The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan army should be cause for almost universal celebration — whatever its manner. The foreign governments that had banned the Tigers as terrorists and from whose Tamil minorities some of the Tigers’ funds had been extorted are glad to see them beaten. So too are Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority, after a 26-year civil war. But Sri Lankan Tamils should also rejoice. They had borne the brunt of the Tigers’ ruthless silencing of dissenting voices, of their pressganging of children and of the bloody consequences of their refusal to countenance any achievable political settlement. Yet the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is making even moderate Tamils at home and overseas feel its victory as their defeat.

In the third of his big set-piece victory speeches early this month, Mr Rajapaksa asserted that the war had been fought to liberate the Tamil people. Unaccountably, he made no reference to the sufferings of Sri Lankan Tamils even though nearly 300,000 of them have been displaced from their homes and are now miserably interned in camps. The president also harked back to ancient Sinhalese martial heroes. Marking victory with plans to build stupas all over the mainly Buddhist country, and relishing songs, posters and newspaper articles hailing him as a “king”, Mr Rajapaksa seems to be cultivating the image of an elected monarch. In particular, he likes to recall Dutugemunu, a famous warrior-king of the second century BC, who defeated Elara, a Tamil usurper from India.

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