Meena Kandasamy’s documentary on Sri Lanka’s women Tamil warriors is now her latest book
With ‘The Orders Were To Rape You’, the writer takes the trauma of the participants towards posterity. LTTE women soldiers | Marietta Amarcord via Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Tamil nationalism grew stronger within the Tamil diaspora every day even as its flames died down with the end of the prolonged war in Sri Lanka in 2009. The end was not a quiet one, and it was not a war with a clear beginning or end, writes academician Sharika Thiranagama.
What happens when you grow up surrounded by conversations of this war in Tamil Nadu and your whole life becomes an act of documenting it, unravelling the entangled threads and ensuring that suppressed voices find a way to be seen and heard? This book, first intended as a documentary, emerges as a witness to the Sri Lankan conflict.