Economic Liberalization and Separatist Nationalism: The Cases of Sri Lanka and Tibet.

• Author: Alling, Greg

Overview

At the poles of South Asia, the Sri Lankan state and the Chinese state in occupied Tibet are enmeshed in separatist movements.(1) The character and setting of those movements, however, are significantly different. Hindu Tamils violently fight for Tamil edam (independence) from Sinhalese Buddhist dominance and oppression in the island country; Buddhist Tibetans nonviolently (primarily) protest Chinese occupation of the landlocked, Himalayan-bound country with a goal of regained Po (Tibet) rangzen (independence). Sri Lanka, a former imperial British colony; and Tibet, now colonized by China, exhibit the broad contextual variance in which separatist nationalism arises.

Such nationalism, perhaps, has as many causes as there are cases. The cases studied here, however, exhibit some important common causal features. In particular, the Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils have been on the receiving end of economic development policies that exacerbate their impoverished situations and ignore their demands. In a comparative look at the violent conflicts in Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia, Sumantra Bose argues that in contravention to the notion that ethnic differences have led to civil war, responsibility lies generally in state policies that magnify and exacerbate those ethnic differences. Responsibility, therefore, lies in the hands of political elites.(2) Supporting this thesis, this article looks at the extent to which economic development policies of the state--particularly the policy of economic liberalization--are determinants of separatist nationalism. In both Sri Lanka and Tibet, the state has promoted economic development schemes that aim to achieve a unified nation-state that presupposes the acquiescence of minority populations. By comparing Sri Lanka and Tibet, this article also intends to draw lessons from the former case that may be applicable to the latter. In particular, it attempts to lay out a rationale for why China may wish to reconsider its economic policies and devise a political solution for the Tibetan situation.

This article does not propose that economic development policies are the sole or even the main state policies that have fueled ethnic divides. Indeed, numerous scholars of Sri Lanka have pointed to a series of Sinhala-biased education, government employment, language and religious policies as multiple sources of the ethnic unrest. As for Tibet, its pre-1951 status of de facto independence offers a straight forward reason for the existence of Tibetan separatist nationalism. Bluntly, Tibetans want their country back. Yet an understanding of separatism and broader state-society relations would be incomplete without a critical look at economic policies. Development policies have had daily positive and negative impacts on the lives of all members of society, and such impacts have shaped the Tamil and Tibetan societies' views of the state. In Sri Lanka, civil war has erupted and persisted. In Tibet, signs of a return to violent resistance are appearing.(3) A broader understanding of the state's economic development policy is also critical because in Tibet the state has recently proposed accelerated economic liberalization policies as the solution to separatist nationalism. This plan may be seriously misleading, since in reality liberalization may tend to propel separatism into a more violent movement.

Ethnic Differences in Sri Lanka and Tibet

Despite significant reason for placing blame for nationalism's rise on policies of the state, ethnic difference nonetheless remains a common basis for separatism. In Sri Lanka, the differences and tensions between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil (particularly "Ceylon/Sri Lankan Tamil") communities certainly predate the British takeover of the island in the early 19th century. Scholar Dagmar Hellmann argues that "there is, however, little doubt that the immediate roots of the problem lie primarily in the nineteenth century.... Though there was no hint of arch-enmity, no claim to a separate state, or to a destiny ordaining that the two groups should fight or destroy each other..." at that time.(4) A simple Sinhala/Tamil divide, however, does not fully characterize ethnic differences. For example, Indian Tamils (low caste laborers imported from India by the British) have few significant ties with Sri Lankan Tamils, and over four centuries of European colonialism resulted in the emergence of distinct and disparate Sinhalese communities, a separation most evident in the Sinhalese People's Liberation Front's violent opposition to India's military intervention in the civil war in the late 1980s.(5)

Yet the most palpable divide is between the Sinhalese and Tamils. British colonial rule, which included measurable degrees of favoritism toward the Tamils in their administration, appears to have magnified the differences between the communities. These came into bold relief after the initial 1931 relaxation of colonial control:

