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Appendix I

AN IMPRESSIONISTIC VIEW OF THE SITUATION IN EARLY 1990

I.1             January 1990: A Time of Ironies

By the end of December 1989, the I.P.K.F. had withdrawn from all parts of the North-East, excluding Jaffna and Trincomalee. A complete withdrawal, which is being insisted upon by the Sri Lankan government, remains a painful dilemma for India. Such an event will no doubt raise difficult questions in India, when it comes to counting the cost against what has been achieved. The Tamil civilian population, both tired and having lost all capacity for self-assertion, awaits events very much as before. It accepted the Tiger's dominance in 1986 in the hope that, with one party in control, life may be more orderly. When the Sri Lankan army launched its Operation Liberation in May 1987 and was poised to enter Jaffna, the people wished that the Tigers would go away instead of putting up a resistance that would be costly, bloody and futile. They had welcomed the Indian army with great relief, after the Indians had stopped the Sri Lankan army from taking Jaffna.When India got into a conflict with the Tigers shortly afterwards, they fervently wished that the Tigers would quickly make peace with India, lest the old adversary, the Sri Lankan state, gain the advantage. Once talks between the L.T.T.E. and India appeared to have finally broken down by October 1988, and India decided to back the E.P.R.L.F. for the provincial leadership, many felt that the Tigers had miscalculated and that some order would yet emerge.

        In areas recently vacated by the I.P.K.F., people had watched the assertion of authority by the Tigers and the Sri Lankan forces with mixed feelings. Just as in the aftermath of the Indo-Lanka Accord, during August and September 1987, there is now relief that irritations stemming from military conflict were, temporarily at least, in abeyance. In suburban Jaffna where the air is full of talk of revenge killings by pro-Indian groups, a grim reality today, many are awaiting the I.P.K.F.'s departure just as they had wished for the Tigers' departure in the wake of the incipient Sri Lankan offensive in June 1987. Killings by Tigers elsewhere are much less talked about.

        Surprisingly little interest is shown in corpses, evidently of Tamils, being washed ashore in Vadamaratchi. A number of such corpses were burnt during the second half  of January. Of eight corpses washed ashore between Polikandy and Point Pedro  on 26 January, one was that of a child  of two. Some were of women. Witnesses said that injuries pointed to their  having been subject to cannon fire. People generally believed that the Sri Lankan navy had played a role in these killings. When the matter was raised by India, the Sri Lankan authorities denied any involvement.

        In contrast to the massacre by the Sri Lankan navy of passengers in the boat Kumudini, in 1985, and that of fisherman off Mandaitivu,in 1986 - both of which rightly had the citizens' committees and church and community leaders voicing strong protest - this time there was dead silence. The general talk is that the present victims were supporters of the E.P.R.L.F. and others with family ties to them,  who now are fleeing to India in fear of reprisals. This silence raises questions of whether the Tamils consciousness  and identity, forged under the experience of common oppression, was still in existence. This is also a pointer to the ease with which differences among Tamils could  be used.

        This has been a time where the symbolism of events had been very different from the underlying reality. For the Tamil people, it had been a time of mind boggling revision of association of sentiments and events. Following the provincial council elections in October 1988, there was evidently an elected government of the Tamil North-East, led by a Tamil group (the E.P.R.L.F.), the Tigers having refused participation. There was the promise of more powers being yielded to this government under Indian pressure. But enthusiasm for this fulfilment of more than what the Tamils had once hoped for, was evidently lacking.

        A  Tamil National Army (T.N.A.) too had come into being through Indian sponsored forced conscription, with the stated purpose of protecting the Tamils. But its decimation by a concert of the L.T.T.E. and the Sri Lankan forces was watched with indifference. The fate of innocent conscripts from the poorer classes elicited little or no public concern. Many of these conscripts who had little training or motivation, were killed in large numbers, some after capture. Some were killed by their own side as they tried to surrender. The more fortunate were ceremonially handed over to their parents by the L.T.T.E.. Ironically, the areas which passed back to the nominal control of the once odious Sri Lankan army, were even spoken of as 'cleared'. The E.P.R.L.F. which had once annoyed Tamil nationalist circles by standing for a united socialist Lanka, was now threatening the Sri Lankan government with U.D.I. (Unilateral Declaration of Independence). On the other hand the L.T.T.E. which had for years refused to negotiate with the Sri Lankan state on the grounds that the terms on offer did not satisfy their demand for a separate state of Tamil Eelam, had now reached a tactical understanding with the Sri Lankan state that even involved operational links.

