There is peace in Sri Lanka, but the island remains divided. In the summer of 2009, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the modern-day Dutugemunu, killed Vellupillai Prabhakaran and ended the 30-year Tamil rebellion. Not only the Sri Lankan army annihilated the Tigers but it almost wiped out Tamils from its north east.
Samanth Subramanian’s brilliant book This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War (published by Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books, pages 320, Rs499) does not offer an apology for LTTE but narrates how the majority — the Sinhalese — crushed the minorities for once and all.
Today, Sri Lanka wants to become a Buddhist state, if it is not already become one. LTTE fought for an independent state largely on the basis of language — they were fighting the Sinhala language hegemony — although it later kept Muslims out of its grand design and turned on them. The LTTE’s cause, in the end, had degenerated into a Hindu cause, which, in the end, even ordinary Tamils abandoned because these ordinary people just wanted to live. Both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army did not let them.
In 2011, Subramanian went to Sri Lanka, spent time in Colombo and Jaffna spoke to war survivors, former associates of Prabhakaran, Muslims, Sinhalese and Buddhist monks to make sense of the awful tragedy that has been played out and largely ignored by the Indian media. Even today the Sri Lankan government does not allow Tamils to enter Puthukudiyirippu. “Seven hundred families had once lived here, until the village was inundated by the 350,000 Tamils pressed eastwards by the Tigers and the army,” writes Subramanian. Did all of them die? How many did survive? There are no clear answers.
How is it possible for a faith that preaches non-violence to indulge in such abominable acts is a question that Subramanian seeks answer during his travel in Sri Lanka. Anyone would be interested in this, especially an Indian living in the times of Shri Narendra Modi. Subramanian tells us: The very first of the Five Precepts followed by Sri Lanka’s Buddhists reads: ‘I undertake the rule to abstain from taking life,’ and in the Dhammapada, an anthology of the Buddha’s sayings is contained the instruction: One should not use violence or have it used.’ There are no caveats, no escape clauses, no laxities of language that can allow for these edicts to be bent to convenience, writes Subramanian.
But Omalpe Sobitha, a Buddhist monk who calls himself a religious fanatic and racist, and one of the founders of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), contests this and says Buddha preached the middle way. And he explains: “If one’s enemy comes to you, you have to fight back. If that fellow is coming to kill you, you can’t meditate and pray: “May you be well and happy.” That’s the impractical way, Sobitha says.
In essence, renunciation of non-violence for the larger good of the Buddhist nation formed the backbone of the Sri Lankan state’s war against the Tamils.
Another Buddhist monk says in the case of the civil war, the Tigers were the mad dogs, and there was no moral dilemma in killing mad dogs. The Tamils in Sri Lanka died as they were animals.
Rightfully, Subramanian notes: “Shrink the humanity of your enemy, and the fighting must seem easier, more just, less complicated. Warfare consists of several psychological tricks, not least the ones you play upon yourself.”
And on the other hand, Prabhakaran, too, had his own justification for violence.
“The Eelam movement will consume many of your nearest and dearest, he told them, but it will all, once the fighting was over, be entirely worth the sacrifice. Clinging to this belief was the only way in which the violence ridden universe of the Tigers could make any sense,” the author points out.
The book is a must-read. Subramanian has written it under obvious limitations with the entire LTTE leadership wiped out and the Sri Lankan government not willing to speak the truth about the final stage of the war. To his everlasting credit, Subramanian is aware of such limitations. He writes: “The truth was, and is, heavily contested territory. In its thirst to end the war, the Sri Lankan Army certainly killed Tamil civilians; it would have been impossible not to when the front moved through Tamil towns and villages, and when the civilian population became –whether inevitably or by Prabhakaran’s design—a human shield for the Tigers…
… But how many civilians died, and how were they killed? The government reckoned nine thousand; the United Nations calculated at least forty thousand, and probably more. The highest estimate I heard was seventy-five thousand, nearly as many fatalities as had accumulated in the previous 25 years of the war. Did the government (Sri Lankan) block off the Vanni to journalists and aid agencies so that it could scorch the earth without fear of being held accountable? Were non-combatants and Tiger foot soldiers killed extra judicially, as a Channel 4 documentary alleged? Were they arranged in a row, blindfolded and naked, and shot in the back of the head, so that they keeled over in a jumble of thin legs and arms, looking more like matchsticks than men?” Gaza, Syria and Iraq pale into insignificance, faced with such questions.
Subramanian is at his best when he describes the post-war Sri Lanka. “Under the unremitting gaze of the army, life became an act, to be performed for the satisfaction of the audience of soldiers. A walk must not appear like a skulk; a package tucked under one’s arm must not look suspicious; conversation must be sanitized; thoughts of anger or rebellion must not show transparently on one’s face. This is no way to live, and it was hardly surprising that Jaffna felt stifled and sullen, as if it has cotton wool stuffed into its mouth.”
And then: “It was almost as if the violence itself was a duty, owed by Sri Lanka to its people, along with elections, clean water and public transport.” Make sure that you read him.