KAMALIKA PIERIS

Shankari Chandran’s first novel Song of the Sun God” (2017) is about a Ceylon Tamil family, caught in the Tamil Separatist Movement in Sri Lanka. Shankari feels strongly about what happened to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. For me, ‘Song of the Sun God’, more than any other novel I have written since, is a novel that really interrogates the injustices faced by the Tamil people, she said in an interview. [1]

So much of the Tamil story has been silenced – our people have been marginalized and silenced in their own country: their narrative has been manipulated, controlled and, in many places, hidden, continued Shankari. When you speak to people from Sri Lanka, there is a fear of telling the Tamil story and experience, and exploring justice for Tamil people. And when you speak to people outside the boundaries of Sri Lanka, so much information and disinformation exists.

I feel as a lawyer and a storyteller, and most importantly a Tamil person, it is part of my responsibility and duty to explore this – whilst bearing in mind the ethical framework around it. This is ultimately other people’s stories, that they have wanted me and other storytellers to write, said Shankari.

The history of Sri Lanka was appropriated by the Sinhalese people and the Sri Lankan government to create an identity of what it meant to be Sri Lankan that excluded the Tamil people. I researched the hell out of things, because I’m a lawyer, and I don’t want anyone to ever doubt the veracity of what I have said about the inhumanities that were affected against the Tamil people. If you can challenge the veracity of one part, people would want to dispute what happened to the Tamil people, and then try to challenge the rest of it, said Shankari in the course of the interview.

What was the initial seed of thought or emotion which triggered the writing process for ‘Song of the Sun God’, asked an interviewer. Shankari replied, I was very close to my grandparents. My grandmother recently passed away and my grandfather passed away a decade ago. The story seed was this couple based on my grandparents from their youth. As part of a diaspora (in particular, a diaspora that was unable to return to Sri Lanka for thirty years), so much of our understanding of Sri Lanka, Tamil history, politics and culture is through the memories and storytelling of our older generations. If you’re willing to listen, there’s such richness in those moments – and I have been listening my entire life.

When I finished my degree, I went travelling around the world. My mother gave me a list of every family member and told me to call them and they would feed me. I did call them, visit them and they fed me – but they would also tell me stories, and I would journal them in the evenings without realizing it. And then in London, I became very close to my extended family who would also tell me my own family history which I also wrote down. Years later, I found those papers and I realized I had unconsciously brought all of that into ‘Song of the Sun God.’

Shankari Chandran was born in London and grew up in Australia, but Sri Lanka was always a presence in our lives, she said. Her parents had a strong connection with north and east of Sri Lanka. We were constantly aware of what was happening with the war, she said. My family, particularly my father and his brothers really felt so much grief, anger, and guilt about having left and having survived and having gone on to create good lives for themselves.  And so there was always this pull, and though we weren’t coming back to Sri Lanka, it was still a daily part of our lives.[2] For us it is received memories of the older generation. But I do feel a very strong connection with Sri Lanka, she said. [3]

Song of the Sun God” (2017 is about Rajan and Nala,  their children, grand children and some relatives. Nala was a Vellala from the  land owning caste. They   hailed  from Allevaddy and Tellipali, two villages in Jaffna. In Jaffna the village was not just where you lived . It was about you,  your family, what they were. It told others your character, not just ancestral location. Your village matters,  enthused the novel. Yes, it  mattered. It indicated the caste a person belonged to. Caste was very important in Tamil society. The novel does not  discuss caste.

After marriage Rajan and Nala lived in Colombo, at  Cinnamon Gardens, a pleasant,  fictional neighborhood of diplomats and doctors.  The fictional hero, Rajan was the best general surgeon in Colombo. He was the youngest doctor to be promoted to chief consultant at the  General Hospital, Colombo and the first Tamil.  He was the doctor to  four  Prime Ministers including JR Jayewardene. They had many Sinhala friends and were happy in Colombo. But  after the  anti Tamil riots of  July 1983, they left for Sydney, Australia .

As a story, Song of the Sun God” lacks interest. There is no character development,  or significant events, but there is melodrama. Two daughters, in two succeeding generations , are  given away to their aunts, to be brought up. The aunts pretend to be their  mothers, resulting in  trauma later on.  One daughter found Now her brother is her second cousin and her grandmother was her great aunt,”  but even this melodrama falls flat. It is repetitive. There is also a Great Dane as the family dog ,but that does not help either.

