SUMMARY
The TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization) was a Tamil separatist rebel group active in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s, fighting for an independent, later modified to autonomous, Tamil territory (see Sri Lanka (Ceylon): Eelam). The group, along with Tamil militancy more generally, emerged in the context of emerging nationalist politics pursued after Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948. Already at that point, the Tamil political leadership expressed fears that the unitary constitutional arrangements of the newly established state would not provide the Tamil minority with adequate protection against the possible discriminatory consequences of majoritarian Sinhalese rule. The identification of the state with Sinhalese interests became even more evident in the constitution of 1972, which stipulated the primacy of Sinhala and Buddhism, the language and religion of the Sinhalese majority. Following these developments, a new militancy emerged within Tamil politics in the early 1970s. The militarization was also accompanied by a radicalization of the Tamil political leadership, which became manifest in the Vaddukoddai resolution of May 1976, which was the first formal call for the establishment of separate state of Tamil Eelam covering the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. The constitutional status of this predominantly Tamil area in the northeast of the island remained the core incompatibility throughout the violent insurgency.
Having existing as an underground, predominately criminal, organization since 1969, TELO was formally set up by the two radical students Nadarajah Thangathura and Selvarajah Yogachandran (“Kuttimani”) in 1977. Like the LTTE, TELO demanded an independent Tamil state, regardless of political ideology; other Tamil groups, like the Peoples Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), had a strong Marxist orientation. The demand for independence was dropped in 1985 following pressure from India, which was able to exert pressure against the group by merit of being its most vital external supporter; India had for example trained TELO’s fighters.
The TELO was primarily funded by various forms of criminal activities, and its main recruitment base was the villages Velvetithurai, Vadimaratchi, and Point Pedro in northern Sri Lanka. The group had a military wing called the Tamil Eelam Liberation Army (TELA); however, both wings were normally grouped together under the name TELO. In 1982, elements of TELA under the leadership of Oberoi Devan splintered from TELO and aligned itself with the PLOTE.
The TELO leaders Thangathura and Yogachandran were captured by Sri Lankan authorities in 1981, and subsequently killed during a violent prison riot in 1983. The leadership of TELO then passed to Sri Sabaratnam, who controlled the group until he was killed by the LTTE in 1986. The group’s new leader Selvam Adaikalanathan then decided to transform TELO into a political party.
The TELO entered into a fragile “coordination alliance” with the LTTE between 1978 and 1981. The alliance broke down after TELO leaders Thangathura and Yogachandran were captured following a bank robbery in 1981; TELO believed that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was involved in the robbery, had betrayed them. In 1985, TELO aligned itself with the EPRLF, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and the LTTE to create the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF) prior to the Indian-organized Thimphu Talks, which was a series of negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil factions held in Bhutan in 1985. The ENLF broke apart when LTTE began purging the Tamil groups, including TELO, it considered to be “moderate” as they had dropped the demand for independence.
TELO had very strong ties to India, and relied heavily on the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, to provide training to its rank-and-file members, and to set up training camps in Sri Lanka. India supported the TELO because it perceived it as being the most pro-Indian of the Tamil groups, and because it lacked any Marxist orientation. When the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) entered Sri Lanka in July 1987, it unsuccessfully attempted to revive the TELO to fight against the LTTE.
