[sacw] SACW Dispatch #1(24 August 1999)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1
24 August 1999
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Contents:
[1.] Neighbours worry as Pakistan, India fight
[2.] Faces of patriotism [in Pakistan]
[3.] A book to reform the books [in India]
[4.] Sri Lanka Peacemaker's High-Risk Life, and Death
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[1.]

DAWN - the Internet Edition
24 August 1999 Tuesday
Features

Neighbours worry as Pakistan, India fight

By Kanak Mani Dixit

KATHMANDU: For an undeclared war, the just-ended armed conflict in Kashmir
between India and Pakistan was very costly.

Many combatants were killed - just over 1,000 according to official
figures, but probably
numbering many more. An estimated 200,000 Kashmiri civilians were
displaced. Bombs worth millions of rupees were lobbed on the craggy
Himalayan ridges
every day.

Exactly how much the month-long conflict cost in hard cash is as yet
unknown. But a much longer term casualty of the conflagration is the
serious loss of momentum in the building of India-Pakistan ties, and the
ensuing setback to South Asian cooperation in trade, transport, cultural
exchanges and economic development.

South Asia's smaller countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka,
watched nervously as the two regional heavyweights thrashed about in remote
Kargil.

For the first time, the direction of prevailing winds literally became a
factor in the day-to-day
geopolitics of a newly-nuclearized subcontinent. In Nepal, one could
breathe a sigh of relief after the arrival of the monsoon, for this meant
that the prevailing winds from the presumed targets of any nuclear attack
would start blowing the other way.

But even that is temporary relief at best. More pressingly, when the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meets for its summit in
late November in Kathmandu, the first order of business, even though the
organization's charter does not allow 'bilateral issues' to be brought up,
may well be to get India and Pakistan off each others' throats so that the
region can start cooperating meaningfully.

"We need to build momentum in the other direction from the brinkmanship of
Kargil," said an official at the SAARC Secretariat, which is based in
Kathmandu.

Already, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh has exhorted
India and Pakistan to solve their problems through discussion instead of
conflict. "Though this is a bilateral issue, we are concerned about it,"
she told an audience of strategic thinkers at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs recently during a visit to London.

"Because of the regional interests peace should be maintained here. The
money being used for the war can be used for the development of the people
of the region," she added, saying SAARC has emerged as an "engine of
development for South Asia."

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga took time out from a visit to
Kathmandu to tell
reporters she did not think India-Pakistan rivalry would derail the SAARC
summit.

"India and Pakistan participated (in the last summit) very nicely," she
said, adding: "Despite
recent escalation in Kashmir, both India and Pakistan are wise enough to
respect the Line of
Control (running through Kashmir) which they decided after much discussion
between the two
neighbours."

Only days earlier, Nepali foreign minister Ram Sharan Mahat told
Parliament that any tension
between India and Pakistan "will have ramifications in the subcontinent.
We want both
our friendly neighbours India and Pakistan to respect the Line of Control
and arrive at a
peaceful solution to the present crisis."

The media were more forthright.

An editorial in the Daily Star newspaper of Bangladesh welcomed the
cessation of hostilities
but wagged a finger: "Responsible behaviour from the two nuclear powers in
South Asia is imperative for the maintenance of regional peace and harmony."

In Sri Lanka, the Island newspaper, in a heroic attempt to provide its
readers with all sides of
the picture, took an unusually creative step. It published - on a single
day - editorials from
three of the subcontinent's leading newspapers: the Dawn of Pakistan and
the Hindustan Times and Hindu of India.

And in its own editorial, the Island said, tongue in cheek, "All three
papers very lucidly present
their points on the issue, each backing their country's stand, as all
newspapers do in moments
of national crisis, although the Sri Lankan media have been found at fault
for doing precisely that by our big brothers both in the Orient and the
Occident."

But within India and Pakistan, the flashflood of patriotism appeared to
blind the print and
electronic media.

Passions in India were whipped up when body-bags began coming home.
Satellite stations beaming from New Delhi lost an opportunity to emerge as
regional channels by becoming cloyingly 'Indian.'

A poll in India Today magazine (in an issue with a bold red cover
strapline that read: 'The Face of the Enemy') showed that 60 per cent of
Indians wanted an "all out war" with Pakistan. The poll questionnaire
conveniently forgot to ask whether this also meant nuclear weapons being
used.