Communal tensions were exacerbated during the period of the Donoughmore constitution (19311947) because the Sinhalese desired further change and utilised the power they had obtained to improve the conditions of the Sinhalese electorates, while the minority groups, especially the Ceylon Tamils, felt neglected and 'dominated' and at every stage demanded safeguards which, however, were construed by the Sinhalese reformers as impedimental to the path of self-government.(6) Independence and the ensuing political competition among the dominant Sinhala political parties resulted in further ethnic fragmentation. The anti-Tamil nature of Sri Lankan politics was best encapsulated in the "Sinhala Only!" language slogan of the leftist Sri Lanka Freedom Party during the 1956 parliamentary elections.(7) Hellmann argues that the language divide escalated into beliefs of racial superiority, and that discussions of Sinhala and Tamil heritage " ... tended to take on an increasingly acrimonious and holier-than-thou tone which shows a growing alienation between the two ethnic groups and the loss of a perceived common history."(8) By 1977, the differences in Sri Lankan society had developed to the point where a Sinhala-dominated democracy was exhibiting authoritarian characteristics. After winning the 1977 elections, President Jayawardene of the rightist United National Party (UNP) appeared to aim his authoritarian tactics most directly at Tamils:

Jayawardene toyed with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) [the Tamils' main political party], because this suited his immediate personal goals--notably to obtain their de facto support in the Presidential elections in 1982. He never seems to have taken the Tamil separatist issue at all seriously, despite the fact that it was escalating into a guerrilla war. The result was that the TULF was discredited and the armed separatist groups assumed the political leadership.(9) If there was any doubt left about the differences between the Tamil and Sinhala societies, Tamil separatists were poised to try to erase it.

As for Tibet, in late 1949 the authoritarian Communist Chinese state began taking over a de facto independent Tibet and the semi-independent, Tibetan-inhabited regions' of Eastern Tibet. Able to force Tibet's official capitulation in 1951, the Chinese state had taken Chinese Nationalist Dr. Sun Yatsen's idea, developed around the turn of the century, that there were "five Peoples of China" (wuzu gonghe--Han, Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, and the over-arching term Hui for Chinese Muslims), and projected it upon the Tibetan society with--clearly from the Tibetan point of view--the intent to assimilate. This majority Han chauvinism led most Chinese to believe that Tibetans themselves were "Chinese" and that they would happily assimilate under the Chinese nationalist concept:

China, since the Ch'in and Han dynasties, has been developing a single state out of a single race, while foreign countries have developed many states from one race and have included many nationalities within one state ... The Chinese race totals four hundred million people; for the most part, the Chinese people are of the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common language, common religion, and common customs--a single, pure race.(10) Chinese society often stereotypes the Tibetans as inferior "barbarians," and, among educated Chinese, Tibetans are considered to be people "without shame," as they have taken decades of Chinese economic and other aid only to respond with intransigence by demonstrating for independence.(11)

Tibetans, however, have resisted this application of Chinese pan-nationalism as well as Chinese rule in a variety of manners. Violent rebellion broke out in 1959 and in the late 1960s. An active resistance army fought across Tibet in the 1950s, and Nepal-based guerrilla fighters fought from exile in the 1960s and early 1970s. Both movements were largely undertaken by Eastern Tibetans, who are characteristically known for their fighting and who previously had little affinity toward, or political connection with, the independent Tibetan government in Lhasa (they were, however, often connected through the Buddhist church, whose leader was also Tibet's traditional political leader, the Dalai Lama). Following American pressure to dismantle the guerrilla groups, a result of Nixon's rapprochement with China in 1972, the majority of Tibetan protest since has primarily been nonviolent, not often organized, and dispersed over a vast, remote and unconnected area. Nonetheless, Tibetan nationalist sentiment exists in the vast majority of the Tibetan populace throughout Tibetan-inhabited areas.

Thus, in both Tibet and Sri Lanka we now find a common situation of a state that is intolerant of its minority population's separatist demands. The Chinese and Sri Lankan states are attempting to build viable nation-states, yet their policies may in fact be fueling the claims and demands of the separatist nationalists. Before...