Posts Categorized: Book Reviews

Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held.

Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held.

Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held…

When it comes to the ideal of living free and prosperously, the Eelam Tamil-speaking people have at least learned to never say never.

This is the first memoir of that momentous period that started with the heady hopes following the ceasefire, continued through the efforts to build a new society in the Vanni and areas of the East, and ended so tragically with the killing of untold tens of thousands in 2009 and the incarcerations of hundreds of thousands in internment camps.

Readers of news in English will be familiar with the narrative of 2002-2009 from the perspective of Colombo. Almost nothing has been written in English from the other side of the Omanthai checkpoint that separated government-controlled territory from that controlled by the LTTE. Those who lived there, Tamils who visited and those who read news written by Tamils are very familiar with the narrative that Malathy tells, but nobody in the rest of the world will be.

My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia by Pamela Constable Released: May, 2004 ISBN: 1574886185 Table of Contents: Prologue Introduction Chapter One – Into the Fog Chapter Two – The River Chapter Three – Ashes in the Snow Chapter Four – The Hidden Heart Chapter Five – The Wrath of Allah Chapter Six… Read more »

Mr. S.J. Gunasegaram was born in Chundikuli on the Jaffna Peninsula in 1901 and passed away in Kopay in 1964 after a life of writing prolifically on a wide variety of subjects, both in English and Tamil. Few scholars have had the skills, the urge, the courage, and the dedication that Gunasegaram had for research… Read more »

published June 1, 2004 Anbudaiyeer Vanakkam Attached is an invitation to the release function of the book Thodarum Thavippu written by Poonguzhali. A note on the book: This book illustrates the real-life struggle of a mother to save her son from the death penalty. Perarivalan was arrested in the Rajiv Gandhi assasination case in 1991 at the… Read more »

by A. Sri-Jayantha; published May 14, 2004 At the Water’s Edge by Pradeep Jeganathan South Focus Press, New York 2004 ISBN 0-9748839-0-5 Pradeep Jeganathan has certainly mastered the art of the short story. Each of the seven stories in this collection is a taut, well-crafted example of the genre. Each is a unique vignette which introduces… Read more »