Coping with further absences: Maaveerar Naal ceremonies in the postwar age

Every year since 1989, LTTE supporters have commemorated the dead Tigers, called Maaveerar (“Great Heroes” in Tamil), in public ceremonies held all over the world. Among LTTE celebrations, Maaveerar Naal (lit. “Great Heroes’ Day”) is the most important because all the fighters are honoured collectively. The combatants are presented as having offered their life for Tamil Eelam. In this paper I will examine how the Maaveerar Naal ceremonies organised among the Diaspora have been affected by the defeat of the Tigers in May 2009. In particular I will focus on the strategies elaborated by LTTE supporters to cope with the numerous absences that the military rout involved. My analysis of the post-war period concerns the ceremony held last year in Novellara, a small town close to Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, where Tamil people coming from the centre and the north of Italy converged. The main data regarding the previous ceremonies are the result of the fieldwork among the Tamil Diaspora carried out in Italy from 2000 to 2008 and of participation in Maaveerar Naal celebrations in Montreal and in Paris.