You said: “So how did the blacks in the US achieve such parity starting from truly appalling conditions? By blowing themselves to smithereens? By trying to create a little black Eelam somewhere?”
If your point is that the American Civil Rights movement had no separatist nationalism in it, you are wrong. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement (which emphasised non-violence and negotiation) was violence and the call for a separate nation by the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X. Prior to that, from the 1910s, there was Marcus Garvey, who responded to American white racism by appealing, not to a nationalism, but a pan-nationalism, a transnational black nationalism uniting Africa and the African diaspora, seeking to establish one country for blacks alone (involving fighting colonialism in Africa and transporting black Americans to Africa). The American whites were astute enough to realise that they had to negotiate with Martin Luther King and use him against the separatist elements or it would create a big violent mess. Equal rights legislation was a product of their timely action to contain the problem of black separatist nationalism.
Sri Lanka missed that moment in the 1970s to co-opt the equal rights movement against emerging separatism. I was reading the Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976 which demanded a separate Tamil nation. Look at all the reasons cited for the separation. The bulk of it, from the 6th “Whereas” contained instances of all the failures of the Sri Lankan state to offer equal rights. The justifications cited by the “Whereas” 1-5 were weak justifications. I would say that successive Sri Lankan governments basically handed over the moral authority for separation to the Tamil separatist politicians on a silver platter through their action and inaction. They failed to see that when you deny a community equal rights, psychologically the only option left against loss of self-esteem is to take refuge behind a discourse of one’s own ethnic supremacy. Frantz Fanon deals with that in Black Skin/White Masks. The pathology that Fanon talks about showed itself in the emergence of the Tigers’ violence and recalcitrance. I believe, like Fanon, that this won’t take the Tamils anywhere because in the end they must heal themselves from the underlying sense of inferiority and abandonment that the supremacy discourse covers up. But there’s nothing to say that the pathology cannot continue to build up, abroad if not in SL itself. Perhaps the Sinhalese ruling elite think they can continue to deny equal rights now that the Tigers have been defeated, but there’s always Tigers II.
The Tamil nationalism issue can actually be dealt with right now by the Sri Lankan state, by enshrining equal rights, whether through federalism or the unitary state. But there’s also the pathology of Sinhalese nationalism to deal with, which has been whipped up through the decades by SL governments. Instead of dealing with economic matters, the working-class were offered Tamil nationalism as their enemy, and Sinhalese nationalism as their savior.
You talk about not allowing an “odious” Tamil nationalism to get a free ride; that both Tamil and Sinhalese nationalism must be disdained with contempt. Your interest is to focus on judgement and blame. Perhaps these nationalisms need to be rather understood and their causes healed? The pathology of the country’s two nationalisms are showcased right out there in the open, in the fact of the IDP camps. The state shows (to me) that it has no intent to heal Sinhala nationalism through its maintenance of the incarceration camps. Its solution appears to me to involve the humiliation and emasculation of Tamils until they are willing to accept the merest semblance of equal rights instead of the real thing. Sinhalese and Tamil racism must be healed together because they are connected and feed off each other. But right now if Tamil nationalism is focussed on and dismantled, it will only allow Sinhalese nationalism to grow. On the other hand, if Sinhalese nationalism is tackled, the Tamils will follow suit.
Healing can only happen with acknowledgment of the past. I am not as hopeful as you because I see resistance to that coming even from educated Sinhalese. They want to focus on punishing Tamils, never mind that they have already been punished through killing in war and now through incarceration in camps and through having to deal with the violent end of two competing nationalisms. Perhaps the Sinhalese can never have enough punishment of Tamils?
Maybe I can pose this in another way. If you took ego out of the equation, what do you think would be the sensible thing to do in Sri Lanka now?
]]>You said:
“… but institutional racism, where laws and negative public practices and attitudes towards the ‘other’ have been normalised and made acceptable by the state and public discourse and allow for systematic discrimination.”
