tiger essay in tamil

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புதிய சாதனை படைத்த நாசா: செவ்வாயில் கார்பன்-டை-ஆக்ஸைடை ஆக்ஸிஜனாக மாற்றியது. அடுத்தது என்ன..?

போலந்தில் 5,000 ஆண்டுகள் பழமையான கல்லறைகள் கண்டுபிடிப்பு, 17,300 ஆண்டு பழமையான கங்காரு ஓவியம் ஆஸ்திரேலியாவில் கண்டுபிடிப்பு, கர்ப்பிணி பெண்கள் கொரோனா தடுப்பூசி எடுத்துக்கொள்ளலாமா அறிவியல் உண்மை என்ன, கணினியால் ஏற்படும் கண் பாதிப்புகள்: கண்களை பாதுகாப்பது எப்படி, ஆன்லைன் வகுப்பு: குழந்தைகள் பாதுகாப்பான முறையில் செல்போன்களை பயன்படுத்துவது எப்படி பெற்றோர்கள் கவனிக்க வேண்டியவை, ifsc என்றால் என்ன எங்கு, எப்படி பயன்படுகிறது, online interview – க்கு நம்மை தயார்படுத்துவது எப்படி 6 முக்கியமான வழிமுறைகள், புலிகள் (tiger) பற்றிய 11 வியப்பூட்டும் தகவல்கள்.

காட்டில் வாழும் பெரிய விலங்குகளில் ஒன்று புலி. புலி, பூனை குடும்பத்தை சேர்ந்தது. புலியின் உடலானது செங்குத்தான கருப்பு நிற கோடுகளுடன் சிவப்பு கலந்த ஆரஞ்சு நிற மென்மையான மயிர்களையும் வெளிறிய அடிப்பகுதியையும் கொண்டு இருக்கும். புலிகள் மாமிசங்களை உண்ணும். புலிகள் பற்றி பலரும் அறிந்திடாத தகவல்கள் இங்கே…

பூனை குடும்பம்

புலி ( Panthera tigris ) என்பது பூனைக் குடும்பத்தை சேர்ந்தது. புலி பாலூட்டி வகையை சேர்ந்தது. பேரினம் பெரும்பூனை.

புலிகள் வாழ்விடம்

புலிகள் பெரும்பாலும் மறைவிடம், அதிகம் இரை உள்ள இடம், நீர்நிலைகளின் அருகில் காணப்படும். சைபீரிய வெப்பக் காடுகள் தொடங்கி இந்தியத் துணைக்கண்டம் மற்றும் சுமத்திரா தீவுப் பகுதிகளில் உள்ள வெப்ப மண்டல மற்றும் மிதவெப்ப மண்டல காடுகள் வரை பரவலாகக் காணப்படுகின்றன.

புலியின் எடை

அமுர் அல்லது சைபீரியன் புலி 660 பவுண்டுகள் வரை எடையுள்ளதாக இருக்கும். சுமத்ரா தீவில் காணப்படும் புலிகள் மிகச் சிறியது. ஆண் புலிகளின் எடை 310 பவுண்டுகள். பெண்கள் புலிகள் அனைத்து கிளையினங்களிலும் ஆண்களை விட குறைவாகவே எடை கொண்டது.

புலிகளின் உணவு

புலிகள் பாலூட்டி வகையை சேர்ந்தது. புலிகள் மாமிசம் மட்டுமே உண்ணும். மான், காட்டுப்பன்றி, மறிமான், எருமை போன்ற விலங்குகளை வேட்டையாடி உண்ணும்.

புலிகள் நீந்தும்

புலிகள் நன்கு நீந்துபவை. வேட்டையாடவும், ஆறுகளை கடக்கவும், பெரும்பாலும் குளங்கள் அல்லது நீரோடைகளில் குளிர்ச்சிக்காகவும் நீரில் நீந்தி செல்கிறது.

புலியின் உறுமல்

புலியின் உறுமல் மூன்று கிலோமீட்டர் தொலைவு வரை கேட்க முடியும்.

புலியின் வேட்டை

புலிகள் இரவில் வேட்டையாடும். பொதுவாக தனியாகவே வேட்டையாடும் விலங்கு. பதுங்கி இருந்து எதிரியை தாக்கும். புலிகள் பெரிய விலங்குகளை வேட்டையாடும் போது தன் முன்னங் கால்களால் இழுத்து தரையில் தள்ளுகிறது. தன் இரை சாகும் வரை அதன் கழுத்தை கடித்து நெருக்குகிறது.

புலி ஓடும் வேகம்

புலிகள் மணிக்கு 65 கி.மீ வேகத்தில் ஓடக்கூடியது. புலியின் பின்னங் கால்கள் அதன் முன்னங் கால்களை விட நீளமாக உள்ளன. புலிகள் ஒரே தாவலில் 20 – 30 அடி முன்னோக்கி பாயும் திறனைக் கொண்டது.

புலியின் வகைகள்

வங்கப் புலி, இந்தோசீனப் புலி, மலேசியப் புலி, சுமத்திராப் புலி, சைபீரியப் புலி, தென்சீனப் புலி, தங்கநிறப் பட்டைப் புலிகள், மால்டீஸ் புலி, பலகைக் கல்நிறப் புலி.

புலியின் இனப்பெருக்கம்

பொதுவாக புலிகள் நவம்பர் முதல் ஏப்ரல் வரை புணர்ச்சியில் ஈடுபடுகிறது. புலிகள் தங்கள் குட்டிகளை ஈன்றெடுக்க 16 வாரங்கள் ஆகும். 3 முதல் 4 குட்டிகள் வரை ஈன்றெடுக்கும். பிறந்த குட்டிகளின் எடை 1 கி.கி இருக்கும். பெண்புலிகள் பாலின முதிர்ச்சி அடைய 3-4 ஆண்டுகள் வரை ஆகும். ஆண்புலிகள் 4-5 ஆண்டுகளில் பாலின முதிர்ச்சி அடைகின்றன.

புலியின் வாழ்நாள்

புலிகள் 10 முதல் 15 ஆண்டுகள் வரை வாழும். வேட்டையாடுதல் மற்றும் பிற விலங்குகளால் எந்த ஒரு பாதிப்பும் நேராமல் இருந்தால் காடுகளில் வாழும் புலிகள் 26 வருடங்கள் வரை வாழும்.

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அணைக்கவே முடியாமல் 44 ஆண்டுகளாய் தொடர்ந்து எரியும் நெருப்பு – மீத்தேன் எடுத்ததால் வந்த வினை

செல்ஃபி எடுக்க, வீடியோ கேம் விளையாடத் தெரிந்தால் ராணுவத்தில் வேலை – பிரிட்டனில் வினோதம், ஆழ்கடல் முதல் நிலவு வரை மனிதன் கை, கால் வைத்ததால் நிகழ்ந்த மாற்றங்கள் இவை தான்.

புலிகள் பற்றிய சில தகவல்கள்

தெரிந்து கொள்வோம்

உலகில் பரவலாக அறியப்படும் பெருவிலங்குகளில் புலியும் ஒன்று. இந்தியா மற்றும் வங்கதேசத்தின் தேசிய விலங்காக புலி கருதப்படுகிறது. புலிகளின் எண்ணிக்கை 97 சதவீதம் அழிந்து விட்டது. அழிந்து வரும் புலிகளை பாதுகாக்கும் வகையில் ஆண்டுதோறும் ஜூலை 29-ம் தேதி சர்வதேச புலிகள் தினம் கொண்டாடப்படுகிறது. 19ம் நூற்றாண்டில் ஒரே ஒரு புலி நேபால் மற்றும் இந்திய மக்கள் 450 பேரை கொன்று குவித்தது.

புலிக்கு இரவு நேரத்தில் மனிதர்களை விட ஆறு மடங்கு கண் பார்வை கூர்மையாக இருக்கும். எனவே புலிகள் பெரும்பாலும் இரவு நேரத்தில் வேட்டையாடுவதை விரும்பும்.

பெண் புலிகளை விட ஆண் புலிகள் அளவில் பெரியது. சிங்கம் பசித்தால் மட்டும் வேட்டையாடும். ஆனால் புலி எப்போதுமே விலங்குகளை வேட்டையாடும்.

புலிகள் ஒரு நாளில் 27 கிலோ கரியை உணவாக உட்கொள்ளும். கிழக்காசிய நாடுகளில் புலியே காட்டின் அரசன் என்று சொல்லப்படுகிறது. புலியின் நெற்றியில் உள்ள கோடுகள் சீன மொழியில் அரசன் என்பதை குறிக்கும்.

புலிகள் செடி கொடி அடர்ந்த காடுகள் மரங்கள் அடர்ந்த காடுகள் சதுப்பு நிலக் காடுகள் புல்வெளிகள் என புலிகள் வாழும் அனைத்துவித பருவநிலை காலங்களிலும் வாழும் தன்மை கொண்டது. புலிகள் பெரும்பாலும் மான்கள் மற்றும் மாடு வகைகள் போன்றவற்றைத் தன் இரையாக்கிக் கொள்கின்றது.

புலிக்குட்டிகள் தங்கள் தாயின் பராமரிப்பில் ஏறக்குறைய இரண்டு வயதுவரை வாழ்கின்றன. பிறகு அவை தாங்கள் வாழிடத்தை விட்டுப் பிரிந்து தங்களுக்கென எல்லையை வகுத்துக் கொண்டு தனியாக வாழப் பழகுகின்றன.

புலி பசித்தாலும் புல்லைத் தின்னாது என்று கூறுவது உண்மையா?

பொதுவாக நாய், பூனை போன்ற விலங்குகள் பிரசவ வலி மற்றும் அப்போது ஏற்படும் பசி காரணமாக தான் ஈன்ற குட்டிகளையே சாப்பிடும். ஆனால் புலி எவ்வளவுதான் பசித்தாலும் தான் ஈன்ற குட்டியை திங்காது. “புலி பசித்தாலும் பிள்ளையைத் திங்காது” என்ற சொல் மருவி புலி பசித்தாலும் புல்லைத் தின்னாது என்று மாறியுள்ளது.

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Save Tiger Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on save tiger.

Tigers have become a very important topic of interest and issue all over the world presently. India is the home of major wild tigers about 2/3 of the world population . Their reducing number has triggered the government authorities to awaken and take observe. While the government is already taking projects to preserve the tiger, there is something that we as the typical public to have to do. Apart from India tigers are found in other countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Malaysia, Russia-Vietnam, Bhutan, etc. Below are some tips that might help us make a little to make a way to save tigers.

How Can We Save Tiger?

The first thing what we can do is create awareness among people. And, this program is even more essential when the focus is to preserve the tigers. We can increase the attention to “Save Tigers” by creating leaflets, ads, advertising the cause on internet websites and the like. The more you propagate the idea about saving tigers, the more persons you will adhere to the cause. Developing attention is incredibly important for all public causes.

