Sri Lanka's conflict: culture and lineages of the past.

• Author: Wickramasinghe, Nira
• Position: THE DIFFICULT ROAD TO RECONCILIATION

There are two ways to lose oneself." by a wailed segregation in the particular or by a dilution in the universal.

--Aime Cesaire

Walter Benjamin famously wrote, "History is the object of a construction whose place is formed not in homogenous and empty time, but in that which is fulfilled by the here-and-now." (1) Few would contest Benjamin's critique of historicism and his argument that what is properly historical only reveals itself to a future generation capable of recognizing it--a generation possessing developers strong enough to fix an image never seen before and never to be seen again. In spite of this, many scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict and conflict resolution in Sri Lanka resist acknowledging the need to historicize their reading of the present. This paper will argue that understanding the fractured state of the Sri Lankan polity today and evolving reconciliation in any form is not possible without a rhizomatic approach to history--a situation where the future and past are constantly in the process of becoming each other. It is nothing new that the colonial graft has shaped the post-colonial state of Sri Lanka. Nationalist historians have recognized the colonial traces in the political system, bureaucracy, education and other sectors and have critiqued the traditional root causes approach to understanding historical events. This paper's approach is different and based on the belief that origins of ideas and events are sometimes less interesting than how they reverberate throughout history. It looks specifically at how culture has been conceived in the colonial and post-colonial states. Rather than attempting to find causes of modern conflict or distrust in events of the past, it will explore how the epistemological position on culture of conflict resolution among practitioners has predetermined how civil war was resolved in the country and, in a sense, precluded other frames for reconciliation. The paper will first look at the lineages between colonial modes of political representation and modern day multiculturalism. The second part of the paper will analyze the links between the popular perception of the state today as a provider of welfare and the regime of entitlements put in place under colonialism. The third section will explore how by contrasting it with a looser and more flexible colonial approach to territory, both the new nation-state and proponents of imaginary homelands are permeated by the idea of culture-based territoriality.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE: COLONIAL MODES OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Much debate on how to resolve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is dominated by a faulty epistemology that assumes each group has some kind of culture and that the boundaries between these groups and the contours of their cultures--namely the Sinhalese and the Tamils--are specifiable and easy to depict. (2) How we think inequities among groups should be addressed--and diversity and pluralism furthered--has been influenced by this approach. The solution to the sovereignty claim according to Tamil separatists, is for believers in the distinctness of cultures to divide the country on ethnic or cultural lines, instituting a more or less advanced federal constitutional arrangement. (3) Multiculturalism is the theory behind this seemingly self-evident resolution of a nearly thirty-year conflict. The paradox is that in spite of the efforts of experts, the country remains in a state of war. Until now, reconciliation has been premised on a faulty reading of society as composed of clearly delimited communities. This leads to an unquestioned understanding of multiculturalism and federalism as panaceas for the current impasse. One can argue that the colonial epistemological graft has in many ways inflected how attempts at reconciliation between conflicting parties have been shaped over the past thirty years. In the same way, the past has been read as being made up of cultural groups locked in a contest for power.

CULTURE AND GROUPS: LINEAGES OF THE PAST

There are many similarities between the practices of the British colonial state in Sri Lanka and those of the post-colony. In its institutions and bureaucracies, traces of the colonial mold are still present. The urge to classify groups according to distinct cultural traits is at the center of the liberal state that grew from the shards of the colonial state. From the 1947 election campaign to the first independent parliament, D.S. Senanayake mentioned "several racial elements" existing in the country and praised each of them for their intrinsic qualities: "the thrifty Tamil," the "Muslim trader," the "adventurous European" and the "friendly Sinhalese" would all join "to build a great nation." (4)

The imperative of enumerating groups in society through the census mode persists in the decennial censuses of the independent state. The official status of cultural groups are captured by the national identity cards citizens carry with them, the forms they fill for state and non-state institutions to enter their children into schools, applications for scholarships, employment and bank loans. Individuals frequently evaded these colonial divides, attempting to either bridge these imposed divisions or, in an even more subversive fashion, to foster hybrid moments. Defiance to or derision of colonial rule was displayed in the dress of some Sinhalese chiefs who chose to wear a sarong over Western trousers. (5) But in the official sense, identities lost the substantial quality, the many forms and shapes they had in practice, and became objective features of people that could once and for all be delineated. Enumerations themselves would not have changed the shape of the varied and contextual identities of the peoples of the land, but their currency contributed to the gradual imposition of the idea--promoted by nationalists as well--that identities were like institutions: fixed and gelled. E.J. Livera, while applying for the post of systematic botanist in 1924, started his application signing, "I am a Ceylonese of the Burgher community and 27 years of age." (6) One of the conventions in the census even today is the "impermissibility of fractions, or to put it the other way round, a mirage like integrity of the body." (7) Multiculturalism, as it is practiced in 21st century Sri Lanka, is a legacy of the colonial idea of society as cultural groups rather than a legacy of a sincere and principled approach to equity and justice. The modern Sri Lankan state does not incorporate any of the subtle practices or complex theories that inform the shape of multiculturalism in states such as Canada, the Netherlands or the United States. It is still the colonial frame that distinguishes the Sri Lankan understanding of multiculturalism. (8)

People saw potential entitlements under colonial rule in identifying themselves as one ethnicity or another. This further moored this perception of identities as embodying inescapable features of being. Colonial knowledge did not imagine identities or construct them; rather, it opened up a new realm for political identities to blossom.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND CULTURE

The British bestowed political representation and cultural group identity upon persons they acknowledged as leaders of their community. The census was the basis for determining race-based representation in the colonial state and political representation was first distributed equally to selected racial groups. In 1833, a legislative council composed of British and natives (Ceylonese members) was established. In the selection of the natives, the governor nominated one low-country Sinhalese, one Burgher and one Tamil. During the seventy years that followed, the only change made to the constitution of the council was the addition of two unofficial members to represent the Kandyan, Sinhalese and Muslim communities. (9) At the beginning of the 20th century, when the first cracks between the various ethnic groups started to form, Sinhalese, Tamils, Indians, Muslims, Burghers, Malays and Europeans all formed separate political associations which the British encouraged to jockey for power, (l0) Groups that were outside the colonial frame of cultural groups and who could not use the representation system in place to forward their demands--caste groups, regional groups, small linguistic groups--frequently used the petition to express their uncivil or barbaric claims. (11)

The adoption of a culture-based system of representation had double-edged consequences. Firstly, it provided a platform for the new multicultural elite to express its discontent. But as seats in the legislature were determined on the basis of the cultural affiliation of the councilors, many of the pressure groups that sprang up were consequently culturally exclusive. This was the case in international organizations such as the Dutch Burgher Union as well as in regionally based societies such as the Jaffna Association and the Chilaw Association. The Jaffna Association was composed of Tamils, who mostly resided in Jaffna and engaged in commercial and professional pursuits. The Chilaw association was an association of wealthy Sinhalese landowners of the district of Chilaw in the Northwestern Province. (12) Pliant and prone to compromise from its inception, this association never included the destruction of the colonial state a part of its project. The liberalism it professed rarely exceeded the half-hearted initiatives of reform issued from the colonial administration. During the period between 1927 and 1928, its members were not in favor of universal suffrage but obtained it in 1931 nevertheless. Ranajit Guha, writing of a similar group in India, spoke of "mediocre liberalism." (13)

MAJORITIES AND CULTURAL RIGHTS DISCOURSE

The colonial institution of race and culture-based representative government, as a prelude to self-government and citizenship for natives, invented distinctively modern forms...