        As for the Indian soldiers in Ceylon, their feelings evinced a mixture of bitterness, puzzlement and anger. They felt that they had come to help the Tamils and had lost over a thousand dead. The "treacherous politics" of the Tamils, they felt, had turned their benevolence into humiliation and waste. They had little understanding of the role of their state and  army, and the enormous civilian suffering that had contributed to this state of affairs.

        Veteran Tamil Nationalist leaders A. Amirthalingam and V. Yogeswaran were assassinated in Colombo on 13 July, 1989. Their politics had articulated the feelings of the rising generation of educated Tamils of the 1950s who were facing the first stirrings of discrimination. To write about their lives and their significance is, by itself, a task for a  professional biographer. It suffices to say here that their strengths, their weaknesses and even their capitulations were not dissimilar to those of the younger generation of militant leaders in whom they aroused feelings of hatred, as well as a sense of betrayal. Besides feelings of grief and nostalgia among members of the public, they also leave behind anger.

        For reasons well understood in Colombo, the affiliations of their killers remained for months, officially at least, a mystery. By early 1990, however, the press in Colombo started treating people to conflicting reports in keeping with the general spirit of the times. The Colombo based Tamil daily, the Virakesari, carried reports according to which, at public meetings in the North and the East, L.T.T.E. spokesmen gave reasons why they killed Amirthalingam. The English language press on the other hand, carried reports quoting senior  L.T.T.E. spokesmen in Colombo denying the L.T.T.E.'s having a hand in the killings. Interestingly, the denials and  the affirmations sometimes appeared on the same day.

        Those who did the killings were themselves gunned down by security men, and came to be commemorated as martyrs on wall posters which appeared in the Tamil areas. Ironically, Yogeswaran too would certainly have been accliamed  as a martyr to the Tamil cause, had he died  years earlier, when he narrowly escaped death during the officially instigated police rampage in Jaffna in1981. This symbolic act of parricide which ended the lives of these nationalist leaders, marks a shift in the actors, rather than in the politics and its motivating principles.

        In the South, the J.V.P.'s insurgency and the government's military response to it through far more indiscriminate killing, had resulted in several, perhaps tens of, thousands being murdered. These represented further refinements of the diabolical methods developed by the state in the face of the Tamil insurgency. There were well authenticated reports of mass burnings of corpses and of mutilated corpses floating down rivers. Following the killing of an Assistant Registrar in 1989 , the University of Peradeniya was  the scene of a gory reprisal where about 15 severed heads were placed around a pond in the university's centre. Southern human rights activists have received accounts of many such victims having been picked at random from detention and rehabilitation centres run by the Sri Lankan government. University authorities have put the number of university students missing in the South at over 240 and still rising. Temporarily at least, the government had reasons to put on a more benevolent face in the Tamil areas. A sizable section of the Tamil leadership had few qualms about expressing confidence in the new leadership of President Premadasa during this tragic situation engulfing the South, in spite of their own historical experience of the same U.N.P. leadership.

        Clearly, little had changed. There was a repetitive character behind the lack of principle and opportunism governing these events. Far from learning anything, the actors were becoming increasingly trapped by their schemes and their ideological predilections. Every move had a note of desperation that went little beyond immediate survival.In this situation of alliances under-pinned by nothing more than immediate expediency, no actor however discomfited at one time can be dismissed. The prospects of lasting peace grow even more distant.

I.2        The Tamil National Army

It has been pointed out that, although the older militant groups recruited volunteers and sent them for training in India,  in due course these recruits came to hate and despise the civilian population. In June 1989, India launched the  formation of the T.N.A. by conscription, forcibly taking in young boys who not only did not want to fight, but also did not believe in the legitimacy of the cause. The stage was thus being set for a major social disaster. It is established from a number of testimonies that training was given by Indian Instructors. To understand this, one must look at the problems of strategy created for India, in the wake of President Premadasa's call on 1 June 1989, that the I.P.K.F. be withdrawn. It  is not in the nature of India's relationship with the E.P.R.L.F. for India to pump in huge resources into a plan conceived by the E.P.R.L.F.. Even after the I.P.K.F. had formally ceased operations on 20 September 1989, Indian troops continued to surround localities and search, looking for escaped conscripts. Publicly however, India denied any links with T.N.A..