Secondly, to preserve the tigers we must stop the poaching. Even when the government has banned the selling of tiger’s skin and bodies, poaching, however, is still prevalent. It’s very important to stop this unlawful act. While you quit poaching, make sure that you do not motivate poachers by purchasing competition skinned baggage, footwear and like products.

Read 500 Words Essay on Cruelty To Animals

Thirdly, It’s been found that our jungles are getting destroyed and that could be a significant cause why creatures like tigers are disappearing. Today, tigers don’t have a proper ecosystem to develop and generate. So, protecting jungles is the next important phase. It is not possible to plant a forest but yes you can plant many trees.

Fourthly, a recent WWF study tells that without mitigation efforts, projected sea-level will rise about a foot by 2070 which can destroy nearly the entire Sundarbans tiger habitat. Sundarbans is a large mangrove forest area and is also the only coastal mangrove tiger habitat in the world. Concerned rising sea levels due to climate change threaten to wipe out these forests and the last remaining habitat of this tiger population.

Lastly, Eco journey is another phase towards your effort to preserve tigers. By traveling on one such journey, you will be able to inform people about the particular situation of tigers and jungles. This will make them feel near to the cause and a positive change could cause them to take effective actions.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Statistics and project

A recent study shows that the tiger population has gone down by 97 percent. In 1900, more than 100,000 tigers were estimated to roam the planet, but that fell to a record low of 3,200 globally in 2010. Project save tiger was an effort to restore the safe environments of tigers which are numbered at around 3000 currently.

The Jim Corbett National park where this project was introduced is the most significant tiger reserve in India focused on preserving the tiger. The objective of that project was to increase the number of tigers that presently exist. Due to this project, the numbers have increased from 2226 in 2014 to 2967 by 2019.

Saving Tiger is not only our duty but also our responsibility. We have to support the government in its projects for the protection of the tigers so that a healthy population of the tigers exists. We should know that when we ask something from nature, we must be ready to give something back. If nature is responsible for our existence, we must take responsibility for its existence.

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Death of the Tiger

By Jon Lee Anderson

A female soldier of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam walks through an L.T.T.E. cemetery in Kilinochchi in September...

1. THE BEACH

The mobile-phone video clip shows a pair of soldiers pushing a naked, blindfolded man into the frame. His hands are tied behind his back. One soldier, dressed in the uniform of the Sri Lankan Army, forces him into a sitting position on the ground, kicks him in the back, and steps out of the way as the other soldier comes forward and shoots him in the back of the head. The man’s body jolts and flops down. Off camera, the shooter can be heard laughing giddily and exclaiming, “It’s like he jumped!” The soldiers kill two other men in similar fashion, and then dispatch a number of wounded prisoners. The camera turns to show at least eight other bodies, including those of several half-naked women, lying in pools of blood. All of them appear to have been freshly executed.

When the end came for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in May, 2009, it was overwhelming and unmerciful. In a three-year offensive of increasing sophistication, the Sri Lankan Army had outmaneuvered one of the world’s most ruthless insurgent armies. The battlefield defeat ended a vicious conflict that for twenty-six years had divided Sri Lanka along ethnic lines, as the country’s Tamils, a mostly Hindu minority, fought for the creation of a separate state against the ruling majority of Sinhalese Buddhists. The Tamil army—known as the L.T.T.E., or simply the Tigers—was led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, a charismatic, elusive man who had become one of the most successful guerrilla leaders of modern times. The Tigers were persistent suicide bombers, as well as relentless guerrilla fighters, and the war took at least a hundred thousand lives in Sri Lanka. In many respects—its entrenched religious and ethnic conflicts, its festering guerrilla warfare and suicide bombings, its seamless interchange between civilians and combatants—the war prefigured any number of later conflicts. Where it differed was in the government’s brutal effectiveness in putting down the insurgency. To the extent that a counter-insurgency campaign can be successful, Sri Lanka is a grisly test case for success in modern warfare.

The Tigers’ collapse began in January, 2009, when they lost the town of Kilinochchi, their de-facto capital. For an organization that had controlled much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka for nearly a decade, it was a devastating reversal. Their remaining fighters, a force of about fifteen thousand, retreated into the jungle near the coastal town of Mullaittivu, taking along more than three hundred thousand Tamil civilians who were trapped with them. With international concern mounting over the safety of the civilians, the Sri Lankan Army designated a series of “no-fire zones” and told civilians to assemble there. It then shelled those zones repeatedly, while issuing denials that it was doing so and forbidding journalists access to the area. Hundreds of people were killed every day. By mid-April, the Tamil rebels and the civilians were trapped on a bloody stretch of beach about a mile long. Hemmed in by the sea, a lagoon, and a hundred thousand government soldiers, they were all but helpless, as the Army kept up a barrage of fire from gunboats, aircraft, and field artillery.

On April 21st, the Army broke through the Tigers’ defenses, creating a chaotic corridor that, over several days, allowed nearly two hundred thousand famished and wounded civilians to flee into its custody. The Army had ordered most relief workers and all international observers to leave the area, but it nonetheless billed its offensive as a “humanitarian operation” to rescue hostages from the Tigers. (The Tigers did in fact prevent some civilians from fleeing, and shot hundreds of them as they tried to escape.) The Tigers’ defenders, meanwhile, claimed that the Army was committing genocide. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admonished Sri Lanka’s government, saying that “the entire world is very disappointed” by the “untold suffering” that was being caused by its efforts to end the war. There were later reports, which the government denied, that as many as forty thousand civilians were killed during the Army’s final offensive, and that their bodies were burned or buried in secret mass graves.

The foreign secretaries of France and Great Britain flew to Sri Lanka, where they pleaded with the government to call a ceasefire in order to rescue the civilians who were still trapped. Suspicious that the diplomats also wanted to save the Tiger leaders, the government ignored them. Tens of thousands of civilians remained in the kill zone, which continued to shrink until it was no bigger than four football fields.

A survivor of the final stand at Mullaittivu, a young pastor, described the scene to me. He and four other pastors and a group of sixty orphans in their care had been dug into shallow bunkers on the beach. “It was the first thing we did whenever we reached a new position—digging and making bags with cut-up women’s saris,” he said. “Only afterward would we go and look for food or water.” The Tamil fighters were in bunkers all around them. “Most of them were Black Tigers,” he said, referring to the Tamil suicide squad. “Prabhakaran was among us, too, but none of us saw him.” He described a charnel ground, with artillery shells landing at random. “All we could see was dead people, people crying for food and for water, and burning vehicles everywhere.”

On May 16th, Army troops took the last coastal positions, and, as they pursued the remaining Tigers, the Army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, declared victory. The next day, a Tiger spokesman posted a statement on the organization’s Web site: “This battle has reached its bitter end. . . . We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer.”

In the bunker, the pastor’s group talked by cell phone with a brigadier general in the Sri Lankan Army who told them to stay there until they saw soldiers, then identify themselves with white flags. The group had run out of food and went foraging in an abandoned bunker nearby. “We found food packets—meat, chocolates,” the pastor said, and they took as much as they could carry, dodging incoming fire. The next morning, a young man in their group was fatally shot as he defecated outside.

By evening, they could see soldiers approaching. “Two or three of us went out with several children, and we took white flags, as the brigadier had suggested,” the pastor recalled. “But as we approached they said, ‘Don’t come,’ and fired guns in the air.” The soldiers had been told there could be suicide bombers among the last Tigers, and in fact several insurgents blew themselves up in the midst of civilian refugees turning themselves in to the Army. “We fell on the ground. They were about fifty metres away. We crawled back to the bunker, and then they fired at the bunker. The whole night, I could hear the Army throwing grenades in the bunkers near us. There were explosions, and people were crying and saying, ‘Help us.’ ”

“I try to be royal without being regal.”

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At dawn, the pastor said he “felt courage” and decided to go out and confront the soldiers. “I went with another pastor and a white flag,” he said. “We explained who we were, and they told everyone to come forward out of the bunker. They ordered us to kneel down. There were about fifteen soldiers. Their faces were covered with black cloth. One soldier said, in Sinhala—I understand a little—‘We have orders to shoot everyone.’ We were shouting for them not to shoot.” After a tense standoff, the pastor was strip-searched, along with the children, and then allowed to collect his belongings from the bunker. “A pastor came behind me, but he was punched in the chest by a soldier. He fell down. He died later that day. The same soldier who hit him stuck his fingers in the wounds of the young men with us who had been injured.”

After another strip search and a long interrogation, the pastors were reunited with the children and put in a detention camp. When I asked the pastor how the experience had affected him, he said, “It is in my mind. When I sleep, automatically it comes out—things I only saw in films in my youth. Bodies without heads. Bodies with the stomach open and the liver coming out.” He added, “At the end, we were walking out through fire and past dead people, and the soldiers were laughing at us and saying, ‘We have killed all your leaders. Now you are our slaves.’ You can imagine how I feel about my country.”

On the same day, May 18th, the Army announced that the Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been killed, along with two hundred and fifty others, during an overnight escape attempt across the Nandikadal Lagoon, which separated the beach from the mainland. Images were released of his body lying at the feet of Army troops, a handkerchief over his forehead to conceal a yawning wound. The Army claimed that it had cremated his remains. Prabhakaran’s eldest child, Charles Anthony, was killed the day before, along with other fighters who launched a final assault on Army lines. Soon after, the Army said it had also recovered the bodies of Prabhakaran’s wife, their daughter, and their youngest child, a boy, all of them dead of gunshot wounds.

Dozens of unarmed Tamils, including several senior Tiger political leaders and their families, were also shot dead by soldiers as they walked out of the kill zone carrying white flags. Their surrender had been personally approved by Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, after being negotiated over a satellite-phone link by the U.N.’s special envoy to Sri Lanka and Marie Colvin, a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, whom the Tamil leaders had asked to be their intermediary. “This was not the chaos of battle,” Colvin said. “It was a negotiated surrender. Promises were made and they were broken.”

After the announcement of victory, there were fireworks in Colombo, the nation’s capital, and across Sinhalese Sri Lanka. In an address to Parliament on May 19th, Rajapaksa declared a national holiday. “We have liberated the whole country from L.T.T.E. terrorism,” he said. “Our intention was to save the Tamil people from the cruel grip of the L.T.T.E. We all must now live as equals in this free country.”

Rajapaksa is a veteran politician with a commanding physical presence, a trademark smile, and a folksy charisma, which his admirers liken to that of the late Ronald Reagan. In office since 2005, he seized on the mood of national euphoria that followed his war victory to call an early election last January, in which he was duly reëlected to a new five-year term. Rajapaksa is the son of a well-known politician, but his family comes from a village in the deep south of the country, rather than from Colombo’s Western-educated élite; in Sri Lanka’s highly stratified society, they are considered nouveau-riche upstarts. He has made his rusticity a political asset, however, and he enjoys a huge following among rural Sinhalese. One of his brothers, Gotabaya, is his defense minister; another, Basil, is his chief of staff and minister for economic development; and a third, Chamal, is Speaker of Parliament. His twenty-four-year-old son Namal was recently elected to Parliament, and forty-odd additional brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, and in-laws hold various other government posts.

