The paradise parable
Most people would find it difficult to think of the Maldives, which recently held parliamentary elections, beyond its image as a go-to travel destination for honeymooners. Who, anyway, would like to imagine the archipelagic paradise as home to limited freedom of expression, frequent murders and kidnappings of journalists, police crackdowns, and coups and coerced resignations by politicians? Additionally, problematise the situation by these facts — more than 80 per cent of its 1,200-plus coral islands stand “less than 1 metre above sea level”; overall, Maldives sits “perilously close to the ocean’s surface”. It’s, therefore, clear that the island nation’s existence is increasingly under threat because of multifarious reasons, ranging from internal, manageable to external, out-of-hand factors.
All these elements about this most “dispersed of nations” rarely get accounted for, but British journalist Daniel Bosley’s Descent into Paradise: A Journalist’s Memoir of the Untold Maldives is one such attempt. It is an accessible, immersive and searing book.
Before deep-diving into the complicated affairs of the island state, Mr Bosley offers a timeline, beginning with the “earliest settlement of the Maldivian archipelago according to historical evidence” in the 1500-500 BCE and ending at the 2023 presidential election in the region, to underline crucial historical milestones. The 21 chapters that follow this crisp prologue — which begins as if it’s attempting yet another “sunny side of life” narrative of the island state but ends up offering a grim reality facing the country — engages readers’ attention as the author hyper-focuses on an array of issues facing the country.
Most chapters begin with epigraphs by “disobedient writer” and “occasional satirist” Yameen Rasheed, who used to run Daily panic“to poke fun at[ maldivian] politicians” and was brutally murdered in 2017. The first one in the first chapter, “Going South”, achieves what any satirist must — a deeply hurtful truth that makes one chuckle: “Truth is, most of the world can’t even locate Maldives on a map.” A case in point is the author himself, who didn’t even know whether the Maldives “was a country” until he applied for an internship opportunity with the Maldives High Commission in London in 2011.
It didn’t take long for this perennially curious bloke from Crewe, Cheshire (England) to understand that much of life in the island nation was like living in a “genuine dictatorship”. To witness it first-hand, he landed in Malé — the Maldives’ capital city — in 2012 as a newly appointed intern at Minivan News, a (now-defunct) Maldivian news website, to which Mr Bosley had applied for lack of a job back home and to assuage his curiosity. The year 2012 was a baffling time for the Maldives. The country’s first elected president Mohamed Nasheed had resigned, and in a year, former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s half-brother Abdulla Yameen had won the country’s second multiparty presidential election. India’s infrastructure major GMR, which was awarded the contract to modernise the operation of Malé’s Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA), was asked to leave, courtesy a “GMR Go Home” campaign. It didn’t help that despite working with meagre resources, Minivan was doing its job without succumbing to the pressures of those in power.
As mr b os ley begins re counting his experiences from here on, the book gains literary momentum. Juxt a posing facts with first-hand findings, the author offers multiple observations. Sample a few. First, “In addition to rising seas and diminishing democracy, an increasingly deadly politico-religious network had emerged: a twenty-firstcentury sea monster, summoned into being by hyped-up Salafists, highstakes politics and disaffected young men, who were often just high.” Second, “[…] a codependent relationship between gangs and politicians in which money and legal protection were exchanged for participation in protests, suppressing political opponents and diverting media attention.” And finally, “The country’s impressive development figures say nothing of wealth distribution across this most dispersed of nations, and the transition from feudal sultanate to developed democracy was far from simple.”
The last observation offers a cue to understanding the island nation — that nothing can easily explain its everyday
arithmetic. From DESCENT INTO
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to facing issues Author: Daniel Bosley
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empathy. This Price: ~699 part-memoir, part-politicohistory of the island-nation, and partelegy to a form of journalism that is now dead vividly outlines what’s plaguing the island nation — hyper-nationalism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, insecurity in corridors of power, journalism crisis, a failure of local organising, and climate change. Mr Bosley’s self-aware and playful writing adds to the charm of the narrative.
For Indian readers, Descent into Paradise should serve as a meaningful resource to stray away from the polarising and diverging monster that social media has become. Earlier this year, India’s Prime Minister visited Lakshadweep on vacation, inviting a host of gratuitously disparaging comments from a Maldivian politician. The backlash on Indian social media was immediate and furious; immediately, tourist bookings to the Maldives dipped as Indians cancelled their tours. All this naturally impacted the Indo-maldivian diplomatic ties. People were soon reminded of the “India First” and “India Out” campaigns in the Maldives under different regimes. It didn’t help that the Maldives is an Islamic nation, and its current president (Mohamed Muizzu) is a pro- Chinese leader.
But a close reading of the situation and the book would render this key takeaway — no matter how wildly different, the Maldives and India are increasingly converging when it comes to the weakening ethos of democracy as they are headed towards a shared future that hardly resembles a holiday destination.
The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. On Instagram/x: @writerly_life