I rarely write book reviews although I read or attempt to read at least 4 full books a month. I rather distill the insights of different reads to analyse the complex messy reality around me. This approach helps me to write my book on urbanization and globalization and also helps to attract a regular readership on my blog.
This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian, a Columbia educated India Correspondent of The National, an English Language Newspaper based out of Abu Dhabi is a Tour De Force of Indian Contemporary Writing based on the stark realities of the mess after the Sri Lankan Army’s demolition job of the Tamil Tigers and with it the complete subjugation of the minority Tamils in the East and the Northern Jaffna Peninsula in an aggressively Buddhist Sinhalese Sri Lanka. The Book is based on comprehensive fieldwork throughout the curvature of the Island the shape of a tear drop in two years after the Tigers were crushed with brutal thud of a hammer as if a mosquito is being squatted.
A first hand journalistic, but quasi-ethnographic account of personal accounts of survivors, stakeholders and civil society actors mainly commoners give this book a Pico-Iyereque Feel while the intellectual historiography of the Tamil Struggle in Sri Lanka is Pankaj Mishra-esque; both writers whom I deeply admire. The book reflects the churning of Sri Lankan Society and its new contours as a Buddhist Sinhalese Nation, where Muslims and Tamils of all faiths have to live by the dictate of the Buddhist Sangha and its radical advocates as the Sinhala Ravaya (or the Sinhalese Roar) where the Monks in Robes justify raw violence to squash any ideology other than the majoritarian narrative of the Aryan Sinhalese Race. The culture, politics, discourse and history is being recalibrated in accordance with the victors scale; this time is the Sinhalese Sri Lankan State. The 2000 year Tamil History in Sri Lanka is reduced to a footnote as signboards even in the Tamil North are in English and Sinhalese. The ‘Devala’ or Tamil in Sinhalese is treated as dispensable as can be read from the stories that the author shares in this narrative. The Book is divided into sections and sub-episodes and is aptly inter-linked to carve a smooth drive. The details of the book capture the war as a personal calamity rather than of cold political state-craft. The Terror, The North, The Faith, and Endgames aka the sections of the books are named with a specificity of a physicist gripping the essence of the write-up.
The most engaging elements of the book for me were the episodes narrating heart wrenching expulsions of the native Jaffna Tamil Muslims in 1990 on a summer afternoon and how the Buddhist Monks have justified War against Tamils on a racist/religion based rationale which renders a moral passport for state led so called anti-terror purges. Fanaticism of all shades it seems has the same colour. The racist justification it felt was the same as the Nazis had against the Jews and same fervour of medieval animosity of the Palestinian-Israeli Question. The Identity tangle brews bloodshed and similar non Buddhist activities such as riots against Muslims of the Arakan and Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar by the neocon Buddhist Groups such as 969 have shown that extremism has no rationale.
I would recommend this travelogue thesis on post war Sri Lanka as an add to a serious readers personal library. A sure-shot contender for the South Asian Writing in English awards for 2014.
Month: July 2014
Trans-national Advocacy Actors: Time to return to core competency?
Recently, there were media reports last month criticizing the Greenpeace Executive who was flying between Brussels and another EU Capital for work every week whereas the commute could be done via a carbon effective route. So, much positive press for being environmentally aggressive on the high seas of the Arctic that Greenpeace is so known for. Last year, the esteemed UK based Charity Oxfam had advertised for an employment position for its Head of Communications with a price-tag of 75K Pounds. Staggering I would contend for a non-profit. But as the tribe of global, corporatized non-profits would retort they need to pay top pound for the best talent in the house. Partially true, but it would certainly not buy sympathy from a college going kid, donating his pocket money to satiate his green conscious. An industry executive whom I to spoke last week was point blank direct in labeling Greenpeace as ‘extortionist’ and questioned about the fuel bills and mobilization costs for the much publicized arctic expeditions. Genuine question indeed raised; which doubts the credibility of the moral entrepreneurship of Greenpeace.
Media Reports of Non Profit Training Seminars in Star Hotels where folks bleed their heart out on poverty while sipping chardonnay is simply not done. Well, one does not have to behave like an acetic, though this does not bring good press to the sector which depends on reputational capital and funder sympathy. Poverty porn creates cynicism and ultimately donor fatigue. In the effort to create ‘Shared-Value’, the non-profit movement has sold its soul to the devil that they so love to mock. The Social Entrepreneurship set-up is commercially not sustainable as there is too little real impact rather than fashionable fluff. They are good souls, but they tend to lose out in the crowd of wannabe do-gooders.
The lack of accountability and transparency in funding as informed by the leaked Indian Governments internal intelligence department report on foreign funding of Activist Non Profits that almost undermined so called developmental progress such as the nuclear power plant in power hungry Tamil Nadu. After Fukushima, the paradigm of risk and nuclear capitalism came to fore and a lot of activists rode the wave against nuclear power. A freshly churned MSF report on developmental interventions in crisis areas indicts non-profits as gunning for funding rather than concentrating on delivering the goods: creating an impact where state actors have failed.
It is time that Non Profits return to their core competence of creating impact, rather than rhetoric and function as true Force Du Resistance in empowering communities to realize their potential.
Land Acquisition & Grammar of Neo-Liberal Rhetoric: Interesting Bedfellows
Every time i switch on to CNBC TV-18 or ET Now, there seems to be a common thread which the business media in India has picked up: portraying the amended Land Acquisition legislation as the demon strangling the animal spirits of Dalal Street Capitalism. Decade long job less growth and economic stagnation of the UPA has given the Modi Administration a free hand in terming every single device of the left of centre resistance as anti-growth. Growth-ism is a totem of our post liberalization culture. Well, there is a chasm between Dalal Street and Main Street. Let the bankers of SoBo visit the chawls of Virar first.
Transnational capitalism has a unique scripture and it has its zealots who preach the word on Bloomberg, Boardrooms and Business Schools. Anyone who has differing opinions is sidelined for un-natural profits at the alter of capitalism by marginalizing communities.
The priests of the bourgeoisie also get relegated to the proletariat of the middle class as was seen during the 2008 financial crisis. India needs manufacturing jobs and that is a reality which cannot be disputed.
Let the ambit of the conversation be broader and expand the boundaries of the discourse. That makes business sense and people are not statistics.
Change Thinker 