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Southerner says 'nowhere to go man except to the North East.' Gunaratna then takes the foreign powers to the hangman for their unremitting attempts to dismember the North and the East from the rest of the country. In effect, his argument is that the Sinhalese with the 599 population density will have to shimmy down to the Indian Ocean, if their strangulating land-squeeze is not redressed by a natural migration to where the land is available -- the North and the East. This is his medication for a scenario of landlessness depravity and unrest in the South of the country. He rubs the ointment in, by saying that those who goad the country into dismembering the North and the East from the rest of its land mass, such as the Norwegians for instance, enjoy a thin population density of 14 per square kilometre. The U.S. has a population density of 29 per sq.km, he points out. This reviewer doesn't see that he takes out the "uninhabitable land'' in Norway or the U.S as he does when computing the figure for Sri Lanka. Some may say therefore that he makes a tortured argument for a tortured island. But this aside, the contours of his argument though refutable, are seemingly solid. He throws the challenge to anybody to reject substantially the argument that those who want a dismemberment of the North and the East from the body of the island, are in fact engaged in what amounts to an unfair land grab. But in the rest of the book, Gunaratna goes at least dangerously close to blaming the Sinhalese more than 'those evil men'' who advocate separatism for the North and the East. The central thesis of his book is that the Sinhala people are divided, and he devotes whole chapters to how the depressed classes in the South seemed to be locked into an entrenched system of caste which keeps them from aspiring for even the most basic of jobs such as those in the Police Force. Gunaratna has at least a closet sympathy for the JVP, which he points out is largely made up of these oppressed classes that were allowed a first look-in as human beings capable of addressing their destinies politically, due to the shrewd understanding of caste on the part of the party's leader, Wijeweera. It's almost easy to see how a man who has so many plantations under his control (Gunaratna is a planter in the classic mould) can have a love hate relationship with the JVP. At one point this odd rich-cousin like identification with the party cadre reaches proportions of the almost farcical - - as when the author gets himself ejected after gate-crashing a souped-up JVP rally which was held in protest of Chandrika Kumaratunga's Federalist package. In another almost matinee-show like episode, the author is about to be wiped off the face of the earth by the JVP intruders who find a gun under his mattress. Gunaratna says "kill me if you want to,'' and the Deshapremis (Patriots) promptly fade off into the sunset. He ends the book by stating Cassandra-like: "I have no doubt the JVP will go the way of all flesh. Power corrupts. They seem to be sanctimonious do-gooders -- that it will not last….'' he writes. Basically he is from a good vista to espy all of what he is commenting on - - here is a member of the elite, mapping out the follies of the fellow elite. Having watched them fritter away gains made after the British left with their caste, class and religion based buffoonery, Gunaratna has almost no quarter to repose any faith in. He finds the JVP genuinely deprived, but is almost puzzled the youth do not identify with his own causes, such as getting the 89 insurrection halted in the interests of managing the situation in the North and the East with the help of Presidential offspring-- Ravi Jayewardene. Ultimately, he sees hope in the Buddhist monks. This in spite of the fact that some of the most irreverent paragraphs in the book are for the Buddhists - - both of the practising and establishment kind --who have given way to a cocktail of charlatans -- kattadiyas, assorted mountebanks and master-casters of evil spells. In all it is a great hectic read - where the gentleman seems to come to terms almost cathartically with his reality. In his tortured island, there are torturers from within and without. He comes out after witnessing all of this unceasing pummelling of the land, almost in plaster-cast, so to speak, but with hope that there is salvation whether in terms of demographics ("convince everybody that the North and East cannot be dismembered unless at peril of pushing the Sinhalese to sea'') or a least in some last minute rear-guard by some folks -- like the monks-- who see the world like he does. |
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