.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

[S: Everyone knows that everyone talks?]<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Yes, that's why nobody talks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

They will get a promotion and go up. We all knew that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

They were sending us to fight. But we couldn’t talk back or argue. If we did, then they would say that we were a traitor. If we talked against the leader, we would be made a traitor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What I still recall about that interview was the macabre feeling of being surrounded by Prabhakaran. Rajan’s landlord had literally papered the mantelpiece and wall in the living room that we were sitting in with pictures of Prabhakaran in a shrine-like fashion—some pictures even garlanded. As we talked, we found our gaze straying to Prabhakaran, and sometimes Rajan lowered his voice. ‘I’ve got used to it now,’ he told me when I finally asked him whether he wasn’t uncomfortable being surrounded by these pictures. By this, he signified not only the geographical but also a psychological transition in how the LTTE was imagined in the diaspora as opposed to Sri Lanka. We were both used to living within a diasporic Tamil landscape that is established as Sri Lankan Tamil by the ubiquity of Prabhakaran’s images.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The profound sense of surveillance and fear that Rajan and I experienced, frequently whispering even though there was no one in the house but us, was this sense that Prabhakaran’s eyes, and thus the LTTE’s, were on us. Rajan and I recognized in these moments when we whispered at each other, that in looking<\/em> at<\/em> Prabhakaran, we caused Prabhakaran to look at<\/em> us. Was he also looking at us when we were not looking at him? Prabhakaran was on a proliferation of surfaces that papered Sri Lankan Tamil worlds and wanted something from you; that fluctuated between being the foreground and background of Tamilness. It was in this sense that I read W.J.T. Mitchell’s insistence that pictures ‘present not just a surface, but a face<\/em> that faces the beholder’.38<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

I too, am primed to read Prabhakaran through the very circuits I describe. My unease, horror, and often panic at seeing images of Prabhakaran come from my own dissident childhood which was simultaneously embedded in these cultural forms through the determined elimination of Prabhakaran as reference. I, too, can never be indifferent to his image. This inability to absent oneself from the emotional economies of Prabhakaran’s image (whichever way one feels) has come to characterize what it means to be Sri Lankan Tamil. This is why you can never look at Prabhakaran without feeling that Prabhakaran is looking at you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In arguing that images of Prabhakaran are critical to constituting what might be marked as Tamilness, I also want to highlight forms of attachment, such as Rajan and I showed in our discussion, which are not only positive or loving but also traumatic and difficult. Thus, alongside this question of what images of Prabhakaran do, I also hope to have given the reader a sense of how to think about Prabhakaran in relation to some of the questions that Mitchell asks when he proposes that we need to not only ask what images or pictures mean, but what they ‘want’, ‘what claim they make upon us, and how we are able to respond’, and thus, also what we want from pictures.39<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

However, Mitchell points out that it is important not to ‘confuse the desire of the picture with the desires of the artist, the beholder…’, that ‘what pictures want is not the same as the message they communicate or the effect they produce.’ In this essay, as an anthropologist, I do concentrate more on the beholder<\/em> and the exchange between what the picture wants and what the beholder wants. I understand this beholder not in a simple sense, but through Christopher Pinney’s notion of ‘corpothetics’.40<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

In Photos of the Gods<\/em>, Pinney states that one cannot understand the ordinary world of Hindu practices without understanding the ‘privileged’ ‘power of the image and visually intense encounters, which have implicit within them the possibility of physical transformation’.41<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In the ‘vibrant everyday visual culture of India’, Pinney argues that judgements about devotional images are rarely about formal aesthetic criteria but about questions of ‘efficacy’ and ‘ability to intervene in the world’.42<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Thus, Pinney suggests we understand visuality in relation to ‘embodied corpothetics’43<\/sup><\/a><\/span>—‘sensory, corporeal aesthetics’.44<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He states that devotional images invite ‘a reciprocating gaze’, they address the ‘beholder’s presence’.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Pinney’s arguments are very productive when thinking about images which are already staged before one encounters them as inviting one’s gaze, and which at the same time are constituted around that constantly renewed encounter. Photographs of one who is staged as the<\/em> leader, here Prabhakaran, and the complex emotions that emerge from the exchange of glances between oneself and the leader, arouse the possibility of not only possessing an image but being possessed by it. That is to say, while this statement could be extended to discuss images and visuality in general, in this essay I understand it as a peculiar characteristic of image economies that constitute the person depicted as a leader. Images of Prabhakaran are inextricable from questions of nation-building, the exercise of power, and the specific cultivations of charisma.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

