Indian Peace Research Articles

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Reviewed by: Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan Lopamudra Basu V. V. GANESHANANTHAN Brotherless Night New York. Random House. 2023. 368 pages. THE SRI LANKAN Civil War, which began with demands of the ethnic Tamil minority to form their separate homeland in the early 1980s after waves of state-sanctioned violence initiated by the Sinhala majority, stretched over three decades, leading to horrific civilian casualties and eventual defeat of the militant Tamil Tigers at the hands of the Sri Lankan army. This traumatic history has been the backdrop of recent Sri Lankan novels in English. What makes V. V. Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night unique is that it presents this traumatic history from the perspective of women and the myriad ways in which their lives are transformed by institutions of ethnic nationalism. Brotherless Night begins with a prologue set in New York in 2009 but then moves back to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, where the narrator, Sashi, is preparing for her entrance exams to medical school in a Tamil upper-middle-class family in which she is the only sister to four brothers. Sashi idolizes her eldest brother, Niranjan, finishing medical school, and wants to emulate him in her choice of profession. Her brother Dayalan and his friend, K, are closer to her in age, and together they frequent the Jaffna Public Library as a place for intensive study. This idyllic world of youthful aspirations supported by a loving family is presented from the beginning as precarious. It receives its first shocking jolt when Sashi and her eldest brother move to Colombo to the house of their grandmother. Soon after Niranjan earns his first salary and becomes engaged to a young doctor, this neighborhood falls victim to anti-Tamil riots, and Sashi's grandmother's beautiful house is burned. Sashi and her grandmother become temporary refugees in a camp, but the greater tragedy is when they discover that Niranjan's car has been burned by a violent mob. Sashi returns to Jaffna to her family to face a completely altered family. Her mother is almost on the brink of a mental breakdown after losing Niranjan, and the younger brothers feel an irrepressible rage at the loss of the eldest brother and an absent father. The family tragedy is compounded by the continuing political disenfranchisement of Tamils, the destruction of Tamil homes and property, including the beloved Jaffna library. It is in the midst of these escalating tensions that two of Sashi's brothers and her friend K leave to join the Tigers, adding yet another layer of loss. In spite of these grave difficulties, the novel charts Sashi's growth into political consciousness. She fulfills her departed brother's dream by eventually matriculating in the medical college at Jaffna. While at medical school, she is recruited by K to provide medical assistance at a clinic run by the Tigers. As Sashi gets more intimately acquainted with the operations of the Tigers, she is increasingly disillusioned by their unethical actions, their hunger for power, killing of members of other Tamil militant groups, and ruthless crushing of all dissent. She realizes that her own brother, Dayalan, is complicit in these atrocities. As the war progresses, Sashi is forced to leave her beloved ancestral home on the orders of Tigers. However, her greatest disillusionment with the Tigers occurs when the Tiger leader recruits K to participate in a highly publicized hunger strike to demand the immediate removal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force that had brokered a fragile peace with the Sri Lankan government. After much internal debate, Sashi agrees to accompany K on the stage. As the fast progresses, Sashi expects the demands to be met or the Tiger leader to call off the fast. Neither happens, and K dies a painful death and becomes a Tamil martyr. Sashi is crippled by this loss as well as the loss of Dayalan but gradually recovers under the mentorship of her anatomy professor, Anjali, who is also secretly documenting the atrocities of the conflict. Through her work in the clinic, Sashi bears witness to sexual violence perpetrated by Indian soldiers as well as killings of Tamil civilians by the Tigers...

