My desire to do a film on Rajani Thiranagama coincided, in ways I only fully realized later, with a great hunger for a more open discussion on human rights in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it took a Canadian filmmaker far removed from this war to revive Rajani's message of peace and justice.
In speaking so openly in the film — even at great risk to themselves — Rajani's family could not help but move others to do the same. Over the last year "No More Tears Sister" became one event among several that kick-started debate on human rights in Sri Lanka in a new and significant way. Rajani's words, spoken so eloquently 17 years ago, continue to this day to provide a searing commentary on the situation in her beloved homeland. Her critique inspires as much today as when it was first uttered — not only in Sri Lanka, but wherever innocent people are caught in the crossfire of armies and militants. human rights advocates around the world have seen the film and endorsed Rajani's message.
Since the release of the 80-minute version in 2005, No More Tears Sister has traveled the world — from South Africa to Asia, Australia, North America and Europe — appearing in new venues almost every month. As evidenced by vigorous Internet exchanges, it has been seen and talked about throughout the Sri Lankan diaspora by people from all walks of life. And everywhere I appeared at screenings, Sri Lankans reacted emotionally, many thanking me personally, telling me how happy they were to see such a film in circulation. Inevitably someone in the audience would reveal a special relationship to Rajani or her work in Jaffna. Her influence was everywhere. Some of my favorite moments have been Tamil mothers wanting to buy the film for their sons and daughters, or vice versa, as a way to revisit their past. At one screening in Alberta, a Sri Lankan announced the film was worth more than all the aid Canada sends to his country. And of course introducing family members to applauding crowds in Toronto, New York and London has been electrifying. Many look forward to the day when No More Tears Sister will be televised nationally in Sri Lanka, in both Tamil and Sinhalese, so that all may pay homage to this great woman of peace and coexistence. Clearly this remains a contentious decision.
We also learned that many Tamils felt uneasy about attending public screenings, fearful that the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) might be present and cause them ill. In Holland, a Dutch man explained that he had been sent by his Tamil neighbor, who was too frightened to attend himself. At some screenings individuals or groups asked hostile questions or attempted to intimidate. Television dissemination of No More Tears Sister is therefore our ally, allowing people to view the film without fear, in the privacy of their homes.
On a very personal level, meeting Rajani's family and discovering her life's work has been both a transformative experience and a privilege. Knowing them I now appreciate much more the concepts of "standing up for one's ideals" and "the personal is the political." The film has changed the family, too. Since "coming out" in the documentary, the family has decided to make its ever present activism more open and vocal, bringing its message of hope and justice to thousands around the globe. Interviews on this website with Rajani's sisters Nirmala and Vasuki, and daughters Narmada and Sharika, explore how the film has touched their lives.
— Helene Klodawsky, June 7, 2006"
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(Rajani's older sister)
"It's not just Rajani's death but so many other peoples' deaths, hundreds of people, that have gone uninvestigated." | Read »
(Rajani's younger sister)
"Though I can understand that people who are discriminated against need to make changes in society, I do think that taking up arms cannot really lead to freedom..." | Read »
(Rajani's older daughter)
"[My mother's] political legacy is that one person can make a difference, even if you have nothing to fight back with. You can be dangerous and powerful even if you don't carry a gun." | Read »
(Rajani's younger daughter)
"So I was just lying on the ground next to a bicycle with fake blood on me. And I had this moment where I thought about what she had seen just before she had died." | Read »
(Filmmaker)
"We also learned that many Tamils felt uneasy about attending public screenings, fearful that the LTTE might be present and cause them ill. In Holland, a Dutch man explained that he had been sent by his Tamil neighbor, who was too frightened to see the film himself. " | Read »
POV: Were there any attempts to investigate Rajani's muder?
Nirmala Rajasingam as a university student
Nirmala Rajasingam: There has never been any attempt to investigate her killing, just as there hasn't been any attempt to investigate the killings of hundreds of other Tamil dissenters. These kinds of targeted assassinations by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers) have been going on for all these years, but you can't investigate them, because no one will come forward to give evidence, and no central authority has attempted to put these things together. It's not just Rajani's death but so many other peoples' deaths, hundreds of people, that have gone uninvestigated.
POV: By speaking and participating in this film, are you and your family putting yourselves at risk?