I think that’s a very good point and I’m in complete agreement that such things should be fought against. But I believe these changes must come gradually, as a country and society develops insight into why such attitudes are wrong. They cannot and will not change overnight. Look at the US today, it’s held up as an epitome of multiculturalism, yet it took till 1968 for all forms of racial segregation to be declared unconstitutional. Sri Lanka *never* sank to that level. So how did the blacks in the US achieve such parity starting from truly appalling conditions? By blowing themselves to smithereens? By trying to create a little black Eelam somewhere? The Sri Lankan problem indicates a deeper problem somewhere don’t you think? And it can’t be just the Sinhalese, because discrimination on a daily basis was never that severe. Part of the problem as I see it, is because Tamil ultra-nationalists continuously rode on these issues to further their own racist ideals, envisioning a little racist utopia for themselves. The Sinhalese ultra-nationalists gave them ample justification, and public Tamil opinion understandably swung in their favour after these violent pogroms. In my humble opinion, the Tamil ultra-nationalists essentually hijacked a struggle for equality and replaced it with a violent struggle for a racist utopia. This is why you see me express equal contempt for Tamil nationalists as much as Sinhala nationalists, because they are essentially two sides of the same coin. It’s not because I don’t understand that the Tamils have suffered the most in this situation, they have, but let’s not let our sympathy for one party cloud our judgement and let an odious evil get a free ride out of it. I had fallen prey to this error in logic for a while before I finally came to the realization that Tamil nationalism should not be continuously excused and ought to be dealt with the same contemptuous disdain as Sinhalese nationalism. Understanding the reasons for some behaviour does not excuse that behaviour, not for the Sinhalese, not for the Tamils.
But how do we get rid of institutionalized racism? Bringing about actual equality I believe must be a slow process of consiousness raising and legal safeguards to enforce any short-comings. But perhaps the most important factor is to transfer allegiance from a primitive ethnic identity to a broader national identity. This is what most societies have done. They call themselves “Americans” or “Australians”. So too must we forge a “Sri Lankan” identity.
Even now, even the most advanced countries have instituionalized racism to varying degrees. A poorer country like Sri Lanka, saddled with baggage from the colonial era, has a longer way to go, but I think we can safely say that there has been a great deal of improvement. No pogroms for 25 years right? Tamil and Sinhalese both national languages. No serious discrimination in terms of opportunities for education, employment etc. Colombo is a showcase of multiculturalism. The majority community is a minority in it. Some severe shortcomings in the north, but I consider that to be an exceptional situation, and I’ll explain why later. All in all, I’m hopeful 
The focus of Rohini Hensman’s original article was not on what was happening in the camps. She says many offer absymal conditions (she doesn’t say “most” or “a significant amount”). That I consider to be a reasonable claim because even the government itself has admitted to that in many statements. But you misrepresent her article by making it seem that it was all about disparaging the condition of the camps, and then you pillory her for that. She does not refer to torture in the camps, nor does she call them “concentration camps” but you make it seem so in your opening to your article in The Nation On Sunday. You claim to know the truth of these camps, yet you visited only a few selected camps, and in only one area. Your article doesn’t state how you came to visit these few camps. If it was by government invite or approval, it similarly stands to reason that you visited the best, the showpieces, of the IDP camps. My reasoning is this: if all the camps were not abysmal, the government would open the camps to photographers because it would immediately and thoroughly disprove the alleged lies that the NGOs and international media are spreading. Why would they want to suffer bad press if all these were lies?
Rohini’s path to truth was through analysis, where she extrapolated a scenario of unethical government behaviour and intent from various facts admitted by government statements, examined the rhetoric of state and army leaders and looked at past events. Given the lack of transparency by the state, she was entirely warranted in doing so. Many other commentators have come to similar conclusions. Also, it is highly difficult to disprove her main concern, that these were incarceration camps since the residents are not given freedom of movement. This is not an unreasonable contention. Even your article cannot claim otherwise.
Yes, she relies on argument, but in argument we always have to clearly state the premisses on which we make our moves. These premisses are articulated in her article, in particular the ethical principles to which she holds.
Where you and Rohini differ is that you find the government’s continued incarceration of innocent Tamils to be acceptable for pragmatic reasons (such as to identify Tigers in their midst, to de-mine the villages, etc) and she does not find these to be acceptable reasons to incarcerate innocent people. I agree with her because I too do not think that people’s inalienable rights such as freedom of movement should be sacrificed by taking an instrumentalist view of human beings–that innocent Tamils’ freedom of movement should be sacrificed in order to make life safe for other citizens. The IDPs are not there to serve the interests of other citizens–they are equal citizens. Unfortunately, neither the state nor you recognize that. As for the landmines excuse, are you saying that the path to their homes are littered with landmines? Aren’t there people living in these areas and moving about? They’re talking about mines in rice fields. Well, so, just tell the IDPs to avoid these.
