Totalitarianism, Rajini Thiranagama, and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Ruben Nagesparan Chandrakumar, BS
Under the reign of the LTTE, the trust that underlies any functioning civilization was cast away and the ability to speak freely was eliminated entirely. There was a set of lies that everyone was called upon to believe with fervor, or they could risk being identified as a traitor to the cause– thus worthy of death. Perhaps no one better documents this phenomenon of being labeled a traitor than Sharika Thiranagama, the daughter of Rajini Thiranagama. Rajini Thiranagama was a medical doctor and the Head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Jaffna.
Initially a supporter of the LTTE, she later became an outspoken critic of the organization’s many transgressions and ignorant beliefs. She was an important figure within the University Teachers for Human Rights organization and, alongside Rajan Hoole and others, published “The Broken Palmyra”- which documents the war crimes and human rights abuses by the IPKF and the LTTE within Jaffna in the 1980s. Due to her staunch criticism of the LTTE, she was met with an untimely death after being shot in front of her house. Although there have been claims that others were responsible for her assassination, the UTHR, her sister, and her two daughters firmly believe that the LTTE was responsible.
Despite being an outstanding community member who had served the LTTE diligently as a medical doctor, she was murdered for her speech and criticisms. This assassination served as a message to all in LTTE-controlled areas: criticize the Tigers, and death will be your fate. This pattern of retaliation and silencing, alongside the complex web of relationships that arose due to shifting political allegiances, meant that the pursuit of truth through truthful speech and dialogue- which is fundamental to a free and fair society- had been replaced by a dogmatic, ideological virus that demanded obedience under a single autocrat.
This mirrors the truths revealed by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his literary works on the nature of totalitarianism and dissent. Solzhenitsyn had an incredibly tough life, from serving as a soldier in WWII to being imprisoned in a gulag for roughly eight years for the crime of criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. In his three works, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” “The First Circle,” and “The Gulag Archipelago,” he laid out a comprehensive philosophy on how totalitarian and dictatorial states depend on a web of lies that people are threatened into pretending to believe.
By threatening individuals with force, those in power can maintain their positions despite a silent majority opposing their rule. However, the silent majority had fallen prey to the lie. The profound discovery, as articulated by Jordan Peterson, is that the “grip of the lie is the totalitarian state.” The antidote to this is best stated by Solzhenitsyn- who sincerely believed that “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”