The  novel is full of references to ice cream, both  vanilla and strawberry. Dhara  was licking ice cream off her wrist on one occasion. The focus is on enjoyment, but there is also a glimpse of the  financial austerity  Tamils are known for. Rajan suggested to the surprise of his family that they eat ice cream at  Galle Face. Its tenth of the price if you buy it by the pound or in bulk, or on sale,  But I thought you might like a treat, he said. While eating this ice cream, Nala recalled that when they were young, once a year their grandfather in Jaffna would buy them an ice cream for a treat from the restaurant next to the Dutch Fort in Jaffna town.

The main story is an excuse for the Tamil Separatist sub  story. The Tamil Separatist   sub story is placed inside the main story but not woven into it. It is  given in installments as reportage. The Tamil Separatist  story  is  tucked into a fictional story, because in fiction, readers are expected to  believe everything  they read and  even remember some of it afterwards.

The book has succeeded in influencing  two writers who were assigned to review the book. Song of the Sun God is a perfect rendition of the chaos in Sri Lanka that played with the lives of its residents, said one reviewer. If the Tamils didn’t learn Sinhalese, they would never be able to live as equals in Ceylon. And the rift between the two communities deepens as the years pass by. This divide is beautifully portrayed throughout the book and made me well up, the reviewer concluded. [4]

Alice Violett, reviewing the book said,  I didn’t even know there was a civil war in Sri Lanka before I read this book, let alone that it went on for 26 years and ended as recently as 2009. It was interesting to learn about both the country and the conflict, with many of the war scenes being  breath-takingly shocking.[5]

The novel gives information on  the many nasty things that were done to the innocent  Tamils of Sri Lanka . It  described the  first  Tamil Sinhala riot in the island, the Gal Oya riots of 1958. At Gal Oya, the government was  bringing in Sinhalese and giving them the best land,  said the novel. There were huge numbers of deaths at Gal Oya. Some had been burned to death.  Nala’s only brother , Mohan dies in the riots at Gal Oya[6]and this has a permanent impact on her. She is still thinking of Mohan twenty years later. His child Dhara was given to Nala to look after.

There is mention of Sinhala Only. Sinhala Only would change everything for the Tamils, said the novel. Children no longer studied in English, they were segregated and taught in  swabhasha. Sinhalese was now the language  of the civil service, the courts and the country. Tamils no longer had a language with which to communicate with the state .

The novel  records that the Jaffna Public Library was burned down on 2nd June 1981. The burning of the Jaffna Public library changed everything, it showed us our place, noted the characters in the  novel.

The Jaffna Public Library is described in glowing terms. It had one of the Asia’s greatest collections of Tamil literature. There were almost  hundred thousand books by Tamils about Tamils, said the novel.

 The  Jaffna community loved the library, said the novel. As children,  Rajan and Nala were taken to the Jaffna public library where they would read for hours. Nala recalled as a child she had poured through books about the Chola kings  who conquered India. They  rode  victoriously south to create new kingdoms and built temples all over south East Asia. She revelled in manuscripts and maps about a Tamil empire where her culture was celebrated. 

The library  was a useful source for those interested in  the Tamil culture that had come from south India and taken on a shape of its own  in Sri Lanka  . The library contained original documents which record the history of the Tamil people in Ceylon, said the novel.The collection represented how far they had come and  how far they could go. Much of this is nonsense, but  the aspirations of the Ceylon Tamils and their plans for domination in Sri Lanka is  significant.

The  July  1983  anti Tamil riots are recorded in the novel. Houses in Wellawatte were  burned down, people killed. A grandmother was  burned alive. Greatly to its credit, this novel records that when the anti Tamil riots of July 1983 took place in Colombo, Rajan and Nala’s  Sinhala friends  helped them.  The novel repeats  this  later on. Sinhala  neighbors helped protect Tamils in Colombo in 1983, the novel said. (p 89,344).  

Then the novel moves to the Eelam war, regarding which the author has no firsthand knowledge. The novel presents the war as a senseless, aggressive  military attack  by the Sri Lanka army on an  innocent Tamil population. LTTE is hardly mentioned. Eelam occasionally. I believe in Tamil Tigers and I believe in Eelam, said one character.

The government sent the army to the homeland of the Tamil people in Jaffna province, said the novel. Army was bombing those sheltering in churches,  such as St Peters at Navali. Almost a hundred Tamils died there, seeking refuge, the novel continued . In  the final stages of the war people died in hospital and school where they had taken refuge. LTTE who surrendered with white flags were killed.

In the book, there is considerable emphasis on the No Fire Zone . There were over 150,000 refugees in the No fire zone, said the novel .  Where did they go asked the novel. The more pertinent question is,  why they were there at all. They were  there because they were obeying LTTE orders. LTTE was engaged in high treason.