You claim that you state your biases and assumptions. One bias is clearly stated towards the end: “At the same time, as a citizen, I do not want any fellow-citizen to remain in these conditions indefinitely.” But you follow this up by saying “The speedy return to their homes, however, depends on everyone cooperating, everyone doing their bit and more than all this, to be responsible in their description. It is one thing to alert authorities to problems and to suggest pragmatic correctives to apparent flaws, and quite another to give a free run to a wild imagination.”
You want speed, yet you name all the conditions that will inevitably slow down the process of return. Plus these conditions are unverifiable. How do you know if an IDP or a journalist is being responsible in his description except insofar as they say what the authorities deem to be the truth? Everyone cooperating? You mean submitting to authority? And you want “pragmatic correctives”, which suggest that you want reformed IDP camps rather than an end to their existence.
This central contradiction in your article splits the rest of your narrative. You imply that you don’t think the camps are an ideal situation, yet you cite stories that are designed to bring tears to readers’ eyes, and make them think that the IDP camps are far better than returning them to their villages where allegedly even worse conditions exist.
By the way, I find your story about the woman suffering from Parkinsons’ Disease hard to swallow. My own mother suffered from PD, and she could not usually even recognise her own daughter or her husband of 40 years. She was usually disoriented, even when well-medicated. PD is a neurological condition where the person is shut off from the workings of her brain because of the absence of neurotransmitters. At 70, this woman would be in an advanced stage of PD. I can’t see her getting down on her knees because even standing would have been highly difficult (for neurological reasons rather than due to muscle exhaustion). She might have been trying to get down to the floor simply to ease the pain of standing. Or she might have been pleading for something.
Something else that perturbs me about your article–your attack on Rohini Hensman, which at times degenerates to the extremely personal, such as when you suggest sarcastically that the government should take all elderly without a home and deposit them at Rohini’s house. It increases a journalist’s credibility when they are able to maintain some detachment, and attack ideas and arguments rather than persons, especially when the other person is a fellow-journalist. Otherwise, it begins to smack of rivalry and jealousy. By contrast, Rohini’s comeback piece is measured in tone and she disagrees with your ideas and claims rather than with your person.
Kumaran (see above) sees Rohini’s verbal activism for freedom of the IDPs as “an act of pure benevolence.” I agree with that description.
]]>cheers
Malinda ]]>
Thanks for sharing the “Yal Devi” poem. Nice one! Let’s keep our fingers crossed for it to start running again. It may run sooner than we think, because the people who were squatting at the Jaffna railway station were asked to vacate, almost immediately after the war, seems to indicate this project is on the fast track. Not sure where these IDPs were chased to, another IDP camp?
I am sure you have already read Rohini Hensman’s follow up:
http://www.groundviews.org/2009/07/07/setting-the-record-straight-challenges-of-internment-for-idps/
She summarizes and clarifies further. She is so thorough in indexing into the arguments of the Tamil IDP issues, I felt relaxed after reading it, because I know she is already packaging and presenting these arguments and agitating for the benefit of everyone in SL. An act of pure benevolence!
GOSL have heard all these good arguments, but why are they falling on barren rocks? Do we have more weed whackers than planters in GOSL?
Anyhoo, I agree with you on the point of telling STORIES. If GOSL releases the IDPs now, propaganda wise will be its net gain, because right now, the IDPs hate LTTE more than GOSL. But if GOSL keeps them hostage for six months, they will forget the LTTE atrocities altogether, and will have plenty of bad stories to tell about GOSL, because nobody likes to be held captive for a long period (six months or more?) even inside a five star hotel.
There is already a creative spurt among Tamils due to their narratives of pain and this IDP situation is only going to make it gush out. Who knows we may soon hear the chants rise from the Wembly Stadium for the Tamils in SL.
However, this may make no difference in SL. Because some folks say, GOSL has let the massive India and China entrench themselves inside SL. Due to this, the much anticipated nuanced approach (a la Hillary’s nuanced approach to terrorism) to resolve the ethnic conflict has already left our harbor even before it arrived at the shores.
SL does not matter much to these giants in the global scale of things. They have bigger fish to fry in their empire-building business. They could care less about Tamil Eelam or Temple of Tooth; but the ports and the beaches definitely matter. We just have to wait and see how this plays out in the future.