Even now, there is little discussion on how to prevent South Asia from
careening to the brink
again.

When the dust of gloating and self-righteousness settles, for the sake of
all South Asia, India and Pakistan must both start at the
beginning.-Dawn/Gemini News Service (c) News-Scan
International.
--------------------------------
[2.]
The News International Pakistan
Tuesday, August 24, 1999
Opinion

Faces of patriotism

by Imtiaz Alam

Pakistani patriotism as the basis of our national conduct is a rare
premise, except for a glimpse on the 14th of August or an occasional act of
self-sacrifice in defense of the motherland. Memories of national
self-determination and liberation fall short of defining the parameters
that can determine the essentials of existence as a nation-state. Whereas
the "ideology of Pakistan", as we know it, justifies the notions of our
existence as a people, it negates the affirmative basis of survival as a
nation-state.

Thanks to a prolonged ideological struggle that has actually been won by
the religious right, for the time being and in a narrow sense, Pakistan is
now being overwhelmingly defined as an instrument of radical Islam and
regardless of the imperatives of a nation-state. In fact, Pakistani
"nationalism" has become subservient to the rising tide of radical
pan-Islamism that knows no geographical boundaries. On the other hand, the
ethno-lingual communities that physically constitute an uneasy federation
find themselves politically displaced in an alien ideological contest.

Moreover, certain "geopolitical national security interests", including
Kashmir, provide avenues of convergence between the strategic objectives of
guardians of geographical boundaries and the ideological considerations of
the radical religious forces. While the systemic failures lend a helping
hand to the divine right of the clerics to define our destiny, the people
become much more alienated in a stultifying existence in a failed republic.

The "two-nation" theory had no doubt a "communal" element in unifying the
Muslim minority against the rule of a majority not ready to accommodate
their concerns behind a self-serving "secular" facade. However, for all
practical purposes, it played a functional role for the creation of a state
in Muslim majority regions of the Indus Valley. After the purpose was
served, the Founder of the Nation in his first address to the Constituent
Assembly, three days
before the creation of the republic, spelled the non-communal basis for
governing Pakistan. That should have brought an end to the "two-nation"
theory, after the objective had been achieved. But that was not to be so.

Despite the "resolution" of communal dispute by the partition of the
subcontinent, the issues of the rights of the minorities have remained
unresolved. They have become much more intractable in all the three
countries of the subcontinent under a majoritarian regime. The secular
constitution of India continues to serve the interests of the Hindu
majority at the cost of the minorities-both Muslims and Christians. Despite
a 97 per cent majority of the Muslims in Pakistan, both the Constitution
and the state have continued to discriminate against hapless minorities and
this fascist marginalization is now being increasingly extended from the
Ahmadis to the Shias. In Bangladesh, the plight of Hindus is even worse
under a Muslim-Bengali nation-state.

In Pakistan, the "two nation" theory got its second birth in the form of
"ideology of Pakistan" as the Mohajir and Punjabi leadership of the Muslim
League got isolated in the provinces. Instead of taking a democratic and
participatory federalist route, the isolated political leadership and an
autocratic establishment based on Punjabi-Mohajir axis adopted an
authoritarian course of internal-colonization and segregation behind the
facade of "ideology of Pakistan". Be it the Objectives Resolution, separate
electorate, "principle" of parity, one-unit, dissolution of elected
governments, suspension of the right to franchise or the successive martial
laws, all of them came to negate the very democratic basis of Pakistan.

The nation-state building in a post-colonial state, characterized by
marginalization of the people, exclusion of periphery and discrimination
against religious minorities, took place behind the facade of "ideology of
Pakistan" and on the pretext of a "strong Pakistan". If perceptions of a
persistent "Indian threat" and the "liberation of Kashmir" were used to
define the national security paradigm, the minorities and the ethnic
nationalities, except the dominating Punjabis (and Mohajirs until the
mid-80s), were dubbed as "enemy's agent" to reinforce an authoritarian
state.

Although the "ideology of Pakistan", continued to find different variants
under successive rulers to suit their designs, it served the same
Punjabi-Mohajir axis. However, during the peak of and after the Cold War,
it took a decisive shift towards a pan-Islamist mission as Pakistan
became a front-line state for a holy war against the "evil empire" at the
behest of the free world.

