haputhanthri

Guns and Races:A Proposal for Doctoral Research

2007-01-03T23:19:00.000-08:00

By Hasini Haputhanthri
Department of Political Science
Lund University
Sweden

Abstract
Post-colonial Sri Lanka is defined by cyclical spurts of racial bloodshed, brutally crushed youth rebellions and a protracted war stymieing many attempts at peace. The increased militarization of public space not only hints at the gradual expansion of the military in terms of numbers but also its ascendance to political legitimacy and public adulation in Southern Sri Lanka. In the North the LTTE projects itself, not merely as a bunch of guerrillas but as a disciplined national army fighting occupying enemy forces (India included). The LTTE and the Government benefit from prevalent socio-economic structures of poverty and marginalization to draw youth into their ranks, in turn, unleashing a pervasive culture of violence perpetuating the war, which negates the development discourse and its bids at poverty alleviation. This paper ventures to analyse the precarious implications of the increased militarization of youth and national imagination. The paper underlines the matrix of poverty, political violence and militarization in terms of their effect on gendered and ethicized local identities, as well as culture and development from an interpretative approach.
Key Words: Militarization, Youth, Culture, Violence, Identity, Ethnicity, Development, Poverty, Gender, Sri Lanka

Background
Militarization of public space and imagination is not a Sri Lankan anomaly. It is a global trend among the perpetually threatened nation-states, wrought with the insecurity of modern age. Increasingly, the Military is identified as an integral part of the state, its strength a reason of national pride: the neat lines of a platoon at attention are as potent a symbol as a national flag drawing much reverence to its stripes and stars. Unfortunately (and inevitably) it has been the instrument of brutality and carnage, apparently serving humanity much less than propagating political greed and power-play. The U.S. Department of Defence is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined[1] - a hint that the impacts of militarization are not merely socio-economic.
In South Asia, this global phenomenon is complemented with the memory of colonial exploitation, communalism and the creation of new nations craving self-assertion. In Sri Lanka, the model of parliamentary democracy – too simplistic for a population of ethnic diversity - concentrated power in the hands of a postcolonial elite who perpetuated the colonial stratagem of divide and rule to gain advantage of electoral politics. The growing tensions since independence have shaped the trajectory and image of its military forces – it has been ruthless in crushing two JVP resurrections in 1971 and 1988 and a number of communal riots culminating in civil war: Since 1983, official figures for loss of human lives range from 60, 000 to 70,000 of which about 30, 000 are considered to be civilians. Scholarly work point out that ‘[a] conflict over power and resources has resulted in a deep social divide, [where] ethno-mobilization plays a central role and civilians are increasingly the perpetrators and the victims of violence’[2].
During the course of two decades’ war, the soldier has become the common man’s hero, especially cast against the popular notion of ‘pilfering political leaders’ held responsible by the public for the country’s present circumstances[3]. A soldier seems devoid of dark ulterior motives. He, or at least his public image, resonates with courage, honesty and discipline. A popular song celebrates his ‘watchfulness over the nation while it sleeps’ and compares him to a ‘guardian deity’[4] while media channels air a prominent advertising campaign for a recruitment drive[5] of Sri Lanka Forces for free. Local communities display banners and slogans of solidarity with the forces in the battlefront and religious ceremonies are conducted to bless the forces. More recently, the Kotalawela Defence Academy was granted the status of a national university. The news of President Rajapaksa’s son joining the Navy made cover photographs[6].
At a national level, the defence budget has increased steadily over the years, consuming up to a 5% of GDP as against 1.8% committed to health and sanitation[7]. Pararajasingham speculates that the Government’s military expenditure was US $74 million in 1983. In 1996 it was well over US $842 million ¾ an eleven fold increase! Not surprisingly, this exponential growth in the military expenditure is accompanied by a growth in the size of its armed forces. The combined armed forces (army, navy and air force) of the Sri Lankan Government which stood at 15,000 in 1983 now stand at well over 106,000 - a seven fold increase[8]. Gamburd draws figures from 2000, estimating the LTTE cadres to range from 2000 – 10, 000. Estimates of men and women in the government forces and police totalled 225,000, with about 75,000 in the army, 25,000 each in the navy and air force, and another 100,000 in the police[9].
Research Area
Mayer notes that over the past three decades Sri Lankan youth have become the main force behind social unrest and violent insurgencies in the country[10]. With JVP’s entry into democratic politics in the South and LTTE’s remain as youth militant group in the North, the state has found convenient justifications in military counter insurgency and a modus operendi to growing unemployment among rural youth. Dissatisfaction and the frustration of the youth, especially educated rural youth, are already recognized as one of the major threats to the political stability in Sir Lanka. Even international agencies have identified youth as the most critical poverty group. In a spirited essay, Militarization or Democratization, Kadirgamar raises an interesting rhetoric:
The record of the State’s militarized institutions (armed forces, police and prisons) not only in terms of their brutality against the ethnic minorities, but also in how they dealt with Sinhala youth and dissent is a testament to the grave dangers posed to a society by any military. To support any army of a state that invades, colonizes and brutalizes a different people, though that is what most armies do, is to invite fire into ones own house. Here, I am not sure that those calling for militarization in the South have learned the lesson even after two rounds of horrifying repression. Now, I would like to turn to the more difficult question of Tamil militancy, national liberation struggles, insurrections and militarization… As an ethnic politico-military organization ruthlessly committed to its version of a national liberation struggle, [LTTE] has taken the peoples hostage through its path of militarization. This extreme militarization will not stop short of regimenting society. This is the second aspect of militarization, it leads to the control, ordering and disciplining of the people’s social and political life in a military fashion, or what I would like to call regimentation. (Kadirgamar, 2003)
The thesis hopes to explore this phenomenon of growing militarization of youth, its causes and consequences as well as its links to the rise of a culture of violence. It will also consider the implications of gender: Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these—whether as combatants or as sex workers. Tambiah notes that in Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism[11].
Methodology
The thesis plans to build on a critical interpretative study from an interdisciplinary perspective. It plans to generate new knowledge through qualitative interviews, supplemented by observations and text analysis. Sri Lanka has been chosen as a case study both because it is an interesting case in its own right and because it represents a larger global pattern.
Significance of Research
Although scholars and journalists have written extensively about Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, most have focused on constitutional issues such as the devolution of power, humanitarian issues such as human rights and refugees, and identity-related issues of ethnicity and nationalism. Very few have contextualized the civil strife vis-à-vis the JVP struggle, paying little attention to the youth focus transcending ethnic lines. This research hopes to shed light upon this particular group – caught in militancy and militarization – and how they make life choices in a culture of intensifying violence and poverty. It will explore the mesh of militarization and its accompanying problems of death, desertion, compensation, drawing links and parallels to, for example, the rise of underworld and prostitution. The research will highlight, in its findings, insights noteworthy in policymaking efforts at peace and development of the country.

References
― Mayer, M, (2000) Life Opportunities and Youth Conflict in Sri Lanka: Challenges for Regional Development Planning in Sri Lanka at Crossroads: Dilemmas and Prospects after 50 years of Independence, Ed, Hettige S T & Mayer M, India: MacMillan
― Tambiah, Yasmin, (2005) Turncoat Bodies: Sexuality and Sex Work under Militarization in Sri Lanka, Gender & Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, 243-261 (2005) Sociologists for Women in Society
― Kadirgamar, Ahilan (August 2003) Militarization or Democratization in Lines, Social Scientists Association, Sri Lanka: lines publications
― Orjuela, Camilla (2004: 16) Civil Society in Civil War: Peace Work and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka, PhD Dissertation, Göteborg University
― Pararajasingham, Ana, The Militarization of Sri Lanka –Causes and Consequences, Paper presented at the conference of the Asia-Pacific Anti-Militarization Forum on 28th March - 1st April 1997, Brunswick Town Hall, Australia
― Gamburd, R M, (2004:156) The Economics of Enlisting: A Village View of the Armed Services In Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka, Ed. Winslow, D & Weber, MD, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indian University Press
― www.12daysoptout.blogspot.com
― www.bbc.co.uk
― www.undp.org

Word Count: 1370 (excluding Reference)
Draft 27/11/2006

[1] www.12daysoptout.blogspot.com site managed by National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth - a network of grassroots activists and national organizations working to counter military recruiting myths, offer peaceful, positive options for young adults, and resisting a possible future military draft in US
[2] Orjuela, Camilla (2004: 16) Civil Society in Civil War: Peace Work and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka, PhD Dissertation, Göteborg University
[3] A sentiment often expressed in casual conversations with neighbours and friends, August 2006 to present, should be viewed in the context of heightened confronts between LTTE and Sri Lanka Forces.
[4] Edirisinghe, Sunil (1980s), Ran Malak Lesa - a popular Sinhala song inciting martial glory and nationalism repeated almost daily on radio and television during wartime.
[5] Triad Advertising, (2006, press, radio & television campaign) Sri Lanka Forces: Together for All
[6] Yoshitha Rajapksa at Navy Recruitment Picture by Sudath Silva Sunday Observer, November 26, 2006, Vol 90 No 50, p 1: Accompanying Headline: Change in Military Strategy Pays Dividends by Lionel Yodhasinghe
[7] BBC/ UNDP
[8] Pararajasingham, Ana, The Militarization of Sri Lanka –Causes and Consequences, Paper presented at the conference of the Asia-Pacific Anti-Militarization Forum on 28th March - 1st April 1997, Brunswick Town Hall, Australia
[9] Gamburd, R M, (2004:156) The Economics of Enlisting: A Village View of the Armed Services In Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka, Ed. Winslow, D & Weber, MD, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indian University Press
[10] Mayer, M, (2000: 156) Life Opportunities and Youth Conflict in Sri Lanka: Challenges for Regional Development Planning in Sri Lanka at Crossroads: Dilemmas and Prospects after 50 years of Independence, Ed, Hettige S T & Mayer M, India: MacMillan
[11] Tambiah, Yasmin, (2005) Turncoat Bodies: Sexuality and Sex Work under Militarization in Sri Lanka, Gender & Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, 243-261 (2005) Sociologists for Women in Society

Guns and Robes:Militant Monks in Sri Lanka’s Ethnic and Political Conflict

2006-06-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Region-specific Course in South Asia

Caught in the throes of recent violence heralding a return to total war Sri Lankan society seems to be tipping dangerously towards increased militancy and civil unrest. Since the civil war broke out in 1983, official (and rather outdated) figures for loss of human lives range from 60, 000 to 70,000 of which about 30, 000 are considered to be civilians. Uyangoda points out that in terms of sheer magnitude Sri Lanka’s civil conflict is presently the most intense internal war in the entire world. This contains a paradox to the deeply engrained traditions of Buddhism in the island that seem to connect its past and present. While Varshney recognizes the present conflict as an ethnic clash based on ascriptive group identities that define the politics of an ethnic group irrespective of internal class differentiation, sect or religion, much Western scholarship on the issue has referred to it as an ethnic and religious conflict. In a forward to the acclaimed work ‘Buddhism Betrayed: Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka’ Jayawardena points out that ‘the reasons [to the ethnic and religious conflict] are embedded in history, the political process and the ideology of religion and nationalism’. This essay tries to explore the discourse on how Buddhism as a collective and a public religion has contributed to the ethnic conflict from a historical perspective, especially with regard to the emergence of ‘Militant Buddhism’. The author has made an effort to go beyond the image of the militant monk found in much-quoted scholarly work on the subject to discover the more recent phenomenon of Buddhist monks in electoral politics.
Before turning to Buddhism, a more general view of the background to the ethnic rift should be spelt out, since the author believes that ignoring the context in general leads to placing overemphasis on certain issues. Orjuela claims that ‘[a] conflict over power and resources has resulted in a deep social divide, [where] ethno-mobilisation plays a central role and civilians are increasingly the perpetrators and the victims of violence’. Thus it must be stressed that power and resources and not religion lies at the roots of the conflict. She argues that the postcolonial democratic system reinforced the identity politics introduced during the British rule, leading to the development of two nationalisms within one state. De Silva contends that the model of parliamentary democracy – too simplistic for a population of ethnic diversity - concentrated power in the hands of a postcolonial elite who perpetuated the colonial stratagem of divide and rule to gain advantage of electoral politics. The author attributes the rise of mass nationalism among the Sinhalese as a reaction, not only towards the British, but towards this English educated power-elite that continued hegemonic tendencies into post independence era as well. One aspect of decolonisation was seen as a renewal of country’s religio-cultural traditions. A second aspect of decolonisation involved the relative positions and the sharing of power among the various ethnic groups. The major political parties played upon both these aspects to mobilize mass support and the demands of Sinhala Buddhist majority became the dominant cultural identity. This ‘Sinhalesation’ of the state essentially prompted minority Tamil nationalism. The Sinhala nationalist ideology holds that territorial integrity and prevalence of the majority rule as necessary to preserve the Sinhala Buddhist identity where as the Tamil nationalist ideology claims the Tamil nation’s right to self determination in what it defines as the Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island.

