Tense Times: A crowd gathered around the burnt body of a member of the JVP-Sinhalese People’s Liberation Front| Photo: Getty Images Tense Times: A crowd gathered around the burnt body of a member of the JVP-Sinhalese People’s Liberation Front| Photo: Getty Images

The sun was beating down on us from a clear blue sky. Driving out of Colombo through the lush green countryside to the south of the island was always a pleasure. As a journalist based in Sri Lanka, I was stepping out to get a sense of what was happening in the Sinhala-Buddhist heartland.

It was the summer of 1988, a time when the island was wracked by violence. The Tamil separatist war in the north and the eastern province was widely reported, but the insurrection in the Sinhala heartland that did not interest the rest of the world, did not get as much media attention.

This story was published as part of Outlook Magazine's 'War And Peace' issue, dated January 11, 2025. To read more stories from the Issue, click here.

Colombo was rife with rumours about the Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna (JVP), a radical Marxist-Leninist group gaining ground in the rural countryside as it moved to overthrow President J.R. Jayawardene’s government. I wanted to go and check out what was happening and see whether things were as serious as rumours claimed. The Indian High Commission had informally warned five or so Indian reporters stationed in Colombo at that time to remain in Colombo as anti-India sentiments were running high in the south, and the JVP believed that J.R. (as he was commonly called ) had sold Sri Lanka to the Indians when he signed the India-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987.

I had driven out of Colombo for about an hour-and-a-quarter when I noticed that down by the river to the right, a group of villagers had gathered in a circle, looking down at something on the ground. I asked the driver to stop and got out of the hired car. I did not speak Sinhala, so the driver who spoke reasonable English followed to translate what the locals said. He was a few steps ahead of me as we approached the group and he told them that I was a reporter who wanted to talk to them. The men made way for me to take a look at what was on the ground.

A decomposed body with a brick tied to each foot with a rope was sprawled there. The eyes had been gouged out, part of the body was bloated and the hands that had been tied behind the back had frayed and come apart. There was a deadly stench. I had seen dead bodies before, in Jaffna when around ten Sinhala prisoners were shot dead by the LTTE, and lined up at the bus stand. The bodies were covered, there was no outward sign of injury, but that was one of the most horrendous sights I had seen so far. The body before me was unrecognisable. The people gathered around did not know who he was and from where he came.

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But it soon became clear when I spoke to a fisherman who lived with his family in a hut by the river. Pediya, 36, looked gaunt, his eyes were enormous and shadowed by dark circles. He said he had not slept for the last fortnight or so. Every three to four days, at the dead of night, five to six Special Task Force (STF) commandos—the island’s elite counter terrorism force—would drive up in two vehicles and stop halfway on the bridge by the river. They would then bring out a prisoner, presumably a JVP activist, blindfolded with hands tied behind his back and shoot him at point-blank range. As soon as the body collapsed, the STF would set to work, tying each foot to a brick that was stocked in the jeep, and dump the dead man in the river below. The operation was swift and did not take more than 15 minutes. Once they threw the body out, the STF men would step into their vehicles and zoom away.

The weight of the bricks ensured that the body would sink to the bottom, before floating up a few days later. When it did, sometimes it would be dragged out by the locals or it would just be carried downstream. By then, the cloth around the eyes would disappear and locals said the eyes would be gauged out by a variety of flesh-eating fish. The body would be unrecognisable by the time the locals dragged it out of the water.

Pediya and his family were terrified by the sight. They would wait every night for the sound of STF vehicles. The team generally came on successive nights. Sometimes there was a gap of over a week. As darkness fell, the dread of what the night would bring would engulf hisfamily. His children, aged 12 and ten, had nightmares and could not sleep. He finally decided to send his traumatisedwife and children back to his in-laws’ village, about 50 km away. I asked him why he did not also leave with them. He said he had to earn a living and could not abandon his home.

There were many more such accounts from villages in the south. The J.R. Jayawardene government was shaken by the JVP insurrection, perhaps even more than by the deadly ethnic war in the north and the east. The uprising was happening in the Sinhala-Buddhist heartland, in striking distance of Colombo, the heart of the government.

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Rohana Wijeweera, the leader of the JVP, had led a rather amateur uprising as a young man in 1971 against the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government. Wijeweera had been to the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he read the works of Marx and Lenin and was inspired by the Russian Revolution. He gave up his medical studies and came home to overturn the system. The State easily crushed the movement, and the ring leaders, including Wijeweera were jailed.

He remained in jail till the United National Party (UNP) came to power with an overwhelming majority in 1977. J.R. Jayawardene decided to lift the ban on the JVP and free its jailed leader. Wijeweera spent the next five years working to revive and restructure the JVP. It was banned again in 1983, but by this time, Wijeweera had transformed the JVP into a meticulously organised underground movement and used the India-Sri Lanka accord to spearhead the biggest ever challenge to the J.R. Jayawardene government.

