The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy
The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy is a 1987 book by Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee. It was published by Viking Books. Both authors are naturalized Canadians; Mukherjee is an Indo-Canadian Hindu who was born an Indian citizen while Blaise was born an American citizen.
The book is about the Air India Flight 182 bombing in 1985. In May 1987 Terry Glavin of the Vancouver Sun stated that The Sorrow and the Terror was only one of two books on the subject, with the other The Death of Air India Flight 182 by Salim Jiwa.
The authors stated that the perception that AI182 was not a "Canadian tragedy" prompted them to write the book. They stated that the book is a "citizen's inquiry" done out of "moral witness", and is not journalism nor sensationalism.
The authors used contacts in California, Europe, India, and Japan for their research. Government officials from Canada and India had spoken with the two authors. The authors conducted interviews of relatives of the deceased. Other persons who spoke with Mukherjee and Blaise included Sikhs of both orientations as well as doctors, engineers, journalists, lawyers, and scholars. The two authors conducted research trips to the Canada, Ireland, and the United States. Within Canada they visited Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, and within the United States they visited Detroit. For research purposes the authors reviewed transcripts and attended trials. Glavin wrote that The Sorrow and the Terror "appears to have borrowed [research materials] heavily from" The Death of Air India Flight 182.
The book has six parts and a glossary of terms related to India and South Asia. The first part discusses the lead-up to the bombing and the bombing itself. The second part discusses the salvage operation and the initial speculation that the crash was intentional. Part 3 discusses some of the passengers on the plane. Part 4 discusses the analysis of the bodies and the aircraft debris. Part 5 discusses the role of Canada in the dispute between Sikhs and Hindus.
The authors criticize Canadian society for not recognizing the AI182 crash as a Canadian issue and instead as "an ethnic tragedy". Glavin stated that Blaise and Mukherjee "admit they reveal little that hasn't been reported in the press".
Gilbert Drolet, the author of a review of this book published in the Canadian Literature, stated that the book "tends to occasional confusion" due to the "labyrinthine complications" of the legal, historical, and religious aspects. In regards to the theory behind who committed the bombing, he stated "Much of the evidence proffered in ascribing blame is regrettably based on shallow research often yielding little more than conjecture and allegation, and yet to call these accusations spurious would be unfair for the truth must lie there somewhere beneath the avalanche of facts surrounding the incident." Drolet criticized the inclusion of detail in the discussion of the injuries to the passengers.
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