A Decade of Confrontation: Sri Lanka and India in the 1980s by John Gooneratne Stamford Lake Publication Sri Lanka, 2000
Sri Lanka's side of the story on the turbulent relations between India and Sri Lanka, is now told in John Gooneratne's A Decade of Confrontation—Sri Lanka and India in the 1980s. Although half a decade too late, it is the most compelling and authoritative account of the confrontation to come out of Colombo. The book traces the rise of Tamil militancy, Sri Lanka's failure to contain it, India's propensity to fish in troubled waters which culminated in the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA), the intervention by IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force), and the inevitable but tragic collapse of the accord.
Gooneratne's book was released around the time Sri Lankans and Sri Lanka was facing one of the worst politico-military crisis in the Jaffna peninsula in May 2000, nearly 10 years after forcing the IPKF to an ignominious retreat from the island. The crowning irony was that the very Buddhist clergy which had demanded the expulsion of the IPKF, was pleading now for its return.
In his book, Goonaratne has carefully opened old wounds and rubbed salt on some of them. His chronicling of facts and events, is fairly accurate though some of his analysis and interpretation may not be palatable to some Indians. That is also why the book is welcome—as it gives the view from the other side of the hill, or strait.