After the war, Rajapaksa’s government adopted a posture of triumphalism at home and defensive resentment of the outrage that the carnage had caused abroad. When the U.N. created an “accountability panel,” government-sponsored rioters mobbed its headquarters in Colombo, forcing it to close. Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in London complained to me that his country was being unfairly singled out: “Colombia has been contaminating the world for years with its cocaine, and now Somalia is with its piracy. What do we hear about that in the U.N.? Nothing.” The important thing, he said, was that Sri Lanka had ended terrorism, making it the first country in the modern age to have done so. In military circles around the world, the “Sri Lanka option” for counter-insurgency was discussed with admiration. Its basic tenets were: deny access to the media, the United Nations, and human-rights groups; isolate your opponents, and kill them as quickly as possible; and segregate and terrify the survivors—or, ideally, leave no witnesses at all.

2. THE PAST

In 1914, Leonard Woolf’s younger sister, Bella Sidney Woolf, published an illustrated guidebook titled “How to See Ceylon.” Leonard, who had not yet married the novelist Virginia Stephen, worked in Ceylon as a colonial administrator, and Bella went to visit him before settling there herself. It was the Edwardian era of languorous travel by rail and rickshaw, croquet clubs, and afternoon teas attended by servants. Woolf wrote, “The stranger, looking down on the motley throng that threads the streets of Ceylon, is bewildered, puzzled. How is he to distinguish between all these people?” She ventured a brief comparison of the island’s two main ethnicities: “The Tamil cooly, it must be conferred, is a much more law abiding, peaceful person than the Sinhalese. Apart from the hot temper which leads to the flashing out of a knife and murder, there is an undercurrent of malice in village life.”

Under the British, tensions festered between the Sinhalese, who make up seventy-five per cent of the population, and the Tamils, with seventeen per cent. (There was also friction with other ethnicities; in 1915, Sinhalese mobs attacked the island’s Muslim minority.) The Tamils were seen as having unfairly benefitted from colonial rule; they held a disproportionately high number of civil-service jobs and university enrollments, and more of them were fluent in English. After Ceylon gained its independence, in 1948, Sinhalese nationalists grew increasingly insistent that the Tamils were “invaders,” whose presence threatened the very existence of the Sinhalese culture.

The Sinhalese have traditionally lived in the south, with its lush land and ancient reservoir-fed rice paddies. The Tamils lived in the arid scrublands of the north, known as the Vanni, and the lowland jungles of the east, areas their ancestors had occupied two thousand years ago, during wars of conquest waged by Hindu kings from Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. Sinhalese nationalists trace their lineage to Aryan tribes of northern India, despite the lack of evidence to support the idea. Although intermarriage across language barriers was fairly common, especially among the upper castes, Sinhalese politics by the early twentieth century had become infused with racialist theories on “Aryanism” then being promulgated in Europe. Anagarika Dharmapala, the leader of the Sinhalese Buddhist revival movement that began under British colonial rule, said, in a frequently quoted speech, “This bright, beautiful island was made into a Paradise by the Aryan Sinhalese before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandals. . . . This ancient, historic, refined people, under the diabolism of vicious paganism, introduced by the British administrators, are now declining and slowly dying away.”

“A billboard of Mahinda Rajapaksa Sri Lankas President who has a huge following among the countrys rural Sinhalese...

The “vandals” Dharmapala referred to were the Tamils, of course, and the “vicious paganism” their Hindu faith. By the time of independence, the seeds of sectarian hatred had taken root. In 1948, Sinhalese nationalists introduced legislation to deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of so-called “Indian Tamils,” most of them tea-plantation workers descended from laborers brought to the island by the British. Then a new law made Sinhala the country’s official language, replacing English, and many Tamils working for the government lost their positions for being unable to speak the language. In the seventies, legislation was enacted to favor Sinhalese students in university admissions, and soon after, a new constitution made Buddhism the state religion. Tamil politicians called for Gandhi-style campaigns of civil disobedience, but young radicals advocated an armed struggle for “national liberation.” Militant groups formed and began squabbling over the way to bring about a separate, secular, socialist Tamil state. Some travelled to Lebanon and received military training from Palestinian guerrillas.

In 1975, the pro-government mayor of Jaffna, the informal Tamil capital, was shot dead as he arrived for prayers at a Hindu temple. The assassin was Velupillai Prabhakaran, a thin, goggle-eyed twenty-year-old who had left high school and gone into hiding to devote himself to the fight for Tamil independence. Prabhakaran is said to have torn up all pictures of himself in the family’s photo album to prevent police from identifying him. (His father, a civil servant, was horrified by his son’s extremism, and remained estranged from him. He died this month, in Army custody.) At the time of the shooting, Prabhakaran was a member of a fledgling group called the Tamil New Tigers. Within a year, he had formed his own breakaway organization, the L.T.T.E. Prabhakaran—known to his followers as Thamby, or Little Brother—had a flamboyant touch: in his early days as the Tiger leader, he posed for pictures with a pet leopard cub, and spoke with admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander the Great. His contemporary heroes included Sylvester Stallone and Clint Eastwood, and he often showed their movies to his young fighters, whom he called his “cubs.” The Tigers soon emerged as the most ruthless of the Tamil militant groups, and eventually annihilated all their rivals.

On July 24, 1983, the Tigers killed thirteen soldiers in a land-mine ambush, and Sinhalese residents of Colombo turned on their Tamil neighbors. In a murderous orgy that spread quickly across the southern part of the island, they hacked, raped, burned, and shot as many as three thousand people. The killing went on for a week, and thousands of Tamil homes and businesses were torched and looted. The authorities, by and large, did not intervene, and in some cases coöperated with the mobs.

The violence was a historic watershed. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils who had lived in the south fled to the north and east; many of them entered the Tigers’ training camps, where a movement was growing for a separate Tamil homeland. Another wave of refugees moved abroad, and these “diaspora Tamils” began to support the Tigers’ cause. India’s sizable Tamil population was outraged, and their politicians called for action. In response, Indira Gandhi’s government began providing the militants with covert financial assistance and military training. Sri Lanka’s civil war had begun.

In December, 1986, I arrived in Sri Lanka with my brother Scott. The conflict was only three years old, and its body count—around five thousand—was still relatively modest. But the Tigers were already notable for their unusual discipline and ferocity. In addition to carrying out a few massacres of their own (including an especially brutal one in 1985, in which a hundred and forty-six civilians were killed in a raid on one of the holiest Buddhist shrines in Sri Lanka), the Tigers had instituted a reign of terror among their fellow-Tamils, imposing absolute authority, levying war taxes, and eliminating their rivals. A master of battlefield innovation, Prabhakaran devised a form of execution for collaborators with the enemy: the victim was tied to a lamppost and blown to pieces with Cordex explosive fuse wire.

During our visit, Colombo was quiet, and the Sinhalese areas of the country remained largely untouched by the war. In the eastern city of Batticaloa, however, we found an atmosphere of violence and contained hysteria. The Army’s antiterrorist Special Task Force, created for the purpose of fighting Tamil insurgents, had taken over the city’s police stations; its soldiers were bunkered in behind sandbags and razor wire, their guns pointing out through sniper holes. After dusk no one ventured out on the streets. Groups of women in saris recognized us as foreigners and beseeched us to help them find their sons, who had been detained by the S.T.F. The Army had developed a pattern of mass arrests, torture, and, with growing frequency, murder. A Tamil Catholic priest, Father Chandra Fernando, told us that disappearances and indiscriminate shootings occurred daily in the area, and that every male between fifteen and forty had been arrested at least once. The conflict had grown so terrible, he said, that he had come to question the very existence of God.

Through Father Chandra, we made arrangements to visit the Tigers’ nearest camp, a journey that took us by motorcycle, ferry, and jeep into a remote area of sparse jungle. When we arrived, wicker chairs had been placed in a half-circle inside a thatched hut. A group of perhaps forty fighters, teen-agers mostly, stood by, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades. The Tiger commander of the Eastern Province, Colonel Kumarappa, appeared. A heavyset Tamil with a drooping mustache, he wore khaki trousers and a white shirt and had a revolver tucked in his belt. He sat down in one of the chairs and motioned for us to do the same. His fighters crowded into the hut around us.

Guerrilla commanders often lay out a philosophical and historical argument for their use of violence, but Kumarappa’s case for war seemed almost offhand; for the Tigers, killing and dying seemed to be virtues in themselves. When I asked him what kind of government he wanted for the new Tamil state of Eelam, he paused for a long while before replying, “Oh, yeah, socialist. A socialist country, yeah, because in here sixty per cent of the people are poor—only ten per cent are very rich. Corruption, you know?” The Tigers, like insurgents who came later in other parts of the world, led constrained lives; they were denied alcohol, cigarettes, and premarital sex, and maintained a worshipful devotion to Prabhakaran, which they demonstrated with their willingness to perform suicide missions. Kumarappa boasted that his fighters were obliged to wear cyanide capsules around their necks and to swallow them if they were captured. “I think the cyanide helps our morale, you know?” Recently, he said, Army commandos had captured a handful of fighters without their cyanide, and the Tigers had evaded interrogation by struggling until their captors were forced to shoot them.

Kumarappa acknowledged killing civilians: “Sometimes, you know, we don’t have any alternatives. Sometimes we have to do that job, too.” But the Tigers had a higher purpose—the cause of a Tamil homeland—and therefore had no choice but to punish those who collaborated with the enemy. Kumarappa said that he had captured many spies; he had one in camp at that moment, a woman of thirty-six. He ordered his men to bring her in. She was tiny, with unkempt hair and a bad limp, and her eyes were wide and unfocussed. She was made to sit in a chair next to Kumarappa. Her name was Athuma, he said. His men had caught her two days earlier, after she infiltrated their area, and accused her of spying for the Sri Lankan Army. Kumarappa said she had already confessed: “Without any torture, she accepts everything.” Her relationship with the Army had begun when an officer agreed to take two of her children to be adopted by his sister in Colombo. Afterward, he had demanded that she collect information.

Athuma mumbled in Tamil, and her eyes roved around. Kumarappa translated: “She asks me for her life.”

“Has she said why she did it?”

“Because of money. She’s suffering in poverty, you know.”

Scott asked, “What does she think is going to happen to her?” Athuma said something in a soft voice. Kumarappa said, “She knows very well the final decision. She knows we’re going to kill her.”

“Rosalie—your poor performance this year has reduced your parents investment in you by almost seventy per cent.”

Athuma spoke to Scott and me, repeating something over and over. Kumarappa said, “She’s pleading, ‘They’re going to take my life.’ ” I asked if people had died as a result of her information, and Kumarappa said no.

“Then why can’t you forgive her?” I asked.

Kumarappa sighed. “Because, you know, she made a big mistake.” He waved, and Athuma was taken away by several fighters.