The Afghan jihad worked as a catalyst in ideological transformation of
both the state and society. While fighting on the side of the Afghan
mujahideen, the security structures of the state passed through an
ideological conversion to the creed of holy war which is now being
reinforced by the jihad in Kashmir. The latest Kargil epic testifies how
effectively the passion and ideology of jihad has thrown every other more
binding national consideration out of the window.

The four-corners of state are reluctant in distinguishing Pakistan's own
interests from the pretensions of ideology. They are, rather, perceived and
formulated from the standpoint of a state engaged in jihad in various parts
of the world. Pakistan's "ideological mission", by virtue of its birth as
an "ideological state", is supposed to determine everything else--be it
economy, polity, centre-province relations, foreign affairs, etc. On the
political front, no party dares to formulate Pakistan's hard and fast
benchmarks that are essentially in conflict with the designs of a "warrior
state". This is the religious right that now decides the use of this
country in
pursuing its "sacred agenda" that is diametrically opposed to the
self-interest of Pakistan and the people that historically inhabit it.

A case for Pakistani patriotism questions all that that can erode the very
existence of Pakistan--be it an unsustainable national security paradigm, a
dozen or so holy wars, Talibanization, "jihad" in Kashmir, the nuclear arms
race, an isolationist foreign policy, the debt-trap, bad governance,
authoritarian rule, maginalization of the smaller provinces, misplaced
priorities, private militias and erosion of institutions. If Pakistan has
to retreat from the brink, it will have to clearly redefine what are its
own enlightened self-interests.

Faced with its all-sided crises of survival, the state should respond to
its aggregate physical and economic limitations and draw a bottom line. So
far, it has functioned in contrast to the imperatives of a peripheral
economy and the actual requirements of the people of four federating units.
While living on borrowed times and stretching too much beyond its means,
the state is left with no choice but bid farewell to everything that gives
it a bad name of a "rogue state" or make it vulnerable from both within and
without. Narrow self-interests of the institutions, expediencies of the
politicians and ideological deceptions will not help take a break with the
past that undermines the essentials of a modern nation-state existence.

A beginning can be made by initiating a national debate on Pakistani
patriotism as opposed to radical pan-Islamism. Given the sum-total of
Pakistan's objective needs and limitations, the following will have to be
redefined: What are the demands of its failed economy? What are the limits
of a sustainable security? What is most needed by the people? What are the
priorities of and what kind of development? What ought to be the relations
between the state and the citizen, provinces and the federation, parliament
and executive and the judiciary? What should be the relations with South
Asia and the world? What is the grand scheme of a sustainable, prosperous
and safe Pakistan? What is meant by Pakistan-hood as a civilized people?

And what has to be a new social contract that embodies the aspirations of
the people of federating units and best possible of a modern Pakistani
patriotism? Shouldn't we revisit Jinnah, a liberal par excellence, and
reject the clerical version being at odds with the genesis of Pakistan?
Yes, we must before it is too late!
---------------------------------------
[3.] The Hindustan Times
| Sunday, August 22, 1999, New Delhi
Opinion

A book to reform the books

The lack of debate amongst feminists on the issue of law and gender justice
has prompted Amita Dhanda and Archana Parashar to bring out a book of
essays, Engendering Law (Eastern Book Company, 1999) in honour of Prof.
Lotika Sarkar: a great teacher and crusader for gender justice and legal
rights.

The essays in Engendering Law analyse gender aspects of specific
legislations and judgements. For instance, in the context of the Consumer
Protection Act, 1986, it has been argued that the Act, though not gender
specific, recognises the special place that women have in relation to the
redressal of consumer disputes.

Since very often women are affected parties in cases of medical negligence,
it has been aptly suggested that concepts like informed consent must be
interpreted in the specific social context of complainants. It is a fact
that, apart from financial constraints, social factors prevent women from
obtaining adequate services of medical professionals. Thus, the consumer
protection law should rely on the principles of unfair trade practice
instead of those of negligence.