History and Religious Ideology
The 2500 years of Buddhist civilisation recounted in Pali chronicles are constantly reinterpreted and reinvented in postcolonial nationalist discourse. Amunugama writes that according to Sinhala-Buddhist tradition, fashioned largely by Vamsa literature, Sri Lanka is the Dharmadvipa (the island of faith), consecrated by the Buddha himself as the land in which his teachings would flourish. The myth of origin in Mahavamsa, a 6th century chronicle written by Buddhist monk-scholar, states that on the very day of the Buddha’s death, Vijaya-the founder of the Sinhala race - landed in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, it was believed that the Buddha had visited the island thrice. One of those visits was to Nagadipa in the northernmost part of the Jaffna peninsula. (Ironically, to establish concord between two quarrelling kinsmen.) The north was thereby firmly established within the sacred geography of Buddhists. Till the beginning of the ethnic war Nagadipa was an important pilgrimage center for Sinhala Buddhists on a par with Mahiyangana and Kelaniya.
Rogers argues that during the Kandyan era being Buddhist was more important in claiming the throne than being Sinhalese. All Kandyan kings were expected to fulfil the role of the Buddhist king, but the longevity of the Nayakkar dynasty indicates no requirement of being Sinhalese. An important strain of royal ideology, which dates back to at least first century AD, posited a strong relationship between the king and Theravada Buddhism, especially the monkhood. According to Kapferer the defeat of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815 ended the ruling chapters of Asgiri and Malwatta Buddhist monkhood, severing the connection between the Sangha and the state. The Buddhist revitalisation movements were integral to the reinvention of Sinhala Buddhist culture during the independence struggle. Kapferer argues that this revivalism tried to re-establish the old status quo of the affiliation of Buddhism to state. Though it had place for minorities, the Buddhist idea of co-existence, according to Kapferer, was by placing the minorities of the island in a subordinate role:
In Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist cosmology the nation and the state compose a unity. In cosmological conception the state protectively encloses the nation of Sinhalese Buddhists, whose integrity as persons is dependent on this encompassment. The state in such a conception encloses other peoples or nations who are not Sinhalese Buddhists. But critical here is that these peoples are maintained in hierarchical subordination to Sinhalese Buddhists. The encompassing and ordering power of the state is hierarchical, and the integrity of nations, peoples, and persons within the Sinhalese Buddhist state is dependent on the capacity of the state to maintain by the exercise of its power the hierarchical interrelation of all those it encloses. The failure in the power of the Sinhalese Buddhist state to maintain hierarchy in the whole order circumscribes threatens the integrity of persons. Thus the fragmentation of the state is also the fragmentation of the nation and is also the fragmentation of the person (Kapferer, 1988:7).

Buddhist Revivalism and Monastic Involvement in Politics
Tambiah claims that the Buddhist revivalism was a reaction against the betrayal of Buddhism during the British Raj and the restoration of Buddhism became an integral part of national freedom. Further, he argues that Buddhist-nationalist journalism propagated by key figures involved in the Buddhist revival like Anagarika Dharmapala fuelled communalism, culminating in the anti Muslim riot of 1915. Thus, what started off as a reaction against Christianity, Western habits of eating meat and alcoholism during the late 19th century was transformed into an ideology that alienated the minorities of the island during the 20th century.
In the struggle for Independence the role of the Buddhist monk as political and social activist was brought to attention, especially with the publication of Walapola Rahula’s The Heritage of the Bikkhu in 1946. Tambiah explains how during the very first general election in 1947 a group of radical monks became politically active in support of the leftist parties. He attributes the narrowing of Sri Lankan politics to a limited range of issues ‘framed within the confines of a Sinhala Buddhist nationalism’ to the emergence of these ‘militant monks’, during the early years of nation-building and state formation. However, he admits that monks were not involved in the riots of 1983, or in the events that preceded it. Nevertheless, he argues that proliferating ‘militantly Buddhist organisations’ during 1980s with a focus on the Sinhala Tamil ethnic conflict such as Mavbima Surakime Vyaparaya (MSV), were instrumental in swaying public opinion against the ‘dangers of devolutionary solutions’ to the conflict, which was interpreted as the first step towards a Tamil Eelam.
Amunugama argues that the decision of Tamil youth to take to violence in their struggle for a separate state, the induction of Indian troops to the island, and the decision of the JVP to use ‘revolutionary violence’ created dilemmas-of varying degree-for Sinhala monks. With the exception of a minority of monks living in borderland of war or working with peace movements the majority of monks supported the Sri Lankan army curbing the Tamil rebels, seeking legitimacy through the distinction between violent Tamil guerillas and nonviolent Tamil civilians. According to Amunugama the Buddhist monks were encouraged to support the violence against Tamil rebels for the very fact that they were direct targets of rebel attacks. The rebels singled out monks for punishment: temples in North and East were attacked and busload of monks were massacred in Arantalawa in the late 1980s. 100 worshippers at the sacred Bo tree in Anuradhapura were killed and the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy was attacked. The characterization of the Tamil rebels as savage helped the monastic order to support and extend their patronage to the Sri Lankan military forces. Amunugama writes:
Military commanders, after assuming office, worshipped at the Temple of the Tooth and met the Mahanayakes of Asgiriya and Malwatta to obtain their blessings. Bodhi Pujas were held in leading temples to seek the blessings of gods in ensuring the safety and success of military personnel. Monks officiated at military functions and the central army cantonment at Panagoda saw the erection of an impressive ‘chaitya’ (pagoda). (Amunugama 1991: 129)
Indo-Lanka Peace Accord
According to the Indo Lanka agreement in 1987 the Sri Lankan authorities agreed to effect changes in the country’s constitution and devolve substantial power from the center to the provinces. Eight Provincial Councils were to be established; one of which - the council of the amalgamated North and Eastern provinces - would be Tamil dominated. This would, in effect grant a degree of autonomy- to the Tamils in what they claimed were their ‘traditional homelands’. On this note, India deployed its army, said to be around 55,000 in strength to pacify the Northern reaches of the island, and in turn released the Sri Lankan army sent to confront the JVP struggle in the South. The devolutionary solution was strongly opposed by the JVP and young monks. An agreement between the two governments in an exchange of letters that neither the port of Trincomalee nor any other part of the island will be made “available for military use by any other country in a manner prejudicial to India’s interests” confirmed fears of Indian imperialism among Sri Lankans and created an unprecedented uproar.
Amunugama and Tambiah both claim that religious ideologues such as Maduluwawe Sobhitha have played a pivotal role in resisting IPKF involvement in the conflict, by influencing public opinion. This was not unconnected to the young monks’ involvement with the JVP and its armed struggle. In fact, the 1980s saw the rapid politicization of the Sangha with all Sinhala political parties establishing support organizations among the Sangha. The extreme of this logic was that JVP recruited the monks as another foot soldier in its struggle. This brought the Buddhist order face to face with violence. The most illustrative example of this phenomenon comes from May Day Parade in 1982 when a thousand young monks ‘clad in their distinctive saffron red robes walked under the banner of the socialist Bhikku front.

JVP’s Warrior-Monk
Tambiah questions: how did the ‘sons of Buddha – ideally dedicated to nonviolence and required by disciplinary rules to abstain from killing and to be nowhere near marching armies and traffic in arms – have taken on the more compelling identity of the ‘sons of the soil’, which entails militant and violent politics? An answer can be found in the JVP movement of the 1970s and 80, which was the most systematic and successful in mobilizing monks as an essential militant support group. Drawing its membership from young rural proletariat, educated yet unemployed due to Sri Lanka’s benign social policies and poor economic growth, the movement infiltrated universities, where young monks constituted an increasingly significant segment. The egalitarian populist ideology, spiced with anti-Tamil pro-Sinhala and pseudo-Buddhist elements appealed to these young monks, who have been fighting hierarchy, sectarianism and casteism within their own monastic orders vis-à-vis national revival for the past half-century. Drawing from A.C. Alles, Tambiah and Amunugama mention that the decision to launch the attack on government in 1971 was taken in a Bhikku hostel in a university and that during both 1971 and 1987 rebellions some Buddhist temples in rural areas were used as storages for arms and ammunition, hiding places and outposts by the insurgents. Amunugama claims that during the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord the polarization of JVP and other mainstream parties into two camps was reflected in the monastic order with senior monks favoring the pro-accord stance of the main political parties, resulting in the assassination of these monks, allegedly by the JVP. The brutal repression of the insurgency made the JVP monks the most vulnerable segment of the movement, unable to hide underground following its militant leaders. Though the author has not located actual data, it is common knowledge that many young monks were tortured and killed by paramilitary forces. Amunugama explains how poetry corners and short story pages in newspapers were filled up with this dilemma of the young monks, who on the face of state terror had to change loyalties, flee the country or as in the finale of many stories, shed the saffron robe and take to a T-56 submachine gun, and disappear into the night.

JHU’s Politician Monk
Much has changed since Tambiah’s controversial book and Amunugama’s poignant essay published in early 1990s. In 2004, nine Buddhist monks were elected to the parliament, creating history in Theravada Buddhist Monasticism in South and South East Asia. Jatika Hela Urumaya was the first such monastic political party to take part in electoral politics with over 200 Buddhist monk candidates standing for the parliamentary elections of in April 2004. Though the event caused much debate among the lay public JHU were able to secure 5.9% of the total votes polled. Deegalle attributes this quick victory to JHU’s roots to Sihala Urumaya, another nationalist political party suffering an electoral setback, and the general socio-religious context of the country. JHU was able to capitalize on the untimely death of Gangodavila Soma, a charismatic popular monk who had immense influence on public opinion. Sri Lankan newspapers characterize Soma as ‘quite identical’ to the early twentieth-century Buddhist reformer, Anagarika Dharmapala,. Through the use of mass media such as television talk shows a number of monks were criticizing state corruption and issues of ethnic conflict, through the Buddhist rhetoric of ‘Dharmaraajya’ (a righteous state).
The JHU manifesto claims Buddhist supremacy and upholds the preservation of Buddhism and sovereignty and unity of Sri Lanka as the priority of the state. They have been active in passing a bill for banning forceful conversion of Hindus and Buddhists into Christianity. JHU has been widely criticized not only by international organizations but by local media as well for Sinhalese Chauvinism, which proves that JHU Sinhala Buddhist nationalism is a small yet forceful minority political opinion. Top prelates and sections of the media have objected to the monks being directly involved in politics. A Sunday Times editorial, for instance, meekly commented: “The Kings of Lanka would constantly seek the advice of the monks in order that they guide the destinies of their people righteously: And that is the way that ought to be today. Nowhere is it said that a monk should be the king himself.” Interestingly this comment highlights that the lay Buddhists acknowledge the role of the monk as guide though it condemns active participation of monks in politics.
These recent developments show that despite the infamous involvement with the JVP during the previous two decades, the Buddhist monks have become a political group wielding public opinion. In return for JHU backing, President Rajapakse agreed to JHU demands during his presidential election campaign for a more aggressive stance against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The 12-point agreement included the revision of the current government-LTTE ceasefire; the abrogation of a government-LTTE agreement for the joint administration of tsunami aid; and the rejection of federalism as the basis for a peace deal with the LTTE.

