The year 2012 marks the 25th year of the induction of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka. The book under review is, therefore, timely. It is simplistic to say that My Days in Sri Lanka is a narration of events of Lakhan Mehrotra’s 14 month tenure as India’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka. The book goes beyond that to deal with important actors and actions of the Island, though it revolves around one of the most tumultuous periods in Sri Lanka, 1989-90. Internally it was turbulent because of the simultaneous existence of Sinhala and Tamil militancies led respectively by the Janata Vimukti Permuna (JVP) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Bilaterally, the period was most testing bringing usually friendly India and Sri Lanka close to blows. It was a period not only of change of regime in Sri Lanka, but also in India. The author, thus, had to witness several tectonic shifts in domestic and foreign policies. It was indeed a challenging and risky assignment. The author’s earlier stint in more tumultuous and ethnically fractured Yugoslavia and his tenures in Cuba, China, and Argentina during crisis times made him the natural choice for the job. According to the author the assignment ‘had come as a complete surprise’ but he ‘welcomed it and was ready for it mind, body and soul.’ He went to Sri Lanka with a clear objective: to carry out ‘a peace offensive’.
August 2012, volume 36, No 8