        The T.N.A., sent into action after a mere few weeks of training, and with little motivation and a feeling of abandonment,  were effectively cannon fodder, even with their ample weaponry. Their actions were motivated by the demands of survival and sometimes by elemental hatreds. Driven to hopeless despair by the designs of powers around them, several of them even showed a touching concern for difficulties faced by others who were better off.

        In Amparai in late October 1989, some Tamils in a crowd were asked to move out and about 40 Muslims were mowed down by the T.N.A.. Some members of the T.N.A. who tried to surrender were fired upon by their own side. Despite the Tigers having made much propaganda out of the conscription of unwilling Tamil youths and schoolboys, the fate of T.N.A. members falling into Tiger hands varied. Many were released to their parents. Others suffered as people suffer in the hands of an angry conquering army. In Batticaloa, in mid-December, an estimated 50 or so T.N.A. members were found shot dead with their hands tied, after they had surrendered, following the killing of an L.T.T.E. leader.

        There were also many instances where T.N.A. members acted with pathetic concern for others. An incident at Kopay junction in December illustrates the deep hopelessness felt by many. A young man going on a motor cycle to Vadamaratchi was detained by a group of I.P.K.F. and T.N.A. men at Kopay, for not having a pass. A T.N.A. boy was asked to guard him.The young man told the boy that he had left his pass behind as he had been in a hurry to go and see his sick mother. The boy thought for a while and murmured,"I too have a mother.". The boy then offered the young man his AK47 rifle and told him,"If I let you go,  I will face punishment.Here, take this gun, shoot me, and go. They will then think that you escaped". The young man who could not believe his ears, found that the boy was in earnest. He then talked to the boy and dissuaded him. The young man's release was later secured by another T.N.A. member who told the Indian officer that the young man was his cousin.

        In the E.P.R.L.F. itself there were many who were disturbed by the conscription, and actively aided the escape of T.N.A. boys under their command. A group of nine escapees who were released at Neervely by the L.T.T.E. in mid-December, 1989, said that conditions and food had been demoralising. They had slept on the floors of huts, trying to keep out rain water with sacks. Their leaders slept on railway sleepers. At Chavakacheri, they had been advised by sympathetic E.P.R.L.F. men to get transferred to Pandeteruppu from where they would be helped to escape. At Pandeteruppu, their E.P.R.L.F. leader asked them to run away and that he would take the punishment for their escape. The punishment would take the form of deprivations and beating.

        In some places the attitude of the T.E.L.O. showed surprising originality. At Trincomalee, the T.E.L.O. gained popularity at the expense of the E.P.R.L.F. and the E.N.D.L.F. by telling young men to say, when they are picked up for conscription, that they are already registered with the T.E.L.O. for military training .The T.E.L.O. then put them through some token motions such as carrying a gun and then released them. In other places, the T.E.L.O. got young men to fill up forms and let them go. These forms were evidently used to procure Indian resources.

        When T.N.A. boys get killed, they are just statistics - 40, 60 or 100 - in the march of history. When militants allied to India get killed, many civilians would dismiss them as traitors. Their tragedy, their inner agony and their many instances of nobility and heroism, are seldom talked about. For their own people, to try to understand is an unwanted burden. For the decision makers in high places in New Delhi, it is well to remember that many of their victims were far greater men than themselves.

I.3        The Tamil Militant Groups

Of the Tamil militant groups, the E.P.R.L.F., the T.E.L.O. and the E.N.D.L.F. allied themselves with India. The P.L.O.T.E., though having lost its political appeal, maintained a strong presence of fighting men in the Wanni. It had recruited there in the early 1980s when it made a greater appeal. After October 1987, it steered a line independent of the I.P.K.F.. At the beginning of the second half of 1989, it withstood a major attack by the L.T.T.E. in which the latter is said to have had the backing of Sri Lankan forces. Its present fate is unclear, after it was dislodged from Chettikulam  in early January, 1990, following heavy  fighting. It has to contend with a hostile environment using its residual appeal. Its leader, Uma Mahesweran was assassinated in Colombo in July 1989.