Guns and Robes
An essay ‘Non-violent Buddhist Problem Solving in Sri Lanka’ by A T Ariyaratna, founder of the Sarvodaya movement, describes the predicament of the Buddhist laity in grasping the paradox of violence in a country idolising the Buddhist values of Ahimsa, and especially among the monastic order:
Statistically seventy percent of the people in Sri Lanka are said to profess Buddhism. There is hardly any place in the country where an ancient or modern Buddhist monument or monastery in not found. There are around twenty thousand monks attending to the religious needs of people today. Religious ceremonies and related activities are going on continuously. The teachings of the Buddha in its most pristine form is found in Dhamma texts. Even non- Buddhist laymen and politicians liberally quote chapter and verse from the Buddha's Words in their public utterances. When one sees and hears this, one gets the impression, or I would say, the illusion, that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country. To my mind, to call Sri Lanka a Buddhist country and then to put the blame for every kind of immoral act or incident of violence or denial of human rights on Buddhists is not fair. Even though historically and culturally Sri Lanka may claim to be Buddhist, in my opinion, certainly the way political and economic structures are instituted and managed today can hardly be called Buddhist either in precept or practice. (Ariyaratne 2006, unpublished/ personal communication)
Similarly as a Sri Lankan, the author often found it difficult to relate some of parts the scholastic writings to the public realities experienced. Terms like ‘Militant Buddhism’ have been used carelessly by the media, and more obvious common-sense answers lost in esoteric academic debate. Tambiah, one of the main sources quoted in this essay, often draws from other sources openly propagandist in nature. Ariyratne on the same note:
…a negative kind of intervention on the part of some educated people, interventions in the form of scholarly analyses based on a hoard of statistical data and historical facts. I call this mostly negative intervention because they did not affect in any way the thinking of either the man on the street or our basic political and economic structure that promoted the situation of disharmony and conflict. In other words, philosophising that does not touch the basic roots of mental defilements and social realities resulting from them, in Buddhist terminology, is simply called moha or ignorance. When ignorance becomes organised, and one calls it social science, it is a disaster for communities who have a right to expect more positive interventions from the more educated sectors. We see a situation today in Sri Lanka of different groups holding onto their own uncompromising positions while the sound of guns and explosions continue to be heard. (Ariyaratne 2006, unpublished/ personal communication)

Conclusion
An attempt was made to illustrate briefly the matrix of history religion and ethno-politics in Sri Lanka’s decades-long conflict with special focus on the role played by Buddhist monks. As a majority with a minority complex derived, (as claimed by many scholarly anthropologists), from centuries of paranoia of Indian invasions and conspiracy theories from which the island - as the last resort of Buddhism - has to be saved, one could readily simplify the case of Sri Lanka as religious fundamentalism. However, the politicisation and militancy of the monks is but one thread that contributes to weave a complex social fabric of conflict and chaos. Failure to provide economic and political opportunities to educated alienated youth (both Sinhala and Tamil) resulting in social frustration is perhaps more fundamental to JVP and LTTE militant struggles than the ‘burden of historical memories’ of ancient kingdoms. Furthermore, it is essential to understand the militant monk as a part of a society completely wreaked by power struggles resorting to violence in all sides – LTTE in the north, JVP in the south the state in countering and repressing these struggles and the induction of the Indian troops within the island, to top it all. The young monks had had to react and find justifications for prioritising the task of saving the motherland over passive preaching of Dharma.
As Amunugama argues, it is also difficult to view the monastic order as a monolithic organisation that had clear-cut vision on ethnic and political issues.
Most importantly he points out the attempts of Sinhala monks to understand social reality in terms of Buddhist symbolism. When dealing with secular notions like ethnicity, democracy, revolution and violence, monks attempted to relate them to their culturally prescribed world of symbols. They go back to the examples of the monks who confronted British power during the struggle for independence. Communism is understood in terms of the Buddha’s prescription of communal living (absence of private property, sharing of alms, etc.) for the monastic order. This leads to the continuous ‘oversimplification’ of complex contemporary issues.
As a final note, the exploration of this discourse may lead one to question the absence of a dialogue on secularism in Sri Lanka, which was present in India in its nationalist discourse.

Bibliography
Ariyaratna, A T, (2006) Non-violent Buddhist Problem Solving in Sri Lanka, unpublished/ personal communication
Deegalle Mahinda (2004) Politics of the Jathika Hela Urumaya Monks: Buddhism and Ethnicity in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 5, No. 2
De Silva, Purnaka L (1997) Sri Lanka: Futures beyond Conlict, Futures vol29 issue 10
Dias Wije, 2005, Sri Lanka: the JHU-Rajapakse deal and the reactionary role of Buddhist Supremacism, World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
Kapferer, Bruce (2001), Ethnic Nationalism and Discourses on violence in Sri Lanka, Communal/Plural Vol 9 no 1
Orjuela, Camilla (2004) Civil Society in Civil War: Peace Work and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka, PhD Dissertation, Göteborg University
Panini Wijesiriwardana and K. Ratnayake 1, April, 2004: New Sinhala extremist party fields Buddhist monks in Sri Lankan elections, World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
Rogers, John D (1994), Post Orientalism and Interpretation of Pre-modern and Modern Political Identities, Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 53, No 1, Pages 10-23, Association of Asian Studies
Tambiah, Stanley J (1992), Buddhism Betrayed: Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka, University of Chicago Press
Uyangoda J Brass, Paul R & Vanaik, Achin Competing Nationalisms in South Asia
Hasini Apsara Haputhanthri
MA in Asian Studies
Centre for East and Southeast Asian Sudies
Lund Unversity
Sweden

Anil´s Ghost

2006-06-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Indepth Course in Political and Social Changes in South Asia/ Scientific Methods

Depiction of History, Religion and Political Conflict in Contemporary Fiction:
‘Distance’ in Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje: Summery.

Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. The government agrees reluctantly to the mission and keeps a grim eye on it. Sarath Diyasena, whose specialty is sixth-century archaeology, is officially designated to accompany her. Investigating an archaeological site, they find a burned skeleton, which they name Sailor, among the remains. The evidence points to violent death and to the body having been moved from somewhere else. Since the site is closed and guarded by the army, this would be the first specific evidence of the government’s long-rumoured black operations. How can they identify the dead man? They visit Sarath’s old mentor, Palipana, a once-eminent archaeologist fallen out of grace, now retired to an abandoned monastery and close to death. He knows of someone who might construct from the skull a representation of the face:
Ananda is last in a line of craftsmen appointed to paint eyes on statues of the Buddha, an ancient ceremonial tradition. Ananda fashions a face that would be recognizable and usable for identification - except that it wears the generic Buddha’s expression of serenity. Ananda’s wife disappeared in the terror; the painter cannot bear to configure death as anything but a state of peace.
Through Sarath’s brother Gamini, whose punishing non-stop work as a doctor in the emergency ward of Colombo’s main hospital after many years in hospitals on the borderlines of war in North Central Sri Lanka, the human carnage of the civil conflict is described with force and detail. Gamini has given up everything (his wife has left him) for sleepless vigils treating the unending victims of bombings, shootings and maimings.
Anil’s quest for truth and her exposition about Sailor to the government-bodies places her life in danger. Sarath manages to take her away to safety and arranges her to leave the country. She escapes. Later, Gamini finds the tortured body of Sarath brought in to the hospital. A description of the assassination of the country’s president precedes the final chapter ‘Distance’ which describes Ananda performing the eye-ceremony on a new statue of Buddha, replacing one plundered by brigands.

Fusing Facts and Fiction

In the author’s note at the beginning of the novel, Ondaatje explains the setting for his narrative as Sri Lanka from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, steeped in a crisis that involved the government, the separatist guerrillas in the north and the antigovernment insurgents in the south. He claims that while there existed similar organisations, the characters and the incidents in the novel are fictional. Then, it becomes extremely significant from both epistemological and ontological positions, that he draws the names of the disappeared from an actual list in Amnesty International reports. Similarly, the description of the assassination of the president is based on true events, though the president’s name has been changed. Ontologically, it portrays the reality as a political and a historical moment of a country’s and its peoples’ being. Simultaneously, it leads to an epistemological discussion on the line between facts and fiction, and the process of validating fiction. My point of departure here would be to analyse how a novel can illuminate aspects of political and social issues recorded in reportage – a Newsweek cover story, a BBC headline, or meticulous research papers.
I will discuss the last section in the novel named ‘Distance’ from an interpretivist position, but will refer to the total text when necessary, to establish certain points. On the outset it must be mentioned that the novel presents an interesting case of positivist and interpretivist analysis through the characters of Anil, the forensic anthropologist espousing western values of objectivity and rationalism and Sarath, the archaeologist arguing for a truth that is enriched by subjective perception: “I want you to understand the archaeological surround of a fact. Or you'll be like one of those journalists who file reports about flies and scabs while staying at the Galle Face Hotel. That false empathy and blame…” For Sarath knowledge is not to be ‘acquired in the usual, reasoning and rational discursive way’ but, as Alvesson and Sköldberg put it, by illumination on the patterns of complex wholes giving a complete overview. Both characters are equally involved in the quest for truth and knowledge, and distinctively represent the two famous empirical traditions.
‘Distance’ is the grand finale that interlocks history, religion and politics of the country in a fascinating fusion of facts and fiction, providing the contextuality for the forensic investigation, unfurled in a manner somewhat similar to mystery writing. It lifts the narrative from typical mystery/science fiction genre to a dialogue on socio-political issues that cannot be understood without relating to the historical processes. Thus, Hermeneutics, with its insistence on the inability to understand the meaning of the part without relating it to the whole, becomes my first tool for analysing the text of Distance. The chapter begins with three brigands pillaging an ancient statue of Buddha. However, this crime is portrayed as negligible compared to the political atrocities committed during this time of terror. “Still this was broken stone. It was not a human life…” The uninhabited land around this historical monument is a burial ground for victims of political murder. The author portrays the destruction of the statue as an action politically neutral, though a year after the publication of the novel saw the destruction of Bamian Buddhas in Afghanistan by the religious fundamentalists, which would invent new connotations to the image of destroying religious symbolisms within Sri Lanka as well as internationally. Just as much as the meaning of action could not be understood without referring to what was happening in the whole island, Ondaatje’s text on Sri Lanka can only be understood when you relate it to the world scenario.
Empathy is a key feature of hermeneutics that can be applied to the text of Distance through narrative analysis. The artisan Ananda is a character that belongs to a different milieu than that of the writer. According to Alvesson & Sköldberg ‘understanding calls for living (thinking, feeling)’ the other person’s ‘universe’ by creative and imaginative means to interpret the meaning of action. Through the use of metaphor and poetic language Ondaatje is able to penetrate the mental universe of Ananda, a rural artisan, and locate him in his ontological narrative: ‘you slipped into the old bed of art, where they had slept. There was comfort there’. Observe how Ondaatje captures Ananda’s relationship to his work: ‘as an artificer now he did not celebrate the greatness of a faith. But he knew if he didn’t remain an artificer he would become a demon. The war around him was to do with demons, spectres of retaliation.’ The writer integrates the knowledge of myth and tradition of the country that links with a public narrative at another level. Thus the religious history of the country becomes the telescope that allows us to observe the present conditions, with the ‘distance’ providing the necessary detachment.
I choose Postmodernism as my second tool for analysis as it enables contrasting vistas within the text than that brought forth by using hermeneutics. The content of Distance involves deconstruction and reconstruction of a historical monument by its inheritors ‘trying to find a solution for hunger or a way out of their disintegrating lives’: these ancient Buddha statues are potent symbols of the nexus between religion and the political economy of the ancient Sinhalese civilisation that flourished in the north central province about 2000 years ago. They are prominent part of the iconography evoked by Sinhala Buddhist nationalists by referring to the ‘Glory Days’ to reinforce Sinhalese identity. By using this image in the present context – the Buddha in the middle of a graveyard of political murders, Ondaatje captures the paradoxes unique to the island - its political and social violence in recent history given the long, deeply engrained tradition of Buddhism that seem to connect its past and present: “the fields where Buddhism and its values met the harsh political events of the twentieth century”.
A second important aspect is that the actors in the Distance are not the protagonists of the novel. Nor are they the protagonists of their society: the thieves who destroyed the statue, Ananda, the artisan who reconstructs it, and the villagers, who assist him, represent the common people of the country. It is not the ‘grand narrative’ of the political elite in the lap of Colombo luxury and power, or ‘the dominant discourse that should be replaced by micro histories – local, always provisory and limited stories’. Thus, Distance becomes the narrative of the subaltern and the ‘marginal is transformed into the principal’. The aspect of reconstruction is as significant as the process of deconstruction in post-modern analysis. Ananda fuses the face of the Buddha out of the broken splinters but instead of trying to homogenise it into a unit, he decides to leave it ‘quilted’, with its ‘eyes [that] would always look north’. The wounded face of the Buddha becomes a powerful metaphor for the island wrought by the conflict in the north. On the other hand, the un-homogenised quilted face could also be a metaphor for pluralism. For example, the same post modernist question could be raised for the text as, whether ‘properties such as unity, identity, permanence, structure and essence are privileged over dissonance, disparity, plurality, transience and change’.