'Theatre for Liberation' during the Period of IPKF in Srilanka

The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990. Later, the IPKF withdrew from Sri Lanka due to Gruella attacks, political maneuvering and pressure from the Sri Lankan government. During this period, property loss and human disasters were reported in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Because of the war between the Indian Peace Force and the LTTE; there was no public space for grammatist performances, theatre activism was stand still. In this environment, two political dramas named ‘Kalathil Kaththan’ and ‘Sathiiyai Venra Savu’ were produced and performed in more than a thousand places. It was aimed at mobilizing support for liberation among the masses. Here, Political Drama is based on political ideology drama. It usually deals with political issues and ideas. Support or oppose a particular political ideology. The LTTE in Sri Lanka was destroyed by a military operation in 2009. They were famous for documentation of Their work, but while destroying LTTE, during that time their archives were also destroyed and thus none of the artistic activities documents they had collected remained, although there were some documents in libraries and individuals which were either destroyed by them due to military threats or hidden so that they could not be taken out. At the same time, many of those who participated in the theatre activities for liberation during the LTTE era live in disguise, avoiding their artistic Identities. Therefore, it seems that the plays of this period are deeply buried in the minds of those who saw them and the artists who participated in them. Due to this, we have to rediscover the plays that are deeply buried in the mind. This study is an attempt to excavate their memories by meeting theatre creators who worked in the ‘Theatre for Liberation’ and who are currently living in isolation due to the political and military crisis. After almost 10 – 20 years, they partially recovered the dramas that were buried deep in their minds after a long discussion. The information is closely related to the social and political power structures, so discourse analysis has been analyzed using the theoretical method (Discourse Analysis) and based on the concept of liberation theatre.

Rewriting History: A. Santhan’s Portrayal of Jaffna in The Whirlwind

Since writing in English from Sri Lanka with a Tamil perspective is limited, as a novel which stands out as an account of the wartime experience of the people of Jaffna, A. Santhan's The Whirlwind explores the life, culture, history, and identity of the people of Jaffna, Tamil inhabitants of the northern part of Sri Lanka. It is expressed through the incidents happened in the Jaffna Peninsula which was occupied by an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980's. This paper describes the ways in which the writer captures the traumas, violence, denial of human rights, the clashes between Tamil militants and IPKF, and their ideologies by rewriting the history of Jaffnese during the period of IPKF. The objective of this paper is to express the traumatic experiences of the minority in Sri Lanka and their sociocultural and political identity in the postcolonial Sri Lanka.

Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England (review)

Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England. By R.Todd Romero. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2011. Pp. xvi, 255. $80.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-1558-49887-7; $26.95 paperback, ISBN 978-1-558-49888-4.) In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company chose as its seal the now-famous drawing of a New England standing in a barren wilderness clutching a bow and arrow and saying, Come over and help us. Lesser known, perhaps, is an Indian peace medal from 1676 that similarly depicts a New England standing alone in a barren wilderness holding a bow and arrow, but the 1676 is speechless, has long hair, and two perfectly round breasts. It is precisely the meaning of this gendered transformation that R. Todd Romero wishes us to consider in Making War and Minting Christians. These images represent English perceptions of Indians as increasingly un-manly over the course of the seventeenth century, to be sure, but also signal another change wrought by colonialism, warfare, and evangelization: the removal of the very things that allowed Indian men to live out either English or Indian masculine ideals in terms of subsistence, community leadership, and spiritual values. This book is largely structured around and Anglo-American understandings of masculinity, religion, and warfare between 1620 and 1676. Although and English societies shared some cultural ground on these issues, they rarely recognized such commonalities, often focusing instead on differences (p. 20). Drawing from a seemingly exhaustive and close reading of English print sources, a number of material objects, and a variety of Indian oral traditions, Romero argues that Native and AngloAmerican conceptions of masculinity unfolded in counterpoint over the course of the seventeenth century and were central to the development of colonialism (p. T). To make his case, Romero draws from an impressive number of episodes and exchanges that illustrate the various colonial and approaches to the issues at hand. Natives demonstrated masculinity through strenuous physical games like hubbub, particular modes of speechmaking, hunting, and warfare. For English colonists, manliness was demonstrated through patriarchy, particular kinds of labor (like farming), and warfare. Colonial officials sought to bend gender roles- particularly related to masculinity- to a thoroughly European ideal, even as praised the few ways in which Indian masculine ideals already met English standards. Through colonial legislation and especially through the evangelization process and the resultant praying towns, John Eliot and other English missionaries and leaders tried to reshape Indian men and boys by curbing Indian games, encouraging them to grow gardens instead of fishing and hunting, cutting their hair short, attending church, observing the Sabbath, praying, accepting Christianity, wearing English clothes, providing spiritual leadership in their households, and fighting more like English men. …