Nirmala: When Helene started to make the film, she interviewed a lot of people who knew Rajani, and almost all of them refused to speak on camera. They were frightened to be associated with the film: they were afraid that the Tigers would come after them. Some of these people were Rajani's fellow activists who have since then fled to the West. Even such people refused to appear on camera.
But yes, of course, my family and I are at risk. As a family, we sat down and thought long and hard about it, and we decided that we had to tell the truth about Rajani's killing. To us, this film was a tribute to Rajani's life. More important, Rajani's story needed to be told because of the continuing murders of Tamil activists and dissenters by the LTTE even during the recent peace process. So we had to take a calculated risk.
POV: What do you remember about the period of your life that was portrayed in the film?
Nirmala: I had fled to the U.K. when Rajani was in the final year of her Ph.D. in the U.K. She, of course, went back to Sri Lanka after she finished her Ph.D., and I stayed in Britain and sought asylum. She continued to come to the U.K. for several years after that during her summer vacations. She had actually been with me in the U.K. two weeks prior to her murder. I remember that I accompanied her to the airport for her flight back to Sri Lanka. She had received letters from the other activists asking her not to come back, saying that they were under surveillance, that one of them was taken for questioning. They said, Why don't you stay in the U.K. for a while? I also begged her to do that, but of course she wouldn't listen. She went back to Sri Lanka.
Two weeks after that I got the news that she was killed. It was a Thursday, I think, and I got the news the following morning. I was completely distraught, of course. I was talking to my family and I wanted to return to Sri Lanka. My parents said, "Absolutely not, you can't come. The situation is unsafe for all of us." They thought I would also be killed, or that something would happen to me. My daughter was nearly three then, and I was pregnant with my son. It was a very difficult time.
It took me years to recover. I don't think I've ever completely recovered from my sister's death. It wasn't simply losing a sister -- she was my friend, my comrade, our political careers were intertwined. Even though she had been politically active I was the one who got her involved in Tiger politics. And of course she died leaving my two young nieces without a mother. It was all very difficult. It is still difficult. But it is like this for many families in Sri Lanka, who have lost loved ones to either the army, or to the Tigers or to other armed groups.
POV: Do you hope to return to Sri Lanka and live in Jaffna in the future?
Nirmala: People like me, we never chose to live abroad. I always wanted to live in Sri Lanka, in Jaffna -- I thought my whole life would be in Jaffna! If you're a person who is politically involved, you feel that you can contribute the most amongst your own people, and that's what I wanted to do. Of course this yearning is there forever, it's permanent, the dream that I would one day go back to Jaffna, live an ordinary life, work in the community, for the people around me. Of course, I cannot and will not return unless there is a democratic government in the north east. It would not be safe, and I don't want to return just to be killed.
But I am optimistic that one day it can happen.
POV: What has happened in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in 2004?
Nirmala: When the tsunami happened -- before the international aid through big agencies and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and the Sri Lankan government could get there to help -- immediate aid was provided by local neighborhoods and villages who were not affected by the tsunami. Many Tamil villages were helped by unaffected Muslim villages and Sinhalese villages, and vice versa. The first help to roll in was from ordinary Sri Lankans themselves. Everyone helped each other before the government and other organizations stepped in.
When this happened, there were Tiger cadres and army soldiers working together. This was the local people reacting to an immediate need. But soon the political biases of the leaders [came out], especially on the side of the LTTE. The motive was not for cooperation at all. It is no secret that a lot of the aid that the LTTE collected for the tsunami was not used for tsunami victims. There were many complaints about how government aid was not reaching the affected people generally due to inefficiency and corruption.
The failure of the joint mechanism for dispensing tsunami aid is because there was no political solution on the ground to deep divisions within society. The aid got trapped in this ongoing conflict between the state and the LTTE, and therefore people for whom it was intended did not get it. However much money flows in. Until there is a political resolution for the benefit of the people. This will happen again and again.
There have been many attempts at peace, the last one, started in March 2002, facilitated by the international community. After four and half years of ceasefire there was no positive result. This was because peace talks were handled as a bartering of a deal between two powerful armies. Human rights, democracy, citizenship rights were not given an important place in the negotiations.
