Velupillai Prabhakaran led the Tamil Tigers through decades of war against the Sri Lankan state. Understanding his rise means examining the grievances that strengthened his movement, the organisation he built and the violence through which he pursued power.
For decades, Velupillai Prabhakaran stood at the centre of Sri Lanka’s armed separatist struggle. He founded and led the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, usually known as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers, seeking an independent Tamil state in the island’s north and east.
His movement developed into a formidable military organisation. It also carried out assassinations, attacked civilians and violently suppressed opposition within the community it claimed to represent.
Prabhakaran’s story therefore raises two connected questions: why did his promise of armed resistance attract support, and what did his pursuit of that promise cost?
From northern childhood to armed militancy
Prabhakaran was born in 1954 in Valvettithurai, a coastal town on the Jaffna peninsula. He became involved in Tamil militancy as a young man, during a period of growing dissatisfaction with parliamentary efforts to address Tamil grievances.
The political background mattered. Language policy, discrimination and repeated failures of accommodation had weakened confidence that peaceful negotiation would produce lasting change.
Human Rights Watch’s historical account places the emergence of armed separatism within this longer history of political and cultural marginalisation. By the late 1970s, militant organisations were offering force as an alternative to unsuccessful constitutional campaigns.
That context helps explain the attraction of militancy. It does not mean that every young Tamil supported armed struggle, or that violence was the only possible response.
The formation of the Tamil Tigers
Prabhakaran’s early organisation, the Tamil New Tigers, preceded the establishment of the LTTE in 1976.
Initially, the Tigers were one of several Tamil militant groups. Their eventual dominance was an outcome of organisation, military success and violence against competitors.
Under Prabhakaran, the movement expanded far beyond a small guerrilla force. It developed naval capabilities, intelligence operations and specialised military units, including the Black Tigers suicide unit.
This organisational development helps explain his importance. He built a movement capable of sustaining a prolonged war against a state.
The question of how that organisation exercised power, however, is inseparable from its military achievements.
Why did Prabhakaran attract support?
The LTTE’s appeal grew within communities exposed to insecurity and violence.
Human Rights Watch recorded how experiences of government abuses influenced support for the Tigers, including among Tamils who had settled overseas. For some supporters, the organisation represented a defence against persecution and a means of achieving political independence.
Others opposed its objectives or methods. Their position could be dangerous: the same report documented intimidation and coercive fundraising within sections of the diaspora.
These distinctions matter. Financial contributions, public expressions of loyalty and silence did not always mean the same thing. Some reflected conviction; others reflected fear or pressure.
Tamil political opinion remained more varied than the LTTE’s claim to speak for the whole community suggested.
The suppression of Tamil rivals
Prabhakaran’s rise also involved narrowing the space available to competing Tamil movements.
In 1986, the LTTE attacked the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, or TELO, killing its leader Sri Sabaratnam. The destruction of rival organisations helped establish the Tigers’ dominance within armed Tamil politics.
The wider pattern extended beyond fighting between militant groups. Human Rights Watch documented LTTE killings of rival politicians, journalists and human rights activists.
This had consequences for the political future the movement offered. People could support Tamil rights while rejecting the Tigers, yet find little room to express that position safely.
A campaign conducted in the name of national liberation could itself deny individuals political freedom.
Assassinations and attacks on civilians
The LTTE became internationally notorious for suicide attacks and political assassinations.
Its victims included former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. Its attacks also struck civilians far removed from political office or military service.
The 1996 bombing of Colombo’s Central Bank, for example, killed ninety-one people and injured many more, according to Human Rights Watch.
Such attacks brought the war into workplaces, streets and public spaces. Their consequences extended through families whose lives had no connection with the decisions of governments or militant commanders.
Whatever political grievances the LTTE invoked, those grievances could not justify deliberately attacking civilians.
Children within the movement
The recruitment of children was another grave feature of the LTTE’s conduct.
Human Rights Watch documented children being abducted or recruited through threats against their families. Recruitment continued during the ceasefire that began in 2002, despite commitments to end the practice.
Its detailed investigation described how the organisation drew children into military life through pressure, propaganda and coercion.
This history challenges any account concerned only with discipline, sacrifice or military effectiveness. The movement demanded sacrifices from children who could not make a free, adult decision about participation.
For their parents, an organisation claiming to protect the community could become a threat inside family life itself.
Negotiation and the return to war
Prabhakaran’s leadership also included periods of negotiation.
The 2002 ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE stated the objective of finding a negotiated solution to the conflict. It created an opportunity to pursue political change without continued fighting.
That opportunity did not last. Human Rights Watch recorded renewed major military operations in 2006, alongside attacks on civilians, political killings and continued child recruitment.
The LTTE had also suffered a serious internal division when its eastern commander, Karuna, broke away in 2004. Prabhakaran’s authority remained central, but the organisation was no longer intact.
In May 2009, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tigers. Prabhakaran was killed in the final phase of the war. The independent state for which he had fought was never established.
Understanding his legacy
Prabhakaran’s rise cannot be understood without the discrimination, insecurity and failed political settlements that helped make armed separatism attractive.
His conduct also requires its own scrutiny. Political circumstances shaped the opportunities available to him; they did not remove his responsibility for the organisation he led.
The distinction between Tamil aspirations and LTTE methods remains essential. A community’s demand for security and political recognition cannot be reduced to the decisions of a single leader.
In Till New Times Come, Bandaranaike’s imagined encounters with the future bring him into contact with the militant politics that developed after his death. Prabhakaran belongs to that later history: shaped by earlier failures, but also making choices with devastating consequences of their own.
His story asks us to consider how a movement promising protection came to exercise such coercive power over the people in whose name it fought.