        The E.R.O.S. appears to have been successful up to a point in avoiding committing itself to any course that involved risk. It survived as an organisation without being thanked by anyone. Its political weakness was a consequence of its worship of tactical survival at the cost of principles. It was very unhappy with the L.T.T.E. going to war with India, but later appears to have come to an understanding with the L.T.T.E..

        E.R.O.S.'s operations had the same character as before, giving the public a learned appearance and using the gun and terror where there were easy pickings. A particular episode, that of the disappearance of Mr. Kanthasamy, was revealing. Mr. K.Kanthasamy, a dedicated rehabilitation worker who had the trust of several donor agencies, returned from his exile and set about planning rehabilitation projects for the North-East in early 1988. He was also the founder secretary of the Tamil Refugees Rehabilitation Organisation. The E.R.O.S. applied  pressure on him to channel funds for projects in Trincomalee through a front organisation. Kanthasamy stood firm and the pressure mounted and took the form of threats. On  19 June 1988, Kanthasamy was kidnapped. When appeals were made by individuals to E.R.O.S. leaders, the response reportedly took the form of arrogant maligning of Kanthasamy. Kanthasamy ,a heart patient, joined the ranks of the disappeared. The E.R.O.S. then issued a statement praising Kanthasamy and appealing for his freedom. The facts are given in records that were left behind by Kanthasamy and published by his associates in London. Kanthasamy was an organised person who maintained systematic records.

        On 15 February 1989, the E.R.O.S. contested and did well in the parliamentary  elections, although the L.T.T.E. had banned any participation in the electoral process, and had killed two candidates from other parties. The E.R.O.S. did nothing to condemn the L.T.T.E.'s actions and demand from all parties a respect for freedom to express ideas. It earned its prize without risking fighting for the principle of democracy. It was widely believed that the E.R.O.S. had made a deal with the L.T.T.E..

        In March 1989, the E.R.O.S. did a public service, when its M.P.'s visited Mullaitivu during heavy fighting and exposed the misery of the civilian population. But its methods began to breed all round resentment. Its cadre became occasional victims of pro-Indian groups who looked upon the E.R.O.S. as having benefited from dirty work done by them. Later, in the first half of 1989, the bodies of six E.R.O.S. members were found after they reportedly went to an I.P.K.F. camp in the Wanni. At the end of 1989, the L.T.T.E. issued a leaflet condemning the E.R.O.S. as receiving training from the  R.A.W..

        The E.R.O.S. in earlier years did recruit well motivated and able men, many of whom became unhappy with the organisation's compromised position. Whether the leadership can rethink and give the organisation a future is left to be seen.

        In the case of the E.P.R.L.F., the process of militarisation set in motion by the Indian involvement in 1983 and the success of the L.T.T.E. and T.E.L.O., first drove it to despair and finally to madness. From the beginning the E.P.R.L.F. had to swim against the dominant trends in Jaffna society. Its early members were able young men influenced by Marxist ideas, who left school early and went into political work in the villages. But the social prestige, as well as fund-collections, largely went to the groups demonstrating military success. In its own drive for militarisation, the E.P.R.L.F. recruited a large number of persons from the depressed classes and gave them guns. They were used without political education to give them self-confidence, infusing in them a sense of purpose, or giving them the awareness to challenge the dominant elitist ideology. The guns these recruits had, without giving them  a sense of dignity, provided them with a means of expressing resentment against society in general. Instead of challenging the dominant ideology and the oppressive aspects of Tamil social tradition, it reinforced prejudices flowing from them. Since the L.T.T.E. was a military organisation which did not articulate a social program, traditional elements in society found it easy to sympathise and even form tactical links with it. And while the E.P.R.L.F. was unable to act as a liberating influence and mould the depressed classes into a political force, the L.T.T.E. could take recruits from the same classes and mould them effectively into a military force.

