I recently read the book Brotherless Night. It was recommended to me by a good friend of mine and my aunt's in Sri Lanka. We were on the phone with her and my aunt was talking about how we saw a poster celebrating Prabakharan and the Tamil Tigers in Pendle Hill, Sydney. I remember that night my uncle was amazed that nobody in Pendle Hill had killed each other yet--they were all Sri Lankans living together in Sydney side by side, regardless of the Prabakharan stuff.
While we were on the phone, I made a comment about how the Tigers would have been considered heroes by many people, and it would be a matter of perspective. My aunt scathingly told me to learn more about the war before I said stuff like that. After the phone call, my friend told me to read the book as our conversation reminded her of it.
It was an incredible book, to say the least. I cried a lot while reading it. I learned a LOT. More than I have learned in my undergrad, that's for sure.
I didn't know we were living in a civil war when I still lived in Sri Lanka. I never knew the extent of the violence against the Tamil population, and I never processed or understood the violence against the Muslim population in future years. The burning of Muslim shops by the BBS was a major catalyst for my parents deciding to finally pull the plug on our life there and migrate to Australia. I never understood anything because all knowledge of violence was kept away from me, likely because of my age and my anxious nature. All I knew was that I was taken away from my home at the horribly tender age of 12 and away from my grandparents and my friends and all I knew was that hurt, the hurt of my own. I only ever knew the good parts of Sri Lanka, of Colombo. My parents were all too glad to get away from it. I finally understand why they kept saying this was the best decision, 11 years later.
My mom told me that her childhood house was built on the burned ruins of a Tamil house destroyed in the riots, and she and my other aunt and my uncle would always talk about the ghost with the anklets. Knowing the full context behind this ghost hurts a lot. In Brotherless Night, there is a chapter dedicated to the experience of Sashi, Niranjan, and Ammammah through the Black July riots. Ammammah's house was in Wellawatte, which is where my mom and her family lived with the ghost. Wellawatte, my home and my mom's home, is a graveyard for hundreds of Tamils. The fact that the ghost still haunts the location of her old home hurts.
Brotherless Night is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever come across, because not only does it aptly evoke the feelings of leaving home, it expresses to the reader just how much it hurts to leave home when you've done all you can to stay and fight, to make things better, to do your part in doing good for your people, illustrating this sense of hopelessness and despair throughout. It shows us the lives of characters who I personally came to love and it gave me a taste of what it might feel like to lose those loved ones in the most horrible ways imaginable. Whether it was through death or through indoctrination, the loss of loved ones is the main theme of this book (I THINK--I am not a literature expert, I studied film though).
The effects of politics and terrorism/freedom fighting and the nuances of it all are explored deeply in this book too. I'm gonna be honest, I feel like I was super dumb about terrorism/freedom fighting before this book. I feel like I had a super idealistic view of it, like, YEAHHH FIGHT THE OPPRESSOR type shit. But Ganeshananthan shows us the double-edged sword that is the LTTE. The purpose was clear--establish Eelam and deliver equality and rights to the Tamils that the Sri Lankan government was failing to provide. Establish Eelam and protect the Tamils from state violence. However, the deaths of Sir, K, and Anjali (based on C. E. Anandarajah, Thileepan, and Rajani Thiranagama, respectively), the death of Dayalan, the boy tied to the pole, the downward spiral of Seelan, the fragmentation of Sashi's entire family, and even the 'no-fire' zone in Mullaitivu and the death of thousands of civilians--these highlight how the LTTE caused violence upon their own people, used their own people in unacceptable ways to further their goals. In the end, they didn't even achieve their goals, so their betrayal of their own was completely in vain. There is no Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. The distrust between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities runs as deep as it used to. Tamil Sri Lankans are still disadvantaged by the Sri Lankan government.
But what leads people to this breaking point? Specifically with the examples of K's death and Seelan's attitude towards his family, the anger and the hurt as a result of the actions of the Sri Lankan government and army is unimaginable to me. Of course there was going to be violence in the end. Of course there were going to be people who were pushed and pushed and pushed until they felt they had no choice but to do it--to severe ties, to kill, to starve themselves, to do whatever it took for the collective freedom (or retribution, or both). And in terms of being able to make this choice, there is a section in the book that haunts me that explains this better than I can in my stupid HTML document. It talks about the suicide of Priya, a woman who was raped and impregnated by a soldier of the IPKF, and whose brothers were murdered by them. While she was not affiliated with the LTTE, it illustrates the breaking point perfectly:
I want you to understand: I was not born to fight for a political cause. I did not feel chosen. And this woman was not born this way--she was not chosen. She was born in a village in Jaffna, and the soldiers raided her house and raped her, and she watched the men who had raped her kill her four brothers. I want you to understand: this is not an excuse, or an explanation. This is a fact. She was not born to walk into an office building on an ordinary day, a day when the sun was shining and three-wheelers cluttered the streets, to try to detonate a bomb... ... She died and she killed other people and she did not mind, and in this she was different from me forever.
