Sunday Times 2
Tackling key questions of imperialism
View(s):Sujit Sivasundaram’s book ‘”ISLANDED” – Britain, Sri Lanka & the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony’ had its Sri Lankan launch on December 17 at the Barefoot Garden Cafe.
Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy speaking at the launch of 'Islanded' while author Sujit Sivasundaram looks on. Pic by Indika Handuwala
First published in the US by Chicago University Press in late 2013 and in South Asia by Oxford University Press, the book focuses on the early period of British rule in Sri Lanka and the colonial power’s fascination with the Kandyan kingdom.
Speaking at the launch, former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict and former Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, hailed the book as a seminal work. “It is an original interpretation of historical fact backed by detailed evidence and perceptive insights. It also questions received wisdom, entrenched narratives and the way we think about our country and ourselves.”
“For over a century now, colonialism for Sri Lankans has always been seen as a terrible period of oppression and subjugation,” she said. “We were never ready to look at the possible intricacies and nuances of the colonial experience. I wonder even today if we have found that self-confidence to do it thoughtfully and without rancour. Sujit Sivasundaram in this book ‘Islanded’ is perhaps the first to make this attempt,” she said.
“He does so not only by presenting new theories of colonial interaction but by analysing in detail the political and non-political aspects of the colonial encounter.” Sujit Sivasundaram is a Reader in World History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College. The title of Reader is given to a scholar in the UK who has attained international distinction for research. He holds the Sackler Caird Fellowship of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and is co-editor of ‘The Historical Journal’.
“It’s a book that took a very long time to write and research, it involved something like ten years of work in libraries and archives in Sri Lanka as well as the UK and elsewhere, interspersed with all kinds of other distractions,” the author said in his speech. He made the decision to broaden his horizons and work on a distant region for his first book (‘Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795-1850′) published in 2005 “so Islanded really is a coming home for me,” he told the gathering.
“Islanded returns us to a period at the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century in Sri Lanka… It works across the Dutch and the British transition and points to how Kandy left a stamp on British rule and how the British in turn radically restructured the island. The British undertook, he said, what he calls ‘Islanding’ and ‘partitioning’, an intensive state enterprise which was experimented with and practised on the island and which also generated a way of thinking as it a romanticised place, a lost Eden as contrasted with allegedly barren mainland (India).
The book tackles one of the key questions in historical writing – the nature of imperialism, and what empires do to societies and cultures. He presented copies of ‘Islanded’ to Prof. Gananath Obeyekere, Emeritus Professor of Princeton University who wrote the foreword and his parents Siva and Ramola Sivasundaram. The book is dedicated to his grandmother Mano MuthuKrishna.