]]>“Surreal” is the right word to describe the IDP camps. It made me think of surrealistic art, where things/forms are put together in an abnormal conjunction. To recognise the surreality is to acknowledge that these conjunctions are abnormal. But also, in surrealistic art, we become more truly aware of where, what these things truly are in themselves, away from these abnormal, perverse conjunctions. The conjunction of people, crowds, barbed wire in the camps animalizes the Tamils, but also thereby draws our attention to their intrinsic, inalienable humanity. It is just wrong that they should be in this situation. People lying around with nothing to do, as if at leisure, but in an incongruent setting that is not at all like a holiday place, with guns pointed at them–that reminds us about their enforced displacement from the productive lives that should be their natural situation. The camps are uncanny ‘homes’ with guns pointed at people—reminding us that real homes are places of security, safety, which these people lack. The pictures show children and parents behaving identically in these camps, loitering without purpose, quequing up–adults have been reduced into living like children, the dignity of their adulthood denied.
Except this is not art, is it? There are human beings experiencing, living this surreality, this distortion, this perversion, in and through their body.
You said: “What Sinhalese are not realizing is, as the days go by, more and more Tamils are resenting the Tamil IDP camps and dropping off from the reconciliation process.”
Do they not realize it? Shouldn’t it be an obvious deduction? Maybe it is more convenient to have Tamils drop off from the reconciliation process, especially now that there are no arms for them to pick up. Is that the purpose of the camps’ continued existence?
The camps are to me, an omen, a signifier that the government has planted in full view of everybody about the future it is planning. I just can’t decipher the message yet. Is it saying that Tamils can’t hope to have free movement and free settlement henceforth? Does it speak of plans of colonisation? Would a government that intends to give Tamils more rights do this to them? I think not–it gives off all the wrong signals about their notions of equal/human rights.
You said: “After the war, as a moderate, I was excited about reconciliation and peace in SL. But in the meantime, I wanted the innocent Tamil IDPs to go home quickly. Now I no longer see any point in this exercise of leaving comments and agitating for the release of the innocent Tamil IDPs.”
Yes, I agree with you about the China and India involvement, and that their focus on empire-building could mean an eclipse of the Tamil struggle. Will this entanglement be good for SL since the two are rivals? What happened the last time SL pissed off India? India trained the Tigers and made them into a force to be reckoned with. Is the West going to be happy with China’s presence in the Indian Ocean? It’s not clear how these countries will align themselves, but no country can court foreign investment without guaranteeing a peaceful, safe environment. The power also lies with the people of SL and with the people of the world. If you say these commentaries are useless, then you’re saying that education itself is useless. I’d like to think that is not true. That’s how the South African situation changed, with public discourse changing and escaping the control of the government. It wasn’t just about Mandela and all the others who gave up their lives but about the STORIES of these people going around the globe and how it inspired them. Do you remember the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert held in1988 at Wembley Stadium organised by the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, which demanded that he be freed at the age of 70? It was attended by 70,000 people, and watched by billions of people all around the world. I still get goosebumps remembering the power of the audience chanting “The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching”, repeatedly, directed at the South African government. Could South Africans continue to live as pariahs? No. On another matter, how did a Black man become President of USA and cut through centuries of prejudice? Through the appeal of his words and ideas. So let’s keep the hope alive and the conversations going.
]]>You mentioned the Yaal Devi train, and I was ignorant of that and looked it up. I found a lovely poem in the process that you will probably appreciate. I’ll respond to the rest of your post separately. I have no clue who the writer is nor when it was written. Perhaps you or somebody else can tell me.
Lost Queen Of The Track
“Yal Devi”, a word of the past
The train that no longer arrives
To see the palmyrah trees…
The lost beautiful queen of the track
Woven with a magnificent cloak of blue
And white,
Can you take me to Jaffna once again?
Like you did in the olden days.
The road is still there, waiting, do you know?