Likewise, there is a need for gender sensitisation of criminal law
provisions. Patriarchal notions have not been abandoned despite provisions
relating to rape, marital rape, dowry, etc, having been changed in response
to women's movements. The existing criminal law needs to be reviewed, but
the National Commission for Women's proposal for a separate criminal law is
not the solution. No doubt gender sensitive laws are required. But the
entire legal system needs to be gender sensitive rather than segregating
women into special areas, it is argued. The Supreme Court has tried to
mainstream the issues of women's rights as human rights. Thus, rape is
classified as a violation of the right to life contained in Article 21.
Similarly, sexual harassment is treated as a violation of the right to
carry on an occupation. It is, however, a matter of regret that the Supreme
Court has so far failed to uphold the right of women to gender justice in
the realm of religion for instance, they are barred from entering certain
temples.

A discussion on the consequences of child marriage illustrates the
contradictory pulls on law reformers. If they choose to declare such
marriage void, they are guilty of ignoring the social reality and the
stigma the child-bride suffers from. What's the real cost of child marriage
and who should pay for it? If women are not to be doubly disadvantaged,
these questions need to be answered.

The tension between the ambit of a secular personal law and religious
personal laws remains unresolved even today. But the concept of the Uniform
Civil Code, enshrined in the Constitution as a directive principle, has two
dimensions: uniformity of law between communities; and uniformity of law
between men and women within each of these communities. What is required,
the book argues, is a gender just code, and consequently it is imperative
to reform the family laws of various communities.

Economic dependence of women is a prominent characteristic of their
subordination. Therefore, changes in the structure of the economy which
offer women a greater role in productive functions could be a major way of
improving their status. The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 and the Maternity
Benefit Act, 1961 aimed at providing substantive equality to women workers,
but a closer examination shows that these legislations have failed to
achieve their avowed goals. The draconian provisions of the Immoral Traffic
Prevention Act, 1956, which the book analyses, demonstrate that these are
consistently used to the detriment of women prostitutes. Another essay
outlines how 'psychologising', or the construction of reality in
subjective terms alone could become the basis for deprivation of women who
depart from role stereotypes. Denial of civil status to persons with mental
illness requires a judicial determination of unsoundness of mind, instead
of accepting the husband's or doctor's versions.

These essays also analyse legal institutions of courts, lawyers and
education. Indeed, Engendering Law should set us on the road to equality.
--------------------------------
[4.]
New York Times
August 24, 1999

Sri Lanka Peacemaker's High-Risk Life, and Death

By CELIA W. DUGGER

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- In a country where there is no vocation more
perilous, indeed more radical, than being a voice for peace, Neelan
Tiruchelvam had worked to bring an end to the savage ethnic conflict that
has tormented this lush island nation. His friends and family had watched
in dread as other leaders of his moderate ethnic Tamil political party were
gunned down or blown up by guerrillas fighting for a separate homeland for
Sri Lanka's Hindu Tamil minority.

A suicide bomber assassinated Tiruchelvam in Colombo in July.

When some of them pleaded with Tiruchelvam, a member of Parliament who
helped draft the Government's peace plan, to get out of Sri Lanka with his
life, he told them: "I can't run away. My duty is here."

So on a hot, sunny morning last month, he went to work as usual, with armed
men in a jeep behind him and on a motorcycle in front. And as usual, he got
stuck at a busy intersection just a couple of blocks from his whitewashed
bungalow.

As he turned the corner, a stranger walked up to his car, pressed his
belly against the window and detonated a bomb strapped to his waist.

Tiruchelvam's shattered body exploded out the other side of his car, and
hung limply out the window like a rag doll. The suicide bomber's severed
head flew over the vehicle and landed on the curb.

The attack, brazenly carried out just a stone's throw from the Prime
Minister's residence, has provided yet more evidence of the brutal
effectiveness of the terror tactics used by separatist rebels in silencing
fellow Tamils who favor political compromise over armed struggle.

More than any other Tamil leader, it seemed that the Harvard-educated
Tiruchelvam (pronounced teer-oo-CHELL-vum), 55, had the intellectual
stature, the gentle temperament and the high-level contacts to coax from
the majority Sinhalese rulers constitutional changes to redress the
grievances of the Tamil people.

His death has been a blow to the search for a peaceful end to Sri
Lanka's 16-year-old civil war, which has left 60,000 dead in a country
whose population -- 18 million -- is about the size of New York State's.

Sri Lanka's Justice Minister, G. L. Peiris, a Sinhalese lawyer, said his
dead colleague was a bridge between the Tamils and the Sinhalese -- a
bridge that the guerrillas wanted to blow up. "We are now without a
consensus builder," Peiris said.