Les dimensions internes des comportements en temps de crise : étude de cas entre l'Inde et le Sri Lanka 1983-1990

On July 29 1987, after 20 years of sustained inter-communal conflict and under great political pressure and war weariness, leaders of the government of Sri Lanka signed an Accord with the Indian government which hady at Sri Lanka s request, intervened in Sri Lanka's military and political conflict. The Accord aimed at the cessation of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Indian involvement in Sri Lanka's domestic affairs signalled a decisional shift among Sri Lanka's leaders from a policy of resolving the conflict by military means to one of seeking political accommodation with the Tamil separatists. However, the presence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and previous attempts by the Indian government to air drop supplies to Tamil rebels signalled the beginning of international crisis between India and Sri Lanka. This paper traces the events and decisional flow of Sri Lanka s elites from the pre-crisis period ofl983 to crisis abatement in 1990 in an attempt to understand the events and patterns of behaviour that led to an international crisis between Sri Lanka and India and more generally to elucidate the relationship between domestic ethnic conflict and international crisis. This paper argues that Sri Lanka entered into an international crisis precisely because of internal threats to its political integrity engendered by its domestic ethnic conflict. First, the theoretical literature is explored, allowing for a fuller exploration of the linkages between international crisis and ethnic conflict. Second, the perceptions of Sri Lanka's decision-maker s in response to increasing Indian involvement during the pre-crisis and crisis period are assessed. Third an analysis of SriLankan decision-making process is weighed against patterns of coping found in the theoretical literature. Fourth and finally, implications for further research are explored, specifically the role that ethnic conflicts play in triggering international crises and the implications that has for the management of ethnic conflicts by regional hegemons.

Aborted Identity: The Commission and Omission of a Monument to the Nation, Sri Lanka, circa 1989

The doomed competition organized in 1989 to design a monument to the nation in Sri Lanka coincided—hardly accidentally—with a grave crisis of this postcolonial state, a former colony (called Ceylon) of the Portuguese (1505–1658), the Dutch (1658–1796), and, most recently and influentially, the British (1796–1948). A terse account of this uniquely overdetermined crisis comes, oddly and appropriately enough, from a hagiography of a politician who helped precipitate it: Dayan Jayatilleke’s tribute to the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa in book form. There he argues forcefully that “the [Sri] Lankan state [then] faced all three major categories of threats that any state could [ever] face.”1 First and foremost—indeed still the most intractable—was the threat to its “territorial integrity,” presented by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE, or the Tigers), who had been fighting militarily for an independent Tamil state in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka for almost two decades. Second, as a direct consequence of the first, was the “threat to national independence and sovereignty” posed by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), whose presence in the northern and eastern provinces of the country was meant to enforce the terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord signed in July 1987. The latter, though presented and even possibly intended by the two sig-