The LTTE has not been interested in a democratic settlement as it would threaten their own power. After continuous threats of returning to war, and in fact after several months of pursuing an undeclared war that nearly destroyed the peace process, the LTTE has now been pressured by the international community to return to the talks. The LTTE has not been interested in negotiating for a political solution that will result in a democratic setup in the Tamil areas. The LTTE would prefer it if the Sri Lanka government handed all of the North and East to them carte blanche, to rule as the sole authority. But now there is increasing pressure on the LTTE from the diaspora and in Sri Lanka as well to settle this problem. There is also pressure from the international community from countries like the U.S., the E.U., Norway, Japan and India. The Sri Lankan government and Sinhala political parties have also come under criticism for dragging their feet on reaching a consensus to devolve power to the minorities.
It is important to remember that the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, yet another minority, has suffered severe aggression and violence from the LTTE and discrimination at the hands of the Sri Lankan state. Their voice is not even represented in the peace talks. People like me are campaigning for the democratic rights of both minorities and indeed the rights of ordinary people from all three communities.
The war has devastated the country and the poor Sinhala people have also faced the brunt of the war. The war has to end and the killings have to stop if Sri Lanka is to develop.
POV: What are you working on now?
Nirmala: I'm involved in diaspora-based movement for human rights and democracy within the Sri Lankan community, particularly with the Sri Lankan Democracy Forum.
For many years I worked as a legal defender for refugees from all over the world in Britain. More recently I moved behind the scenes, and now I produce training courses for British immigration advisors.
POV: What is Rajani's legacy?
Nirmala: I think Rajani is an inspiring figure, and I believe she inspires people in her community to stand up and be counted, to speak the truth, to stand up for human rights, and to fight against all violence. She felt strongly that ordinary people should come together to achieve power and [pry] open the space for democracy. She also felt strongly about the problems faced by other women. We used to talk about how "after all of this is finished, we will work with women, oppressed women in our community..." If she were alive today, she would be working with women now. We had many ideas and many dreams.
POV: Were there any attempts to investigate Rajani's muder?
Vasuki Rajasingam, Rajani's younger sister
Nirmala Rajasingam: There has never been any attempt to investigate her killing, just as there hasn't been any attempt to investigate the killings of hundreds of other Tamil dissenters. These kinds of targeted assassinations by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers) have been going on for all these years, but you can't investigate them, because no one will come forward to give evidence, and no central authority has attempted to put these things together. It's not just Rajani's death but so many other peoples' deaths, hundreds of people, that have gone uninvestigated.
POV: By speaking and participating in this film, are you and your family putting yourselves at risk?
Nirmala: When Helene started to make the film, she interviewed a lot of people who knew Rajani, and almost all of them refused to speak on camera. They were frightened to be associated with the film: they were afraid that the Tigers would come after them. Some of these people were Rajani's fellow activists who have since then fled to the West. Even such people refused to appear on camera.
POV: What do you remember about the period of your life that was portrayed in the film?
Nirmala: I had fled to the U.K. when Rajani was in the final year of her Ph.D. in the U.K. She, of course, went back to Sri Lanka after she finished her Ph.D., and I stayed in Britain and sought asylum. She continued to come to the U.K. for several years after that during her summer vacations. She had actually been with me in the U.K. two weeks prior to her murder. I remember that I accompanied her to the airport for her flight back to Sri Lanka. She had received letters from the other activists asking her not to come back, saying that they were under surveillance, that one of them was taken for questioning. They said, Why don't you stay in the U.K. for a while? I also begged her to do that, but of course she wouldn't listen. She went back to Sri Lanka.
Two weeks after that I got the news that she was killed. It was a Thursday, I think, and I got the news the following morning. I was completely distraught, of course. I was talking to my family and I wanted to return to Sri Lanka. My parents said, "Absolutely not, you can't come. The situation is unsafe for all of us." They thought I would also be killed, or that something would happen to me. My daughter was nearly three then, and I was pregnant with my son. It was a very difficult time.
It took me years to recover. I don't think I've ever completely recovered from my sister's death. It wasn't simply losing a sister -- she was my friend, my comrade, our political careers were intertwined. Even though she had been politically active I was the one who got her involved in Tiger politics. And of course she died leaving my two young nieces without a mother. It was all very difficult. It is still difficult. But it is like this for many families in Sri Lanka, who have lost loved ones to either the army, or to the Tigers or to other armed groups.
