Balachandran Prabhakaran's killing - Isn't Sri Lanka's conscience troubled?

Brijesh Kalappa
19 February 2013, 02:53 PM IST

Images of Balachandran, a large eyed 12 year old child, eating some biscuits and another of him looking forlorn and lost were witnessed by the world. He looks helpless with moist eyes in a refugee camp, wearing just an elastic brown shorts with a black patch on it and what looks like a lungi draped over his upper torso in two fresh images which were released by Channel 4 in the UK. Balachandran lies lifeless in a third frame- a picture which had been seen by the world in May 2009, a chilling picture of Balachandran's lifeless body after 5 gun-shot wounds. The very same camera that had shot Balachandran's lifeless body had also shot the earlier two pictures. Balachandran was the son of LTTE Chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.

When seen together, the three pictures tell the story of the killing of a child for the misdeeds of his father. Velupillai Prabhakaran was the mastermind behind the killing of thousands of people and most of all, India's most popular political leader Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. Prabhakaran was shown dead in the same tranche' of pictures released by the Sri Lankan army in May 2009.

I wept uncontrollably the day Rajiv Gandhi was killed, just as millions of other Indians- he was young, charismatic and represented hope. His death dashed those very hopes. His widow and children bore the trauma of the killing most dignifiedly. Sonia Gandhi refused the Congress Party's unanimous entreaty to become the Prime Minister in 1991 and withdrew into a shell. She remained away from the public gaze for an extraordinarily long 7 years, only leading the Party in 1998 when its downward spiral was all too apparent. Yet again in 2004, she refused to adorn the position of Prime Minister.

Sonia Gandhi wrote to the then President K.R. Narayanan voicing her views against the hanging of her husband's murderers in this manner: "[The] Supreme Court of India has confirmed the death sentence on four persons who were responsible for the assassination of my beloved husband Rajiv Gandhi.

Our family does not think that the four held responsible for the heinous murder of my dear husband must be hanged. My son, my daughter or myself do not wish that the four murderers be hanged.

In particular, we do not at all wish Nalini, mother of an eight-year-old child, to be hanged. I am aware how my children miss their father and we do not want another child to lose its parents together and get orphaned.

As you are well aware, my children Rahul and Priyanka and myself are suffering untold mental agony day in, day out due to the loss of our beloved Rajiv. But neither my children nor myself would like the persons responsible for my husband's tragic end to be hanged.

Hence I humbly request you to stop their hanging and grant them pardon when they seek your clemency."

No religion accepts the killing of a child for his father's misdeeds. Deuteronomy 24:16 reads "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." The Holy Koran 2: 233 says "No mother should be harmed through her child, and no father through his child. And upon the [father's] heir is [a duty] like that [of the father]…" Buddhist philosophy, practiced extensively in Sri Lanka , tells the story of Angulimala, a killer who wore a garland of the fingers of his victims around his neck. He pursued the Buddha in an attempt to kill him, when he realized that he could just not catch up with him. He asked the Buddha why he couldn't reach him and the Buddha's converted him into a monk with these words:

"I stand still Angulimala evermore,
For I am merciful to all living beings;
But you are merciless to living beings.
Therefore I stand still and you stand not still."

In the Hindu form, even an animal or bird deserved compassion, a pigeon which was about to be devoured by a hawk took shelter of King Shibi. The hawk insisted that the king must provide equally for all his dependants. Maharaja Shibi cut and donated his own flesh equal in weight to that of the pigeon.

It is sad, nay, heartrending that the Sri Lankans took away the life of this bright eyed child, for no perceptible fault of his. He had no choice in the matter of being born as Prabhakaran's son. I cried in just the same manner as I had at the time of the death of Rajiv Gandhi when I saw these pictures of Balachandran- may his innocent soul rest in everlasting peace.