Conflict and Cinema
The purpose of the analysis of Distance in Anil’s Ghost so far has been to unearth how contemporary fiction could portray socio-political issues in a more meaningful manner than how it would be exposed in the mainstream media. Novels such as Anil’s Ghost, Funny Boy, July and Cinnamon Gardens have recorded the political conflict in Sri Lanka, through narratives that place these situations in historical and social perspectives, elucidating deep insights and understanding. If literary fiction, in the form of prose or poetry can be regarded as a cultural product of its society, it could also be read as creation of culture.

Cinema is another form of cultural product, which in turn creates culture. Håkan Durmaz sees cinema as a surface for recording social realities. Though cinema could be seen as a modern commercial operation and a mode of popular entertainment, for some social researchers, it can be an invaluable field for producing insights into changing social relations. He argues that film has been a medium for depicting conflict, for example, in the Cannes Film Festival 1995, two films on the Balkan Wars won the best film, Palme d’Or and Grand Prix. Similarly, in Cannes Film Festival 2005, a Sri Lankan film depicting the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka won the Camera d’Or.
I want to gear my thesis towards discovering how cinema has portrayed the socio-political situation in Sri Lanka. Thus my research question could be ‘how the Sri Lankan and/or South Indian Cinema have portrayed the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka?’ A number of sub questions can be brought forth in this regard. How has cinema depicted Sinhalese or Tamil identity? What are the dominant discourses subscribed to/refuted in the movies? How has the state and the civil society reacted to the movies? Has the movie had an impact on inter group relationships? Does the movie propose creative and alternative solutions to end the conflict? How sensitive have the movies been to depicting the life of the minority? What was the motivation of the filmmaker? How has his or her background affected the content of the movie? Why did he choose to depict the situation in that particular way?
The ambition or the goal of this research springs from a personal observation and assumption that a communications issue (also) lies at the heart of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Once you exclude the government and the LTTE from the set, the main predicament that the people face is their inability to communicate with each other due to language difference - the greatest setback for strengthening of inter-group relations. This is by no means an effort to give a simplistic interpretation to the sources of the ethnic conflict, which has a number of complex processes converging and leading to the current state of affairs. My interest is finding alternative points of departure to search for peace from the perspective of the civil society. Agreeing with Durmaz, I will not go as far as to find a ‘cure’ in cinema, but definitely some clues.
In making methodological choices I will first aspire the research to be comparative, drawing a case from Tamil, South Indian Cinema to be compared with a case/cases from Sinhala Cinema. I make this choice especially as there are no movies made in Tamil or by Tamil directors in Sri Lankan cinema. Thus, Sri Lankan cinema or ‘Sinhala Cinema’ as it is often called may naturally tend to be the ‘majority view’ where as South Indian cinema, can (hopefully) provide an alterative approach in portraying the conflict.
Secondly, I wish to analyse these films from an interpretivist position, drawing from the nine different types of hermeneutics, discourse analysis and post-modern analysis. Kvale points out that traditional media research employ qualitative method through content analysis to find he content and the form of communication. This textual analysis is to identify the discourses the movies relate to and establish their relationship with the prevalent ideologies regarding the ethnic conflict. I believe the step to be necessary as it will be instrumental in recognising the reaction of the state and the civil society towards the ideologies these movies put forth. However, it is important to note that my ambition is not to make a movie review. The focus of the research is the ethnic conflict and identifying the key aspects of the contemporary discourse revolving around it, and how cinema becomes a medium, which reflects the reactions of the civil society and the state to the ethnic conflict.
My third step will be a field study to investigate the creators and the audience of this cinema as the representatives of the civil society. Interviews will be the main method of gathering information. I believe this is the best method since the nature of the information sought is qualitative rather than quantitative. Kvale points out that the sensitivity of the interview and the closeness to the subjects lived world can lead to knowledge that can be used to enhance the human condition. The interviews could be in the form of individual interviews (i.e. with the directors/scriptwriters of the movies or the member of the Film Development Board) to focus group interviews (i.e. university students, NGO professionals and peace workers, researchers, artists, journalists, critics representing civil society groups). The interviews will be directed towards finding out the opinions, especially with the audience where as the interviews with the filmmakers will be geared towards finding out his experience (in the form of a narrative) of making the movie as much as his attitudes and opinions towards the subject discussed.
Field observations will be a primary way of finding out the impact and the reaction of the films, supported by some research into newspapers and media, for example, some movies were, first banned by the government for a long time before finally being able to be shown on the cinemas.
Finally, it would be important to carry out the research with an open mind. I believe the fruit of my research to be unearthing some insights about the formation of certain attitudes towards the current political situation as much as about how the portrayal of the ethnic conflict in cinema leads to a social discourse on war and peace.

Bibliography
Ondaatje, Michael (2000) Anil’s Ghost, Picador
Kvale, Steinar, (1996), Inter Views, Sage Publications
Parker, Ian and the Bolton Discourse Network, (1999), Open University Press, Buckingham, Philadelphia
Alvesson and Sköldberg (2000) Reflexive Methodology, Sage Publications
www.festival-cannes.fr

Fault Lines of Freedom:Postcolonial Identity Politics of South Asia in a Global Era

2006-06-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Indepth Course in Political and Social Changes in South Asia

The trouble with the English is that their history happened overseas,
so they don’t know what it means.’
Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses, 1988:337

Fault Lines of Freedom: Contours of Analysis

“Divided nations en route – ex hypothesis – to unity”
- Clifford Geertz (1973: 279).

A sardonic comment by Professor Geertz seems an appropriate ingress for a discussion on the convoluted passage of South Asian democracies from imperial colonies to the global village, ‘beset by virtually the entire range of primordial conflicts complexly superimposed one upon the other’. This essay analyses competing identities as the fault lines of new nations in South Asia, through exploring the postcolonial geo-politics of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka. The author argues that patterns of colonial hegemony were perpetuated by the ruling elites replacing the colonisers after gaining independence, aggravating and entrenching these fault lines inherited along with Westminster democracy, bureaucracy and a host of other civil institutions as a part and parcel of colonial legacy. On the same note, Price comments, ‘the lasting significance of the colonial state, then, lies in the Orientalist results of colonial hegemony’. Furthermore, the author argues that a vicious circle of postcolonial insecurities continues into the global era that further complicates and globalises local issues and sets the arena for sophisticated and deadly warfare.
Postcolonialism provides a powerful analytical tool in deconstructing the colonial experience, to illustrate the formation of new identities in the region. Price argues that by understanding the political integration of pre-modern polities we are able to construct a better view of the nature of colonial disruption and its consequences for political development in South Asia today. She notes that while there are few words in pre-modern texts, which mean ‘identity’, the number of words referring to ‘community’ is countless. British Imperialism, as it unified South Asia for the first time in known history, transformed these old regional identities and gave rise to new, changing all facets of social life through modernity. At the core of this process lies the British obsession with categorisation of local communities into ethnic and religious groups, which underlines their stratagem of divide and rule. Borrowing from Foucault, Price argues that ‘the British took a skewed perception of Indian society, based on cultural misunderstanding and at times, racial prejudice’, an observation similarly valid regarding Sri Lanka. The ensuing essentialism – the paradigm shift among ordinary people in their everyday lives, in the forms of stereotypification and the recognition of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – created the conditionality for the emergence of two nation theories within the subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
Contributions from the Subaltern school are indispensable in deconstructing the colonial experience, which have veritably argued that much of the scholarship on the nationalist movement had neglected the non-elitist groups. Subalternists argue that, ‘if the traditional heroes of the nationalist movement had not betrayed the aspirations of ordinary men and women, the movement would have had revolutionary results’. The fact that these protagonists, coming from cosmopolitan regional capitals of the empire such as Colombo and Calcutta, had passed through the very doors of Oxford and Cambridge and most visibly shaped national identities and the nationalistic movements, moving on to become the future leaders of these independent states, speaks for itself.
To re-establish this historicity in modern terms I borrow Aswini Ray’s lines: ‘ the unresolved Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, and the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka…are historically rooted in the distortions of the colonial process of globalisation and the cold war, still surviving beyond its end in Europe’. To take this stance is not merely adhering to a so-called ‘anti-modernist’ view of Globalisation, where you view the term as only another buzzword to denote western colonisation over the rest of the world and romanticize the latest phase of capitalism; it is a powerful tool to historically analyse the shifts in global hegemonies and the relationship between globalisation and postcolonialism; it is to place globalisation, as Kinnvall and Jönsson say, ‘in a localised historical context by looking at the role of colonisation and de-colonisation in the region’. The colonial mode of production structurally linked Europe with Asia. It opened up trails of migration, exchange of goods services and ideas back and forth between the two continents, albeit with all the trappings of imperial exploitation and cultural dominance. If globalisation is viewed as ‘interweaving linkages of factors of production, consumption and lifestyle’, then it is at least as old, Ray argues, as the expansion of European civilisation through proselytization, trade, commerce, mass migration, industrial capitalism and colonialism. On the same note I contend that while colonialism has been and still is an important part of globalisation, more modern aspects of globalisation, (or glocalisation, to be accurate) such as weakening of the state power aggravating insecurity and identity quests, fragmentation and transnationality with expanding diasporas and ‘imagined communities’, create new implications to South Asian societies, culturally, socially and politically.
I will support my claim through the cases of India – Pakistan and Sri Lanka at inter and intra national level while the latter part of the essay will focus on the same conflicts at a sub national level. Religion, gender and nationalism will serve as a pivotal triad around which I weave my case for postcolonial identities as the fault lines of these newly independent states.

