How many mistakes should one accept in a book before it is pulled from sale? In the normal course, when a book is accepted for publication by a recognised publishing company, there are experienced editors who go through the text, correct it and ensure that there are no major bloopers.
Then there are fact-checkers who ensure that what is stated within the book is, at least, mostly aligned with public versions of events from reliable sources.
In the case of The Rise and Fall of the Tamil Tigers, a third-rate book that is being sold by some outlets online, neither of these exercises has been carried out. And it shows.
If the author, Damian Tangram, had voiced his views or even put the entire book online as a free offering, that would be fine. He is entitled to his opinion. But when he is trying to trick people into buying what is a very poor-quality book, then warnings are in order.
Here are just a few of the screw-ups in the first 14 pages (the book is 375 pages!):
In the foreword, the words “Civil War” are capitalised. This is incorrect and would be right only if the civil war were exclusive to Sri Lanka. This is not the case; there are numerous civil wars occurring around the world.
Next, the foreword claims the war started in 1985. This, again, is incorrect. It began in July 1983. The next claim is that this war “had its origins in the post-war political exploitation of socially divisive policies.” Really? Post-war means after the war – this conflict must be the first in the world to begin after it was over!
There is a further line indicating that the author does not know how to measure time: “After spanning three decades…” A decade is 10 years, three decades would be 30 years. The war lasted a little less than 26 years – July 23, 1983 to May 19, 2009.
Again, in the foreword, the author claims that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam “grew from being a small despot insurgency to the most dangerous and effective terrorist organizations the world has ever seen.” The LTTE was started by Velupillai Pirapaharan in the 1970s. By 1983, it was already a well-organised fighting force. Further, the English is all wonky here, the word should be “organization”, not the plural “organizations”.
And this is just the first paragraph of the book!
The second paragraph of the foreword claims about the year 2006: “Just when things could not be worse Sri Lanka was plunged into all-out war.” The war started much earlier and was in a brief hiatus. The final effort to eliminate the LTTE began on April 25, 2006. And a comma would be handy there.
Then again, the book claims in the foreword that the only person who refused to compromise in the conflict had been Pirapaharan. This is incorrect as the government was also equally stubborn until 2002.
To go on, the foreword says the book gives “an example of how a terrorist organisation like the LTTE can proliferate and spread its murderous ambitions”. The book suffers from numerous generalisations of this kind, all of which are standout examples of malapropism. And one’s ambitions grow, one does not “spread ambitions”.
Again, and we are still in the foreword, the book says the LTTE “was a force that lasted for more than twenty-five years…” Given that it took shape in the 1970s, this is again incorrect.
Next, there is a section titled “About this Book”. Again, misplaced capitalisation of the word “Book”. The author says he visited Sri Lanka for the first time in 1989 soon after he “met and married wife….” Great use of butler English, that. Additionally, he could not have married his wife; the woman in question became his wife only after he married her.
That year, he claims the “most frightening organization” was the JVP or Janata Vimukti Peramuna or People’s Liberation Front. Two years later, when he returned for a visit, the JVP had been defeated but “the enemy to peace was the LTTE”. This is incorrect as the LTTE did not offer any let-up while the JVP was engaging the Sri Lankan army.
Of the Tigers he says, “the power that they had acquired over those short years had turned them into a mythical unstoppable force.” This is incorrect; the Tigers became a force to be reckoned with many years earlier. They did not undergo any major evolution between 1989 and 1991.
The author’s only connection to Sri Lanka is through marrying a Sri Lankan woman. This, plus his visits, he claims give him a “close connection” to the island!
So we go on: “I returned to Sri Lankan several times…” The word is Lanka, not Lankan. More proof of a lack of editing, if any is needed by now.
“Lives were being lost; freedoms restricted and the economy being crushed under a financial burden.” The use of that semi-colon illustrates Tangram’s level of ignorance of English. Factually, this is all stating the bleeding obvious as all these fallouts of the war had begun much earlier.
The author claims that one generation started the war, a second continued to fight and a third was about to grow up and be thrown into a conflict. How three generations can come and go in the space of 26 years is a mystery and more evidence that this man just flings words about and hopes that they make sense.
