Cinders in paradise

A well-crafted amalgam of first-hand accounts and stories from a decades-long conflict, 'This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan war' by Samanth Subramanian traces the origins of the Sri Lankan problem, through epics of the past, colonial shenanigans, religious and ethnic bigotry and the compulsions of contemporary politics. This book stands out as a well-researched  compilation of everything  about the conflict years, as well as post-war Sri Lanka, traversing gut-wrenching stories from both sides of the war. Encompassing a wide cast of journalists, social workers, war victims, monks, politicians, wary former Tiger sympathisers and Lankan Tamil diaspora, the book spins an account of how trouble brewed in this island paradise, tore people from their homes, scarred atleast two generations and left behind a legacy of fear and gloom.

Writing about a long-drawn out conflict that continues to haunt a nation is no mean task, especially where there are no easy answers, no obvious sides to pick, where the lines between the 'good' and the 'bad' are so impossibly blurred. The author plunges into this task with seeming ease, first by drawing out stories from former Tigers who struggle to come to terms with their Cause that turned futile, and vivid accounts of the atrocities committed in their heyday. Then there are stories of majoritarianism, suppression of the Tamil minority, lionisation of a 'Sinhala only' past, and of the paradoxically extreme ways of a religious tradition founded in moderation and the 'Middle path'.

The accounts of the two warring sides are followed by the problems of the present day, of vanished journalists, missing ex-Tiger sympathisers, and of the survivors struggling to eke out a life from the embers of a still-burning conflict. In this post-conflict world,  the annihilation of the Rebels and the victory ring hollow, leaving more questions unanswered than ever. The author paints a word picture of startling clarity, ringing with a palpable sense of desolation, and the stale but ever-present taste of fear. A keen seen of irony, and an eye for the ludicrous, help provide respite from the bleakness of the subject. 

On the whole, the narrative is relatively tight; the author's tone tinged with empathy, displaying sensitivity in interviews with victims, genuinely contrite in expressing helplessness in the face of despondency. However, quirky digressions into the extraneous and a tendency to move back and forth across people and places are distracting at times. 

Shunning the tedium of chronology, the book manages to keep in sharp focus the inevitability as well as the hopelessness of it all, with the powerful writing deftly laying bare the cruel ironies and delusive nature of this civil war. In the end, people, and not ideology or religion, drive conflict: not least by 'shrinking the humanity of the enemy', by 'pouring (religion) into new and unexpected moulds'. Violence begets violence, and beyond a point, the war  turns into an exercise in brinkmanship and futility. The conclusion is strangely appropriate in its abruptness:  conveying that even the final 'victory' has brought no semblance of clarity or closure to the people on either side of this Divided Island.