I speculatively propose here that images of Prabhakaran as leader<\/em> rather than pictures or images in a more general sense, produce for Sri Lankan Tamils three simultaneous thoughts\/reactions that slip into each other. First, Prabhakaran wants something from us or is looking for something in us (which can range from fear, as in my case, to devotion in another). Second, the question of what I look like from within his gaze, a Lacanian question par excellence, is unresolvable as Lacan points out.45<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Finally, what he wants, by the very nature of him being the Thalaivar<\/em>\/Leader is inaccessible to us; he alone is supposed to condense, distil, and stand for Tamil Eelam in our place. His inaccessibility as well as his proliferation combine in the exchange of looks between ourselves and the leader Prabhakaran—presented to us as an image.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

However, bringing together what images do and what they want means understanding the different kinds of audiences and spectators that the circulation of Prabhakaran creates and renews. The embodied spectator, in looking, is always conscious of other embodied spectators as constituting one’s relationship to the image. We are not very far from Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ here, though I show here the importance of understanding the location of each of the spectators whose histories are emplaced within that imagined community of Tamils rather differently.46<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Staring at pictures of Prabhakaran while writing this essay took a psychological toll on me in ways that I had not fully anticipated. The genres are so familiar, I knew every image before I looked for it; the landscape is so familiar, and yet I have avoided it for so long. The fear, pain, and anger cannot be fully contained in words. Yet I know I could tell another Sri Lankan Tamil dissident that I am looking at a picture of Prabhakaran and words would not be necessary to explain how I feel. I look at Prabhakaran, and Prabhakaran looks back at me, because I am myself, and that self is a Sri Lankan Tamil.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Notes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