The package of constitutional reforms that Tiruchelvam and Peiris crafted
to give Tamils more power is still stuck in the poisonous partisan deadlock
between the country's two main political parties, both dominated by the
Buddhist Sinhalese majority. That deadlock is unlikely to be broken before
national elections next year, political experts say.

While the rebels, who call themselves the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam, have neither denied nor claimed responsibility for Tiruchelvam's
slaying, they have been blamed for it by officials and political experts.
They note that the group had demonized Tiruchelvam in their propaganda
and that the method of killing -- by a suicide bomber -- is a Tiger
signature.

At the end of his life, Tiruchelvam, a constitutional scholar, was
discouraged by the lack of progress
in getting the peace package through Parliament. But his wife and
colleagues say he never lost hope that a resolution to Sri Lanka's
fratricidal war lay in ideas of federalism, individual liberty and
tolerance.

"He still felt that it was in his grasp to bring about this historic
settlement," said Gowher Rizvi, a
friend and former professor at Oxford University who now heads the Ford
Foundation's South Asia office. "He would say, 'We're almost there. Our
work is almost done.' "

For Tamil moderates like Tiruchelvam, 1994 was a year of great hope. They
believed that the majority Sinhalese might agree to a just settlement of
Tamil grievances and that the guerrillas might accept a
peace deal to end the fighting in the country, off India's southern tip.

That year, Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of the powerful political family
most associated with the
rise of Sinhalese nationalism, had won a landslide victory on an
unprecedented peace platform.

Her victory came with support from Tamils after she promised to open
peace talks with the separatist Tiger militants. Many Tamils believed that
her Government would deliver a plan to give them a measure of political
autonomy in the north and east of the country, where Tamils are in a
majority.

The clash between Tamils and Sinhalese -- over language, religion,
university admissions and government patronage, among other things -- had
festered since the country gained its independence from the British in
1948.

The Tamils, who make up slightly less than a fifth of the population and
who had a privileged position under the colonial rulers, felt discriminated
against after the Sinhalese, who are about three-quarters of the
population, took the reins of governance.

For Tiruchelvam, Mrs. Kumaratunga's election seemed to be a moment he had
been preparing for
his whole life. He was an upper-caste Hindu born into a politically
engaged Tamil family that was part of Colombo's English-speaking elite.

After he earned his doctorate at Harvard Law School in 1972 as a Fulbright
scholar, Tiruchelvam came home and spent his career searching for ways to
end Sri Lanka's ethnic strife. He helped organize
the International Center for Ethnic Studies, a research group here, and
became an expert on how countries had accommodated ethnically diverse
societies constitutionally.

He and his wife, Sithie, also a lawyer, built an influential, multi-ethnic
circle of friends. She described him as "a small-made man," just 5 foot 3
and a half inches tall, whose shy, quiet ways complimented her own teasing
gregariousness.

Roberto Unger, a professor at Harvard Law School who had been close to
Tiruchelvam since their student days at Harvard, said, "He was
completely devoted to reconciliation on the basis of this intuition he had
that we have to forgive one another before we can talk to each other."

During her long years in the political wilderness, the new Sinhalese
President, Mrs. Kumaratunga, had joined the Tiruchelvams around the dinner
table in their home.

"In political discussions with Neelan, she always felt that the Tamils had
gotten a raw deal that had to be corrected," Mrs. Tiruchelvam said. "He
believed she had the courage of her convictions and that she would carry
out her promises."

So in 1994, when Mrs. Kumaratunga became President with a huge mandate for
peace and Tiruchelvam was elected to Parliament, he began working with her
Government to draft a package of constitutional reforms that were to turn
Sri Lanka from a centralized state into an "indissoluble union of regions."

As that work progressed, however, negotiations with the guerrillas fell
apart in 1995. The Government, in turn, stepped up its military campaign
against the Tigers.

Ominously, by late 1995, the authorities had learned that the Tigers
planned to stake out Tiruchelvam's home. The Government began providing
him with round-the-clock security. He never again left his walled enclave
without bodyguards.

The peace plan stalled. It needed a two-thirds majority in the 225-member
Parliament to pass, but opposition from the other major Sinhalese party,
the United National Party, left the governing People's Alliance coalition
some 17 votes short.

