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Home > Struggle for Tamil Eelam > International Frame of Struggle for Tamil Eelam > India & the Struggle for Tamil Eelam > Tsunami & the Killing of Pirapaharan! - New Delhi's RAW & its Running Dogs... > Rumour-mongering, Sinhala Chauvinism and Hindu's Ram > Tsunami Disaster & Tamil Eelam
Rumour-mongering, Sinhala Chauvinism and Hindu's Ram
S. Sivanayagam, 23 January 2005
Rumour mongering is a habit that is endemic to Sri Lanka. How are false rumours spread? The process begins with one individual who has a grievance with the world. He plants the rumour, and goes away. The juicier the rumour, the faster it spreads. But no one will ever know who started it first. There is a story in Aesop's Fables of a monkey who was asked where it got its fleas from. He pointed to the next monkey. There are two reasons why a false rumour spreads fast. One: there are interested parties who want to believe it and therefore pass it on to the next man. Second: as the saying goes, there is a sucker born in the world every minute. Suckers are people who have no mind of their own. They are prepared to swallow everything that is fed to them. The dictionary defines the word ram, as an "uncastrated male sheep" (The New Penguin English Dictionary). Although it happens to be his name, with a capital R, there is no question that he needs some form of assistance to make him a more professional editor and a better human being. No sooner than the wishful conjecture of Mr. Pirabakaran’s death spread in Sri Lanka and in the West, Ram jumped on the bandwagon. "Where is Prabakaran?" was the title of his editorial on January 11, as if that was a fit subject for an editorial in a reputed Indian newspaper, at a time when both his country and Sri Lanka were reeling under the tsunami tragedy. It was very obvious that the poor man was wishing that Mr. Pirabakaran was dead, from the kind of doubts he raised in that editorial about the Tamil leader being alive. What a disappointment for him to find Mr. Pirapaharan is very much alive. It must be remembered that this is not the first time The Hindu has "killed" Mr.Pirabakaran in its columns. Fifteen years ago, in 1989, in its issue of July 24, The Hindu ran the following headline - PRABHAKARAN REPORTED KILLED IN LTTE SHOOTOUT. The paper went on to report that Pirapaharan had been killed by his deputy "Mahattaya." That was after India’s disreputable intelligence agency RAW spread that diabolical lie, taking All India Radio, Doordashan, Lalith Athulathmudali in Colombo and many others for a merry ride. |