POV: Do you hope to return to Sri Lanka and live in Jaffna in the future?
Nirmala: People like me, we never chose to live abroad. I always wanted to live in Sri Lanka, in Jaffna -- I thought my whole life would be in Jaffna! If you're a person who is politically involved, you feel that you can contribute the most amongst your own people, and that's what I wanted to do. Of course this yearning is there forever, it's permanent, the dream that I would one day go back to Jaffna, live an ordinary life, work in the community, for the people around me. Of course, I cannot and will not return unless there is a democratic government in the north east. It would not be safe, and I don't want to return just to be killed.
But I am optimistic that one day it can happen.
POV: What has happened in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in 2004?
Nirmala: When the tsunami happened -- before the international aid through big agencies and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and the Sri Lankan government could get there to help -- immediate aid was provided by local neighborhoods and villages who were not affected by the tsunami. Many Tamil villages were helped by unaffected Muslim villages and Sinhalese villages, and vice versa. The first help to roll in was from ordinary Sri Lankans themselves. Everyone helped each other before the government and other organizations stepped in.
When this happened, there were Tiger cadres and army soldiers working together. This was the local people reacting to an immediate need. But soon the political biases of the leaders [came out], especially on the side of the LTTE. The motive was not for cooperation at all. It is no secret that a lot of the aid that the LTTE collected for the tsunami was not used for tsunami victims. There were many complaints about how government aid was not reaching the affected people generally due to inefficiency and corruption.
The failure of the joint mechanism for dispensing tsunami aid is because there was no political solution on the ground to deep divisions within society. The aid got trapped in this ongoing conflict between the state and the LTTE, and therefore people for whom it was intended did not get it. However much money flows in. Until there is a political resolution for the benefit of the people. This will happen again and again.
There have been many attempts at peace, the last one, started in March 2002, facilitated by the international community. After four and half years of ceasefire there was no positive result. This was because peace talks were handled as a bartering of a deal between two powerful armies. Human rights, democracy, citizenship rights were not given an important place in the negotiations.
The LTTE has not been interested in a democratic settlement as it would threaten their own power. After continuous threats of returning to war, and in fact after several months of pursuing an undeclared war that nearly destroyed the peace process, the LTTE has now been pressured by the international community to return to the talks. The LTTE has not been interested in negotiating for a political solution that will result in a democratic setup in the Tamil areas. The LTTE would prefer it if the Sri Lanka government handed all of the North and East to them carte blanche, to rule as the sole authority. But now there is increasing pressure on the LTTE from the diaspora and in Sri Lanka as well to settle this problem. There is also pressure from the international community from countries like the U.S., the E.U., Norway, Japan and India. The Sri Lankan government and Sinhala political parties have also come under criticism for dragging their feet on reaching a consensus to devolve power to the minorities.
It is important to remember that the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, yet another minority, has suffered severe aggression and violence from the LTTE and discrimination at the hands of the Sri Lankan state. Their voice is not even represented in the peace talks. People like me are campaigning for the democratic rights of both minorities and indeed the rights of ordinary people from all three communities.
The war has devastated the country and the poor Sinhala people have also faced the brunt of the war. The war has to end and the killings have to stop if Sri Lanka is to develop.
POV: What are you working on now?
Nirmala: I'm involved in diaspora-based movement for human rights and democracy within the Sri Lankan community, particularly with the Sri Lankan Democracy Forum.
For many years I worked as a legal defender for refugees from all over the world in Britain. More recently I moved behind the scenes, and now I produce training courses for British immigration advisors.
POV: What is Rajani's legacy?
Nirmala: I think Rajani is an inspiring figure, and I believe she inspires people in her community to stand up and be counted, to speak the truth, to stand up for human rights, and to fight against all violence. She felt strongly that ordinary people should come together to achieve power and [pry] open the space for democracy. She also felt strongly about the problems faced by other women. We used to talk about how "after all of this is finished, we will work with women, oppressed women in our community..." If she were alive today, she would be working with women now. We had many ideas and many dreams.
POV: You and your family worked with filmmaker Helene Klodawsky during the making of No More Tears Sister. What was it like to finally see the finished film on the big screen?