(Fault) Line of Control: India and Pakistan on the Edge

“As to where Pakistan was located, the inmates knew nothing…the mad and the partially mad were unable to decide whether they were now in India or Pakistan. If they were on India, where on earth was Pakistan? It was also possible that the entire subcontinent of India might become Pakistan. And who could say that both India and Pakistan might not entirely vanish from the map of the world one day…”
Sadat Hasan Manto, Kingdom’s End and Other Short Stories 1989: 12

Aren’t the implausibility and strangeness enfolding the new geographies of belonging and alienation, of identity and insecurity, beautifully captured in Manto’s words? By the time of British withdrawal in 1947, the Raj was fissured into many splinters; into the main two camps of India and Pakistan; and into more than five hundred princely states that were torn between the choice of joining India or Pakistan or remaining independent. Jalal argues that ‘the loss of the sub continental vision [has] compartmentalised South Asian historiography [and] deflected from any sort of common understanding of the common dilemmas of the region’s present and the interlocking trajectories of its future’. She further argues that the two hundred years of colonial institution building sapped the subcontinent’s capacity for accommodation and adaptation, crucial for a multicultural political entity of India’s nature.
Chakrabarty claims that Indian nationalism developed as a reaction to imperialism and its tradition of history writing that viewed the impact of colonial rule as a munificent process that granted India its modernity and political unity. He quotes Anil Seal who presents a rather extreme view of nationalism as ‘the work of a tiny elite reared in the educational institutions the British set up in India. This elite, both “competed and collaborated” with the British in their search for power and privilege. Seal portrays the history of Indian nationalism, as “the rivalry between Indian and Indian, its relationship with imperialism that of the mutual clinging of two unsteady men of straw.” On the other extreme is Bipin Chandra who depicts the modern Indian history as an ‘epic battle between the forces of nationalism and colonialism.’ He argues that nationalism, authored by such visionaries like Gandhi and Nehru, was the antithesis to colonialism, which united and produced an “Indian people” by mobilizing them for struggle against the British. I find Guha’s stance the most enriching of all, when he argues that domination and subordination of the subaltern by the elite was an everyday feature of Indian capitalism itself and that it manifests in the manner in which the elite nationalists sought to mobilize the subaltern classes. The “Indian culture of the colonial era,” Guha argues further, is a culture of “dominance without hegemony”, stressing the fact of “failure of the bourgeoisie to speak for the nation”
A postcolonial approach to deconstructing Partition veers the debate into investigating the formation of the two-nation theory and divided identities rooted in the colonial practices: Censuses played a key role in the formation of nationalist and religious identities in India. Haan argues that these censuses had a considerable influence on how society viewed their own identities and those around them. Census returns divided population into religious groups separating Hindus, Muslims and Christians and also divided Hindus on the lines of Varna classification scheme. It is interesting to notice how the religious divisions bred essentialism and stereotypes that were inherently engendered. Muslims were generally attributed with male characteristics of aggression, sexual promiscuity and hyper-fertility where as Hindus were seen to be feminine, docile and peaceful.
This leads us to the formation of fundamental religious identities within the nationalist movement that ultimately resulted in the split of the freedom struggle creating two nation states on the basis of religious difference. Ahmed argues that Hindu fundamentalist organisations came into being in the 1920s with a specific in-built bias against the minorities (especially Muslims). Jinnah’s creation of Pakistan and Islamic identity presents an interesting case of nation building. To begin with, Pakistan was a completely new country and the Muslims in pre-independent India did not share a common culture, language, political organization or territory to call their own. Jinnah's achievement, according to Ahmed, was to create ‘a modern Muslim persona, one which would represent a modern Muslim nation and reflect its spirit while providing identity and unity. It heralded the dawn of modern Muslim mass politics, of political images and symbols’. The two-nation theory is also central to Pakistan Ideology, which maintains that Muslims and Hindus have retained their distinctiveness historically and that the discrimination of minority Muslims in India justified the separation and creation of Pakistan. However, Ali points out the inherent dilemma of Pakistan in asserting its identity as an Islamic state in modern era especially as the ideology can alienate the non Muslim minorities and be used as a tool by the political and military leadership to deprive them of regional and cultural identities.
To return to the theme of gender I take the Babri Masjid incident of 1992. While portraying the Hindu nationalism as a micro-religious nationalism of the elites, Bacchetta argues that the Hindu nationalists strategically used the sacred space of Babri Masjid as a symbol of Muslim military invasion and male sexual aggression. India is the motherland, often depicted in collective Hindu conscience as the body of the mother goddess ‘Brahma mata’ and the Muslim invasions that India ‘suffered’ from antiquity are seen as a violation of female Hindu body. It is interesting to note that killing a cow could also carry such gendered connotations, since for the Hindu, the cow is ‘Gaumata’ – Cow Mother Goddess, and the slaughter of a cow by the Muslims in 1934 has led to communal riots and continues to be at the root of the rumours that set off communal violence even today. This violation of the female Hindu body - and not just any female body but the mother’s body - by the Muslims is an extreme challenge to the honour of Hindu manhood. This could only be re-asserted through the likes of razing a mosque to ground and, unofficially, violating Muslim women and castrating Muslim men and leaving one thousand dead within the first month following the riot of 1992. Thus, as Hansson and Kinnvall assert ‘the use of “woman as other” becomes a way for group and sometimes even state representatives to reassert control in time of crisis’.
Any debate pertaining Indo-Pakistan relations is incomplete without mentioning Kashmir. I will discuss it briefly in relation to the impact of globalisation and war on terrorism. Varshney attributes the unresolved problem to three kinds of nationalisms: religious nationalism of Pakistan, secular nationalism of India and ethnic nationalism embodied by the Kashmiriyat. Madan argues that the case of Kashmiri nationalism is slightly problematic since, though the Kashmiris share distinctive physical characteristics, a distinctive culture and two mutually intelligible languages, it lacks the written literary tradition and therefore does not lead itself to a nationalism as strong as the Bengali case, in which the nationalists were successful in creating Bangladesh - a nation different to that of India and Pakistan.
Chadda is of the view that the Kashmiri conflict and the Indo-Pak relations would have taken a different route had it not been played out in the arena of cold war US-Soviet rivalry. The UN, dominated by the Western powers, was not in a position to play an impartial role in bringing about a solution to a third world conflict. Today, the Kashmiri dispute is inevitably linked to the most crucial of global concerns – the international network of terrorism, with India frequently accusing Pakistan of using Afghan war veterans to train Kashmiri insurgents. The implications of globalisation on arms control, narcotics and terrorism will be returned to during the discussion on Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka: Repeating History - Recurring Fault Lines

‘It was a Hundred Years War with modern weaponry, and backers on the sidelines in safe countries, a war sponsored by gun-and drug-runners. It became evident that political enemies were secretly joined in financial arms deals. “The reason for war was war.”’
- Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, 2000: 43

Ondaatje was referring to the political situation in Sri Lanka in the mid 1980s. 20 years later, the situation remains much the same. After a stalemate ceasefire negotiated in 2001, recent developments in December 2005 have brought the government and the LTTE to the brink of war. The economic and social development of the country taking a backseat due to the preoccupation with war is only secondary compared to more damaging consequences of cyclic upsurges of nationalism and the possibility of communal violence, spurred by insecurity and deep mistrust of the ‘other’.
Orjuela claims that ‘[a] conflict over power and resources has resulted in a deep social divide, [where] ethno-mobilisation plays a central role and civilians are increasingly the perpetrators and the victims of violence’. She argues that the postcolonial democratic system reinforced the identity politics introduced during the British rule, leading to the development of two nationalisms within one state. De Silva contends that the model of parliamentary democracy – too simplistic for a population of ethnic diversity - concentrated power in the hands of a postcolonial elite who perpetuated the colonial stratagem of divide and rule to gain advantage of electoral politics. The author attributes the rise of mass nationalism among the Sinhalese as a reaction, not only towards the British, but towards this English educated power-elite that continued hegemonic tendencies into post independence era as well. One aspect of decolonisation was seen as a renewal of country’s religio-cultural traditions. A second aspect of decolonisation involved the relative positions and the sharing of power among the various ethnic groups. The major political parties to mobilize mass support played upon both these aspects and the demands of Sinhala Bhuddhist majority became the dominant cultural identity.
This ‘Sinhalesation’ of the state essentially prompted minority Tamil nationalism. The Sinhala nationalist ideology holds that territorial integrity and prevalence of the majority rule as necessary to preserve the Sinhala Buddhist identity where as the Tamil nationalist ideology claims the Tamil nation’s right to self determination in what it defines as the Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island.
At this point it is necessary to point out that the LTTE ideology should not be equalled to Tamil nationalism. To quote De Silva ‘Tamil nationalism has endured in a variety of forms: From collaborationist-nationalisms practised in the 1990s, by the EPDP, EPRLF, PLOTE, TELO and breakaway factions-like the former-EPRLF ‘Rasik group’ in the east and former-PLOTE ‘Mohan group’ in the Jaffna peninsula, that operate as auxiliary units of the Sri Lankan armed services to chauvinist-separatism (typified by the Eelamist LTTE)’.
The Eelamist version of Tamil nationalism has tried to incorporate other minority groups of different ethnic origin (such as the Muslims) under the term of ‘Tamil-speaking people’. The formation of Tamil identity in terms of suffering and struggle is central to LTTE ideology. This includes a multitude of painful experiences relating to discrimination due to language policy, university admission system, unfair economic development and political system favouring majority rule that refused to recognise Tamil identity, inciting a feeling of second-class citizenry. The LTTE has glorified the courageous Tamil struggling against suppression. Orjuela points out that LTTE fosters a culture of heroism and devotion of war martyrs with religious features inspired by both Hinduism and Christianity.
The role of religion in competing nationalisms in Sri Lanka is slightly more ambiguous than the clear-cut Hindu-Muslim divide of India. While Buddhism remains central to the majority Sinhalese identity (which also includes the Christian Sinhalese minority), the fact that LTTE leadership comes from the Christian minority where as the majority of the Tamils are Hindus prevents the direct politicisation of religion in the conflict. Neither can one trace a fault line along gender regarding Sinhalese and Tamils as with Hindus and Muslims in India (though the former group is accused of dominating the latter in Sri Lanka). Indeed, there seems to be a dearth of research regarding this dimension of the conflict.
Placing Sri Lanka’s conflict in a global context refines our understanding by elucidating another significant dimension. Substantial popularity and sustenance from Tamil Diaspora that is plugged into an efficient global support network, helps the LTTE to solve logistical problems, re-supply its arsenal and access new technologies of warfare. About 60% of the LTTE’s war budget is generated through Tamil Diaspora and trade in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Far East. The LTTE is often accused of trading in drugs, weapons and other illegal activities. At the same time the separatists have sought legitimacy and support by playing on ‘struggle for liberation’, to foster ties with more formal global economy of international humanitarian assistance.
However, Uyangoda indicates other imperatives of globalisation such as the power of global and regional actors to urge both parties to find solutions. The international community has begun to define the options available for both parties, by conceptualising mediating and even imposing a framework for negotiations. With the global war on terror giving rise to anti-separatist ethos, a consensus has emerged among main political powers such as EU, USA, India and the UN that in the current conjuncture of South Asian politics, they are not in favour of creating a new ethnic state in Sri Lanka. Nonetheless Uyangoda points out that externally mediated settlement may not necessarily lead to be successful as they may not match the political zeitgeist within the country. Despite many setbacks the LTTE has shown remarkable resilience in holding on to their original demands, leaving little space for the attainment of a political solution. With the Southern reaches of the country renewed in its nationalist fervour, President Rajapakse, who recently came to power backed by JVP and Sihala Urumaya, has stated that he is no longer in favour of Norway for the role of the mediator. He has left the option open for India to step back into the picture while proclaiming that there will be no concessions to the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka.
With both parties far from willing for the least bit of compromise, it remains to be seen which politically imaginative, mastermind solution, let alone what externally induced negotiation process, could bring enduring peace to this deeply divided society.