A road without tracks
Symbolising a bond without brotherhood
Limited only to words,
And perhaps of pen and paper too,
A road that once was
Now covered from ashes and sands of time
Waiting to find her way back again
And to fly…
With her majestic powerful engines
Which pumped life to separate cultures,
A distant merger written in the sky,
A dream perhaps,
Tired of waiting…
Of an eternal joining of hands
And a pigeon with wounded wings
A stream of blood
Running down
Making its mark,
Eye for an eye
Blood for blood
The words keep repeating
And a union that never took place,
“Yal Devi”, the lost sister of the mist
Is still waiting to find her way
But when will you
Mighty train,
Arrive,
To take us home again? (JP)
Endless chatter about “Thamil rights” is only a smoke and mirrors campaign to cover up a much more insidious drama unfolding within the Thamil Diaspora. Many of the people who built their careers, including academic careers, on tiger propaganda find themselves suddenly exposed in the cold light of day. As this was their only claim to fame, it has become more urgent than ever for them to maintain the pretense of ‘genocide’ in Sri-Lanka. They will cling to this propaganda as if to dear life because at the end of the day it consoles them with a false sense of moral superiority.
This is their ontological security in a world that constantly undermines essentialist interpretations of the world.
]]>I have been following what you have been articulating here in this thread with interest. Thank you for taking the time to write the last long comment (July 5, 2009 @ 2:42 pm). It really spoke to me and I am sure there are many silent readers here, who appreciate your candidness and relentless drive in articulating your view, a much needed perspective at this juncture, if I may add.
I like what you said:
“… I am very sure that a state killing civilians and interning innocent civilians in order to find a few (disarmed) terrorists among them, is very, very wrong. I am horrified by that, and frustrated that others seem to want to ignore that and instead discuss other matters. I am also appalled that fellow-citizens aren’t protesting that, and instead are offering food and supplies, which suggests an implicit acceptance of the ethics of the situation.”
I couldn’t agree with you more and couldn’t have said it better. I left some comments earlier at D.B.S. Jeyaraj’s blog something along these lines:
http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/808 comment no 13, no 144
http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/819 comment no 21
This whole IDP camp situation is surreal to me. But as the days go by, I am beginning to realize these camps are here to stay for awhile (long enough to become real and stay in our minds for the rest of our lives).
What Sinhalese are not realizing is, as the days go by, more and more Tamils are resenting the Tamil IDP camps and dropping off from the reconciliation process.
After the war, as a moderate, I was excited about reconciliation and peace in SL. But in the meantime, I wanted the innocent Tamil IDPs to go home quickly. Now I no longer see any point in this exercise of leaving comments and agitating for the release of the innocent Tamil IDPs.
If India and China (considered the “two tracks on a railway-line running independently” as Bogollagama now elucidates) don’t see anything wrong with the long term internment of the innocent Tamils, I think we should begin to suspect their motives.
While everyone is excited about the gravy train (Yaal Devi train between Colombo and Jaffna, expected to bring in the Tami Diaspora money.), are these big players trying to derail it for their own political benefit of empire building? I dunno.
GOSL vs. LTTE war came to a quick end because India and China wanted to get on with their empire building business. Now, India and China must impress upon GOSL to release the disabled and innocent Tamil civilians ASAP to diffuse the tension in Sri Lanka and Tamil Diaspora.
]]>Thank you for explaining your point of view. I feel that we both to see the same outcome, a just, equitable, plural society. What differs are our perceptions of the events that have occurred so far and perhaps how to get where we want to go.
I will address the points you’ve raised in greater detail in a few days time. Please check back on this same thread.
But just a quick point of clarification: “1,000 to 3,000 killed is a large number, though you seem to treat it here as a blessing that it wasn’t more”
I in no way intended to trivialize it, merely to make my point that it was more a case of a pogrom, with a few opportunistic mobs using the event to pillage and carry out racist attacks against Tamils. For comparison’s sake, take a real genocide, like the Rwandan case, where 7 out of 10 Tutsis were systematically killed over a period of 100 days by well organized groups. Therefore, I don’t feel that the Sri Lankan situation is indicative of a “genocidal Sinhalese”, although there is no argument that, that day will live in infamy as one of the most shameful days in Sri Lankan history. The real reason that the situation escalated to that level was because J.R’s govt. passively endorsed it and did nothing to reign in the mobs, and we all know that mob mentalities take a dynamic of its own when left to its own devices. I think the whole situation is rather well understood, so I won’t harp on it, but that’s on the whole why I think it’s pointless to characterize the Sinhalese as “genocidal”.
