In an interview on Sri Lanka

So onto your last book, Like Myth and Mother by Sumathy. What is this about?

So this book came out last year. Like Ludowyk, she teaches English at what is now called Peradeniya University. She is a poet, and writes plays that have won awards. So this is a selection of poetry and prose, written over the past 2 decades. And it’s a very personal way of looking at very difficult times. And it’s very critical of all of us – the activists, the intellectuals.

Looking at not just this, but almost all the books you have chosen: you are not criticizing the Sinhala government as much as you are criticizing the Tamil community, and the LTTE in particular. Why aren’t you angrier with the government?

It’s not that I’m not angry with the Sri Lankan government, or that I’m not looking at them critically. In 1983, when I was 12, my family was exiled from Sri Lanka because of state repression. I have no illusions about the brutality of the state, about the way the conflict was dragged on by successive governments. The question is how to confront the governments. And I suppose my view is that we have to begin by looking inside our own communities, that unless we look inwards, we can’t challenge our oppressors. That’s why dissent is so important. As a teenager, I too dreamt of becoming a Tamil militant. But when Rajani was assassinated, that’s when I realized there was something deeply wrong with the political culture of militant movements. And by the way, so far I have only talked about books in English. There have been some very engaging and though-provoking books in Tamil as well. I’d like to mention one in particular: Kovinthan’s Puthiyathoru Ullagam, which means New World. It was written in one month in 1984 by militants who were on the run from their own militant group – the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam or PLOTE . It had a tremendous impact on me. I read it a year after Rajani was killed and it talked about the internal violence and torture meted upon idealistic youth by these militant groups. It was really the starting point of my serious questioning of armed militant politics.

So what was your feeling on hearing the news that government forces had killed Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran?

 I felt a great sense of relief that the war is at an end, particularly these last few months, the toll on civilians has been horrific. Now the big guns are silent. The Tamil Tigers took the Tamil community on a disastrous adventure, with their extreme demands, their insistence on a separate homeland.

So what needs to be done, going forward, in your view?

The discrimination against Tamils and other minorities, the grievances they faced that preceded this brutal war, that was the reason for this whole civil war – these issues have to be addressed. The minorities have to be treated with dignity and their rights have to be protected. And, so far, it doesn’t look to me as if the government is serious about resolving the political problem. In fact, the current government has given Sinhala Buddhist nationalism center stage. But beyond that, people of all communities have to come together now. We need to look inward and figure out – what is our responsibility, to ourselves, to the other communities? After 25 years, the Tigers have been destroyed. And large sections of the Tamil population supported the Tigers. We have to ask: ‘Why?’ This is a moment for deep self-reflection. It is always easier to blame your problems on someone else.

It’s also a time for reconciliation and for that, the abductions, the killings, they have to stop. After 25 years of civil war, we can finally, I hope, move forward. Before the war, we had 25 years of nationalist mobilization and polarization. I hope the next 25 years will usher in a new era of peace.

And that’s why I chose these books. They are very political choices. I have chosen them because they speak to my sense of solidarity, and collaboration, with some of the intellectuals, writers and activists who wrote them. The Tigers decimated Tamil activists, they targeted and killed them. It will take a long time for another generation to emerge. And maybe these books will be a source of inspiration for the next generation.