Fault Lines of Civility: Identity Politics at a Sub National Level
For a comprehensive analysis of socio-political dynamics in South Asian societies, it is necessary to zoom in at the social fabric, stepping down from national and international expositions to the sub national or communal level. Ethnicity becomes the central conception around which group identities are formed at this point. Madan argues that it is not only characterisation of identity, but also a set of strategies to achieve certain ends in the interest of a particular group, which could be opposed by competing ethnic groups. Ethnic movements therefore may involve violence. Coping with ethnicity, Madan continues, is the ‘successful management by an ethnic group through “identity games” to further its economic and political interests’. He defines “identity game” as ‘the deliberate choice by an ethnic group of particular aspects of its cultural profile for highlighting in the expectation that doing so will yield the desired results in a given situation’.
In a study regarding ethnic conflict and civil society Varshney argues that there is a strong link between the structure of civil life in a multiethnic society to the presence/absence of ethnic violence. First, he claims that interethnic and intraethnic networks of civic engagement play very different roles in ethnic conflicts. Interethnic associations are conducive to peace, while communities that are based on intraethnic (fault) lines are prone to conflict as they lead to weak interconnections between community groups. Second, he argues that both formal and informal civic networks, which cut across ethnic groups, promote peace. ‘Vigorous associational life, if interethnic, acts as a serious constraint on politicians, even when ethnic polarization is in their political interest’, adds Varshney.
Drawing from a fascinating study on the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India, Varshney illustrates how, despite ethnic diversity, some regions, cities, towns and villages in India remain peaceful when others erupt in communal violence. He investigates how ethnic violence is predominantly an urban phenomenon – a claim reaffirmed by Tambaih and certainly applicable to Sri Lanka too.
Between 1950-1995, rural India, where majority of Indians still live, accounted for only 3.6% of the deaths while eight cities account for 46% of all deaths of Hindu-Muslim violence in the country. This clearly establishes the town/city as a unit of analysis, and Varshney argues that India’s Hindu-Muslim violence is city specific, not state specific, albeit ‘with state and national politics providing the context within which local mechanisms linked with violence are activated’.
To Varshney, the pre-existing local networks of civic engagement between Hindu and Muslim communities are the single most important factor that contributes to the different outcomes in different cities during a crisis, (i.e., Calicut remained peaceful when Aligarh drowned in a bloodbath during the Babri Masjid incident). He explains that especially, when formal associations such as trade unions, professional associations, sports clubs or cadre-based political parties, draw from both Hindu and Muslim communities providing them a civic space for interaction, the capacity of these communities to endure national level exogenous shocks, i.e., partition, in this case Babri Masjid incident, is considerably higher. By allowing communication between members of the two communities, these networks make neighbourhood-level peace possible at a time of crisis. Furthermore, routine civic engagement allows the two communities to regulate and manage the tensions and conflicts thorough non-violent means.
Varshney stresses the importance of ‘peace committees’ in Calicut - temporary organisations consisting members of both communities, that greatly contributed to the maintenance of peace through policing neighbourhoods, killing rumours and providing local administration with information. Another dimension of this is the intercommunal business organisations that link the livelihoods of many Hindu families with Muslim families. Varshney suggests that intercommunal business survives because of this link than the neighbourhood warmth between Hindu and Muslim families: ‘Though valuable in itself the latter does not necessarily constitute the bedrock for strong civic organisations’.
On the contrary, Aligarh albeit of the same size and composition of Calicut, had its Hindu and Muslim population living in highly segregated neighbourhoods. It lacked both formal and everyday civic mechanisms that strengthened interethnic interaction and understanding. The peace committees that were organised in Aligarh were intraethnic; did not draw from the two Hindu and Muslim groups and they primarily served to protect intraethnic neighbourhoods. Contrary to building bridges across the fault lines, they bred mistrust and reiterated communal consciousness.
Like all other cities that broke into violence, Aligarh showed evidence of politician-criminal nexus. The criminals engaged in violence and murder could not be brought to justice since they were under the protection of the politicians and had close connections with the local media which were instrumental in spreading rumours and polarising masses: Brass has called this arrangement ‘institutionalised riot system’. The politicians in Calicut, on the contrary, were not given into ethnic polarisation though it was in their political interest. The politicians considered it a risky strategy in a society where inter religious civic integration was strong, fearing that if their party was directly linked to destroying decades long Hindu-Muslim peace, they would be punished by the electorate. This proves that strong interethnic civic engagement reinforces peace and mutual trust, as against intraethnic associations that reiterates the fault lines, controlling and curtailing political actors and de-hegemonising their power to exploit national crises to their gain.
Tambaih’s explication of the 1983 riots in Colombo refines (and simultaneously complicates) my argument on inter group relations thus far. He detects a pattern in the recurrence of ethnic riots; albeit intermittent events, they constitute a series of unfolding succeeding occurrences, for example, the 1983 riot – most virulent in the island’s history – were preceded by the riots of 1958, 1977 and 1981. However, these riots are short lived, as they are necessarily ‘human outbursts with a life cycle of orgasmic violence and spent energies’.
Similarly, at the root of this complex process are often the distortion of micro-events and the response of the human masses to mytho-historical clarion calls that explain the present in terms of the past that justifies violence. According to Tambaih Mahavamsa’s passionate and pious characterization of Sri Lanka as being totally dedicated to preservation of Buddhism by the Sinhala race with the ever-present danger of the Tamil incursions is a living faith and a justification of collective action. Furthermore, Tambaih places the 1983 riot in the context of routinisation a ritualisation of electoral violence, a situation that encouraged the belief that the ethnic problem could be dealt in a similar fashion.
In a refreshing discourse on violence in Sri Lanka Kapferer contends that ‘the disorder of violence does not necessarily reflect a disordered world, rather its structuring and creatively organising movement’. Moreover, violence reveals structure in itself and in the world around it, even as it appears to destroy it - such apparent destruction being itself a structuring movement. The fact that these civilian destroyers return to their daily existence, back to living side by side with the very community they gruesomely clashed with, bears deep implications for inter group relations. Duly, Tambaih stresses the need of research in Anthropology of displaced persons and suffering.
Fault Lines of Freedom: Concluding Remarks
‘Is there any conclusion that can be drawn from 50 years – which is a long time in the life of a any modern nation – of the duel quest of statehood and nationhood by the major sates of South Asia?’ questions Embree. In the colonial struggle for freedom of the nation, these deeply multicultural civilisations resulted in creating nations within nations, unfortunately trapped within the idea of a unitary state. Ethnic identities became the fault lines along which territories had/has to be split. Histories and religions of people become justifications for collective and political retaliation.
In revisiting my original argument I reaffirm that ethnic identities created during the colonial period became political fault lines for India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The alienation between political elites and the masses of these states have often resulted in short sighted policies to gain electoral victory. The consequences of these policies are manifest in current political chaos of the region, infested with insurrections, separatist wars, militancy and civil violence. Increasingly, these power struggles unfold in a global arena where modern knowledge, technology, Diasporas, terrorist networks and international law define the boundaries and the velocities of these postcolonial identity games. Chellaney argues that ‘the future of the international campaign against terrorism hinges on success in this region to root out terrorist networks and deter regimes from encouraging or harbouring armed extremists’. With India and Pakistan entering a sophisticated nuclear age, every level of ethnic interaction has deep implications to region’s security. And the future of peace within the region depends upon imaginative political solutions to guide these pluralistic societies still juxtaposed between tradition and modernity.

Bibliography
Ahmed, Akbar (1994), Jinnah And The Quest For Muslim Identity Magazine: History Today, September 1994
Bacchetta, Paola (2000), Sacred Spaces in Conflict in India: The Babri Masjid Affair, Growth and Change, Spring 2000
Brass, Paul R & Vaniak, Achin Competing Nationalisms in South Asia
Chadda, Maya (2002), Building Democracy In South Asia: India Nepal Pakistan, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000), Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Hitoriography, Neplanta: Views from South 1:1
Chellaney, Brahma (2001/02) Fighting Terrorism in South Asia, International Security vol 26, no 03 Winter 2001/02
De Silva, Purnaka L (1997) Sri Lanka: Futures beyond Conlict, Futures vol29 issue 10
Embree, Ainslie (1997) Statehood in South Asia, Journal of International Affairs 51:1, Summer 1997
Gunatilleke, Tiruchelvam & Coomaraswamy (1983) Ethical Dilemmas of Development in Asia, Lexington Books, USA/ Canada
Haan, Michael (2005), Numbers and Nirvana: How the of 1872-1921 Indian Census Helped to Operationalise ‘Hinduism’, Religion Vol 35 (13-30)
Hansson & Kinnvall (forthcoming) Gender, Multiculturalism and Religious Discourse(s) – Women and Symbols in Hindu Nationalism, Gender Equality
Jain, Arun (eds) (1998) Do Population Policies Matter? Fertility and Politics in Egypt, India, Kenya and Mexico, Chapter 3, Population Council
Jalal, Ayesha (1995), Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, Cambridge University Press
Kapferer, Bruce (2001), Ethnic Nationalism and Discourses on violence in Sri Lanka, Communal/Plural Vol 9 no 1
Kinnvall, Catrina & Jönsson, Kristina (eds.) (2002) Globalization and Democratization in Asia: The Construction of Identity, Routledge
Ludden, David (2002), India and South Asia: A short history, Oxford: One World Publications
Madan, T N (1998) Coping with Ethnicity in South Asia: Bangladesh, Punjab and Kashmir compared, Ethnic and Racial Studies, September 1998
Manto, Sadat Hasan (1989), Kingdom’s End and Other Short Stories translated from Urdu by Khalid Hasan, Harmondsworth
Ondaatje, Micheal (2000) Anil’s Ghost
Orjuela, Camilla (2004) Civil Society in Civil War: Peace Work and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka, PhD Dissertation, Göteborg University
Pratap, Anita (2001) Island of Blood, Viking/Penguin Books, India
Price, Pamela (1996), Orientalism, Post-orientalism and the Study of Government and Politics in a Non-western Societies, Forum for Development Studies, No 2
Rushdie, Salman (1988) Satanic Verses, Viking, US
Tambaih, Stanley J (1990) Presidential Address: reflections on Communal Violence in South Asia, Journal of South Asian Studies 49 no. 4 (November 1990): 741-760
Varshney, Ashutosh (2001), Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society, World Politics, Vol 53, No 3 April 2001
Varshney, Ashutosh (1991), India Pakistan and Kashmir: Anatomies of nationalism, Asian Survey, Vol 31, no 11
www.bbcnews.com

Author’s note on word count (excluding Bibliography and cover page): 4761

Paradise Divided: Sri Lanka’s War for Peace in a Global Arena

2006-06-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Course in Political and Social Chnage in South Asia, October 2005

Compared to its promising socio-economic performance at the time of independence, the present circumstances of Sri Lanka, with its protracted war that has cost 168% of the country’s GDP in 1996, falls nothing short of the Miltonic idiom of paradise lost. Figures for loss of human lives range from 60, 000 to 70,000 since the civil war broke out in 1983, of which about 30, 000 are considered to be civilians (Brass & Vanaik: 198, Orjuela, 2004:17). Uyangoda points out that in terms of sheer magnitude Sri Lanka’s civil conflict is presently the most intense internal war in the entire world, while Varshney recognizes it as an ethnic clash based on ascriptive group identities which, irrespective of internal class differentiation, sect or religion, tend to define the politics of an ethnic group (World Politics, April 2001: 364).
A postcolonial analysis helps to understand the development of two nationalisms within one state. According to Orjuela, the postcolonial democratic system reinforced the identity politics introduced during the British rule. In the two decades ensuing independence the new social forces attempted to define a national identity in opposition to the Western ethos as a reaction to the English educated political elites that were seen as an alien by-product of the colonial system as well as the colonial experience itself. One aspect of decolonisation was seen as a renewal of country’s religio-cultural traditions. This ‘Sinhalesation’ of the state essentially prompted minority Tamil nationalism. The Sinahala nationalist ideology holds that territorial integrity and prevalence of the majority rule as necessary to preserve the Sinhala Buddhist identity where as the Tamil nationalist ideology claims the Tamil nation’s right to self determination in what it defines as the Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island. These two competing nationalisms led to bipolarisation of the ethnic groups in which essentialism and stereotypes continue to breed deep distrust of ‘the other’. A quintessential quote comes from the former President Kumaratunga who in an interview with a French daily, Le Point in 2000 claimed that Prabhakaran “has the mentality of an Adolf Hitler. He is a megalomaniac. He finds much pleasure in killing and destroying…what the LTTE want is to torpedo negotiations” (Asian Survey, January 2001:118).
The formation of Tamil identity in terms of suffering and struggle is central to Tamil nationalism. This includes a multitude of painful experiences relating to discrimination and marginalisation due to language policy, university admission system, unfair economic development and political system favouring majority rule. Furthermore, discrimination in the labour market, Sinhalese-biased education system in subjects of history and social sciences and the lack of recognition for Tamil identity incite a feeling of second-class citizenry. The LTTE has glorified the courageous Tamil struggling against suppression. Orjuela points out that LTTE fosters a culture of heroism and devotion of war martyrs with religious features inspired by both Hinduism and Christianity.
In an age where globalisation simultaneously weakens the power of nation state and gives rise to identity quests (Kinnvall and Jönsson, 2002: 12), the ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka inevitably lead to insecurity. Sinhalese supremacy is seen as a threat to Tamil identity, Tamil separatism is conceived to be a threat to Sri Lankan national integrity - a viscous circle of postcolonial insecurities. The development of a war economy can be viewed in a similar context where the armed forces seems to be the steady avenue of public sector employment for both Tamil and Sinhalese, urban and rural proletariat. A stable monthly income with allowances for serving in battle areas and guaranteed pension to the families in case of death has made ‘employment’ in the armed forces an attractive life proposition for vernacular-schooled rural young men with secondary level education (Uyangoda: 202) He further mentions Nordstrom’s concept of ‘dirty war’ that subjects people to violence ‘not simply to win a political victory but to crush any perceived or imagined threat’ and thereby destroy cultures of co-existence.
The LTTE has a global network for political lobbying and fundraising for social rehabilitation as well as trading in drugs, weapons and other items for war efforts. About 60% of the LTTE’s war budget is generated through Tamil Diaspora and trade in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Far East (Gunaratne 1999 quoted in Orjuela 2004: 98). On the other hand the LTTE has sought legitimacy and support by playing on ‘struggle for liberation’, to foster ties with more formal global economy of international humanitarian assistance.
However, globalisation has other imperatives such as the internationalisation of Sri Lanka’s conflict where global powers are likely to play a direct role in coercing both the government and the LTTE to find peace. According to Uyangoda this means that the country’s ethnic conflict now unfolds in a global arena where international community has begun to define the options available for both parties, by conceptualising mediating and even imposing a framework for negotiations. With the global war on terror giving rise to anti-separatist ethos, a consensus has emerged among main political powers such as EU, USA, India and the UN that in the current conjuncture of South Asian politics, they are not in favour of creating a new ethnic state in Sri Lanka. Though the Indian intervention of 1987 miserably failed the present involvement of Norway as mediator and Japan as a major donor has played crucial role in deciding the future trajectory of the peace process. Writing in 2001, Uyangoda points out that with the political conditions then existing in Sri Lanka, the logic of externally mediated settlement may not necessarily contribute to long term peace, as the domestic constituencies did not match these external forces.
The recent presidential election saw Mahinda Rajapakse to power backed by JVP and Sihala Urumaya – two Sinhalese nationalist parties. Rajapakse is in support of renegotiation of the ceasefire agreement of 2002. With the recent assassination of a foreign minister (who happened to be a Tamil instrumental in banning LTTE as a terrorist organisation internationally) still fresh in the communal memory, it remains to be seen what externally induced negotiation process could succeed in bringing peace to this deeply divided society.
Bibliography
Sri Lanka in 2000: Politics of Despair, Lawrence Saez, Asian Survey, Vol XLI No 1 January/February 2001
Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society, Ashutosh Varshney, World Politics, Vol 53, No 3 April, 2001
Globalization and Democratization in Asia, Catrina Kinnvall & Kristina Jönsson, 2002
Competing Nationalisms in South Asia, Paul R Brass & Achin Vaniak
Civil Society in Civil War: Peace Work and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka, Camilla Orjuela, 2004
Ethical Dilemmas of Development in Asia, Godfrey Gunatilleke, Neelan Tiruchelvam & Radhika Coomaraswamy, 1983
Hasini Apsara Haputhanthri
MA in Asian Studies
Centre for East and Southeast Asian Sudies
Lund Unversity
Sweden