Narmada Thiranagama: In the beginning, we didn't really know how involved we would get with this film. We just wanted to publicize issues about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and get justice for my mother. But then when I saw the film on the big screen, I realized what an emotional impact the film would have on me. It really got under my skin. My aunt and I had the same reaction: We both started seeing my mother again, almost like a living person. She became so much closer, so much more visible, not so much in the past. I imagine my mother much more present in my life since the film.
It's also very emotional seeing other people's reactions to the film. People have been moved -- people who don't really know about Sri Lanka and my mother. They've asked fascinating questions about politics, parents and children, about identity, about conflict. Some of the younger people at screenings have asked me about what you do when your parents are activists, in fact.
POV: And what was your response to the question? How do you feel about the personal sacrifices your mother made because of her activism?
Narmada: I think if there's one thing my mother taught me, it's that all women are asked to make sacrifices in their lives. That's something I saw in the community I grew up in as well. I think that my grandmother made as much of a sacrifice in her life, in some ways. I grew up seeing that this very bright, capable woman spent her life caring for children. She never went to university. She had some education and became a teacher, and the quality of toughness in my mother came from her. But I could always see that there was a kind of repressed energy in my grandmother. Women made sacrifices in our community all the time, and all over the world.
My mother taught me that politics is not just party politics, it's not just politics with a big P. Sometimes the choices that people make in their lives everyday are political. My mother was condemned for teaching at a university, asking awkward questions about students who had disappeared, continuing to care about issues that other people would prefer no one looked at or noticed, even for wearing skirts [that] didn't cover her ankles. When she married a Sinhalese man, my father, that was a political choice too.
All of her actions, and the way she was condemned for them, highlighted, for me, the dangerous choices a woman can make. I think she really did exemplify that the personal is political. So I get my understanding about politics from her. My mother and father tried to retain their humanity in the difficult circumstances, and that was what their political activism was. And so how can I not understand why they made the sacrifices that they did? The alternative was too terrible.
POV: What do you remember about Sri Lanka?
Narmada: My memories of Sri Lanka are both painful and beautiful. It was a wonderful place to grow up for my sister and me. But with my mother's death, Sri Lanka became so traumatizing. Her death was a huge shock. I was so scared for many years afterwards. When I was young, my mother seemed so sure, so confident. I didn't think anyone could ever do anything to her, and she wouldn't allow anything to be done to us. I had complete confidence in her, and I thought she could do anything. When she was killed, it tore the rug out from under me. I wanted to run away.
We moved to England after my mother was killed, and I've lived in England since then. I went back to Sri Lanka one more time when my grandmother was dying, which coincided with the shooting for "No More Tears Sister." That was a wonderful visit. It was a healing visit. I really do love Sri Lanka, and in some ways, it will always be my home.
I used to think about walking the streets of Jaffna, to my house, all the time. I used to think that it would be the happiest moment for me -- it would be a wonderful day. It would mean that the situation would have changed politically. It would represent more than a homecoming, it would mean a resuscitation of the community.
But I can't go back to Jaffna anymore. At least [not] until the Tigers cease to be able to influence politics through violence. The use of violence would have to stop; that's the only way I can go back.
POV: What do you do now?
Narmada: I work for a trade union in England. Actually, I got into the union work almost by accident. I was looking for jobs after I left university and then applied for a job as an assistant in the office of the general secretary of this trade union. I did that for six years in the end! Recently I got a promotion to work in the equality and training part of our union. I'm working on women's work and pay, racism and issues related to work for other minority groups.
I find this work really rewarding because I get to see politics from the other side -- the "high" political process: negotiations between government and interest groups, the process of legislation, how the political process works in Britain. I studied history at university, and there's always a divide between "high" politics -- the history of kings and queens, great men and women -- and "social" history: the history of the mass of people, large political and economic forces where the individual doesn't have much agency.
Nowadays in academia, there is much more understanding about how the history of ideas, concepts and philosophy is part and parcel of the history of social movements. The divide between those two forms of history is artificial, and it's understood that individuals interact with larger forces, and one person can have agency. An individual can have so much power, but yet, it's not enough. You have to motivate and move others and go with them.
In some ways, that's related to the work that I do, which is now more policy work for the union. I look at trade unions and how they're growing, especially with black workers and women workers who are now joining unions in larger numbers, and I think about how we can best serve them. A lot of the work I do is about supporting the communities that are disadvantaged, how to train them and support them. It's intellectually demanding and politically satisfying for me.