        When the E.P.R.L.F. returned in the company of the I.P.K.F. in August 1987, it did so with a strong urge for revenge against the L.T.T.E. and a deep resentment against the people. In time, the use made of them by the I.P.K.F.  made them suspicious  and  resentful of people in general.  The I.P.K.F.'s use of  them as hit men and informants operating from I.P.K.F. camps, completely destroyed their political potential. Even after realising power through the Provincial Council, they lacked the party discipline and ability to mobilise support from sections of the population whose just grievances had not been addressed by the politics of the Jaffna elite - grievances concerning the depressed classes in Jaffna, various regional issues and the Muslim problem, among others. In reprisals after attacks by the L.T.T.E., they took the cue from the I.P.K.F.. Instead of mobilisation towards liberation, what the depressed classes saw from them was greater inexplicable brutality than that suffered by influential sections. The depressed classes had the worst of killings, beatings and destruction of property. People sometimes came to regard themselves lucky if detained by the I.P.K.F. rather than its allies who were sons of this community. The E..P.R.L.F.'s participation in the I.P.K.F.'s conscription program was a reflection of its powerlessness  as well as a loss of any sense of reality. With the prospect of the I.P.K.F. going in early 1990, leaving them high and dry, pretending that the T.N.A. would protect them, their anger turned against the people rather than against India. The I.P.K.F. did nothing to deter their ruinous conduct. Anyone who was suspected of harbouring L.T.T.E. sympathies was in danger of being killed. Some members of the E.P.R.L.F. and other militant groups aligned to the I.P.K.F., during their last days in Jaffna, visited many cruelties on the civilians, including the murder of the Jaffna Kachcheri accountant who argued against an unfair instruction. Again, it was as usual the depressed classes who felt most helpless against this orgy of indiscipline and blind fury. Having begun as a movement with socialist and democratic ideals, its final role was to strengthen the dominant politics of Tamil society, rein-force its hierarchical and totalitarian drift, and to destroy for many years to come, the prospect of an alternative.

        Those who aspire to leadership should be judged harshly for their misuse of opportunities and authority, and for murdering those whom they were meant to protect. In looking at this situation however, it is well for us to try and understand it. We must also look at the role of the society, its opportunism, insensitivity, shallowness and  its immense capacity to stifle and destroy youthful potential. We must look also at the destructiveness of the dominant politics and, in particular, the role of the L.T.T.E.. The early leaders of the E.P.R.L.F. were once young men who were motivated by ideals into doing political work. Our society did not give them admiration or respect. There was no serious opposition to the L.T.T.E.'s banning them in December 1986, killing over 50 of their members in custody by April 1987 and even branding them first as anti-social elements and, later on, as traitors. The L.T.T.E. would not only not allow them to do political work, but also sought to destroy them without even the honour that was their due. The anger of young men placed in that position should be understood, although it cannot be justified politically or morally.

        Once in the I.P.K.F. bandwagon, the E.P.R.L.F. lost many of its abler leaders who had earlier stayed on. Many of its cadre had little idea of what they were going to do, except to have the prospect of ignominious death hanging over them. The E.P.R.L.F.'s late Trincomalee leader, George Thambirajah, had told a class-mate on his return to Trincomalee in August 1987,"I know that the L.T.T.E. will get me one day. Before that I will take as many of them as I can down with me." Another leader who had been a pleasant, dedicated young man in his earlier years said: "We did political work once. That was not appreciated. We were not allowed to work. Like Stalin, we had to take a decision to survive. So we decided to kill". The organisation had come a long way from 1986, when it had maintained a democratic structure, and had mostly avoided the resort to internal or other killings which were rife in other prominent militant groups.

        Mannar town was one place where the E.P.R.L.F. had earned itself an acceptable name with the public. A few days before the I.P.K.F.'s departure in December 1989 and the re-entry of the L.T.T.E., some foot-ball players from schools were on their way to an L.T.T.E. sponsored match. When asked by the E.P.R.L.F., they said that they would be in trouble if they failed to go. The E.P.R.L.F. men looked sombre. They said,"We will not stop you or cause you trouble. You need not have any anxiety over fighting here. We are withdrawing. We have tried to maintain an understanding relationship with the people in our area. But now there is nothing we can do. Those from our group elsewhere have misbehaved with the people. We will leave this place and go to some other country".

        Another said, "I brought several of my close friends into this organisation.They have now been killed as traitors. My parents are influential and I could have lived comfortably. I stayed on to prove that my friends who died were not traitors".

        Although generally suspicious of civilians and instinctively aggressive, some of these militants would, seeing that no ill was meant, listen after being shouted at. They would even listen submissively on being told that they were no longer a political force, and that many of them had once been young men who wanted to do some good, but had now become  psychiatric patients. Some of them would admit that the T.N.A. was a total disaster, but would not say who promoted it. They even felt that the only way to regain some credibility was to disband the T.N.A., ask parents to take their children away and make a confession before the public. But they were doubtful if the leadership would accept it. They were also crucially dependent on India for their security. A public confession would have to say many things embarrassing to India. Having come to depend on India, they would in time suffer the tragic fate of those who were used by a big power and proved an embarrassment later on. Those who survived the arduous crossing to India would meet with rejection and humiliation, in sharp contrast to earlier days,following July 1983.