The Age of Migration

2006-06-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Indepth Course in International Relations, 05th June 2006

The Age of Migration: A Review of Theoretical Perspectives
International population movements, though an age-old phenomenon, increasingly define the dynamics of contemporary global politics and society. Transnational networks in the forms of trade and investment, ideas and people, with nodes of control in multiple locations, are recasting states and societies in distinctive and important ways. The Age of Migration deals with three key issues: it explains the complexities of contemporary international migration; explores political and social problems of ethnic diversity resulting from settlement of migrants in host communities; and finally links the two discourses of migration and ethnic diversity to address this ‘transnational revolution’ comprehensively.
In explaining the migratory process and the formation of ethnic minorities Castles and Miller draw from several theoretical perspectives. The authors insist upon the need for interdisciplinary approaches. The phenomenon can be analysed from several angles, including Liberalist, Structuralist and Social Constructivist perspectives. At another level, applying Feminism and Postmodernism can unearth fascinating insights, about the way in which the book handles its subject matter. The authors are quick to point out the weaknesses of standpoint explanations and call for a more integrated approach in dealing with the issue. This lifts the discussion into a superior footing, which enables the reader to reflect on the global patterns in their historical contexts and modern evolutions. Thus I will analyse the book at two different levels, and with several perspectives while giving prominence to Social Constructivism.
From a Liberalist viewpoint, the book introduces neo-classical economic models to explain the process of migration. According to Steans and Petiford, Liberals believe that all human beings are rational and value individual liberty above all else. In terms of economics, the global market for labour thus decides the flow of migration. Neo-classical models explain migration through ‘push-pull theories’, where “individuals ‘search’ for the country that maximises their well-being”. Constraining factors such as government restrictions on immigration or emigration are seen as market distortions that should be removed. Castles and Miller point out that though in the long run such flows should help to equalise wages and conditions in developed and underdeveloped regions creating equilibrium, the empirical studies contest these assumptions. Thus the authors argue that the push-pull theories cannot explain why a certain group of people go to one country instead of another: for example, why have most Algerians migrated to France and Turks to Germany. Liberal explanations of free individuals making utilitarian and rational choices may thus be rendered too simplistic and ahistorical.
The Historical-Structural approach provides an alternative explanation: Migration is seen as a way of mobilising cheap labour in the context of an unequal global economic system. The process in turn perpetuates uneven development and is seen as important as military dominion that structurally links the First and the Third world, making the latter dependent on the former. While the ‘push-pull’ theories tended to focus on mainly voluntary migrations of individuals, like that from Europe to the USA before 1914, the historical-structural accounts looked at mass recruitment of labour by capital. The availability of labour was both a legacy of colonialism and the result of war and regional inequalities within Europe.
Nevertheless, the authors reject this approach for being one-sided as much as Liberal accounts are. Castles and Miller point précis:
The neoclassical approach neglected historical causes of movements, and downplayed the role of the state, while the historical functional approach often saw the interests of capital as all-determining, and paid inadequate attention to the motivations and actions of the individuals and the groups involved. (Castles and Miller 2003:26)
Migration systems theory arises out of this critique to avoid extremes of structuralism and agency centred theories. It tries to find an inclusive middle-ground approach to studying the population movements. From a Social Constructivist point the focus is on the interplay of the structure and agency in the process of migration. Steans and Petiford point out that Constructivism ‘rejects any social features as given and places human beings in particular contexts’, which inform their actions as they reproduce social realities. In this respect the migration systems theory suggests that migratory movements generally arise from the existence of prior links between sending and receiving countries based on colonisation, political influence, trade, investment, or cultural ties. For example Castles and Miller point out that migration from India Pakistan and Bangladesh to Britain is linked to the former colonial presence in the sub-continent.
Similarly, Social Constructivism holds that the process of construction is a ‘social’ process that cannot be done by a single person alone. The process of migration according to the discussion of Castles and Miller is likewise:
International migration is hardly ever a simple individual action in which a person decides to move in search of better life-chances, pulls up his or her roots in the place of origin and quickly becomes assimilated in the new country. Migration is a collective action, arising out of social change and affecting the whole society in both sending and receiving areas. (Castles and Miller 2003: 21)
The main assumptions put forth in the book reflects the influence of a middle ground approach. The stance on human nature is contextual. The book stresses the importance of culture and community in the migratory process. A suitable illustration is provided from migration research in Asia, where migration decisions are usually made not by individual but by families. In an Asian setting the elders of a family (often male) may decide to send one of the daughters to another region or a country in order to cope with the pace of socio-economic change. The motivation from the family-unit perspective is that the females are more reliable in sending back remittances. On the other hand, the authors point out how these patterns may correspond with global phenomenon such as the increased feminisation of migration.
In keeping with the role of norms and institutions in Social Constructivism, the main tenet of the migration theory is one of particular strength: it sees migratory movements as a result of interacting macro- and micro-structures. Macro-structures refer to large-scale institutional factors such as political economy of the world market, interstate relationships, the laws, structures and practices established by the state, etc. The microstructures are the informal social networks developed by the migrants themselves, in order to cope with migration and settlements. These two levels, according to Castle and Miller, are linked by a number of intermediate structures, which are referred to as meso-structures.
The formations of migration chains explain relationship between actors and processes. Castles and Miller argue that migratory chains are started by external factors, such as recruitment or military service, or by initial movement of young and often male pioneers. This also indicates the relationship between domestic and international politics. Once a movement is started the others will follow, establishing social networks that cope with bureaucratic procedures, finding shelter and employment and overcoming personal difficulties. Thus, the book indicates that migratory processes once started become self-sustaining social processes.
If migration systems theory focuses on unravelling the structural processes of migration, transnational theory emphasises human agency. The authors recognise that migration, in an age of globalisation, where rapid improvements of global transport and communication technologies create circulatory and repeated mobility and lead to the formation of transnational communities. Arguments of the ‘deterritorialised nation-states’ imply serious consequences to the ideas of national identity and international politics. Halliday’s presentation of globalisation and nationalism as contradictory processes deserves to be examined at this point, in order to grasp the effect of migration and formation of ethnic minorities. Halliday views migration, travel and tourism, employment abroad and worldwide communication as factors opposing nationalism whereas, hostility to immigration, fears of unemployment, xenophobia and dislike of alien cultures can promote nationalism. Transnational business communities, political and cultural communities are seen as developing countervailing power to contest the power of corporations and governments.
In this respect the book addresses themes of state and power, institution and world order, identity and community, inequality and justice, conflict and violence from a Social Constructivist, Feminist and Post-modern perspectives. According to Steans and Pettiford, from a social constructivist perspective, states behave the way they do because they are socialised into the institutions of internal politics. Large-scale migration and growing ethnic diversity pose dilemma of integration for political entities based on the notion of modern nation-states. Though most modern states have made conscious efforts to achieve cultural and political integration of minorities, this process is never simple as seen in the example of – to quote one out of many – Australia’s immigration panic and the Tampa affair. Thus, the authors show how especially in the era of globalisation the nexus between power and nation-state is declining, which implies multiple directions for policy decisions: ‘…it seems likely that increasing ethnic diversity will contribute to changes in central political institutions, such as citizenship, and may affect the very nature of the nation-state.’
Identity becomes a locus of meaning in the crossroads of these global processes. Formation of ethnic communities or minorities are presented as a product of ‘other definition’ and ‘self definition’ by the host community and the immigrant settlers. From a Social constructivist point groups tend to distinguish between insiders and outsiders and gain their identity and sense of belonging from this distinction. The authors’ discussion of ethnicity, class, gender and life cycle as markers that crosscut and interact, affecting life chances, lifestyles, culture and social consciousness is refreshingly constructive. Analysing the formation of ethnic minority identity from a feminist perspective enriches the arguments presented in the book. Gendered racism and gendered embodiment of culture and nation can be seen as specific forms of social normalisation and exclusion. Women of ethnic minorities not only become the easiest targets of racial discrimination of the dominant group, but also become the cultural symbols to their own community, where nationalist discourses construct the notions of national unity and distinctiveness on feminine symbology. Thus, for ethnic minorities culture becomes a source of identity and focus for resistance to exclusion and discrimination. From a post-modern perspective, the authors argue that the immigrants and their descendents do not have static homogenous identities but instead dynamic multiple identities with fluid boundaries. The same applies for the dominant group, whose notions of a homogenous nation prior to the arrival of the migrants can be deconstructed to show exactly the opposite. Thus the concepts of national culture and identity become highly questionable. The authors go on to deconstruct ideas of not only culture and community but also nation-state and citizenship, which add important dimensions to the arguments. According to Linklater exponents of new conceptions of citizenship advocate that the differences between citizens must be reflected in public policy. Minority groups throughout the world should be recognised through minority/ group rights and cosmopolitan democracy.
In the book, inequality is seen as an inevitable consequence of government policies and in the formation of ethnic minorities. This is manifest around the world in different cities through the development of ethnic neighbourhoods, the distinctive use of urban space and ethnic associations. The authors argue that racism, marginalisation and social exclusion is present in all host countries to varying degrees, as well as the segmentation of labour market on ethnic and gender lines. In the UK, for instance, immigrants from the commonwealth became concentrated in the least desirable jobs and youth from ethnic minorities suffered high unemployment rates. The authors argue that certain social policies that were designed to reduce ethnic concentrations and ease social tensions achieved absolutely the opposite!
Likewise, the increased salience of racist violence and social tensions is addressed as a reaction to the growing insecurity resulting from rapid socio-economic change for peoples and their communities. Racist campaigns, harassment and violence are seen as important factors in the process of minority formation and political mobilisation. Castles and Miller highlights that growth of anti-immigration extremism on one hand and the importance of immigrants as ethnic voting blocs on the other. This duality of the migrants as political actors and targets of politics is the key to understanding migration security in the context of modern political terrorism.
The authors argue that government policies that deny the reality of immigration lead to marginalisation, separatism and racist violence. They propose that the best way to prevent marginalisation and social conflicts and uphold peace and security is to grant permanent immigrants full rights in all social spheres, especially with regard to political participation – the lack of which could lead to immigrant militant activities:
Globalisation is leading to multiple identities and transnational belonging. Exclusionary modes of immigrant rights and nationhood are questionable, because they lead to divided societies. Similarly, assimilationist models are not likely to succeed, because they fail to take account of the cultural and social situation of the settlers. Multicultural citizenship appears to be the most viable solution…(Castles and Miller 2003: 253, 254)
In summing up, the authors argue that more broad based world development is needed, in order to cope with problems such as illegal migration, since migration is not a solution for bridging the North-South gap, unemployment in Africa or rural poverty in India. In a structural discussion of the current world order, they show how development of the third world, though fairly utopian, can lead to a decrease in migration in the long run but admit that the results will not be of short term. The authors rest some hope on globalisation that makes cultural interchange inescapable, where fusion of old civilisations has the potential of creative redefinitions and solutions for nation-states in future.