At some point, violence is the only answer. At some point, violence is the only language people will understand. And even then, it may not work out. And this is the part that is depressing. If martyrdom achieved its goal, then that would at least... I don't know. But pointless martyrdom is heartbreaking and despairing.
Talking about the LTTE being a double-edged sword without talking about the Sri Lankan government's role in its formation in the first place would be idiotic. It is state violence that led to the formation of Tamil freedom groups like PLOTE and LTTE in the first place. Postcolonial Sri Lanka, post-independence Sri Lanka, hell-bent on marginalizing and disadvantaging the Tamil Sri Lankans, is to blame. And further than that, we can always justifiably point fingers at our favourite little island in Europe for yet another successful instance of 'dividing and conquering'. It is important to remember that state violence is terrorism, and personally I think it is 'true' terrorism. I can point out the terrorism of the LTTE, the IRA, and Hamas and condemn the violence caused by their actions, sure. But why, why, WHY? Are we to let the state terrorism by state/colonial bodies fall by the wayside? The state terrorism is the true evil here, because why the fuck on earth are you as a government and military doing this shit in the first place? How else can I explain myself? The Sri Lankan government was supposed to ensure everyone had equal rights regardless of ethnicity or religion or ancestry. State violence. And colonial violence--why the fuck were the English up in the Irish business? Why the fuck is Israel even a thing for fuck's sake? Yeah, terrorism sucks. But should we not be pointing our fingers at those who hold the real power as well? Those with the money and the militaries who suddenly decide that these specific people should succumb to their desires just because? Come on now.
Sashi actually describes this feeling too in a small scene. Sashi tries to convince Seelan not to join the Tigers, to finish his studies, and I think it illustrates that desire to just DO SOMETHING:
"Thanggachi," he said, keeping his eyes on the board. "Do you think I will go to university in Colombo now? Ammammah's house burned. Periannai is dead. How can we act as though that did not happen? The library burned. All of this and more has happened. You want to go on in some sort of peaceful life, but there was never a peaceful life. That was a myth. Are you so surprised that people want to join the movement?"
To tell you the truth, I was not. And you can be honest: you are not surprised either. You are thinking, as anyone would, as everyone has, at least in passing, about what you would have done. If I were in his shoes, I would never, you might have said to yourself; or perhaps you are sure you would have done exactly the same. There is no way to know, truly, without standing where we did...
I did not want Seelan to go, because I could not bear the thought of losing another brother. I did not want him to go, because I needed his anger beside mine. I wanted him to go, because if I could not have revenge, I thought he should.
So yeah, two things can be true at once. Two violences can be true at once. Before reading this book, I had this idealistic notion that many terrorist groups could be absolved of their violence because of their greater goal... but really, no, that's just not right. But I do know this for sure--more than ever I think state violence is one of the most evil things to happen to any population. Whether it's colonial violence, purposeful marginalization of a population, or your government selling itself out to corporations, it's pure evil and breeds nothing but destruction.
The book also explores the role of Sri Lankan Tamil women in the Civil War, less so than these central themes but to some extent nonetheless. A major aspect is the rape of hundreds of women by the IPKF. The IPKF is another entity in the book that is discussed mainly to highlight how useless they were for anything that wasn't rape, and how they fanned the fire.
Anyway, from my understanding, the book shows this role in a few examples. Keep in mind that none of these women were actually enlisted as Tamil Tigers. Firstly and obviously we have Sashi, who worked tirelessly at the field clinic alongside the Tigers, looked after K during the hunger strike, and helped Anjali and Varathan with the Reports. We have Amma and the neighbourhood women who provided food for the Tigers. We have Anjali, who spoke her truth and was killed for it. And we have Priya, who detonated a suicide bomb. Apart from Priya, I think there is a clear binary present--Ganeshananthan highlights how it was mainly the men who were involved in outright violence and warfare, while the women were involved mostly nonviolently, and this shows us how the Sri Lankan Tamil gender roles presented themselves in the civil war. I found this aspect quite interesting. I liked how Ganeshananthan did not provide a commentary herself on this, but presented information plainly and let it do the talking, if that makes sense.
Not only did this book open my eyes to just how silly I've been regarding nuance in general, it also just made me feel terrible. I'm homesick for a place where people died in the most horrible ways. I was homesick and clueless and living in a la-di-da land, dwelling in sweet ignorance, and I'm ashamed. I knew everything from a cold, polished, matter-of-fact perspective, and I never knew anyone's personal stories. This book is a work of fiction, but it is grounded in reality and in deep research. Sashi's character helped me understand how so many girls my age in my country living during that time experienced it all. I am grateful I understand now, but I wish I didn't understand. I wish there was never a civil war, I wish people weren't assassinated and burned and raped and pillaged, I wish there was no need for the Tigers, I wish people didn't lose their loved ones and never see them again, I wish Tamil Sri Lankans could have stayed in Sri Lanka in their homeland and not been forced to flee, and I wish the ghost in my mom's old house wasn't a ghost--I wish she had grown up to be old.