Both sides of the Sri Lankan civil war insisted on their victimhood, which only prolonged the fighting. A few hours’ drive from Colombo, we visited a camp for Tamil political suspects who had been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. There were a hundred and twenty-five inmates, ranging in age from fifteen to sixty-seven, all of whom had been picked up by the Special Task Force. Although most of them were uneducated farmers and fishermen, and denied having anything to do with the Tamil militant organizations, they had been tortured and humiliated, they said. Their guard, a Muslim, nodded sympathetically as they spoke. At one point, he whispered to us, “They are all innocent.”

At the day’s end, we joined our host, Bobby Wickremasinghe, the deputy minister for prisons, on the veranda of the camp administrator’s house. “Nobody sees our problem,” he said. “We are just a few Sinhalese, but the Tamils are millions, here and in South India. They can go to India, where there are so many Tamils. They can go all over the world. Who will take me, a Sinhalese? I must live and die on this island! . . . Does no one see that for us, the Sinhalese Buddhists, it is a problem of survival? It is the perishing of a race.” The Sinhalese, of course, constituted three-quarters of the population. “If we wanted to, we could wipe out the Tamils in an hour or two. But we haven’t done that, because we are Buddhists.”

Over the decades, there were periodic ceasefires and peace negotiations, but the two sides could never agree to durable terms. Both relied on the ongoing fight for political leverage. Sinhalese politicians needed the nationalist vote, and Prabhakaran, who was primarily a battlefield strategist, seemed incapable of political compromise.

The social and economic effects of the war were huge. Tourism dwindled, depriving the country of a crucial source of revenue. The expenditures for the military diverted money from social-welfare projects and energized leftist activism among Sinhalese nationalists. The government allowed Indian peacekeeping troops into northern Sri Lanka in 1987, which further inflamed the nationalists and helped set off a Sinhalese-on-Sinhalese civil war that cost an estimated fifty thousand lives. In the war with the Tigers, at least a hundred thousand people were killed; perhaps half of them were Tamil civilians, and roughly a quarter were members of Sri Lanka’s armed forces. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils were displaced from their homes, and a million more fled abroad.

The Tigers killed one Sri Lankan President by suicide bomb, in 1993, and came close to killing two more; they also assassinated scores of government ministers, parliamentarians, military officers, and other officials. In 1991, in the world’s first female suicide bombing, a Black Tiger named Dhanu set off explosives concealed under her clothing as she knelt at the feet of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian Prime Minister, during a public ceremony, blowing him and fourteen other people to bits.

The closest the Tigers came to ruling a Tamil homeland was in the period that followed the peace accord of February, 2002. During that time, the Tamil lands of the north and east were united, and the Tigers’ political administration began to function as a virtual state, with its own army, navy, border guards, and customs officials. (Bizarrely, everything from the supply of electricity to health and education services continued to be funded and run by the Sri Lankan government.) Acting as conflict negotiators, Norwegian diplomats paid calls on Tiger officials and carried messages to their government counterparts in Colombo.

But by the time Mahinda Rajapaksa stood for election in November, 2005, the ceasefire was already unravelling. Just two months earlier, the country’s foreign minister, a moderate Tamil, had been assassinated by a suspected Tiger sniper. The Tigers encouraged a boycott of the election, and, ironically, the dearth of Tamil voters helped Rajapaksa win by a slender margin. At his inauguration, Rajapaksa invited the Tigers to a new round of talks, but amid mounting violence they withdrew. In July, 2006, after the Tigers blocked a reservoir that supplied water to thousands of farmers, Rajapaksa authorized a new military offensive against them. This was followed by a political blow: in October, the Supreme Court ordered that the Northern and Eastern Provinces be separated, diminishing hopes for the Tamil homeland.

The next month, Prabhakaran declared a renewal of the “freedom struggle.” The war had begun again. With the help of two Tiger defectors named Karuna and Pellian, the Army took over the east, and then moved its offensive north, pursuing Prabhakaran’s troops into the Vanni. At the same time, the Army embarked on a huge recruitment drive: between 2005 and 2009, it grew from a hundred and twenty-five thousand troops to three hundred thousand. By January, 2008, Rajapaksa, determined to crush the Tigers, announced a formal end to the ceasefire.

Sri Lanka’s war dragged to its bloody climax just as Obama took office. Perhaps for this reason, the official American position was one of lawyerly, largely ineffective disapproval, with the U.S. Ambassador, Robert Blake, voicing humanitarian concerns and occasional criticism of the government, but otherwise keeping quiet. The U.S. and the European Union did curb arms sales to Sri Lanka, so the Rajapaksa government turned instead to Eastern nations. China, in the last year of the war, supplied a billion dollars’ worth of military aid, including fighter jets, air-surveillance radar, and anti-aircraft batteries; Russia and Pakistan provided artillery shells and small arms; Iran supplied fuel.

Unofficially, however, the United States had provided some help. Sri Lankan diplomats and military officers acknowledged to me privately that U.S. satellite intelligence had been crucial when, in 2008, Sri Lanka’s Navy sank seven Tiger ships loaded with military cargo. The ships—members of the Sea Pigeons fleet, which sailed without identification from various Asian seaports—were cruising in international waters, as far as a thousand miles from Sri Lanka, when they were attacked. They carried war material worth tens of millions of dollars, and their destruction deprived the Tigers of their traditional means of military resupply just as the Sri Lankan Army ramped up hostilities. From then on, the Tigers were on the run, herded ineluctably into shrinking territory.

The Tigers’ defeat was not preordained. The events that led to their demise had everything to do with the personality of their leader. Prabhakaran had been dictating the terms of the war in Sri Lanka for so long, and built up such extraordinary power, that he appears to have lost his sense of proportion. At some point during the Army’s siege of his headquarters at Kilinochchi—before the city fell, in January, 2009—he is believed to have escaped with his wife and children and their bodyguards to one of his hiding places in the jungle, in an area called Visuamadu. For weeks at a time, they lived literally underground in an elaborate hideout.

The house was so ingeniously concealed that its existence was discovered only in 2009, when soldiers stumbled across it. They discovered an underground lair of rooms descending fifty feet, with bulletproof doors, air-conditioning, surveillance cameras, and electricity from a soundproof generator. They claimed to have also found oxygen tanks, a bottle of cognac, and a supply of insulin (suggesting that Prabhakaran, who had grown rotund in recent years, may have been diabetic), as well as a Marks & Spencer shirt with a forty-two-and-a-half-inch chest.

“I had no idea a sexless marriage would involve so much reading.”

The Army maintained the compound as a private museum for select visitors. At the end of a paved road just wide enough for a single jeep was a modest-looking pink bungalow, its roof camouflaged by dried palm fronds. Another palm-covered structure concealed a drive-down subterranean garage. Next to the fenced entrance of the compound was an open-air funeral bier, where the bodies of slain Tiger officers were brought so that Prabhakaran could pronounce words of homage before they were disposed of.

Down a narrow stairwell from the bungalow’s front room was a claustrophobic series of small, tile-floored rooms. The last one held an emergency exit, where an iron staircase spiralled up to ground level at the rear of the house. From the top of the stairs, Prabhakaran would have had to run only a few feet to reach the protection of the surrounding jungle.

At Mullaittivu, after years of evasion, Prabhakaran was finally trapped. Because all the people around him have been killed, it is difficult to know how he spent his last moments—whether, as the Army says, he was killed in combat, or whether he was caught and executed. The Tiger leaders clearly hoped for a deal that would spare their lives. Weeks before the massacre, Prabhakaran’s aides began calling their intermediary Marie Colvin, and on the evening of May 17th one of them relayed surrender terms: the Tigers would lay down their arms in return for a guarantee of safety for fifty of their leaders and a thousand of their fighters. Colvin said that this surprisingly low number most likely represented all the Tiger fighters left alive on the beach. She heard machine-gun fire behind the aide’s voice, suggesting that the fighting was close by.

Until the very end, Prabhakaran believed that the international relief community, the U.N., and Western governments would save the Tigers. “The L.T.T.E. continued to read the world as if it was pre-9/11,” Jayampathy Wickramaratne, an adviser to Sri Lanka’s past two Presidents, explained. “What happened was that many countries, such as the U.S., took a different view of the L.T.T.E. than they had before—even if they sympathized with the Tamil people.” In May, 2006, after years of accommodating the L.T.T.E., the European Union branded it a terrorist organization. The U.S. had done so a decade earlier, and George W. Bush’s Administration had supported Sri Lanka’s counterinsurgency campaign directly.

Prabhakaran also crucially underestimated Mahinda Rajapaksa. “Pre-Rajapaksa governments never went one hundred per cent all out to wipe out the L.T.T.E.,” Wickramaratne explained. “They used military force, but always had a political solution in mind. But then came Rajapaksa, and he was prepared, rightly or wrongly, to go whole hog. If you look at the L.T.T.E., it’s a case of them arrogantly refusing opportunities. They thought they could just keep telling the world that they were willing to talk, but not follow through. They thought they were the exception, until Rajapaksa came along and said, ‘I’m not going to let you do it.’ ”

3. THE CONQUERED LANDS

With the Tigers’ defeat at Mullaittivu, all of Sri Lanka’s territory came under government control for the first time in nearly thirty years. In the north and east, the Army occupied the land, pursuing a kind of clear-and-hold strategy, in which it herded the Tamil inhabitants into a series of Army-run “welfare camps”—essentially military prisons—and did not allow them out until they were deemed harmless. The camps initially held three hundred and twenty thousand Tamil civilians; an estimated twelve thousand Tigers were kept in separate facilities. With the north largely emptied out and the sites of the fiercest fighting off limits to all but military personnel, secrecy descended over the former Tiger territory.

President Rajapaksa had described his postwar vision as “one nation, one people”—in which no single ethnic group would lay claim over any part of the land—and called for “economic development and prosperity” as the route to reconciliation. But many Tamils believed that this was simply the first step toward complete Sinhalese domination. Without the Tigers to defend the land, the government would flood the north and east with Sinhalese soldiers and their families; much as China did in Tibet, they would weaken the Tamil claim on the region with unrelenting force and by diluting the population.

The military prohibited access to the north to all foreigners without special permits, but a Tamil social worker, whom I will call Siva, agreed to take me through the less guarded back roads of the Vanni. We set out by jeep for Kilinochchi, the Tigers’ former capital. There were Army bivouacs every hundred yards or so, and larger military camps every few miles. The soldiers scrutinized us closely as we drove by, but allowed us through the roadblocks. The Vanni was a wasteland of low bushes and fallow farms and a succession of war-ruined hamlets.

We stopped in one tiny fishing village: a welter of roofless houses, trash-strewn sand, and scrubby trees—and an Army post. The hundred-odd families there had been released from the detention camps five months earlier, and were now living in lean-tos made out of sheet metal or U.N.-issue blue plastic; some had fenced themselves in with woven palm palisades. No one in the community spoke Sinhala, and the soldiers did not speak Tamil; the community leader told Siva that they wanted someone to be sent to live with them who could talk to the soldiers on their behalf. In the past few nights, someone had tried to break into a number of homes, and the villagers believed it was Sinhalese soldiers. “We don’t know if they are trying to steal or if they are looking for women to rape,” the community leader said.