I.4        India and the Indian Peace

            Keeping Force

To arrive at a proper understanding of this episode, one must try to get away from the strong emotions that this has engendered. The average Indian officer can only see an ungrateful population set against the deaths of many comrades. Civilian deaths, agony and anger do not exist for him. They did their job the only way they were trained to do it, they would contend. If you want to blame anyone, blame the politicians, they would say. It has been a temptation for many Tamils to use racial sentiments found in the West to malign an army from a poor third world country. That would be unfair. The Indian Army has the professional qualities to be used as a disciplined force. Reprisals have mostly been carried out in a planned manner, intended to terrorise.

        The failure of the Indian Army is largely a consequence of arrogance and, stemming from it, a refusal to understand and respect civilian feelings. Considering  the stakes India had in this situation, the number of Indians who came here with a view to making a serious study of the situation was low, in comparison with the number of Westerners who came here. Most damaging, apart from a deliberate decision to use terror in most difficult situations, were political decisions by the I.P.K.F.. While pleading that they were not politicians, but were military men doing only a military job, they used their powers freely to experiment with politics - forming citizens committees, censoring the press, directing the actions of militant groups, and so on. The decision to terrorise L.T.T.E. supporters through murder during the run up to the provincial council elections in October 1988, was a political decision of the I.P.K.F.. From the talk of some officials, this appears to have been made on the premise that, because Jaffna Tamils were opportunistic enough to accept the mass killings of T.E.L.O. members in mid-1986 in exchange for order, they would once again accept the decimation of L.T.T.E. supporters for the same reason. Such decisions determined the negative attributes which were fatal for the E.P.R.L.F.-led provincial administration. The I.P.K.F.'s opposition to the L.T.T.E. was not based on a political critique of the L.T.T.E.. There was, rather, much admiration for the L.T.T.E. amongst I.P.K.F. officers.  For an army placed as the I.P.K.F. was, political decisions  were certainly necessary. They should at least have been taken in keeping with democratic principles subscribed to by India, rather than left to casual arrogance.

        Perhaps the most inexcusable decision of India's was to form the T.N.A. by forced conscription. It was done under conditions which lacked both accountability and legitimacy. Neither the I.P.K.F. nor the E.P.R.L.F. led administration, had earned the latter. It was done in a manner that was callous, offensive and degrading. Young boys were picked off the streets, long distance buses and trains. To poor and defenceless parents was added the agony and the tedium of going from  place to place and from camp to camp, in an attempt to trace their sons. These wretches, numbering the thousands, were given meagre training and armed to survive as best as they could. They were disowned by almost all, including India. For many, this single act of forced conscription, terminated any feeling that India could play a constructive role.

        What prompted this high-level decision which was, at once, indefensible, irresponsible and even tactically unsound ? Who in the Indian hierarchy made this decision on conscription? Whose interests were being represented here? Or  was it the decision of a bankrupt bureaucracy that just wanted to try something, however stupid?

        During early 1988, an Indian General told a university delegation that recovering arms is an extremely difficult job, adding that for this purpose they would use "these gun-toting rascals" and then disarm them. The reference was to pro-Indian groups. He explained that every non-professional person carrying a gun was a rascal. Having started with a disarming  operation, India has now turned to flooding the place with arms and in militarising those already disillusioned with what had happened. There was no more talk of rehabilitation.

        For young Indian soldiers, it is time for home thoughts. On the streets you may see one examining a new pair of trousers collected from the tailors. Another might test his newly purchased pocket radio. Those more curious would chat  with the civilians. "In Mannar, the people were nice to us. But in Jaffna it is different", they would say. They too had discovered that many houses in Jaffna have some member abroad. One may hear them remark, "So, when the troubles begin, you will leave the others and go away". They too are a simple people like ourselves, taking a simple joy in the simple and inexpensive things of life.  With India very much a part of our nurture, it is a pity that our actual encounter has left many bitter memories.

        For thousands of our young men, so thoughtlessly used by India, there can never be home thoughts.[Top]

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