u/DukeSphinx

Whenever people discuss the Sri Lankan Civil War, the focus usually falls on Sri Lankan politics or the LTTE itself.
Far less attention is given to the role played by India’s external intelligence agency, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), and the strategic decisions made by successive Indian governments that fundamentally altered the conflict.
This is not speculation. Much of this has been acknowledged by former Indian officials, intelligence officers, journalists, and academic historians.

The Cold War Context
To understand India’s actions, you have to understand the geopolitical situation of the early 1980s.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi viewed Sri Lanka through the lens of regional security.
Several developments worried New Delhi:
- Sri Lanka’s growing ties with the United States.
- Military cooperation with Pakistan.
- Fear that outside powers could establish influence in the Indian Ocean.
- India’s desire to remain the unquestioned regional power under what analysts often call the “Indira Doctrine.”

Rather than allowing Colombo to drift toward India’s rivals, New Delhi sought leverage.
The Tamil militant movements became that leverage.

RAW Begins Supporting Tamil Militants
Beginning around 1983, RAW established training camps in Tamil Nadu.
These camps trained members of several militant organisations, including:
- LTTE
- TELO
- EPRLF
- PLOTE
- EROS
Thousands of militants reportedly received military training, explosives instruction, intelligence training, communications equipment, and weapons.
This has been documented by numerous historians including M.R. Narayan Swamy, S.D. Muni, J.N. Dixit, K.M. de Silva, and Rohan Gunaratna.
Former Indian officials have also acknowledged this policy.
RAW did not exclusively support the LTTE.
Initially India deliberately supported multiple groups to avoid allowing any single organisation to dominate.

Why Did India Do This?
India’s objective was not Tamil Eelam. It was strategic influence.
The militants served several purposes:
- pressure Colombo into accepting Indian mediation
prevent Sri Lanka from aligning too closely with rival powers
- increase India’s influence over Sri Lankan internal affairs
- ensure any political settlement required India’s involvement

The militants were viewed as geopolitical assets.

Did RAW “Create” the LTTE?
The LTTE already existed.
The organization was founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran in 1976, years before India’s large-scale involvement.
However, RAW dramatically accelerated the organisation’s growth by providing military training, weapons, safe haven, funding, and logistical support.
Without this assistance, many historians argue that the LTTE would likely have developed far more slowly and large scale war would not have happened.

Indira Gandhi’s Strategy
Indira Gandhi personally approved the policy of assisting Tamil militant organisations.
According to former diplomats and intelligence officials, the objective was never permanent insurgency.
The expectation was that India could later control these groups and use them as bargaining tools.
That assumption proved catastrophically wrong.

Rajiv Gandhi Inherits the Policy
After Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi continued many aspects of the policy.
However, events spiralled beyond India’s control.
The LTTE became far stronger than expected and increasingly independent from Indian influence.

The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord
In 1987 India intervened directly.
The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord attempted to end the conflict through provincial devolution while requiring militant groups to disarm.
The LTTE refused.
India then sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF).
Ironically, Indian soldiers soon found themselves fighting the very organization India had previously trained.
More than 1,000 Indian soldiers were killed during the conflict.

Blowback
The ultimate irony came in 1991.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber.
The organization India had once armed became one of India’s deadliest enemies.
It is one of the clearest examples in modern South Asian history of geopolitical proxy strategy producing unintended consequences.

A common misconception is that the LTTE only fought the Sri Lankan military. In reality, the LTTE also committed widespread violence against Tamil civilians, particularly those who opposed them or refused to support the organisation.

Some documented examples include:
- Assassinating moderate Tamil politicians who advocated democratic or non-violent solutions.
- Killing members of rival Tamil militant groups, often after they had surrendered.
- Executing Tamil civilians accused of being “informants” without any due process.
- Forcibly recruiting thousands of Tamil children and adults into their ranks (providing cyanide capsules to minors to commit suicide once captured and selecting low-caste Tamils as suicide bombers under the Black Tigers).
- Extorting money from Tamil businesses and civilians through taxation and intimidation.
- Suppressing dissent by threatening or murdering Tamil journalists, academics, and community leaders who criticised the LTTE.

During the final months of the war in Mullaitivu, the LTTE forcibly prevented thousands of Tamil civilians from escaping the conflict zone. Human rights organisations documented that civilians who attempted to flee were threatened, and in some cases shot at, while the LTTE used the trapped civilian population as human shields. This left many Tamil civilians caught between LTTE abuses and government shelling.

Some notable Tamil victims include:
- A. Amirthalingam – assassinated after advocating a democratic political solution.
- Neelan Tiruchelvam – assassinated for promoting constitutional reform and peaceful resolution.
- Lakshman Kadirgamar – assassinated for opposing the LTTE internationally.

The LTTE also systematically eliminated members of rival Tamil organizations such as the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front, and People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam in an effort to establish itself as the sole representative of Sri Lankan Tamils.

This is one of the reasons why governments including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and the European Union designated the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. Terrorism is not defined by the ethnicity of the victims, it is the deliberate use of violence and intimidation against civilians to achieve political objectives.
Recognising the suffering of Tamil civilians at the hands of the LTTE does not diminish the suffering caused by other parties during the civil war. A complete understanding of the conflict requires acknowledging that many Tamils were victims of the LTTE as well as of the broader war.

Sources
Human Rights Watch (2008) – Trapped and Mistreated: LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni
https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/15/trapped-and-mistreated/ltte-abuses-against-civilians-vanni

Human Rights Watch (2009) – War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/02/19/war-displaced/sri-lankan-army-and-ltte-abuses-against-civilians-vanni

Amnesty International (2001) – Sri Lanka: LTTE recruitment drive for child soldiers must stop
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/knowledge-hub/all-resources/sri-lanka-ltte-recruitment-drive-child-soldiers-must-stop

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – Reporting on child recruitment by armed groups in Sri Lanka (LTTE monitoring reports referenced in HRW documentation above)
Human Rights Watch – Additional documentation on forced recruitment, forced labor, and restrictions on civilian movement in LTTE-controlled areas (summarised across multiple HRW field reports 2008–2009)

One of the most disturbing examples of the LTTE’s extremist ideology was the 2006 suicide attack targeting Sri Lankan Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, where investigators later confirmed the female LTTE bomber was pregnant.

The attacker, identified as Anoja Kugenthirasah, entered Army Headquarters in Colombo on April 25, 2006 posing as a pregnant civilian seeking medical treatment. She detonated explosives strapped to her body near Fonseka’s convoy, killing several people and seriously injuring Fonseka. Reports following the investigation stated that she was around three months pregnant at the time of the attack. The bombing marked one of the most shocking suicide operations of the war because it demonstrated the extent to which the LTTE was willing to exploit even pregnancy and motherhood for violent political purposes.

That single case alone shows how deeply the LTTE’s culture of martyrdom and violence had developed. A movement willing to use a pregnant woman in a suicide mission demonstrates a complete disregard for human life, including the life of an unborn child.

This was not “freedom fighting.” It was the weaponisation of motherhood itself for political violence.

Too often, online discussions about the Sri Lankan civil war either romanticise or selectively sanitise the LTTE while ignoring the organisation’s long record of brutality: suicide bombings, political assassinations, ethnic cleansing of Northern Muslims, forced recruitment, and child soldiers.

Acknowledging atrocities committed against Tamil civilians is important and necessary. But historical honesty also means acknowledging the crimes and extremist methods of the LTTE itself.

The victims of the war, from every community, deserve truth, not selective memory or glorification of violence.