It was one of many allegations of rape I heard. Over the years, groups like the Asian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International have documented numerous cases in which Sinhalese soldiers raped Tamil women and girls. In the cell-phone video from Mullaittivu, the soldiers appraise the dead women and make lewd comments that strongly suggest that they have been sexually assaulted.

We drove north on the main road from Colombo to Jaffna, the historic capital of the Tamils. The road had been reopened to the public for the first time in years; the British-era railway, whose rails and wooden ties had been torn up and used as bunker reinforcements by the Tigers, was also being rebuilt. Cafés and picnic grounds had sprung up by the side of the road, with signs identifying them as “People’s Rests” and “Army Welfare Canteens.” They were occupied by soldiers and busloads of Sinhalese tourists. Siva remarked, “They are increasing, not reducing, their presence. This is permanent.” Entire military cantonments, made out of special materials supplied by the Chinese, were being erected all over the north. We passed many more Army camps along the road.

The Army had said that it was waiting until mines could be cleared to return Tamils to their homes, but Siva was dubious. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they are looking for gold on the corpses,” he said. “The Tamil people are famous for liking jewelry and gold. I think that’s it; otherwise there is no reason why they shouldn’t allow people to go back to their places. That and evidence of mass graves, war crimes. Maybe they are moving the bodies.”

Siva’s claims at times had the ring of conspiracy theory. But later Major General Mahinda Hathurusingha, the security commander of Jaffna, confirmed for me that the cantonments were indeed intended to be permanent. From the military’s perspective, the war continued. “The L.T.T.E. inculcation of the youth—this is a big problem for us,” he said. The Army needed to maintain a presence in the north to insure that Tamil radicalism never started again. To gather intelligence, another senior officer told me, it had infiltrated the Tamil population and installed electronic surveillance systems.

During the war, signs of the Tigers’ presence were ubiquitous in Tamil areas. Throughout the north, hand-painted billboards advertised their sacrifices on behalf of their people. One of them showed two Tamil mothers, both wondering where their daughters were. On the left side of the billboard, one of the daughters, an adolescent girl in pigtails and a pink dress, is depicted in three panels. In the first, she is at home alone, meekly receiving three armed government soldiers. In the second, she looks out through the bars of a jail cell. In the third, her pink skirt and legs protrude from a bush, while the soldiers dig a shallow grave. On the right side, the other daughter, wearing tiger-striped camouflage, looks strong and determined; she wields a weapon during combat in the jungle, and steers a Sea-Tiger launch on the ocean.

Now the Army had methodically erased all traces of the Tigers in the north. Kilinochchi’s cemetery had been totally eradicated. Pointing to mounds of broken gravestones and piles of rubble, Siva explained, “The Army has come along and just bulldozed them.” In the center of Kilinochchi, the Army had erected a victory monument: a giant concrete cube with a bullet hole cracking its fascia and a lotus flower rising from the top. Soldiers stood at attention before a marble plinth, whose inscription extolled the Rajapaksas’ leadership during “a humanitarian operation which paved the way to eradicate terrorism entirely from our motherland, restoring her territorial integrity and the noble peace.”

Though the Rajapaksa government denies plans for the “Sinhalization” of the north and east, it has done little to assuage the Tamils’ fears. These anxieties are fuelled by a sense of communal humiliation. During a stop at a friend’s house in Kilinochchi, Siva complained of “seeing soldiers everywhere, occupying our places. But people are resigned. They feel they can’t fight the Army presence anymore.” His friend added that he had heard a local Tamil vegetable seller calling out in Sinhala. When he asked why, the vender told him, “Tamil has no place now.”

Among many Tamils, as well as Sinhalese, the Tigers were despised for violently upsetting Sri Lanka’s delicate status quo. Middle-class and upper-class Tamils were targeted for extortion; those who opposed the Tigers’ separatist campaign risked assassination. But in the backlands of the north and east the Tigers, despite their brutality, were the only government that most Tamils knew, and were more representative of their community than the postwar Sinhalese administration. Siva said, “After all, who were the L.T.T.E.? They were our children! O.K., maybe even they were terrorists, but people here, because they were their children, had feelings for them.”

At one point during our trip, two women approached Siva. The older one, in her forties, with a long ponytail and a red bindi dot on her forehead, carried a photograph of a slim youth standing in front of a shrine. She identified him as her son, and explained that he had been forcibly conscripted by the Tigers in 2002. In the areas they controlled, the Tigers had demanded that each Tamil family contribute at least one member to the cause; children as young as fifteen, girls as well as boys, were often conscripted. If they weren’t produced voluntarily, they were taken by force.

The other woman had lost her daughter in 2006. The girl, twenty-four at the time, had gone out to attend a birthday party and hadn’t returned. She, too, had ended up in the Tigers. Neither woman had heard anything of her child since the end of the war. They told Siva of going to the detention camps and getting the runaround from authorities. They had come to him because they had heard rumors of a secret detention camp and hoped he’d know where it was.

The younger woman had last heard news of her daughter from another female fighter who had survived the siege at Mullaittivu. “That girl told me that they had been together, that my daughter had a chest injury, and that in the fighting she had lost sight of her. She said that just behind her the Sri Lankan Army was coming, so it’s possible they caught and saved her.” The mother added, hopefully, “She was in Intelligence. She had finished high school, and she spoke some English.”

The older woman said that other detainees had told her that her son was captured alive, and he had been collaborating with the Army by leading it to the Tigers’ hidden weapons caches. If the reports were true, she said, sobbing, it meant that her son had been tortured. I asked Siva what the chances were that either of the women’s children were alive. “Very little,” he said. Of the woman’s daughter, he told me, in English, “Most likely they killed her on the spot.”

4. THE POSTWAR CAMPAIGN

Major General Kamal Gunaratne was the field commander of the Special Forces troops that finished off Prabhakaran. During my visit, he was running the north from his base at Vavuniya, a town that, in the old days, marked the northern limits of government control. He and his officers met me in a dark wood-panelled conference room, where framed photographs showed the General and his soldiers standing over Prabhakaran’s body. Gunaratne, a tall, blustering man wearing a red beret and a camouflage uniform with a chestful of medals, described the war in heroic terms: “Our youth is gone now, but we had no choice, we had to live with this problem. But we didn’t want our children to live with it, so we decided to end it. It was a mammoth task, but we have done that for the nation.” His men had paid for Sri Lanka’s peace with their “blood, sweat, and body parts.” In the end, he said, the three-year offensive killed six thousand of his soldiers and twenty-three thousand Tigers. He added, “Since the death of the ruthless terrorist leader Prabhakaran, there have been no deaths in Sri Lanka from a terrorist act.” Gunaratne was echoing the Sri Lankan government’s official dogma: the postwar peace justifies whatever was necessary to achieve it.

Gunaratne showed me some private snapshots of the dead Prabhakaran, including one in which the handkerchief that covered his forehead had been removed, revealing a gaping hole in his forehead. It suggested an exit wound, as if he had been shot from behind at close range. Gunaratne had taken Prabhakaran’s dog tags, which he had given to Sarath Fonseka, the Army commander, and his Tiger I.D. card, which he had kept for himself. He pulled out his wallet and extracted it from among his credit cards. The serial number on the I.D., he pointed out, was 001. I asked if he intended to keep his trophy. He took the card and looked at it for a moment, then put it back in his wallet. “Maybe one day I’ll give it to the Army for its museum or something. But right now it’s mine. I think I’ve earned it.”

For nations operating in the age of instant media, counter-insurgency is in significant measure a public-relations problem. What should victory look like? No matter what else happened in Vietnam, many Americans’ image of the war was formed most vividly by the photograph of the huddled civilians of My Lai moments before they were killed by U.S. soldiers. Since the cell-phone video from Mullaittivu leaked out, the Rajapaksa government has fought a second campaign to define the massacre as a glorious victory. Sri Lanka has found friends who are willing to agree, or at least not to care; these include China and other Eastern nations, as well as military experts from around the world who are impressed by the effectiveness of its tactics. The government has largely ostracized those who disagree; within its borders, it has silenced them by force.

A week after the war’s end, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva was the scene of a political standoff between a bloc of Western nations that called for an investigation and another—led by Sri Lanka and including Brazil, Cuba, India, and Pakistan—that called for a resolution praising Sri Lanka for the “promotion and protection of all human rights.” The latter resolution won, with twenty-nine votes in favor, twelve against, and six abstentions.

In the following months, lawyers in the U.S. Justice Department began exploring the possibility of war-crimes prosecution of Gotabaya Rajapaksa—who lived in the United States for a time and acquired citizenship—as well as the former Army commander Sarath Fonseka, a green-card holder. On a visit to the U.S. in the fall of 2009, Fonseka dodged an interview request from Homeland Security and flew back to Sri Lanka. For the most part, though, the Obama Administration has maintained a policy of circumspection.

One senior Administration official told me, “With regard to Sri Lanka, I can assure you that war crimes and crimes against humanity are a big part of our bilateral discussions.” But the Administration’s only public acts have been to send Stephen Rapp, the State Department emissary on war crimes, to Sri Lanka, as well as its two senior human-rights officials on the national-security council, Samantha Power and David Pressman. Rapp filed two fact-finding reports with Congress, while Power and Pressman urged the Rajapaksa government to show greater accountability for its actions during the war.

Rajapaksa, meanwhile, has said that his government was “looking east,” and he signed a number of economic deals with China, including one for the construction of a large port in his home district of Hambantota. In August, he presided over a lavish ceremony to mark the opening of the port’s first phase, which a thousand Chinese laborers and engineers, along with Sri Lankans, had completed in a year of around-the-clock shifts. Before an audience of hundreds of dignitaries, Rajapaksa stood at the helm of a giant model ship, turned the wheel, and watched the seawater enter the muddy basin carved out by the Chinese.

In the not too distant future, Sri Lanka may be seen as an early skirmish in a new “Great Game” of influence between China and the United States and their proxies. “Sri Lanka has read the situation and seen that the West’s influence is diminishing,” Harim Peiris, a Sri Lankan political analyst, said. “So this government has made some strange friends: Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, Russia, and Japan. China is probably our biggest single investor. These are ‘softies’—soft loans without pressure. So who’s putting the pressure? Oh—Sweden and the E.U.!” Peiris laughed derisively, and said, “There is no serious international pressure.”

A Western diplomat in Colombo said, “We don’t have a lot of influence here. We’re not a big fish. China is. It’s pouring in billions of dollars that are described as soft loans, but someday they will have to be paid back. And they don’t ask about human rights.”

Jaliya Wickramasuriya, another relative of President Rajapaksa’s, is Sri Lanka’s Ambassador in Washington. He suggested to me that the U.S. was missing out. With the war over, Sri Lanka was going to boom economically. “We want the U.S. to come in,” he said. “America, hurry up!” Laughing, he added, “But there are a lot of suitors, and if the suitor takes a lot of time . . . however good-looking, there are always others!”