POV: What do you think your mother's legacy is?
Narmada: She has both a political legacy and an emotional legacy. The emotional legacy is for the people who knew her. The political legacy is for the people who never met her.
Her emotional legacy is to be an example of the vulnerability of courage. After she died and I moved to England, I started falling apart. I didn't feel very strong or courageous or anything. I remembered that my mother wasn't always together. But you can be someone who bends or even breaks and still be strong. Vulnerability can be strength. She also had a passion for life. My mother had a joie de vivre. She would laugh a lot or cry a lot. She also appreciated all the small things. She had a powerful and inspirational way of living life that was honest and uncompromising.
Her political legacy is that one person can make a difference, even if you have nothing to fight back with. You can be dangerous and powerful even if you don't carry a gun. I hope she's a symbol -- not an abstract symbol, but a real human symbol -- that she draws attention away from slogans and rhetoric, and draws attention to the people, and to the realities of life. To say, "Never mind your aims and aspirations and rhetoric, what are you actually doing?"
My mother's legacy is not finished yet. She couldn't finish what she wanted to do, so let's finish it for her.
POV: What was it like to portray your mother in the film?
Sharika Thiranagama
Sharika Thiranagama: At that time, there were a lot of killings, and it was a very dangerous situation, and so it was very difficult to get any actresses to come forward to play my mother, because to be in this film, to speak out, would be a political statement. It puts people at risk. So that is one of the main reasons why I agreed to portray my mother.
I didn't really prepare for the film. And when I started filming it the process was much more difficult than I thought it was going to be.
I found the death scene very difficult to do, obviously. My sister and I were there. My mother was shot outside the house, and my sister and I were inside the house at the time, so we heard the shots. For the film I had to depict her at that same moment that I had experienced as a child, but from my mother's perspective. So I was just lying on the ground next to a bicycle, with fake blood on me. And I had this moment where I thought about what she had seen just before she had died. That scene was a jarring moment of connection between myself and my mother.
There were other scenes that were just embarrassing to do. I had to portray my mother meeting my father at the train station, and I wore a pregnancy belt! Actually, that day was my birthday! So I was my mother, pregnant with myself, on my own birthday.
Before we started shooting the film, I'd been thinking quite a bit about my mother. It took me a long time to come to understand her as an individual in her own right, as opposed to just thinking about my own feelings of loss. When I started doing my own research in Sri Lanka and meeting people who knew her, I started to understand much more how she had affected lots of people's lives. It made me really look at her and think more about what she left behind. And see her as someone who was not just a mother to her children but her own person who was very passionate about politics.
POV: What was it like for you and your family after your mother's death?
Sharika: After my mother's death, the next few months were a blur. My family, we all collapsed. The day that she died, my sister and I were in the house. People kept coming to the house, and nobody wanted to tell us what happened, that she was dead. So we were just sitting there, knowing that something bad had happened but not knowing what it was. Then my grandfather came and picked us up and took us to our grandparents' house. It was a terrible time for us.
My sister wanted to leave Sri Lanka. We left in a hurry. My father had decided that he was going to raise us. Even though it was so sad to leave my grandparents and my aunts, it was really important for us to know that our father wanted us.
So we went to England, and it was a hard life for us. My father devoted his life to us. He worked here and there at first in London, and then he went back to university to get a degree in social work and he became a social worker. We didn't have a lot of money, so it was not an easy existence.
The first few years we were all just clinging on, as if we were clinging on to driftwood, hoping to salvage something. By the time I was thirteen, fourteen, I really missed having a mother. I felt very out of place. For a long time, nobody ever really understood what it was about. And I could never talk to anybody about it. Not even to my friends. Until I started doing my Ph.D., I never talked very much about Sri Lanka. For years I kept it suppressed inside me, because I knew that nobody would ever understand. When I was first in England, and I was eleven, I tried to tell some other kids about it, and they laughed at me. That was a very painful experience. So I just kept it separate for years. I had two lives: one life that was with my family, that belonged to Sri Lanka, and the other life that's in London. When I went to university, I started to talk more about it, and then I did my research in Sri Lanka [and] suddenly all these feelings for Sri Lanka and my mother came out.
POV: Tell us about your research work in Sri Lanka.