Then in 1997 and 1998, the Tigers, who had already killed a dynamic leader
of Tiruchelvam's party over tea and biscuits in 1989, began killing more
of the party's most promising talent, officials say. Vellupillai
Prabhakaran, the underground leader of the Tigers, had built a
battle-hardened corps of 4,000 to 8,000 followers, as well an elite cadre
of suicide bombers, celebrated as martyrs to Tamil Eelam, the separate
country they were fighting for.

First, they gunned down a member of Parliament at a ribbon cutting. Then
they killed the newly elected Mayor of the northern city of Jaffna, herself
the widow of an assassinated partyman, and a few months later killed her
replacement, too.

Tiruchelvam's elder son, Nirgunan, 26, an investment banker in Singapore,
became almost obsessed with his father's security. He begged his father to
stay inside their house, or to wear a bullet proof vest and travel in a
bomb-proof car.

The son tracked down an aging bomb-proof Jaguar that had carried the Queen
of England when she visited Sri Lanka in the early 1980's. But when his
father used the car, it broke down. The one garage that could fix it always
seemed to be busy.

The signs that Tiruchelvam was a target mounted. D. B. S. Jeyaraj, a Sri
Lankan journalist living in Canada, kept up with the Tigers' propaganda
and saw that their verbal attacks on Tiruchelvam
as a traitor to the separatist cause were becoming more venomous.

He cautioned Tiruchelvam, who replied that there was little he could do
to stop the Tigers if they
were determined to get him, especially in Colombo, where he was often
immobilized in traffic jams.

Carol Grodzins, a longtime family friend who was an administrator at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, decided to find a way to
get the Tiruchelvam's to safety, if only for a few months.

She phoned Tiruchelvam's admirers at the Rockefeller Foundation and
Harvard Law School. Soon,
he had offers from both places and accepted them.

For a month this summer, the Tiruchelvams went to the Rockefeller
Foundation's study center in Bellagio, Italy. Mrs. Grodzins had expected
them to go directly from Italy to Cambridge, Mass., where Tiruchelvam was
to be a visiting professor at Harvard Law School for the fall semester.

Instead, the couple returned to Colombo on July 19. There was widespread
speculation that Mrs. Kumaratunga's Government planned finally to introduce
the peace plan in Parliament this August.

The day they got back, the Government warned Tiruchelvam of a new
assassination threat from the Tigers, but did nothing to increase his
security. He considered asking the Government for more protection, but
decided against it.

"Neelan did not want to be under obligation," his wife said. "He did not
want to ask for something that was not given."

Despite the strain, he carried on with his work. On the morning of July
29, he and his wife had breakfast together as usual.

He had a long telephone chat with his journalist friend in Canada,
Jeyaraj. Tiruchelvam spoke of the Tigers' latest threats, and said he was
convinced that they were out to extinguish his party, the Tamil United
Liberation Front. But he needed just a little more time in Parliament to
see the constitutional reforms through, he said. Then he would relinquish
his seat.

Half an hour later, he got in his car to go to work. At 9:18 A.M. the
suicide bomber's blast rocked the neighborhood.

In the weeks since, Tiruchelvam's fellow Tamil moderates have become even
more fearful. Party
workers recently filled rusty tar barrels with sand and lined them up at
the entrance to the party's shabby headquarters in Colombo to block any
bomb-laden car.

One recent afternoon, Tiruchelvam's sons sat with their mother in their
father's darkened, book-lined

study and spoke of what the national tragedy has cost them.

After anti-Tamil riots swept Colombo in 1983 and Sinhalese mobs killed
hundreds of Tamils, there was an exodus of Tamils from the country. Even
then, when virtually every Tamil moderate who had been in Parliament moved
to India, Tiruchelvam refused to leave.

But he and his wife decided to send their sons, then 8 and 10, to boarding
school in India to protect them. Mithran, now a 24-year-old law student at
Cambridge University, still seems
wounded by the experience of growing up so far from his parents.

"It was very hard for the younger one," Mrs. Tiruchelvam said, as her sons
listened. "He felt unwanted because he wasn't allowed to come home."

The sons admire their father's commitment and sacrifice, but agree on this:
The family tradition in Sri
Lankan politics ends with them. They want no part of it.

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