Unabashedly partial to Sri Lanka Part ll

We continue with Padma Rao Sundarji, author of Sri Lanka: The New Country conversation with Dilshan Boange:

Q: Who would you say is the intended readership of this book? And how do you see yourself addressing those particular interest areas of that readership through your book?

I don't dare say the intended readership is Sri Lankan, since I, unlike most foreign writers, am absolutely sure that Sri Lankans know much, much more about their own country than I do. Still, there may be the odd place in the North and East that the odd Sri Lankan southerner may not have yet visited, the odd anecdote that may please and amuse the Sri Lankan reader. I would certainly hope so. But overall, the book is primarily aimed at giving foreign travellers to Sri Lanka an opportunity to hear the OTHER side of the eternally pessimistic, backward looking story that dominates reportage on Sri Lanka in the international media.

They don't have to accept what the army told me, or to accept what the people I spoke to told me. But they must at least be prepared to lend it an ear. Not block it out as many do. You know, the most hilarious thing is when I interview the odd Tamil Sri Lankan who has something good to say about the Colombo establishment. The standard response by foreign journalists to my report is: Oh, but you did not speak to the 'right Tamils'.

So, who are these 'right Tamils'? Only those who espouse separatism? So are those who are happy to be within a united Sri Lanka but certainly and rightfully seek a just political solution, the 'wrong Tamils'? I also wanted to upturn some other standard clichés: that all South companies investing in the North and East are only there to exploit the land and people for their own benefit; that all South NGOs working in the North are essentially agents of the Colombo establishment or that of some international donor agency; that the entire armed forces of Sri Lanka are ruthless murderers who enjoy killing people, that all Tamils want a separate state and all Sinhalese are only out to kill Tamils and now, Muslims.

And finally, I wanted to emphasize that what came to an end here was a war between the army of a sovereign state against armed separatists on its own soil, not like the dozens of wars being fought by western nations against armed separatists on ALIEN soils. Needless to say, the difference in western reportage on the former and the latter is brazenly discriminatory and always will remain so, if our intellectual elite don't shake off their slavishness towards all things emanating in the west and start examining and interpreting our own countries through our own prisms.

Q: As a journalist do you believe reportage must always be objective and never prescriptive? How did you deal with this matter when writing your book?

Reportage - straightforward reporting - must of course always be objective. It is not a reporter's job to pass comment, but to faithfully reproduce all that he experiences and hears. An analyst, on the other hand, is invited to comment and of course, a comment is by nature, subjective. Since I was writing a book to showcase the other side of what has been relentlessly parroted in the media that is straightaway, a subjective take. But then, it is meant to be, as I say in the preface to the book. However, my reproduction of what people said to me - whether those fitted into my overall intention of presenting 'the other side ' or not - is scrupulously objective.

I am proud of the fact that nobody financed my book, I paid for my entire trip and all expenses and confronted and faithfully reproduced whatever army generals, presidents, and ordinary people alike told me in response to my questions. Lastly, I make it very clear in the preface and have scrupulously avoided making the annoying mistake of offering unwanted 'advise' to Sri Lanka. It is the most literate society in South Asia, thank you very much, I doubt very much whether Sri Lankans need help from the outside to solve their own problems.

Q: In the book you refer to the Tamil people in the North as 'so called Sri Lankan Tamils' when juxtaposed with the legacy of the estate Tamil community whose origins are more clearly posited as of from Tamil Nadu and brought by the British. Do you feel that one of them is less Sri Lankan or that neither of them really has yet been fully 'embodied' in the 'Sri Lankan identity'?

I must clarify. The 'so-called' was to emphasize to foreign readers that the Tamils of the North are referred to as such (or as Eelam Tamils) even by themselves. As opposed to the estate Tamils who are known as the Indian Origin Tamils (IOTS). It was a clarification for the foreign reader who doesn't know the difference. I don't feel either community is 'less' or 'more' Sri Lankan. In any case and as I say repeatedly even in the book, I am hardly an authority on the subject of how Sri Lankan communities see or perceive themselves.

Personally and if there is any section I see as a confused lot - and I feel sorry for them - it is the third generation Tamil diaspora member born, educated and raised overseas, who is somehow pushed repeatedly to keep the concept of Eelam and the concept of a 'separate', non-Sri Lankan Tamil identity alive per force.

They remind me in many ways of the youngest generation of India-born Tibetans, many of whom have moved on to other western countries. It is somehow sad and unfortunate that it is others (again in the case of Tibet, a huge section of bleeding-heart liberals from California to Calicut) who insist that 'Free Tibet' is the parole they must follow. Never mind the fact that many are not even remotely interested in returning to the land called Tibet. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is true of the majority.