As I watched TV visuals of the death of V. Prabakaran, the head of theLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and read and heard accounts of the wayhis dead body was disfigured and rolled in dirt by the Sri Lankan Army, mymind went back to the years 1951-55 when I was a student of the Loyola Collegeof Chennai, run by the Society of Jesus. Every class, including mine, had fouror five Tamils from the Northern Province of Ceylon as Sri Lanka used to beknown before 1972. Even in those days, they never considered themselves part ofCeylon. They would introduce themselves as Jaffna Tamils and not as Ceylonese Tamils .