Maldives: Dying Paradise

Book Review

 

Title: Descent Into Paradise

Author: Daniel Bosley

Publisher: Macmillan, 2023

Pages: 410

 

Sometime in 2001-2002, when I was new to Delhi’s pretentiousness, I applied for a teaching post in the Maldives. Now I realise that my destiny [which Maggie calls Providence] was good enough that my application was rejected. I would have been a dead man on one of the thousand plus islands and atolls of the country within a year of my arrival there. This is one of the many sad lessons I learn from Daneil Bosley’s book on the island nation.

The author arrived in the Maldives as a journalist, unable to find a better job than a postman’s in his own country, the UK. From 2011, Bosley worked in the Maldives for seven years and married a young woman from there too, having converted to Islam just for the wedding. His book comes from firsthand information and impressions about the country’s history, politics, and, above all, religion. And a doom that awaits the country due to climate change.

The earliest settlers must have arrived on the islands from India and Sri Lanka some 2500 years ago and Buddhism seems to have been the popular religion until King Dhovemi, who called himself Sultan Muhamad al-Adil, converted to Islam in 1153 CE. All history that has nothing to do with Islam has been wiped off from the face of the islands by now. Such is the power of religion on those little pinpricks in the Indian Ocean.

Bosley’s book doesn’t delve much into old history – no one knows much about it anyway. Whatever little could be learnt is provided in Part I of the book. This part also deals with the present Maldives, its politics, economics, and the tourism industry – the only viable source of income. The country emerges as a huge paradox in this part of the book. The Maldivians want the money of the tourists but they hate everything else that is not Islamic. Even democracy is an evil, according to the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives, “a diabolical Christian-Jewish conspiracy.”  

The book goes on to give us detailed information on life in the islands from the time it became a declared democracy: 2008. What is the Maldives in the first place? Part I ends with this definition:

“… it’s an ancient ocean civilization turned ailing democracy – situated atop an imperilled and geo-strategically important atoll ecosystem – awoken from two millennia of relative isolation into a state of near schizophrenia by high-rolling tourists, pearl-clutching Salafists and pro-democracy activists.”

Corrupt politicians and ignorant mullahs rule the roost in this country that is 99% ocean and 100% Muslim. It is impossible to be a Maldivian and not be a Muslim. Bosley falls in love with a Maldivian woman. But he cannot date her, let alone marry, unless he becomes a Muslim. Dating, a Western perversion, is out of question anyway. Marriages happen aplenty, however, as long as you’re a Muslim.

“People in the Maldives just get married … a lot,” says the author. “In fact, if the country didn’t have the sun, sand and sea, it would probably be best known for its outlandish marriage (and divorce) statistics.” The author mentions an example of a couple who married in the morning and divorced in the evening. One of the headlines in the mid-2010s described the country as ‘The Paradise where everyone’s divorced’. In 2016, one in ten ‘newlyweds’ had been newly-wed at least three times before. In a country that is hemmed in by the ocean, dictators, and mullahs, people should be permitted some personal diversification of entertainment.

Those who try to liberate the Maldives from these perversions are killed sooner than later. The author gives us detailed examples of Rilwan and Yameen. Both had big dreams for their country, to liberate their country from its regressive clutches and make it a real paradise where people can dream beyond rules and rubrics.

Rilwan committed himself “to music, literature and poetry, exploring the breadth of an Islamic philosophy far deeper and more resilient than that being preached in illicit prayer rooms.” He turned to Rumi, Bob Dylan, and George Orwell for the kind of inspiration that the Quran wouldn’t provide. He wrote blog posts to persuade his people to think differently than what the mullahs asked them to. Then, one day, he ‘disappeared’. He was disappeared.’ ‘Disappear’ becomes a transitive verb in the Maldives.

Yameen was brought up in the capital of Kerala as a young boy by his parents who had migrated. Later, he pursued his higher studies in Bangalore. “I have lived all my life in a free country, sharing a society with over 150 million other faithful Muslims,” Bosley quotes Yameen. When he chose to return to his own country, The Maldives, he was alarmed by its dogmatism and irrationality. Religion is politicized by “shameless mullahs,” he wrote in his blog. He too disappeared.

The guardians of religion wouldn’t let you live even in another country if you stray from the lines drawn by them. Raudha Athif, the Maldives’ first Vogue cover girl, was killed in Bangladesh.

The last part of the book deals with the problem of climate change which is going to spell disaster for the island nation. Will the Maldives survive to the next century? The problem is discussed in sufficient detail in the final chapters.

This is an eminent guide to the island nation: its recent history (there isn’t any other because all else is erased forever), politics, religion, and tourist resorts. Its possible future too. This review has chosen to focus on politics and religion for reasons that my regular readers will understand easily.

Tailpiece: In order to marry a Maldivian woman, Daniel Bosley became Dhaniyaal Yusuf, learnt Islamic catechism and prayers, and passed an interview at the Islamic Centre. The last question (all others were on religion and prayers): “What do you think about the idea that all Muslims are terrorists?”

PS. I received a copy of this book as a prize from Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed, via Macmillan, in a blog-hop organised by them.