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A review by archytas
This Divided Island: Life, Death, and the Sri Lankan War by Sammanth Subramanian
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I've read a few books on the Sri Lankan civil war now, and what Subramanian does well, he does very well. An outsider to Sri Lanka, able to speak Tamil and English but not Singhalese, he put this book together travelling the country shortly following the war. His capacity to get people to speak to him is exceptional, and in particular, the latter part of the book set in the Vanni, becomes unputdownable reading. Subramanian explores many perspectives in his travels - from Tamil officers in the governing military to Muslims attacked by both the Army and the LTTE, to former LTTE cadre, to northern Tamils hostile to the LTTE, to the family of political dissidents who disappeared, and even a rebel monk or two. The picture he builds is not a simplistic one, but one which traces the many threads of this experience, from the systematic discrimination faced by Tamils, the religious tensions between Buddhism, Hinduism and the country's besieged Muslim minority, the terror tactics of the LTTE and the war crimes of the army. he does this through centering voices of those living through this - not the powerbrokers, but those of people trying to live their best life, do the right thing, and survive.
Subramanian is present in the narrative - I'm not sure you could do this book in any other way. I struggled at times with his relatively strong opinions, especially when it came to the LTTE, which he viewed largely as a cult around a cruel and despotic Prabhakaran. At times, it seemed to me he explained the brutality of the Army as a response to the LTTE (referring, for example, to the mass execution of LTTE prisoners- many of whom were teenagers and/or conscripts as çhemotherapy). At other times, he interjects to disagree with interviewees who speak favourably of the social role of the LTTE, or in one case, even when someone tells him the Army caused them more suffering than the Tigers. To understand the complex dynamics within the LTTE - and perhaps to understand the depth of the Tigers' betrayal - I would look to something like Rohini Mohan's Seasons of Trouble, which follows a variety of Tiger fighters and Vanni residents over a longer period of time.
This focus shifts towards the end of the book when Subramanian details the horrors visited upon the Vanni by the Army and the devastation wrought on the community by the wicked combination of the LTTE's use of the communities they govern as cannon fodder and the genocidal bombing policies of the Army. The result was hundreds of thousands dead, whole communities gone. And Subramanian helps you feel the tangle of emotions of the survivors, as well as the fractured nature of their memories. This is the kind of history that values understanding over certainty, and that is exactly the kind of history that might help us to avoid repeating it.
Subramanian is present in the narrative - I'm not sure you could do this book in any other way. I struggled at times with his relatively strong opinions, especially when it came to the LTTE, which he viewed largely as a cult around a cruel and despotic Prabhakaran. At times, it seemed to me he explained the brutality of the Army as a response to the LTTE (referring, for example, to the mass execution of LTTE prisoners- many of whom were teenagers and/or conscripts as çhemotherapy). At other times, he interjects to disagree with interviewees who speak favourably of the social role of the LTTE, or in one case, even when someone tells him the Army caused them more suffering than the Tigers. To understand the complex dynamics within the LTTE - and perhaps to understand the depth of the Tigers' betrayal - I would look to something like Rohini Mohan's Seasons of Trouble, which follows a variety of Tiger fighters and Vanni residents over a longer period of time.
This focus shifts towards the end of the book when Subramanian details the horrors visited upon the Vanni by the Army and the devastation wrought on the community by the wicked combination of the LTTE's use of the communities they govern as cannon fodder and the genocidal bombing policies of the Army. The result was hundreds of thousands dead, whole communities gone. And Subramanian helps you feel the tangle of emotions of the survivors, as well as the fractured nature of their memories. This is the kind of history that values understanding over certainty, and that is exactly the kind of history that might help us to avoid repeating it.