According to the novel, the state army was shooting into the No Fire Zone recklessly. The novel does not say the LTTE was firing from  the No Fire Zone. Army  said it had not used  heavy weapons,  and had not targeted civilians, UN satellite imagery showed that they  did. Army had set up mortar batteries that were  calibrated and re calibrated for the No fire Zones it had shepherded the civilians into, continued the novel.

Thousands died in the No Fire Zone  said the novel. Government  refused to allow medical supplies  in and the injured out of the No Fire Zone. Government also  refused to allow Red Cross into the No Fire Zone, to provide food and medication. The Army bombed  a  hospital  in  the No Fire Zone, though the location  has been given by the Red Cross to the army, said the novel.

The entire population depended on UN for food to eat. That was enough for two days, rest of the time they starved, said the novel. The novel is silent about the fact that throughout the Eelam war, food was sent  to the north by the government of Sri Lanka .The healthy appearance of the hostages as they arrived on the government side, after the hostage rescue, showed that they had not lacked food.

 In the novel there is much emphasis on mothers and children  .In the No Fire Zone children knew when and how to jump into  bunkers when the shelling started the  burst of sound that deafened for the moment, the beautiful silent moment followed by screaming, said the novel, poetically .

The novel continued, at Mullavaikkal  mothers on the beach  were digging bunkers in the sand. Mothers hiding their children using the own bodies as shells rained down. Mothers clung to their wasted children and placed their wasted bodies over them.  Later they lined the dead children in  lifeless rows, covered with flies. Mothers sat and wailed by them, said the novel.  However, the mothers and children rushing to the  government side, at the end of the war, shown on television, looked fit and healthy, they did not look wasted at all.

The novel records  the end of the Eelam war. They are our people and they were slaughtered on the beach like animals, declared  the novel. The army killed the hostages and stepped over a morass of bodies without a second thought.  One  hundred thousand  dead at  Mullavaikkal, mourned the novel.

Those sent to refugee camps,  never returned from them, said the novel. Soldiers had set up a section for themselves in the refugee camp and for the female refugees of their choice. The state army is shown in a very negative light. Dhara ,a character in the novel, who was working for the LTTE  was assaulted,  tortured and repeatedly raped by the army, on  a bed,  or tied down on a  table.    Her reactions  are described at length. There are more than one instance of rape by army, said the novel.[7]

After the war ended, people had returned to claim their lands, presenting faded deeds, continued the novel. But new Sinhala communities were constructed on top of old Tamils ones. New Sinhala districts were created  in old Tamil ones  making  Tamils a minority in their own homelands. Army appropriated land and businesses. Tamil  families were either in camps or living by the way side of their former homes, said the novel.

The novel   contains many contemptuous references to  the Sinhalese, Buddhism and  Mahavamsa. These carry a whiff of  the Tamil superiority shown by elite Tamils in the 1950s. The novel recalled that G.G. Ponnambalam had  said that most of the Sinhala kings are actually Tamil.

This island has never been a nation it was just three separate tribal kingdoms. Ceylon was forced together as one colony ,not a nation.  A zone really for administration convenience, run by one of the finest civil services of the world, said the novel. [8]

If the Buddhist monks and politicians want to use the Mahavamsa to take sole ownership of this country then we have a right to challenge the chronicle and them. We should talk about our ancient Tamil kingdom and the richness of Hinduism. We  should put forward our side of the history,  continued the  novel .[9]

The main target it in the novel, however, is  the Maha Sangha. Bhikkhus excelled at stirring trouble, said the novel.[10]  Monks are telling  people about the  greatness of Buddhism . Telling Sinhala-Buddhist who  ten years ago  barely cared about their own religion. [11] The Buddhist say the Mahavamsa gives them a historical claim to the country. It is their history of the Sinhala kings of Ceylon. [12] Sinhala only, the monks said was not just about language , it was  about Buddhism’s return to greatness. It was about racial superiority, hidden in the rhetoric of religion, said the novel.[13]  ( Continued)

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[1] https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/song-sun-god-novel-interrogates-injustices-faced-tamil-people-interview-shankari-chandran

[2] https://www.ft.lk/FT-Lite/An-afternoon-with-Shankari-Chandran/6-648177

[3] https://www.ft.lk/FT-Lite/An-afternoon-with-Shankari-Chandran/6-648177

[4] https://www.thebooksatchel.com/song-sun-god-shankari-chandran/

[5] https://www.draliceviolett.com/blog-tour-song-of-the-sun-god

[6] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p60

[7] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 145

[8] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 41

[9] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 21

[10] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 42

[11] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 22

[12] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 21

[13] Shankari Chandran Song of the sun god p 85