The Sri Lankan government does have supporters in the U.S., particularly in military circles. Senior officials told me that their government owed much to a Pentagon official named James Clad, “a great friend of Sri Lanka.” Clad was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, in charge of the Pentagon’s dealings with India and Sri Lanka, until he was replaced by the Obama Administration in January, 2009.

I telephoned Clad, and he invited me to his home, in suburban Washington, D.C. Clad is an articulate man in his late fifties, with a ready sense of humor. Citing official oaths of secrecy, he demurred when it came to questions about U.S. aid to the Sri Lankan military, but he made it clear that he had been supportive of the Sri Lankan government’s war effort, and that he felt that the criticisms expressed by the West had been counterproductive to Western interests.

“The self-imposed marginalization by the U.S. and other Western countries in Sri Lanka has led directly to increased influence by China, Pakistan, and Iran, none of which share the Western humanitarian agenda, to put it mildly,” he said. As evidence, he mentioned a Chinese arms dealer that had advanced ammunition to the Sri Lankan government throughout the military campaign; the debt was later satisfied by arrangements that gave China commercial advantages in Sri Lanka.

Clad has known the Rajapaksas for many years. He referred to the President’s brother Gotabaya, the defense minister, as “Gota.” A fierce critic of the Tigers, Clad said that the organization had assassinated several Sri Lankans whom he regarded as personal friends. “The L.T.T.E. was the most deliberately ruthless terrorist group, bar none, certainly in Asia,” he said.

In order to reform Sri Lanka’s public image, Clad, who recently retired from the Pentagon’s National Defense University, recommended to Gotabaya Rajapaksa that he host a meeting on maritime-security concerns in the Indian Ocean. It would help Sri Lanka “get out of its box as a ‘single-issue country’ and reconnect it with an earlier maritime heritage,” he said. In August, Clad invited me to the Galle Dialogue, a two-day conference attended by senior naval officers from more than a dozen countries. The conclave was held at a luxurious seaside hotel outside the old colonial fortress city of Galle, in the south.

The assembled commodores and admirals discussed everything from the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 to the problem of Somali piracy. But mostly the conference was an opportunity for Sri Lanka’s military leaders to boast to their colleagues about beating the Tigers. The foreign speakers congratulated them on their achievement, and asked eagerly about the techniques they had used. Brigadier General Stanley Osserman, of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, said, “Sri Lanka has a lot to offer in the field of terrorism prevention and maritime security.” Sri Lanka’s Special Forces commander said he had adopted the Tigers’ own tactics by sending his commandos in small, guerrilla-style bands to hunt them down.

The keynote speaker was Gotabaya Rajapaksa, an owlish, watchful man with a mustache, wearing spectacles and a gray suit. “Sri Lanka’s victory over terrorism is an unprecedented event that the world can learn from,” he said. He spoke of how the Tigers’ international support network had enabled it to raise funds from the Tamil diaspora and to ship weapons into Sri Lanka. “At one point, the L.T.T.E. controlled one-third of the Sri Lankan coastline,” he said. “In this way, heavy weaponry and enormous quantities of ammunition were brought to Sri Lanka. And this happened in a post-9/11 world.” Rajapaksa was congratulating the American observers; it had been the U.S. that helped locate the Tigers’ ships.

“So there you are—I thought I heard someone squishing moodily about the moors.”

Later, the Sri Lankan terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna underscored much of what Gotabaya had said. “It is a dream that no civilians will be killed in a counter-insurgency campaign, and civilians died in Sri Lanka’s,” he said. “But I can assure you that no Sri Lankan soldier deliberately killed a civilian.” Gotabaya stood up in the audience and said, “From the very beginning, we had in mind the safety of the civilian population, and gave our campaign a humanitarian component along with the military one. One of the ways we did this was to call our campaign a ‘humanitarian mission.’ ”

Gotabaya didn’t address the allegations that festered in international circles, many of which focussed on him as the ultimate overseer of the war. The European Union had just announced that it was rescinding a trade-tariff agreement on textiles worth several hundred million dollars a year. And in the past few weeks his government had fought with the United Nations; after Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked to send an advisory commission to Colombo to discuss accountability issues, an ultra-nationalist government minister besieged the U.N. Mission in Colombo at the head of a mob of angry demonstrators. President Rajapaksa said the U.N.’s involvement was not needed: a “Lessons Learnt” commission, which he had appointed, would look into things instead.

A Western military observer told me that he believed that the abortive U.N. human-rights resolution had come at exactly the wrong time. “All that did was to box them in and give heart to the most extreme Sinhalese voices,” he said. “You have to keep in mind the Sinhalese national psyche. They do not say thank you, and they do not say sorry. That’s from the Defense Minister on down. He’s very nice, but if you box him in he’ll turn into a nasty little animal.”

Within Sri Lanka, even Sinhalese critics of the Rajapaksas have been savagely attacked, and challenges to the government’s explanation of the war have been brutally put down. The most prominent critic has been General Sarath Fonseka, Gotabaya’s handpicked subordinate and the commander of the final offensive against the Tigers. When Mahinda Rajapaksa called the snap Presidential election, after the war’s end, Fonseka announced his own candidacy. The campaign was ugly. Fonseka, who had been the face of Sri Lanka’s military victory, presented himself as the country’s true liberator. Rajapaksa accused him of plotting a coup and revealed bank accounts that hinted he was corrupt. Fonseka lost the election badly, but he emerged as the country’s main opposition leader.

In an interview two weeks after the election, Fonseka insinuated that Gotabaya was guilty of war crimes for ordering the execution of Tiger leaders who had surrendered. “I am definitely going to reveal what I know, what I was told, and what I heard,” he said. “Anyone who has committed war crimes should definitely be brought into the courts.” Within hours, Fonseka had been arrested. He was later charged with corruption and violating his military oath of office by plotting his political career while still in uniform. Gotabaya suggested that he could be tried for treason, and told a BBC reporter that he should hang if he was found guilty. With Fonseka in prison, his wife carried on a campaign in his name for a subsequent parliamentary election, which he won, even though his loyalists were harassed and, in some cases, abducted by plainclothes thugs.

In Colombo, a Sinhalese human-rights lawyer said, “The Fonseka case shows people that the Rajapaksas will go after anyone seen as a threat. They defeated the L.T.T.E. and have decimated their main political opposition, and now they are going after those who are critical of them.” The government has acted unsparingly against journalists, human-rights activists, civic leaders, and others. In the most notorious case, in January, 2009, the prominent newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge was attacked as he drove to work in Colombo’s city center; motorcycle-riding assailants forced his car to stop and fatally shot him in front of dozens of onlookers. At the time of his murder, his newspaper, the Sunday Leader , was being sued for defamation by Gotabaya Rajapaksa after it implicated him in alleged corruption.

A few days later, the newspaper ran an editorial titled “And Then They Came for Me,” which Wickrematunge had left behind in the event of his murder. In it, he excoriated Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom he described as an old friend who had become power-hungry and corrupt, for undermining Sri Lanka’s democracy through state terror. “Murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty,” he wrote. “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.” Addressing Rajapaksa, he predicted, “In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too.”

In an interview afterward with Time , President Rajapaksa was asked about Wickrematunge. “He was a good friend of mine. He had informed somebody to inform me” that he was in danger, he said. “But unfortunately, I didn’t get that message. I would have told him to go to the nearest police station. No one knows what happened.”

Gotabaya Rajapaksa received James Clad and me in a sitting room of his house, a British-era villa in a large garden compound in Colombo. The room was impersonally furnished with fifties-style blue settees and abstract geometric paintings, all government-issue. The Defense Minister was casually attired in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops. He coughed in a compulsive way, as if he had a nervous tic. It was a little before the dinner hour, so he called for an orderly to bring in the liquor trolley. He didn’t drink, he said, and didn’t know what he had in the house. He knew only that he had a bottle of “Fonseka.” Would we like a drink of that? He grinned. On the trolley was a bottle of Fonseca Bin No. 27, a brand of port. He laughed delightedly at his joke. He had a high-pitched giggle, which broke out at odd moments throughout the evening.

That was the day that Sri Lanka’s papers had carried the news that a military court had convicted Fonseka of involvement in politics while in service and stripped him of his rank and military honors. (He was later sentenced to thirty months in prison.) I suggested that the timing of Fonseka’s arrest—only hours after he had accused Gotabaya of war crimes—made it look like a personal vendetta. Gotabaya coughed and giggled and waved his hands dismissively. “No, no. He made those same accusations during the campaign, many times. I could have arrested him then if it was about that. In fact, I should have arrested him earlier.”

Gotabaya evinced a grudging admiration for Prabhakaran, for his “ruthless dedication to his cause,” but acknowledged that he had felt “very happy” when he was told of his death. As for Sri Lanka’s national reconciliation, Gotabaya said that he believed his brother’s proposals, to win the peace through economic development, showed the right way forward. The average Tamil, like the average Sinhalese, he said, just wanted to get on with his life. Referring to the Tamils’ long-standing wish for secession, he said, “All that business about separation is something only politicians care about.” When I asked about the suspicions that the government was attempting to change the demographics of the Tamil lands by swamping them with Sinhalese soldiers, he said, with a laugh, “We should do that, but it’s difficult.”

“The entrance to my cubicle is three feet away. Please respect my partition.”

Clad gently lobbied Gotabaya to renew the country’s relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the last days of the war, the I.C.R.C. had been restricted to removing wounded civilians from Mullaittivu by sea, and ever since it had been grounded at its headquarters in Colombo. In the final months of the war, the Army had repeatedly bombed the I.C.R.C.’s emergency hospital facilities, killing three employees and scores of patients. Gotabaya had blamed the Tigers. In a report prepared by the International Crisis Group, “War Crimes in Sri Lanka,” the hospital attacks feature strongly in the case against Gotabaya.

Gotabaya warily said that he was willing to have the Red Cross stay on if the organization would agree to a new understanding of its activities on the island. “We must forget the past and look to the future,” he said. Lowering his voice confidentially, he added, “The problem is the I.C.R.C.—some of their people had been here for a long time, and became friendly with the L.T.T.E.” He suggested that the Red Cross and other international relief agencies were long-time accomplices of the Tigers. In December, 2006, he had nearly been assassinated by a Black Tiger driving a rickshaw rigged with explosives; he pointed out that the bomber had been a Tamil employee of the relief organization CARE . He said, “So I say to the I.C.R.C., ‘Bring new people and let’s have a fresh start.’ ”

After dinner, Gotabaya led us outside. Across his lawn, by the garden’s high security wall, was a huge, illuminated outdoor aquarium. Inside, several large, unmistakable shapes moved relentlessly back and forth.

“Are those sharks?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you want to see them?”

We crossed the lawn and stood in front of the tank, which was eight feet tall and twenty feet wide. There were four sharks, each about four feet long, swimming among smaller fish.

I told Gotabaya that they looked like black-tipped reef sharks. He shrugged. “They’re my wife’s,” he said. She knew everything about them, he explained, but she was away on a visit to the States. All he knew was that the tank needed to be changed with fresh seawater every two weeks. “They bring it in special tanker trucks,” he said, watching the sharks. He giggled softly.

