The exclusivist politics and mindsets of those
who have drowned Sri Lanka in civil war must be
challenged by a creative recovery of the island’s
hybrid identities, says Nira Wickramasinghe.

The delegations representing the Sri Lankan state
and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
met on 28-29 October in Geneva for talks to
thrash out a possible settlement to the civil war
that has ravaged the island of Sri Lanka since
1983. They did so against the background of
military operations raging on both sides in the
country. It was sadly predictable that the
politician-warriors at the talks remained
entrenched in their mutually irreconcilable
positions, and returned empty-handed to their
wounded land of 75,000 war widows, 25,000 child
soldiers, 220,000 internally displaced people,
and 1,000 people killed since April 2006 alone.
Yet had they stepped back from their political
calculations for a moment, they would have found
that they spoke the same language: a language of
fear and difference, of force and exclusiveness;
a language that could only end in insoluble
contradiction.

 The mirage of peace

Both sides attended the Geneva talks with
ulterior intentions. The Colombo government was
paying lip-service to an international community
that had wanted the meeting as a sign of
goodwill; the LTTE saw the event as an
opportunity to highlight the humanitarian crisis
in the north and east of Sri Lanka due to the
closure by the government of the A9 highway. The
civilians in Jaffna were once again sacrificed by
the intransigent attitude of both parties.

Since 2004, the governments of successive
presidents, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda
Rajapakse, have sought to undermine the ceasefire
agreement reached in 2002 by Sri Lanka’s then
prime minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe. This
created the room for a Sinhalese nationalist
backlash. Rajapakse was elected on 17 November
2005 promising a just peace, but the overtone was
that a military solution was the only option to
save the Tamil people from the clutches of the
“fascist” LTTE and to protect the integrity of
the nation.

In October 2006, government forces were badly hit
in two attacks at Muhamalai and Habarana where
more than 230 military personnel were killed. The
government’s response is a plan to double its
defence expenditure in 2007 and prepare for a
major assault against the Tamil Tigers. The LTTE
too is busy rearming.

Thus, exactly a year after the presidential
election, and three weeks after the abortive
Geneva talks, it is clear that for both sides,
the preferred option is war in order to gain
unilateral military advantage; establishing a
dynamic for peace in the present grim context is
a remote prospect.

The only positive element in an otherwise
depressing scenario is the signing of a
memorandum of understanding between the two main
political parties: the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom
Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP),
over working towards a political solution in the
country that entails devolving power to the north
and east. But by the time the military operations
are over, it must be feared that the tired,
battered and starved populations of the north and
east will refuse even a reasonable offer put
forward by a government that has shown little
compassion for their suffering.

 A discourse of purity

In Sri Lanka, where issues of history and
territory have been at the heart of the claims
and counter-claims of leaders of the Sinhalese
and Tamil communities, it is useful to adopt a
rhizomatic approach to history: that is, one
where the future and past are constantly in the
process of becoming each other.

The understanding of culture in Sri Lanka - of
statesmen, rebels and practitioners of "conflict
resolution" - has predetermined the type of
resolution to the civil war in the country and in
a sense precluded other frameworks for
reconciliation.

Everyone in Sri Lanka - except those dismissed as
“spoilers” and “un-liberal” forces - tends to
accept that people “have” a culture with
clear-cut boundaries and easily recognisable
features. The way issues of inequity and
difference have been addressed is deeply
influenced by this approach.

Furthermore, people forget that the distribution
of communities varies from one region to another.
While there are areas with a majority of over 80%
(Tamil in the far north, or Sinhalese in the far
south), there are also areas with approximately
25% minority populations, and areas with
approximately equal representation between groups
(such as the plantation district of Nuwara Eliya,
and the Trincomalee and Amparai districts in the
east).

The dominant belief is, however, in purity of
cultures compounded by territorial exclusivity:
ideas that acquired hegemonic status with the
growth of nationalism and anti-colonialism and
which have been further entrenched in recent
decades. Colonial rule helped propagate the idea
that identities were fixed and stable and that
one could not jump from one to another.