The UNP was a right-wing pro-business party, while the JVP was an extreme Left-wing outfit. While the ideological challenge between capitalism and communism did not resonate with the people, what did was the fact that the Indian troops were now deployed in the country’s northern and eastern provinces. It was an insult to Sinhala-Buddhistnationalism. The Buddhist clergy, more so the younger lot, solidly backed Wijeweera.

A nervous government was now all set to crush the uprising as protests and hartals were organised across the Sinhala-dominated areas.At the start of the movement, protesters were often arrested, tortured and then let off. But gradually, as positions hardened, many were killed. Wijeweera soon showed that he was capable of bringing the country to a halt by calling for strikes and shutdowns. The JVP diktat was followed by the entire island nation except the north and the east, where the LTTE called the shots.

Kulith lived with his parents and two sisters in Matara. He was the tallest boy in his class. At 17, he was already six feet tall. He was good at sports, long jump was his favourite, and he had already won a number of medals at school and in local competitions. His dream was to represent his country at the international level. One day, a policeman arrived at the family’s doorstep. He fished out a photograph of a protest march from his pocket. Among the protesters was Kulith, who like the rest of the class, had joined a JVP march. The policeman assured Kulith’s parents that the station head wanted to have a word with him and after answering some questions, he would be back. The family was not worried since they knew the station head.

mega888 slotArrests, kidnappings and disappearances of alleged JVP sympathisers by government forces were the order of the day. The JVP too did not spare those they suspected of spying for the government and killed suspects just as ruthlessly.

Kulith never came home again. At 7 pm, the father went to the police station and was told that Kulith would have to spend the night in lock-up. The family spent a week in and out of the police station waiting for their son’s release. They were allowed to bring home-cooked food for Kulith and were repeatedly assured that it was just a matter of time before he would be back home. At the crack of dawn on the eighth day since Kulith’s arrest, a neighbour arrived saying that there was a pyre burning in the market just below the clocktower. A number of prisoners in the local jail had been killed. The father rushed to the market and saw his son’s body burning in the pyre made of used car tyres. He pulled out what remained of Kulith’s dead body, wrapped a blanket around him and carried him home. He wanted to avoid the indignity of his boy being burnt in the market. The family could at least give him a dignified funeral.

Leaving dead bodies burning in the market place was meant to warn the rest of the village of the price they would pay for sympathising with the JVP. A cynical government minister, in charge of industry, commenting on the closure of factories thanks to the frequent calls for hartal called by Wijeweera, spoke of the loss to the exchequer and added, “Tire manufacturers are, however, doing roaring business,’’—an obvious reference to the widespread use of tyres by the security forces to burn the dead!

Arrests, kidnappings and disappearances of alleged JVP sympathisers by government forces were the order of the day. As it happens in such situations, people settled scored with enemies by painting them as activists.

The JVP too did not spare those they suspected of spying for the government and killed suspects just as ruthlessly. In the south, every call of non-cooperation by the JVP had to be followed. The JVP had the support of the majority community, especially in the rural heartland. However, when things were going Wijeweera’s way and the government was paralysed, the JVP leader made a tactical error. He asked policemen and soldiers not to co-operate with the government and threatened to kill their family members. This was the turning point for the JVP. Wijeweera had the people’s support, and many ordinary soldiers also sympathised with the JVP. But when family members came under threat, they felt betrayed. From then on, the government forces soon got the upper hand. Wijeweera was captured and died in police custody in November 1989, ending a violent chapter of Sri Lankan history. The people endedup paying a heavy price.

The death toll during the second JVP uprising in Sri Lanka from 1987-89 is said to be between60,000 and 80,000 people. This includes both insurgents and civilians. Ordinary people were caught in the crossfire between government forces and the insurgents. Fear stalked the countryside as people waited for the dreaded midnight knock of the security forces. Government brutality was much more pervasive though the JVP also killed suspects and political workers of the ruling United National Party (UNP).

Wijeweera’s death ended the JVP’s armed struggle. In 1994, the JVP renounced violence and vowed to change the system through electoral politics. The JVP, with its commitment to peasants, trade unions and students, worked at the grassroots and found easy acceptance. Though the JVP had not indulged in a single incident of violence since giving up armed struggle, the established political parties would target them as violent extremists. However, the 2024 elections have decisively proved that the people of Sri Lanka did not buy any of it. Significantly, the so-called anti-Tamil party made deep inroads in Tamil-dominated areas like Jaffna and Vanni districts. It is unthinkable that it managed to win five seats in the northern province. The revolution that Wijeweera tried to usher in 1971 and 1987-89 has come, but through the ballot box. Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidential elections and a two-third majority in Parliament as well, with the support of not just the Sinhala-Buddhist majority but all sections, including minority Tamils and Muslims.

(This appeared in the print as 'Heaven’s Edge')

The Harmanpreet Singh-led side scored its first goal just in the second minute of the match via Sukhjeet Singh. This was in fact the first significant chance created in the match by any side.agilaplay

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