More in this same section: “To know Sri Lanka without war was once an impossible dream…” Rubbish, I lived in Sri Lanka from 1957 till 1972 and I knew peace most of the time.
Ending this section is another screw-up: “I returned to Sri Lanka in 2012, after the war had ended, to witness the one thing I had not seen in over 25 years: Peace.” Leaving aside the wrong capitalisation of the word “peace”, since the author’s first visit was in 1989, how does 2012 make it “over 25 years”? By any calculation, that comes to 23 years. This is a ruse used throughout the book to give the impression that the author has a long connection to Sri Lanka when in reality he is just an opportunist trying to turn some bogus observations about a conflict he knows nothing about into a cash cow.
And so far I have covered hardly three full pages!!!
Let’s have a brief look at Ch-1 (one presumes that means Chapter 1) which is titled “Understanding Sri Lanka” with a sub-heading “Introduction Understanding Sri Lanka: The impossible puzzle”. (If it is impossible as claimed, how does the author claim he can explain it?)
So we begin: “…there is very little information being proliferated into the general media about the nation of Sri Lanka.” The author obviously does not own a dictionary and is unaware how the word “proliferated” should be used.
There are several strange conglomerations of words which mean nothing; for example, take this: “Without referring to a map most people would struggle to name any other city than Colombo. Even the name of the island may reflect some kind of echo of when it changed from being called Ceylon to when it became Sri Lanka.” Apart from all the missing punctuation, and the mixing up of the order of words, what the hell does this mean? Echo?
On the next page, the book says: “At the bottom corner of India is the small teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lankan.” That sentence could have done without the last “n”. Once again, no editor. Only Tangram the great.
The word Sinhalese is spelt that way; there is nobody who spells it “Singhalese”. But since the author is unable to read Sinhala, the local language, he makes errors of this kind over and over again. Again, common convention for the usage of numbers in print dictates that one to nine be spelt out and any higher number be used as a figure. The author is blissfully unaware of this too.
The percentage of Sinhalese-speakers is given as “about 70%” when the actual figure is 74.9%. And then in another illustration of his sloppiness, the author writes “The next largest groups are the Tamils who make up about 15% of the population.” The Tamils are not a single group, being made up of plantation Tamils who were brought in by the British from India to work in the tea estates (4.2%) and the local Tamils (11.2%) who have been there much longer.
He then refers to a group whom he calls Burgers – which is something sold in a fast-food outlet. The Sri Lankan ethnic group is called Burghers, who are the product of inter-marriages between Sinhalese and Portuguese, British or Dutch invaders. There is a reference made to a group of indigenous people, whom the author calls “Vedthas.” Later, on the same page, he calls these people Veddhas. This is not the first time that it is clear that he could not be bothered to spell-check this bogus tome.
There’s more: the “Singhalese” (the author’s spelling) are claimed to be of “Arian” origin. The word is Aryan. Then there is a claim that the Veddhas are related to the “Australian Indigenous Aborigines”. One has yet to hear of any non-Indigenous Aborigines. Redundant words are one thing at which Tangram excels.
There is reference to some king of Sri Lanka known as King Dutigama. The man’s name was Dutugemunu. But then what’s the difference, eh? We might as well have called him Charlie Chaplin!
Referring to the religious groups in Sri Lanka, Tangram writes: “Hinduism also has a long history in Sri Lanka with Kovils…” The word is temples, unless one is writing in the vernacular. He claims Buddhists make up 80%; the correct figure is 70.2%.
Then referring to the Bo tree under which Gautama Buddha is claimed to have found enlightenment, Tangram claims it is more than 2000 years old and the oldest cultivated tree alive today. He does not know about the Bristlecone pine trees that date back more than 4700 years. Or the redwoods that carbon dating has shown to be more than 3000 years old.
This brings me to page 14 and I have crossed 1500 words! The entire book would probably take me a week to cover. But this number of errors should serve to prove my point: this book should not be sold. It is a fraud on the public.