Bibliography
Castles, S and Miller, M J, 2003, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Steans J and Pettiford L, 2001. International Relations: Perspectives and Themes, London: Longman
Baylis J and Smith S 2004. tehGlobalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press (3rd ed.)

Hasini Apsara Haputhanthri
MA in Asian Studies
Centre for East and Southeast Asian Sudies
Lund Unversity
Sweden

A Movie Review: Tsotsi

2006-06-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

Note: Submitted as an assignment for Indepth Course in International Relations, 05th JUne 2006

Set in a shantytown in the suburbs of Johannesburg, Tsotsi follows a young gangster on a short journey to humanization. Though a sensitive personal tale of love and empathy (or the lack of it), Tsotsi makes a fine case for a theoretical analysis in IR from several different perspectives: it is also a tale of security/insecurity in certain places of the globe – of growing inequities in distribution of power, income and resources within specific societies and social groups, and the impact that this has on the provision of education and primary health care facilities for the poorest members of society. I will analyse the film, using Realist, Structuralist and Feminist approaches in International Relations.
Tsotsi, which in a South African language means ‘thug’, is the name adapted by the protaganist – a ferocious young man. He and his small gang prowl the city looking for potential victims with pitiless, predatory eyes. Their method of attack is vividly demonstrated on a subway, when they stab a man to death inside a crowded moving train to rob money. They are predators who steal and kill to survive according to the basic laws of nature; their actions resonate well with the Realists’ argument on some aspects of human nature, where actors pursue their self-interest aggressively to the determinants of others, without regard to the constraints of law or morality. Steans and Pettiford point to the central theme of anarchy in Realism. The backdrop and cinematography of Tsotsi establishes the chaotic, anarchic, dog-eats-dog world of a suburban shantytown from the very first few scenes: the camera pans over a jungle of shanties as the credits appear; Tsotsi, Butcher, Aap are all established as part of this jungle, following their basic instincts for survival: life, as in the starting scene of throwing dice, is a gamble. Anarchy is also represented through the protagonist’s past. As a child he led a lawless life, away from parental authority and care, a past that shapes not only his characteristics but also his destiny.
The group dynamic between Tsotsi and his four followers can also be interpreted from a Realist perspective. Though Tsotsi is the unofficial but obvious leader of the gang, his power is not uncontested. Both Butcher and Teacher Boy challenge Tsotsi’s authority in different ways, and by the end of the film, both characters suffer assaults –one broken and the other eliminated – by the protagonist. Furthermore, this power play does not take place in a lacuna; there are others who have stakes in this balance of power, such as Fela, who tries to bait Tsotsi’s gangsters to his side. Thus, the film conveys a sense of realpolitik – a shrewd awareness and a readiness to use force through repetitive bursts into violence.
However, the film doesn't offer a judgmental look at the protagonists, rather presenting their behaviour as the result of the environment they grew up in. Tsotsi reveals its beauty in its roughness through the contrasted portrait of an individual who becomes a metaphor of the world he embodies. A structural view of human nature holds that it ‘is not fixed and essential. The human subject is social and historical. Human Nature is conditioned by prevailing forms of social, economic and political organisations.’ The film presents the character of Tsotsi a product of his past and society.
Thus, Tsotsi is a rich dish for a Structuralist savouring. The key tenets of Structuralism according to Steans and Pettiford, are all well represented in the movie: Tsotsi’s world is obviously and profoundly shaped by the structure of the capitalist world economy and we see that protagonists’ crimes are determined by factors. The class distinction is spelt out. The shantytown exists side by side of a bustling, glistening city, with people who have more than two swanky cars to loose. John and Pumla are the embodiment of this other word, which has the power and the resources to order the Police around. The way John and Pumla screams at the police when they loose their baby is not just an expression of intense pain and despair, but also an expression of power and authority their class wields. The police is portrayed as carrying out their duties to protect them as efficiently as possible, not simply because they are the victims of a shocking crime but also because they are what they are! This reflects the very Structuralist argument that states reflect the interest of the dominant classes rather than the existence of a genuine national interest.
Thus, the breathtaking emotional drama of a gangster who carjacks a rich lady and unexpectedly finds her baby in the backseat, is carefully balanced with a latent call for justice. The film showcases the fundamentally unjust social and economic order that generates conflict and disharmony, and state institutions that does little to prevent it. In this sense, the main conflict within the film takes place between the bipolarised classes of a postcolonial society. As the events unfold we can see that the poor marginalized classes pose a security threat to the bourgeois, safe, comfortable home.
Structuralists argue that the economic base supports a range of other superstructures – state, law, education and health systems as well as mass media. Concentration of power in the hands of the rich is seen as inevitable. In the film power can be interpreted not only in crude terms, but also as the ability to access resources. Tsotsi has never been to school. His mother had no access to proper healthcare. The media doesn’t splash around Tsotsi’s side of the story, his tale of poverty-stricken childhood spent in a drainage pipe or his human transition which is the central theme of the film. The newspapers carry rich man’s tale of loss (who, it must be noted, has instant access to healthcare, security and mass media). The film clearly questions this: whose tale is heard by the society?
The argument can be stretched to include the core-periphery theme of the Structuralist argument. The film establishes Africa as a periphery society of the world system, laden with poverty, hunger and HIV/Aids. Johannesburg township forms the core within this periphery society, whereas the shantytown remains further outside. In one scene, Tsotsi revisits his childhood home, which turns out to be a stack of abandoned cement pipes at the outskirts of the township where homeless kids spend their nights. One cannot help remembering this stark pipe-home when Tsotsi visits the baby room full of soft toys and comforts in John and Pumla Dube’s home. Such images resonate the growing gap between the rich and the poor around the globe.
HIV/Aids is firmly established in the film as a disease of the poor, not only through ample exposure of HIV/Aids prevention billboards in several scenes, but also the character of Tsotsi’s mother, whose appearance is brief but crucial. The example of HIV/Aids in Africa illustrates the complex interrelationship between human security in individual societies and the distribution of power and resources globally. Tsotsi’s mother is defenceless against HIV simply due to her poverty, which affects her ability to access nutritious food, healthcare and medical supplies, all of which are necessary to combat Aids. The inequity is not merely economic. Thomas argues that women and girls continue to comprise majority of the world’s poorest people. Tsotsi’s mother is presented as oppressed by her alcoholic husband, directing our attention at another crucial dimension that needs to be explored in Tsotsi.
The film has much to be exposed through a Feminist lens. At one level, Tsotsi portrays women as victims and women as saviours. At another it places women in varying positions of power and character. In yet another, it questions masculinity, femininity, motherhood and complicates stereotypical ideas through the transition of the protagonist. And, there’s more!
To begin with, Tsotsi’s mother, as mentioned above, represents one of the worst positions to be in the world. She is an African woman, poverty-stricken, infected with HIV/Aids, oppressed by an alcoholic husband and is shown to be denied of her right to express her affection for her son as she lies on her deathbed. The powerful depiction of her circumstances transcends the less than 10 seconds appearance she gets in the running time of 1hour 36 minutes. She is a victim of her social position and is powerless, her voice lost among a million of ‘marginalized others’ who share her plight. But her voice is not lost in the memory of her son. Her tenderness for Tsotsi (or David, note that she is the only person in the film that calls the protagonist by his real name and thus becomes an integral part of his identity!) strikes a raw, sensitive chord in his character. Thus, this mother becomes a metaphoric ‘wounded other’ forever present inside seemingly ruthless Tsotsi, who is swift to kill and at surface seem to symbolise nothing but male aggressiveness.
This is the ‘other’ dimension invoked in Tsotsi by the baby he steals. His hopeless and disarmingly funny attempts to take care of the baby establishes his capacity for tenderness and love, complicating essentialist notions of masculinity and femininity. He repeats to Miriam that the baby belongs to him: “He’s mine”, even when he decides to leave the baby in her care; in a second raid of the same household Tsotsi steals milk powder and a baby feeder. The following confrontation with Miriam is thought provoking. Tsotsi tries to establish himself as capable of taking care of the baby, proving that he can now provide the baby with milk, an act that could almost be interpreted as an eagerness ‘to become a mother’, whereas Miriam voices the common worldview “you cannot become his mother’’, just by the ability to provide milk, thus establishing motherhood as exclusive to womanhood. Something Tsotsi, as a man, cannot be.
Stretching the argument down the same lines reveals that Tsotsi is as much a confrontation between yin and yan as between rich and poor, good and bad. Concepts of violence, aggressiveness, murder and ruthlessness are connected to ‘bad male’ where as tenderness, love, healing and caring is associated with ‘feminine goodness’. However, the film transcends this simple dichotomy in the emotional transition of the protagonist and indicating his capacity and craving for tenderness.
Miriam epitomises ideal African womanhood. Her stature exudes ampleness and fertility. She is a young single mother, widowed and alone in a big bad world, but she is independent, resilient and dignified. She makes her living by sewing and selling wind-chimers, thus associating her with righteousness, creativity and beauty, though her life circumstances could not have been much better than Tsotsi’s. She refuses to accept payment from Tsotsi in return of breastfeeding and caring for the baby. Her innate capacity for tender care transcending selfish interests, resonant with the theme of motherhood, is presented as the saving grace in a world driven by the law of the jungle. She is also the voice of reason that pressurises Tsotsi to return the baby to the mother. She is the antithesis to conflict, competition, violence and insecurity, which defines modern global politics as much as the shantytown she lives in. Not only does her character defy Realist or Structuralist interpretations, but she also provides a contrast to all the other female characters in the film.
For example, Pumla is portrayed as woman victimised by a criminal. Though she may come from a position of empowerment, from a privileged class, who can afford to vent her anger at the police officers, by the end of the story she is almost dehumanised: her inability to walk makes her a dependent on her husband. It is John who is the caretaker, and the hero of the last scene, successfully regaining their child back from the criminal’s hands. Other minor female characters (ie. Soekie, Fela’s girlfriend) are just the right trappings of a patriarchal society, where women can only survive or wield power by being someone’s woman (Fela’s girlfriend) or recasting themselves in masculine qualities (Soekie).
In conclusion, it must be noted that analysing Tsotsi shed light upon important issues of justice and equity, violence and security, gender and identity, poverty and marginalisation, making it a powerful social commentary and a political statement, as much as it is tale of universal humanity, love and redemption.

Bibliography
Gavin Hood, 2006, Tsotsi (English Title: Thug), South Africa, BBC Films
Steans J and Pettiford L, 2001. International Relations: Perspectives and Themes, London: Longman
Baylis J and Smith S 2004. The Globalisation of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press (3rd ed.)
www.imdb.com
Word count: 2134

2006-06-05T15:14:00.000-07:00

test