Note also that since that day, there has been no such major event, despite the many desperate and extreme attempts by the LTTE to provoke one, in order to justify their cause and bolster their ranks, such as the bombing of the Temple of the Tooth. So I think we should see the positive side of things and the relative maturity of the country compared to those abysmal days. Improvement will always be incremental, rarely overnight.
]]>Apologies for the extremely long post.
Yes, part of the answer to why I courted nasty responses lie within me. But people seem to have misread my motivation. If I used a declarative tone, it was not because I am bossy or ‘imperialistic’ or racist, but because I am very sure that a state killing civilians and interning innocent civilians in order to find a few (disarmed) terrorists among them, is very, very wrong. I am horrified by that, and frustrated that others seem to want to ignore that and instead discuss other matters. I am also appalled that fellow-citizens aren’t protesting that, and instead are offering food and supplies, which suggests an implicit acceptance of the ethics of the situation. As one writer, Kusal Perera noted, these people are not in camps because a tsunami hit them. They are not victims of a natural disaster but a man-made disaster. They are there because somebody intentionally displaced them and now want to use their presence in the camps to humiliate them. Some writers here want to put a positive spin on the state’s action, and say the state rescued these Tamils from being LTTE hostages, that it was LTTE that used them as human shields and thus forced the army to shoot at them. I don’t see it that way. Anytime innocent civilians are caught in a war zone (whether by terrorist machinations or not), the state’s guns and shelling should just stop. That is the humane and ethical thing to do. Instead, the state used the situation to finish off the Tigers in the easiest way possible. A government is supposed to protect citizens, not shell them. The people need now to protest the state’s internment of innocent civilians and query the government’s actions.
I need to unpack my idea of what constitutes racism because it may be different from the way others understand racism. Racism is not only expressed by acts done and words said, but also by the ommission of certain acts and words. Also, the more powerful form of racism is not that of individuals calling each other names or even individuals killing each other, but institutional racism, where laws and negative public practices and attitudes towards the ‘other’ have been normalised and made acceptable by the state and public discourse and allow for systematic discrimination. This kind of racism can do untold damage to the targeted community as well as entrench racism among the host community. When I speak of Sinhalese racism, I am thinking of governments that have come into power on the platform of Sinhala chauvinism, the acts they have done on that ticket, and the people who voted them into power. You consider Sinhalese contributions of supplies to the camps to be humanitarian. For me, it is as insidiously racist as colonial memsahibs giving aid to poor peasant and urban ‘natives,’ and patting themselves on the back for their kindness, but never going so far as to question the role of their own community in causing these people’s poverty, and the right of these people to be equal. Underneath these types of acts is the (racist) assumption that these ‘natives’ don’t deserve much, certainly not as much as is owed to whites, and that they should be grateful for any little thing that is given them. It’s patronage. It is this attitude too that I see in these websites where people (educated people, mind you) say things such as the internment camps are decent, that 40 people sharing one latrine is acceptable, that it makes good sense for 300,000 people need to be interned in order to weed out a few thousand (disarmed and headless) terrorists, that Sinhalese harbouring Tamils against massacres shows their lack of racism while ignoring the issues that led to the massacre in the first place. 1,000 to 3,000 killed is a large number, though you seem to treat it here as a blessing that it wasn’t more. This is the number killed in 9/11, which the world as well as the Americans thought was a horrific disaster.
It is very probable that, in the early days, Sinhalese chauvinism was only practised by a minority. But institutional racism over the decades, the acts of the state, the state’s demonising of Tamil struggle for equal rights as a demand coming from terrorists rather than from a minority community (where they equate Tamils with the Tigers), the racialised theatre of war between the SL army and the Tigers being depicted as Sinhalese vs Tamils, and the state’s repression of liberal views in the media has inevitably led to an entrenchment of racial thinking over the years. Many people may not have been born by 1983, but they would have grown up at the receiving end of all this ideological discourse. Sinhalese and Tamils are only culturally different, and not even hugely different, yet over these decades they have been constructed as ‘races’.
When I say that the majority of Sinhalese are racist, it is not that I think that they will go out to kill Tamils or steal their property or their rights, but that they will not raise a ruckus when this is done. They may give help on a private basis but so far haven’t done it on an organised, public basis. This may appear to be a benign or half-conscious or even unconscious racism or even just plain indifference but it is very dangerous because it creates a situation where Tamils are placed in jeopardy. Their action, or rather lack of action, is then racist in its effects.