For example, in the 1920s in his certificate of
discharge YG Stephen, an engine-cleaner, had to
state his race after his name, in this case
Tamil. Nationalists did not contest the reading
of society embodied in such requirements: one
divided into well-defined and discrete
communities. In the early 20^th century the
Sinhalese lay preacher Anagarika Dharmapala
(1864-1933) promoted a national dress for the
Sinhalese that would be devoid of external
cultural influences: the Sinhalese man should not
"show the entire body like the Veddas who wear
only a loin cloth, not wear a trouser like the
fair Portuguese."

There were of course subversive moments, which
should be rekindled, where the power of
definition was denied to the colonial power and
the apparatus of value-coding displaced: many
village tribunal presidents chose to wrap a
sarong over their trousers, thus acknowledging
both European and Ceylonese customs.

There are many ways in which the order of
progress and reason, the implacable dichotomies
of colonial thought - east/west,
traditional/modern, primitive/civilised - were
undone. But nationalism never claimed hybridity
and instead reiterated and reinforced the
colonial discourse of purity.

The state denies the option of straddling many
identities. But in everyday life in border areas,
and among coastal communities, men and women
spoke (and still speak) two languages and
continue to visit all places of worship -
Catholic churches, Buddhist temples and Hindu
devales. In the eastern province, Hindu and
Muslim villages are commonly interspersed and
there was probably a significant degree of
intermarriage in the pre-colonial period. Until
recently, Muslims participated in Hindu temple
festivals, and some Hindu castes such as the
Parayar drummers were given a customary role in
the celebration of Muslim saints’ festivals.

 Beyond the federal argument

Colombo-based think-tanks, untouched by the
complexity of the population distribution of Sri
Lanka and by the overlapping of identities and
cultural practices, continue to advocate a
federal reorganisation of the state as the
formula for solving the “ethnic problem”. They
are implicitly supported by aid donors and
multilateral agencies.

But the formation of cultural enclaves as a
solution to the demands for justice by the Tamils
of Sri Lanka is both troubling in itself, and
inadequate or insufficient. Since more than half
of the Tamil-speaking people live outside the
would-be devolved regions (i.e. the north and
east) it is the Sri Lanka state in its entirety
that needs to undergo a drastic change.

This would mean sapping the cultural
exclusiveness of our schools - organised
according to language/ethnic streams, offices,
clubs, associations, and political parties.
Unfortunately there seems to be no political
formation capable of this type of innovative
thinking. The possibility of a social-democratic,
secular type of rule was closed from the
mid-1950s; at that time, both main parties - the
UNP and the SLFP - adopted policies that
emphasised the majority culture and language,
while the old left that harboured more secular
values was decimated by the rise of the Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front
[JVP]), a nationalist/populist new left.

Since then, the dominant Sinhala and Buddhist
culture and language permeate all institutions
and the everyday life of citizens, while minority
religions and languages are permitted to exist as
cultural forms rather than as political options.
Multiculturalism exists only in law; in practice
government circulars are rarely written in both
languages and police stations are aggressively
monolingual. The president of the country
addresses his citizens in Sinhala only, wears the
Sinhala national dress and is regularly seen on
state TV worshipping in Buddhist temples together
with his Catholic wife.

In 2006, as part of the Vesak festival that
celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of
the Buddha, the state (for the first time in Sri
Lanka) decreed an entire week of abstinence for
all inhabitants and visitors to the country. Once
again the stress was on preserving Buddhism in
its purest form rather than accepting its
modernity and allowing people to choose the life
and mode of religious practice they wished.

 The way forward

At a time when the state is openly and often
aggressively promoting Sinhalese culture and
Buddhism while paying lip-service to
multiculturalism, the challenge today is to
revitalise citizenship as an alternative to
multiculturalism. Reconciliation is only possible
within a state structure that recognises multiple
identities through multiple acts of
identification. Dividing territory according to
“cultural identities” with the view to devolving
powers should not be considered a panacea.
Sri Lankans deserve better than two federal
units, mirror images of each other, each
practicing similarly exclusivist policies, each
fostering dreams of authentic cultures and pure
“races”. A parallel strategy is needed, aiming at
radically transforming the existing state to
ensure that common values of equity and justice
for all its citizens are respected. Autonomy for
the other can only happen in a state that
nurtures pride in cultural mélange and hybridity,
rather than in the fantasy of the purity and
authenticity of cultures.