Sanctuary: Native Border Crossings and the North American West

The Sioux, Sitting Bull, and Border The forty-ninth parallel boundary between western Canada and United States appears like a quiet and unexplained guest in North American history, with its seemingly arbitrary straight slightly mysterious origin, and hazy significance, and to none more so than North America's Native peoples, whose territories it divided. Throughout 1870s and 1880s line, as many Native groups came to call boundary, became, however briefly, their friend. [1] As they were pushed and pulled across it, groups on both sides of line saw in its medicine hope of political refuge from American or Canadian government on other side. The first were American Sioux, when suddenly in 1877 American side meant exposure, pursuit, and captivity, and Canadian side, sanctuary. Cross line into Mother's country and there was still hope of living as hunters rather than as hunted. Cross it, said Robert Higheagle, a Sioux, and you altogether different. On one side you a re perfectly free to do as you please. On other you are in danger. It was a simple formula, less a tale of two nations than of one North American West, upon which history tells a story of variations (Higheagle n.d.). Their camp stretched along west bank of Greasy Grass Creek in south central Montana, probably largest off-reservation gathering of Indians ever seen. The Blackfeet, Hunkpapa, Ogalala, Sans Arc, Brule, Minneconjous, and Cheyenne, strung together like segments of a caterpillar. At around noon on 25 June 1876, attack of Lt. General George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry took them by surprise. Suddenly, the squaws were like flying birds, recalled Sitting Bull, leader of Hunkpapa; the bullets were like humming bees. The women, it turned out, thought of seeking sanctuary first. By dusk, women and children were moving camp, and by morning they had crossed Greasy Grass Creek, beyond sound of gunfire, where groups of warriors began to join them. Their annihilation of Custer's forces that day and next is most famous defeat of U.S. army in history of West. It is most famous Indian military victory, it was also, for remaining Plains tribes, beginning of end of freedom. We kept moving all summer, a man named Red Horse recalled, the troops being always after us (Graham 1995, 54-55, 86, 70, 104; Neihardt 1961, 108-09; Hardorff 1991, 92-95). The Indians had seen this coming. The Sioux and United States were both expanding their territories, Sioux ever since many of them left Lakes region for plains in late-eighteenth century, and United States in its relentless westward migration that poured across and onto western plains beginning in 1840s. They fought bloody battles throughout 1850s and 1860s and made treaties--at Fort Laramie on North Platte River in 1851 to control intertribal warfare and protect westering whites, and in 1868 to create a Great Sioux Reservation out of what later became South Dakota, with added hunting grounds west in Yellowstone and Powder River country of present-day Montana and Wyoming. At same time, in 1869 Grant administration formed an idealistic Indian Peace Commission just as determined to turn Plains Indians into crop-growing Christians as U.S. Army was to round them up or kill them. Even in 1870s, many Indians disregarded treaties entirely, e specially young hotheaded ones and those most resistant to change. The Sioux still pushed westward, gaining turf from Crow. Faced with a choice of falling into hands of earnest humanitarians or fighting and starving, many chose latter (Utley 1993, 43, 82; Prucha 1984, 17-21; Greene 1991, 4-5). By time Custer and Seventh Cavalry arrived at Greasy Grass, Sioux were restive. In summer of 1874, Custer himself had led an expedition of soldiers and miners into Paha Sapa, Black Hills, which jut four thousand feet from plains in what was then western third of Sioux Reservation, and they found substantial gold deposits there. …

Sri Lanka: Surviving Ethnic Strife

Sri Lanka: Surviving Ethnic Strife K.M. de Silva (bio) When Sri Lanka—or Ceylon, as it was then called—gained its independence from Britain in 1947–48, it was hailed as the “model colony” that had negotiated a peaceful passage out of colonial rule in a region still suffering from the shock of the bloody partition of India and Pakistan and the civil war in Burma. Today, this 66,000-square-kilometer island just 40 miles off the southeastern tip of the Indian subcontinent is better known for the destructive effects of prolonged ethnic conflict, though it remains a functioning democracy and one of the few postcolonial states with an unbroken record of democratic rule. The island has three distinct “ethnic” groups, the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims, and adherents of three of the world’s other major religions besides Islam, namely Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. The Sinhalese, who make up almost three-quarters of the total population of about 18 million, are concentrated in the southern, western, and central parts of the island. Most Sinhalese are Buddhists; all told, these account for two-thirds of the total population. There are two distinct Tamil groups, the Sri Lanka Tamils (12 percent) and the Indian Tamils (5 percent). The latter are descended mainly from plantation workers whom the British brought to the island in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and who now live mostly in the central hills. About two-thirds of the Sri Lanka Tamils live in the drier northern and eastern parts of the island, with the rest residing in the predominantly Sinhalese-populated areas. Despite being in the majority on the island itself, the Sinhalese are all too conscious of being a minority vis-à-vis the Tamils of southern [End Page 97] India and Sri Lanka taken together. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located across the Palk Strait from Sri Lanka, is an important center of Tamil separatist sentiment within India. Although Sri Lanka’s Muslims are mostly Tamil-speaking, they regard themselves as distinct by virtue of their religion. The division between the two groups is seen at its sharpest in the eastern part of the island, where more than 30 percent of the Muslims are concentrated. The pattern of population distribution has had profound consequences. While the fate of parties at general elections is determined largely in the Sinhalese areas, the Tamils have contributed to their own discomfiture by adhering to regionally based ethnic parties since independence. The Muslims largely avoided this mistake, at least until the late 1980s. While the virulence of ethnic conflict in recent years is of course an essential part of the story, Sri Lanka also provides a superb example of how democracy can survive under almost impossible conditions, including intervention by its giant neighbor to the north. 1 After covertly supporting Tamil separatists for a time, India in 1987 sent in the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to mediate the conflict. The IPKF remained in the north and east of the island for a little over two and a half years. 2 Its presence provoked a massive backlash of Sinhalese-nationalist sentiment and the second phase in the violent career of the ultraleftist People’s Liberation Front (JVP), whose combination of Marxism and Sinhalese nationalism and penchant for violence bring to mind Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and Peru’s Shining Path. 3 On the Tamil-separatist side were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), just as fanatically committed to a particular authoritarian agenda as the JVP and just as strongly nationalist. The Tamil Tigers’ compulsive resort to terror has earned them, too, a justifiable comparison to the Khmer Rouge. Faced with these twin threats, the Sri Lankan government had no choice but to resist or succumb. Eventually, it defeated the JVP. The LTTE has presented a more difficult challenge. Kept at bay from the mid-1980s on, in late 1995 and early 1996 the LTTE saw its main stronghold at the island’s northern tip fall to the Sri Lankan army. But that is not and will not be the end of the story. The loss of life in these conflicts has been extraordinarily high...

