CHENNAI: When writer Samanth Subramanian began researching on the Sri Lankan war that ended in 2009, he sought to meet ordinary people. “I was clear that the people I wanted to meet weren’t academic, politicians, top-ranking military or Tiger members. They have been written about enough and don’t interest me. Real history is written at the bottom. There are artists, cadres at low ranks, teachers and archaeologists and ordinary people whose lives have been buffeted by the war,” says the author, on the sidelines of the launch of his latest tome This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War at Starmark Books in Express Avenue on Monday. Samanth is also the author of the celebrated non-fiction Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast.
After LTTE leader V Prabhakaran was killed in 2009, the civil war that ravaged the country for several decades, ended. In search of the hidden stories, Samanth stayed in Lanka for 10 months in 2012, meeting and interacting with people in the war-affected areas.
“Large parts of the country were opened up after the war. Suddenly, a few categories of people were more accessible. I was looking for untold stories and keen to see what happens to a country that has a civil war of 30 years. How do you go about putting life together when war becomes part of lives?” he adds.
Samanth says that the book sheds light on the many kinds of dichotomy in the island nation, which has been neatly categorised into two groups —the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
“It is very much like in India, but just that it is more visible here. There are divisions among the Tiger sympathisers, the Muslims and the Buddhist clergy. Among them, the Muslims are between nowhere as both the Tamils and the Sinhalese don’t consider them their own,” he adds.
While the author clearly had his views in place about the LTTE, he was however, surprised by the extent of callousness the group had shown towards its own people. “I was shocked to learn the depth of the viciousness and the ease with which they targeted their own people. It delegitimised them further,” he says.
He says that during the close of the war, there were considerable revelations that could give the whole picture a clearer context.
“There was targeted bombardment of civilians and it is also true that the Tigers had made them human shields. What made the army so brutal and drove the Tigers to the highest levels of callousness? There are heart-wrenching stories that emerge between the two, people are missing and the UN is still trying to investigate the human rights violation,” he says.
With no redemption as yet for the parties affected, Samanth believes it is hard to be optimistic.
“The Tamils right now are politically weak, the UN means well, but it can only do so much. The present regime has committed too much to their version of story, it won’t do any soul-cleansing confession,” he adds.
Published by Penguin India, This Divided Island is priced at Rs 499.