5. RECKONING

“Is it over?” I asked a Sinhalese politician in Colombo.

“The war is over, but the conflict is not,” he replied. “The problem goes beyond the existence of the L.T.T.E. The problem is that this country does not accommodate its minorities well.” Several of Sri Lanka’s governments had attempted to make political accommodations to the Tamils, he said, but Sinhalese nationalists had always vetoed them. “This is the perfect time to offer an accommodation to the moderate Tamils who have rejected violence.” But, he said, “I think Rajapaksa will not make conciliatory gestures, because he is himself an ardent Sinhala nationalist.” The politician explained that he needed to speak off the record, because, although he knew Rajapaksa personally, it would be “counterproductive” to voice his criticisms publicly.

By the second anniversary of the war’s end, the Army’s “welfare camps” had been largely emptied out. But many of the Tamils I encountered felt that the peace was perilously fragile. In an eastern town called Vakarai, a Tamil youth leader who went by the name Prabhakaran told me, “We only hope the international community can bring pressure to bear on the government, because a dignified and honorable solution is necessary for the Tamil people.” Without it, he said, “we cannot say that a second war will not come. It will bring great destruction if and when it happens.”

In Lasantha Wickrematunge’s posthumous editorial, published four months before the Tigers were crushed at Mullaittivu, he wrote, “There is no gainsaying that [the Tigers] must be eradicated.” But, he argued, a “military occupation of the country’s north and east will require the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens, deprived of all self-respect. Do not imagine you can placate them by showering ‘development’ and ‘reconstruction’ on them in the postwar era. The wounds of war will scar them forever, and you will have an even more bitter and hateful diaspora to contend with. A problem amenable to a political solution will thus become a festering wound that will yield strife for all eternity.”

The same might be written about any number of entrenched conflicts around the world. To solve these problems, General David Petraeus and others have placed great hope in a doctrine of counter-insurgency that tempers military action with nation-building and careful community work. But it should not be forgotten that the more effective counter-insurgencies, like Sri Lanka’s, are hideous in practice. They involve killing many people and terrorizing many more. In Afghanistan, Petraeus has told his field commanders to “drink lots of tea” with the locals. This effort had at best mixed results. At the same time, along the border with Pakistan, the C.I.A. has been successfully sponsoring the Counterterrorist Pursuit Team, a paramilitary group of three thousand Afghans. It was with the help of such proxies that Petraeus rolled back Iraq’s insurgency in 2007 and 2008. That effort involved a great deal of outright killing, both on and off the battlefield. In the end, it mostly worked.

We know that Sri Lanka’s conflict ended in a bloodbath, even though it occurred, as intended, out of sight. In the face of all the official denials and the diplomatic language about accountability, there is Wickrematunge’s grim prediction of his country’s future and his own. And there is the stubbornly ineradicable video of naked Tamils being kicked and shot and laughed at by their uniformed killers. ♦

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Tiger Essay for Students in English

Essay on the Tiger

There are plenty of wild animals in this world, and one of them is the Tiger. In Hindi, it is called Baagh. The tiger is a wild animal. Its scientific name is Panthera tigris. It belongs to the family “Felidae” and is the largest living species of cats. Its appearance is distinct with its outer body covered with orange-brown fur with black stripes running vertically on it. It is a carnivore and feeds on the flesh of animals it hunts. It is mostly found in the Indian subcontinent. In this essay on tiger, its behaviour, diet, hunting practices and other characteristics shall be discussed. Today it is an endangered animal, and that’s why students must learn about its habitat and other characteristics.

Learn about the wildest creature on the Vedantu to become familiar with its life and the nature around it.

Habitat and Physical Features

Tigers are mostly found in dense forests of Sunderbans in West Bengal, regions of Tripura and Assam as well as in certain places in central India. A tiger essay in English must contain some details about the majestic appearance of a tiger. A tiger has a large and strong body with brown fur and black vertical stripes. It has four legs, a large head, a long striped tail and a pair of glowing, ferocious eyes. Its feet are padded and it has sharp claws. It hunts and chews on its prey with its four sharp teeth.

The National Animal

Tiger is the national animal of India. Therefore, tigers are considered very sacred in India. Several folkloric tales contain stories about tigers. In Hindu mythology, tigers often act as vahana or mount for some Indian goddesses like Durga. Tigers are full of glorious might and unmatchable bravery. However, tigers are quite recluse creatures in their habitat, unlike lions. Although full of courage and power, tigers prefer to stay within their territories. The home of the tiger is called a “lair”. Therefore, most tigers live inside their lair and territory. However, any national animal tiger essay will remain incomplete without discussing the family of tigers.

Habit

The female tiger is called a “tigress” and the offspring is called a “cub”. Unlike lions, male tigers do not stay in their lairs to protect them from attack. Both tigers and tigresses practice hunting during the day and sleep at night. A tiger’s roar is extremely loud and powerful. It communicates with the other tigers through its roars. Tigers are very clever animals. Their hunting tactics include hiding behind thick bushes and suddenly attacking their prey. Tigers generally eat small animals like deer, bullocks, antelope, etc. Tigers are often called man-eaters, however, they only prey on humans when they’re harmed by humans or cannot find any other animal to prey on.

Although this tiger essay states details about the power of a tiger, this tiger information in an English essay would be invalid without mentioning the kindness and generosity tigers display. Tigers are considered very kind creatures. They tend to share their prey with tigers outside their territories. Oftentimes, a male tiger raises cubs on his own without the tigress’s help. Tigers raise orphaned cubs belonging to other tigers as well.

Tiger Hunting and the Need for Conservation

Therefore, tigers tend to be extremely kind towards other, unrelated tigers. However, humans have not been so kind to tigers. This tiger essay writing would be incomplete without stating how humans treat tigers for their valuable skin, nails and bones. Tigers are one of the most endangered animals in the world. They are hunted by humans for their valuable skin, nails and bones. Humans also capture tigers in zoos, away from wildlife, which makes the animal unhappy.

They must be allowed to live and mate in their natural habitat, which again should be conserved. Like lions, tigers are tertiary or third-level consumers in a forest ecosystem. They feed on primary (herbivores) and secondary consumers and help in energy transmission in the food chain. Therefore, from an ecological point of view, tigers must be conserved to maintain balance in the ecosystem.

And with that, the tiger essay in English comes to its conclusion. In this essay, the behaviour of tigers, their diet and their hunting practices have been discussed. From this tiger essay, it can be concluded that tigers are very important creatures of wildlife.

My Favourite Animal Tiger- Essay in English

Tiger is the national animal of India. It is a wild animal found in places of West Bengal, Assam, central India, etc. In my favourite animal tiger essay, some characteristics of the tiger are discussed.

A short paragraph on tiger: The tiger is considered a sacred animal in India. It is present in numerous Indian folklores and is associated with Indian goddesses such as the goddess Durga. The tiger is a symbol of power, bravery and might.

The tiger is a carnivore and it preys on animals such as deer, bullocks, antelopes, etc. the female tiger is called the “tigress” and the offspring is the “cub”. Tigers live in “lairs”. They communicate with each other through roars and are recluse animals. Tigers are very kind to one another. However, humans kill tigers for their skin and nails and capture them in zoos away from the wildlife which makes them unhappy.

Therefore, from this short essay on tigers, it can be concluded that tigers are very important in maintaining the balance of the environment. They are a symbol of power and rage. However, they are endangered and should be protected from human cruelties.

Content included in Tiger Essay by Vedantu

Vedantu has included all the necessary information about the tiger. Students will learn about the habitat of the tiger-like most of the tiger population found in the Sunderbans of West Bengal and the jungle of Assam. Also, students learn about the differences between tigers and lions. An essay talks about the intellectual tactics of the tiger during hunting and its kindness of sharing prey with other tigres. Vedantu experts have added numerous interesting facts about it in the essay.

They have even explained why tigers are the sacred animal in India, their territory, i.e. lair, and so many other different things.

Vedantu provides you with correct and intellectual information that helps you understand the core knowledge. Students can find the desired answers at the Vedantu from our different subject matter experts.

Students find it a little hard to write an essay, or else what happens sometimes they are not aware of the content or can not recall the points on unexpected topics. Vedantu has uploaded essays on the most famous and searched topics to make essay writing easy for the students. For example, an essay on the tiger has appeared across different platforms and in the exams.

FAQs on Tiger Essay for Students in English

1. What are the five types of tigers?

Tigers are the largest animals of the cat family, Felidae is the term we use for the cat family. Some of the subspecies of the tiger have become extinct due to the uncultured hobby of hunting. Today there are five subtypes of tiger species.

Amur tiger or Siberian tiger

Amur tigers are the largest among the five subspecies. You can find them in the Russian far east region or on the Russia China border.

Indo-Chinese tiger

Also known as the Corbett tiger. You can find them in the mountainous terrain of India, in the jungle of Thailand and Cambodia. The IUCN Red List has included these subspecies as endangered ones.

Sumatran tiger

Found in the only Sumatran island of Indonesia, it is listed as a critically endangered species.

The Royal Bengal tiger

Found in the jungle of Sunderbans of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.

South China tiger

Found in the central and eastern part of China. Only eighteen or nearly twenty south china tigers are living today.

2. Why should I choose Vedantu for an English essay on tigers?

Vedantu provides you with essays on different topics that you can find in the examination. These essays cover authentic information about the tigers and give a clear idea of their life and habitat. Also, you come to know various unpopular facts about the species, like their intelligence of hunting and sharing the killed animal with other tigers. Vedantu does give you the correct information but helps you understand it with the rhetoric explanation.

3. What is the meaning of the endangered tiger?

Today the population of tigers is decreasing swiftly, and to take it as a concern, the International Union Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has declared tigers an endangered species. It means this species is at the risk of becoming extinct in the future. The IUCN Red List is the most trusted source or guide to the conservation status of the species globally. All this information is available on Vedantu to give students updated knowledge about the tigers.

4. Which subspecies of tiger is the national animal of India?

The Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera Tiger) has become the national animal of India after the project tiger in 1973. It has a yellow coat of fur and black stripes on the body. The grace and the enormous power of the tiger have earned this pride. You can learn more about the tiger and its qualities in the essay provided by the Vedantu faculty. These essays are free for the students; you can read them on the website or install the Vedantu learning app on your device.

5. What type of food do tigers consume?

Tigers prey on other animals ranging from termites to elephant calves. Tigers mostly rely on their sights and intellectual hunting techniques to find prey in the jungle. Most of the time tigers only stay in their lair unless they are hungry. They stalk their prey hiding in the bushes and attempt to get as close to them as possible. Today, due to the continuous deforestation tigers are losing their habitat, and eventually, they come to the mainland where they prey on humans to satisfy their famish. Read more about the tigers in the essay provided by the Vedantu.

6. How long do Tigers live?

Adult tigers live for ten to fifteen years.

7. How many hours does a tiger sleep?

Tigers sleep for sixteen hours a day on average.