Strategies of Appropriating the West: The Evidence of Indian Peace Medals

Strategies of Appropriating the West: The Evidence of Indian Peace Medals

Pangs of proximity: India and Sri Lanka's ethnic crisis

A Framework of India's Approach towards its Neighbours India's Concerns in Sri Lanka Responses to the Ethnic Crisis July 1983 - July 1987 The Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of July 1987 Role of the Indian Peace Keeping Force An Evaluation Appraisal Reflections on Theoretical and Policy Aspects

Indian Fighters and Indian Reformers: Grant's Indian Peace Policy and the Conservative Consensus

Indian Fighters and Indian Reformers: Grant's Indian Peace Policy and the Conservative Consensus

Benjamin West's Documentation of Colonial History: William Venn's Treaty with the Indians

A careful study of Colonial history reveals that William Penn's Treaty with the Indians by Benjamin West is an intricately composed survey of Pennsylvania political events. Commissioned in 1771 by Thomas Penn, son of the founder, the painting is designed to defend the proprietary rights of the Penn family which had been challenged during the 17605. The protagonists in Penn's Treaty are Quakers, Indians and merchants, three groups that had been at the center of friction and dissent in the colony. By using such diverse sources as political satire, Roman sculpture, descriptive writings of William Penn, and Indian peace medals, West composed a modern epic.

Funding the California Indian Superintendency: A Case Study of Congressional Appropriations

Research Article| April 01 1977 Funding the California Indian Superintendency: A Case Study of Congressional Appropriations MICHAEL A. SIEVERS MICHAEL A. SIEVERS Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1977) 59 (1): 49–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/41170684 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation MICHAEL A. SIEVERS; Funding the California Indian Superintendency: A Case Study of Congressional Appropriations. Southern California Quarterly 1 April 1977; 59 (1): 49–73. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41170684 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. © Copyright 1977 The Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Indian Peace Medals in American History

Indian Peace Medals in American History

Indian Peace Medals in American History

Indian Peace Medals in American History

Indian Peace Medals in American History

Indian Peace Medals in American History

The Presidential Indian Peace Medal

The Presidential Indian Peace Medal

Edward Fitzgerald Beale and the Indian Peace Commissioners in California, 1851-1854

Research Article| June 01 1960 Edward Fitzgerald Beale and the Indian Peace Commissioners in California, 1851-1854 Richard E. Crouter; Richard E. Crouter Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Andrew F. Rolle Andrew F. Rolle Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly (1960) 42 (2): 107–132. https://doi.org/10.2307/41169444 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Richard E. Crouter, Andrew F. Rolle; Edward Fitzgerald Beale and the Indian Peace Commissioners in California, 1851-1854. The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 1 June 1960; 42 (2): 107–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41169444 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.