Sharika: For my Ph.D., I worked on a project called "Stories of Home." It was on displaced Jaffna Tamils and Jaffna Muslims in a variety of locations in Sri Lanka, and I explored their understandings of home, place and belonging. I went back to Sri Lanka and worked with Tamils on this topic.
When I started doing my research, I also found out about what has been happening to the Muslims in Sri Lanka, who were ethnically cleansed. In October of 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) expelled all Muslims from five districts in the northern region. So about 70,000 to 80,000 people were expelled in 48 hours. In Jaffna, the Muslims were expelled in about 2 hours: they lost all their possessions. My grandmother told me about how she had stood at the gate and these Muslims had walked past her with their possessions in their bags, all that they were allowed to take. It was a terrible moment for the North as a whole.
This made me think about my own identity as a Tamil, and what it meant to be a Tamil and to be from the North. Academics working on Sri Lanka don't write about what has happened to the Muslim community. The right of Muslims to return to the North is not a part of the peace process. They are very much forgotten. So it made me question my own understanding of Sri Lanka. I went and did a lot of my research in refugee camps with the Muslims who had been expelled, and I learned a lot. That was a really big moment for me, because it made me think about what it means to be an ethnic majority of some kind. Tamils are a minority in Sri Lanka, and we've been discriminated against. But then to face what we Tamils, as a majority in the North, do to our own minorities, is a difficult thing.
Now I am continuing my research in an attempt to further understand the last twenty years of the war, the political history of the Tamil community and to document alternative histories.
My desire to do a film on Rajani Thiranagama coincided, in ways I only fully realized later, with a great hunger for a more open discussion on human rights in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it took a Canadian filmmaker far removed from this war to revive Rajani's message of peace and justice.
In speaking so openly in the film -- even at great risk to themselves -- Rajani's family could not help but move others to do the same. Over the last year "No More Tears Sister" became one event among several that kick-started debate on human rights in Sri Lanka in a new and significant way. Rajani's words, spoken so eloquently 17 years ago, continue to this day to provide a searing commentary on the situation in her beloved homeland. Her critique inspires as much today as when it was first uttered -- not only in Sri Lanka, but wherever innocent people are caught in the crossfire of armies and militants. human rights advocates around the world have seen the film and endorsed Rajani's message.
Since the release of the 80-minute version in 2005, No More Tears Sister has traveled the world -- from South Africa to Asia, Australia, North America and Europe -- appearing in new venues almost every month. As evidenced by vigorous Internet exchanges, it has been seen and talked about throughout the Sri Lankan diaspora by people from all walks of life. And everywhere I appeared at screenings, Sri Lankans reacted emotionally, many thanking me personally, telling me how happy they were to see such a film in circulation. Inevitably someone in the audience would reveal a special relationship to Rajani or her work in Jaffna. Her influence was everywhere. Some of my favorite moments have been Tamil mothers wanting to buy the film for their sons and daughters, or vice versa, as a way to revisit their past. At one screening in Alberta, a Sri Lankan announced the film was worth more than all the aid Canada sends to his country. And of course introducing family members to applauding crowds in Toronto, New York and London has been electrifying. Many look forward to the day when No More Tears Sister will be televised nationally in Sri Lanka, in both Tamil and Sinhalese, so that all may pay homage to this great woman of peace and coexistence. Clearly this remains a contentious decision.
We also learned that many Tamils felt uneasy about attending public screenings, fearful that the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) might be present and cause them ill. In Holland, a Dutch man explained that he had been sent by his Tamil neighbor, who was too frightened to attend himself. At some screenings individuals or groups asked hostile questions or attempted to intimidate. Television dissemination of No More Tears Sister is therefore our ally, allowing people to view the film without fear, in the privacy of their homes.
On a very personal level, meeting Rajani's family and discovering her life's work has been both a transformative experience and a privilege. Knowing them I now appreciate much more the concepts of "standing up for one's ideals" and "the personal is the political." The film has changed the family, too. Since "coming out" in the documentary, the family has decided to make its ever present activism more open and vocal, bringing its message of hope and justice to thousands around the globe. Interviews on this website with Rajani's sisters Nirmala and Vasuki, and daughters Narmada and Sharika, explore how the film has touched their lives.
-- Helene Klodawsky, June 7, 2006