Kuala Lampur, Sept. 29 -- One government armed the Tigers to drive India out. Decades later, another has taken away the statue of the Tamil hunger striker who died asking India to keep its promises.

The police came to Nallur after the commemorations were over. They removed Thileepan's statue and carried it away.

The official explanation was law and public order. But politics is not only what a government says. It is what people hear. And many Tamils heard the old message again: Your grief is a problem. Your dead are inconvenient. Your memory needs our permission.

Thileepan was twenty-three when he died. Born Rasaiah Parthipan, he had been a medical student before joining the LTTE. By 1987, he was one of its political leaders. On 15 Sep...