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1<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Poole, Deborah, Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World<\/em>, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997; Rose, Gillian, Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment<\/em>, Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012. See also Spyer, Patricia, ‘Photography’s Framings and Unframings: A Review Article’, Comparative Studies in Society and History<\/em>, <\/em>Vol.<\/em> 43, No. 1, 2001, pp. 181–92.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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2<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Eder, Jens and Klonk, Charlotte, eds., Image Operations: Visual Media and Political Conflict<\/em>, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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3<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., p. 6.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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4<\/a><\/span><\/sup> See Thiranagama, Sharika, ‘Making Tigers from Tamils: Long\u2010Distance Nationalism and Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto’, American Anthropologist<\/em>, Vol.<\/em> 116, No. 2, 2014, p. 265–78.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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5<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Rose, Doing Family Photography<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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6<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Thiranagama, Sharika, In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka<\/em>, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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7<\/a><\/span><\/sup> https:\/\/www.refworld.org\/docid\/42c3bd300.html<\/span><\/u><\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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8<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Cf. Thiranagama, In My Mother’s House<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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9<\/a><\/span><\/sup> For example, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1x-r3AIy74g<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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10<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Tekwani relates that ‘The LTTE’s powerful communications network transmitted daily situation reports (sitreps) from Jaffna to its media headquarters in a Western capital where the sitreps were distributed as press releases though telex machines (later with the introduction of fax machines and the internet, it was able to readjust its media budget) to media and governments in Western capitals. Printed material was a prime means of LTTE propaganda till the early 1990s, when the group went to great expense to publish multilingual and expensively produced four-colour booklets and pamphlets with profuse illustrations. These publications were distributed to the local and international media and select government organisations.’ Tekwani, S., ‘The Man Who Destroyed Eelam’, Tehelka Magazine<\/em>, Vol. 6, Issue 20, 23 May 2009. http:\/\/old.tehelka.com\/the-man-who-destroyed-eelam\/<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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11<\/a><\/span><\/sup> The prominent themes of LTTE iconography are evident in the Getty Images collection of photographs. https:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/photos\/prabhakaran?family=editorial&phrase=prabhakaran&sort=oldest<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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12<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Tekwani, ‘The Man Who Destroyed Eelam’.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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13<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid. and pers. comm.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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14<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Tekwani, ‘The Man Who Destroyed Eelam’.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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15<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Tekwani suggested to me (pers. comm.) that Prabhakaran became primarily depicted in military garb after the defeat of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force, reminding the viewers of his ‘battle-front commander’ image.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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16<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Alberoni, Francesco, Movement and Institution<\/em>, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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17<\/a><\/span><\/sup> http:\/\/tamileelamsongs.com\/kutty-kannan\/<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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18<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Interviews, September 2004.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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19<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Interviews, September 2004.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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20<\/a><\/span><\/sup> This is explored in relation to the LTTE in Thiranagama, In My Mother’s House<\/em>, pp. 183–227.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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21<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Alberoni, Movement and Institution<\/em>, p. 190.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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22<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Peter Worsley also suggests that most movements in fact have two leaders, one, the symbolic charismatic leader and a number two, effective, administrative, and often murky. Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia<\/em>, New York: Schocken Books (Vol. 156), 1968.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Pottu is one of the few amman <\/em>(uncles) in the movement. Pottu<\/em> also refers to the target\/bullet hole to be placed in the forehead of an enemy to be killed, which can also resemble the vermilion pottu<\/em> mark that married Tamil women wear on their forehead.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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23<\/a><\/span><\/sup> https:\/\/prabakarangallery.wordpress.com\/<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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24<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Schalk, P., ‘The Revival of Martyr Cults among Ilavar’, Temenos<\/em>, Vol. <\/em>33, 1997, reprinted in https:\/\/tamilnation.org\/ideology\/schalk01.htm<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Sornarajajah, N., ‘The Experience of Tamil Women: Nationalism, Construction of Gender, and Women’s Political Agency’, Lines<\/em>, October 2004. www.lines-magazine.org\/Art_May 04\/nanthiniI.htm<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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25<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Death is a very special form of love. Death is one particular way in which individuals become indispensable, where one’s disposability becomes a special form of election: ‘for the follower the choice of death is a way of evading the disappointment of replaceability. I force you to watch me die for you: for a moment I am indispensable to you and death will hide from me the fact that I am not. Death removes all doubts’ (Alberoni, Movement and Institution<\/em>, p. 149).<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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26<\/a><\/span><\/sup> ‘Nilavil Puthiya Kavithai’. https:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/video\/x706mtg<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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27<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Schalk, ‘The Revival of Martyr Cults among Ilavar’.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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28<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Thiranagama, ‘Making Tigers from Tamils’.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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29<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Barthes, R., ‘Myth Today’, in Mythologies<\/em>, trans. Annette Lavers, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972, pp. 106–64.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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30<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Report by Stewart Bell in the National Post<\/em>. A 2001 file photo shows a donation container and Tamil flags displayed for sale at the renovated Hindu Temple Society in Richmond Hill.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/canada\/two-toronto-hindu-temples-fined-by-cra-for-sending-money-to-suspected-tamil-tigers<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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31<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Thiranagama, ‘Making Tigers from Tamils’.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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32<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Dennis McGilvray and I speculated that this might possibly even be the wedding of an ex-LTTE cadre couple.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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33<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Rose, Doing Family Photography<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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34<\/a><\/span><\/sup> TVP stands for Tamil Viduthalai Puligal (Tamil Liberation Tigers). In Tamil the LTTE is often referred to either simply as iyakkam<\/em> (movement) or as Viduthalai Puligal.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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35<\/a><\/span><\/sup> For a more extensive account of the civil war and militancy, see Thiranagama, In My Mother’s House<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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36<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Cf. Thiranagama, Sharika, ‘In Praise of Traitors: Intimacy, Betrayal, and the Sri Lankan Tamil Community’, in Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly, eds., Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-building<\/em>, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, pp. 127–49.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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37<\/a><\/span><\/sup> All interviews cited in this essay were in Tamil, conducted and translated by the author.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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38<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Mitchell, W.J. Thomas, What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images<\/em>, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 72.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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39<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., p. xv.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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40<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Pinney, Christopher, ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India<\/em>, London: Reaktion Books, 2004.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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41<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., p. 9.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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42<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., p. 18.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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43<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., pp. 18–22.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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44<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Ibid., p. 193.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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45<\/a><\/span><\/sup> See Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis<\/em>, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Norton, 1981, pp. 82–84, 181–83. Also see Lacan, Jacques and Fink, Bruce, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious’, Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English<\/em>, New York: WW Norton & Company, 2006, p. 690. Cf. Copjec, Joan, Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists<\/em>, Harvard: MIT Press, 1994.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n