National Animal Tiger Essay

The national animal tiger essay is a writing competition in all schools. It bridges the gap between writing and reading comprehension. Essay on our national animal tiger is an article that gives information on tigers and their importance in maintaining the Earth’s ecosystems. The essay has many informative sections, such as tiger conservation and some interesting facts.

A tiger is quite territorial and will often cause issues if introduced into a new environment. They may also attack humans significantly if they are raised in captivity. The national animal tiger is also known by other names, such as the Bengal tiger and the Royal Bengal tiger.

Tigers are part of the Indian pride and are a national symbol. The tiger was chosen to be the national animal because it had been recorded that these animals were known to carry very high status. This has continued throughout history, and the tiger was exported to many other countries around the world during the British rule in India.

Tigers are the largest of all cats and are elusive creatures. It is known for its ability to leap, swim, and spring. It also has many other features like a long tail with black stripes and an orange coat. Tigers are also found in Nepal, where they have been considered sacred animals.

Tigers live in tropical forests and grasslands. They also live in some mountains and swamplands. Tigers are threatened by habitat loss, poaching and conflict with humans. Tigers live in different parts of Asia, primarily in India. Besides India, tigers are also seen in China, Thailand, Sumatra islands in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia.

About 3,900 tigers are living in the wild today. When tigers are young, they live with their mothers in a cave or another secluded area. Once they grow up, they spend most of their time hunting for food.

Importance of Tigers

Tigers are regarded as apex predators, and for a good reason, tiger hunting is at the top of the food chain. Not only do they have a strong sense of self-preservation and a potent physical presence, but they also take care of their young ones until they are old enough to fend for themselves.

Tigers are an essential part of the world’s ecosystems. If they disappear, it could destabilise the ecosystem, and the lives on the planet would not be able to sustain.

They are the most accurate commentators on nature, and they have an unparalleled understanding of it. Tigers live in an ecosystem where there is always some sort of competition.

Tigers are unique, giant cats; they are called ‘king of the jungle’ due to their size, predatory skills and power. Tigers are predators because they hunt and kill other animals for food. Deer, which live in herds, are common prey for tigers.

The Lifespan of a Tiger

Tigers are a part of nature and have a vital role in the ecosystem. They live for 8-10 years and are very adaptable, expressing themselves through more than 20 body patterns. Every habitat has its tiger population, which is vital because the tigers help to ensure that their species thrive.

Need for Conservation of Tiger

The need for the conservation of tigers is important since they play a major role in the ecosystems and help regulate their environment. Tigers are also important for tourism because they are one of the main attractions that draw people to regions that don’t have other attractions.

The population of the tiger has been declining due to poaching, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict. Despite conservation laws and programmes, the number of tigers continues to decline. Conservation efforts can help by reintroducing tigers into areas that have been previously fenced off or otherwise restricted for their protection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should we conserve the national animal tiger.

Tigers are elusive animals, and by spreading awareness of what is happening to the environment, we can save them to keep them around. Tigers are an endangered species, and they need our help in conserving them. If we don’t conserve them soon, they will be extinct.

Why should a Class 3 child be given BYJU’S national animal tiger essay?

A Class 3 child must be provided with BYJU’S national animal tiger essay because it bridges the gap between writing and reading comprehension. Moreover, kids understand that the tiger is the national animal of India, and it is an integral part of Indian cultural heritage. It is also the largest cat in the world. However, there have been significant threats to its existence, including poaching and loss of habitat due to deforestation.

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Tamil Tigers

By: Mike • Essay • 987 Words • November 11, 2009 • 1,511 Views

Essay title: Tamil Tigers

LTTE is probably the most violent and well organized terrorist organization in the world. The activists of LTTE are trying to take over a part of northern and eastern Sri Lanka because they consider it their вЂњownвЂќ state wanting to make it independent through a violent campaign of terrorist acts all around Sri Lanka. The biggest enemy of the Tamil Tigers, the other way to call them, is the government of Sri Lanka.

Dravidian people that were originally from the south of India are named Tamils after their own language, Tamilian. When India was still a British colony, British colonial authorities made all the Tamilian people move, they moved to a lot of countries among them, Sri Lanka, with one of the biggest population of Tamils. Tamils were people who worked on the tea plantations before they were moved, but they still continue that since it became something like a tradition that most of them have to be tea planters. These peoples main religion is Hinduism but they practice a lot of other religions, though their official is Hindu.

Difference among ethnicity, religion, language, and history, as well as some others, are probably the most spread topics for conflicts. In every conflict there has to be some background that might have lead to it. The problem occurred when the Tamils first moved from India, since they were all new to the country and to all the traditions those people had, they started to be treated in a different way, not the way they treated others. The government did not support them and they started to live in poverty, but even though a lot of time passed since then, nothing changed, many of Tamilians are still experiencing poor living conditions as well as working conditions. There are also some differences in religion and the language between the Tamils and the native Sri Lankan people. After the riots in Sri Lanka, which occurred because of the government changing the official language and because of the government refusing to give more power to the Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka since Tamils were the majority, thousands of Tamilian people were killed by the government forces and the others were forced to leave their homes and move to other areas when thousands of soldiers followed them to put down any resistance occurring, Tamilians became even more against the government and started developing their own force to resist.

Velupillai Prabhakaran, the creator of the LTTE, founded the organization in 1975, right away he gained many supporters, mostly the Tamil youth, and some of them even joined the organization later. Prabhakaran created many parts to his organization: the вЂњSea Tigers, вЂњ the вЂњAir Tigers, вЂњ the вЂњBlack Tigers, вЂњ and the political part of the group. Each one of these groups is responsible for doing their own jobs. The вЂњSea Tigers вЂњ are responsible of destroying any enemy considered ships, the вЂњAir Tigers вЂњ are responsible of destroying any enemy considered aircraft, they even have their own aircraft, the вЂњBlack Tigers вЂњ are probably the deadliest part of their organization, since they are responsible of attacking military, political, economic and even civil targets, and the political part of the organization is responsible of introducing the interests of the Tamilian people in the government. The вЂњBlack Tigers вЂњ are as well recognized as the suicide bombers.

The LTTE is a well trained organization, it also uses the newest technology to reach their goal. In order to get in to the organization you have to be trained for four months, which includes training how to handle weapons, how to use the aircraft and the ships, if needed, how to communicate, and how

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COMMENTS

புலி
புலி (பாந்தெரா டைக்ரிஸ்; Panthera tigris) என்பது பூனைக் குடும்பத்தில் ...
புலிகள் (Tiger) பற்றிய 11 வியப்பூட்டும் தகவல்கள்!
பூனை குடும்பம். புலி (Panthera tigris) என்பது பூனைக் குடும்பத்தை ...
புலியின் பயன்கள், சிறப்புகள்
உலகில் பரவலாக அறியப்படும் பெருவிலங்குகளில் புலியும் ஒன்று ...
புலிகளைப் பற்றி இதுவரை அறிந்திடாத 13 உண்மைகள்!
புலிகளைப் பற்றி இதுவரை அறிந்திடாத 13 உண்மைகள்! இந்தியா மற்றும் வங்க தேசத்தின் தேசிய விலங்காக இருக்கும் புலி 97 சதவீதம் அழிந்து ...
புலி 10 வரிக் கட்டுரை/புலி தமிழ் கட்டுரை/புலி கட்டுரை/Tiger essay
#This is an 10 lines essay about Tiger in Tamil.Please do subscribe and support 😊@featherslearning #புலிகட்டுரை# ...
சிங்கம்
சிங்கம் என்பது பாலூட்டி வகையைச் சேர்ந்த ஒரு காட்டு விலங்கு ஆகும். இவ்விலங்கு ஊன் உண்ணும் விலங்கு வகையைச் சேர்ந்தது.
புலி
புலி| தேசியவிலங்கு| 10 வரிகள்| தமிழ் கட்டுரை | Essay On Tiger In Tamil#abisguide puli katturai in ...
10 Lines Essay On Tiger In TAMIL
10 Lines Essay On Tiger🐯 In TAMIL | புலி 10 வரிக் கட்டுரை | புலி தமிழ் கட்டுரை | Tiger essay tamil#tiger #essay #10linesontiger ...
Tiger Essay for Students and Children in English
We have written over here two sample essays on tiger which includes a long essay of 500 words, short essay of 100-150 words and ten important points that highlight the subject matter of the essay. ... Tamil, Marathi and Gujarati. 10 lines Essay on Tiger in English. The tiger is India's national animal. The tiger is known for its might and ...
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers) (Sri Lanka
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, are a separatist group in Sri Lanka. Since the 1980s, the LTTE have been agitating for a homeland for ethnic Tamils ...
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; Tamil: தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், romanized: Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, Sinhala: දෙමළ ඊලාම් විමුක්ති කොටි සංවිධානය, romanized: Demaḷa īlām vimukti koṭi saṁvidhānaya; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization ...
Tamil Tigers
3366. Cite. View Full Essay. Tamil Tigers When the word terrorism or terrorist is spoken, the immediate image for most people is the likes of Al Qaida and the bombings of the London Subway or the 9/11 attacks on American soil. This is a very limited understanding of terrorist groups. In almost every nation, religion, and ethnic group, there are ...
ஒட்டகச் சிவிங்கி
ஒட்டகச் சிவிங்கி (ஒலிப்பு ⓘ) ஆபிரிக்காவில் காணப்படும் ...
Save Tiger Essay for Students and Children
500+ Words Essay on Save Tiger. Tigers have become a very important topic of interest and issue all over the world presently. India is the home of major wild tigers about 2/3 of the world population. Their reducing number has triggered the government authorities to awaken and take observe. While the government is already taking projects to ...
Death of the Tiger
A female soldier of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam walks through an L.T.T.E. cemetery in Kilinochchi, in September, 2007. Government soldiers later destroyed the cemetery.
Tiger Essay for Students in English
The tiger is a symbol of power, bravery and might. The tiger is a carnivore and it preys on animals such as deer, bullocks, antelopes, etc. the female tiger is called the "tigress" and the offspring is the "cub". Tigers live in "lairs". They communicate with each other through roars and are recluse animals.
10 lines on Tiger
10 lines on Tiger | Kids Essays Writing on Tiger | About Tiger Tamil #10linesontiger #tigertamil
National Animal Tiger Essay
The national animal tiger essay is a writing competition in all schools. It bridges the gap between writing and reading comprehension. Essay on our national animal tiger is an article that gives information on tigers and their importance in maintaining the Earth's ecosystems. The essay has many informative sections, such as tiger conservation and some interesting facts.
Tamil Tigers
Essay title: Tamil Tigers LTTE is probably the most violent and well organized terrorist organization in the world. The activists of LTTE are trying to take over a part of northern and eastern Sri Lanka because they consider it their вЂњownвЂќ state wanting to make it independent through a violent campaign of terrorist acts all around Sri ...
Tiger Essay In Tamil
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Tiger Essay In Tamil
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Our National Animal Tiger Essay In Tamil
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