You think that we should pay equal attention to the racism of the Tamils. What I say now may make you angry, but racism as a sociological concept is linked to power. According to this, a group with power (such as majority groups) that sets up a system that empowers its own race or ethnic group can be described as “racist”. A group without power (for eg, minority/small groups in any country) cannot technically practice racism in a democracy because they lack the facilities to entrench the power of their race over others. They may hate the majority, gnash their teeth and say vile stuff about them, but they can’t do anything to disempower the majority or establish the priority of their culture over that of the majority. All they can do is struggle for equal rights. So the issue of who started it first is not as relevant as who can do damage to others with their racism. Unarmed minorities can’t do this whereas unarmed majorities can harm the others through using instruments of government.
Having said that, as a minority, the Tigers were exceptional and clearly racist: violence allowed them to beat the odds and establish their power and they did considerable harm to Sinhalese life and culture and to Muslims. So too the diaspora sections that supported them. But Tiger racism has been exterminated. The diaspora that supported them are left sucking their thumbs, and some are even being prosecuted. But Tamils in SL and Tamil Muslims, the ones who are left to negotiate peace and a new constitution, have all this while merely been victims of racism from both sides. What do they have to apologise for? They never elected the Tigers, never brought them into existence, never had the power to influence the Tigers to behave differently.
Just think of what is happening with the committee charged with looking at constitutional changes. Do you think even extremely racist Tamils and other minority politicians in this committee can force the majority politicians to give them anything? They are at the mercy of the sense of justice of these politicians and of the state regime. Only if the Sinhalese think it is ethical to give minorities equal rights can they hope to get it. India is not going to interfere. Hence my focus on the Sinhalese frame of mind rather than on Tamils.
I am not at all trying to justify separatism—in this postmodern era, we should be way past that. Nor am I trying to ascribe blame. I’m asking people to look at the past and see how they could have played it differently. If they see how they could have done that, that the present did not need to be the way it is today, they actually liberate themselves from the past and can get down to thinking about a very different future. Let me say that as someone with Sri Lankan origins, I want SL to do well for itself. If tomorrow a great Sinhalese leader or leaders emerged to take the country to great heights, I would be extremely proud. It would not matter to me that he or she is Sinhalese rather than Tamil. That is why I have used harsh terms—because I am truly disappointed that SL has wasted all its great cultural potential.
Like you, I don’t believe that race is a real category. Human beings are 99% the same genetically. Unfortunately, race is a powerful fiction that has gripped people, not so much since medieval times, but since the European colonial era. Europeans invented race and they used it for capital accumulation. We inherited the concept from them and the usage as well. I’ve read a few texts of European travel writing and was surprised that they focussed on cultural differences rather than on race. Someone said that the last four Kandyan kings were Tamil. If that is true, isn’t that amazing? It won’t happen today. Colonialism interacting with capitalism changed everything.
I agree that people should abandon racialism and appeal to a common humanity. But you can’t do that with people who do now believe (some very fervently) in race except by making them confront their race ideas, the consequences of it, its fictional status, and acknowledge the futility of it. But this won’t happen overnight. Also, to do it, you need to examine the past very thoroughly to see how SL arrived at the present moment (not in terms of one or two root causes, but of various events, circumstances and ideas coming together at different points in time). When I insist that equal rights be legislated before anything else, it is not because I want to entrench the concept of race but rather because, in a society where people believe in race, it is the one thing that will immediately allow people finally to relax and FORGET about race and see their common humanity. It will be the stepping stone for new and rich cultural and intellectual development beyond ideas of race. Then the unity you want will naturally happen.
]]>Since you now seem to be willing to consider alternate points of view also, let’s try to continue this conversation and see where we end up.
You said: “I keep asking questions, but people prefer to berate me instead of responding rationally.”
Perhaps the answer lies within and not outside of you. I don’t say this with malice, and I hope you will take it in the right spirit, but if you re-read your very early posts, you’ll see that you didn’t really ask questions, but instead, proclaimed in effect, a genocide by the racist Sinhalese. People reading your posts will naturally have a defensive reaction against such claims, especially in light of facts such as the following
a. Many of these “racist” Sinhalese harboured and helped Tamils during the ’83 riots for example, at risk to their own lives. A simple logical analysis should tell you that if all Sinhalese were racist/genocidal, far more than the 1000-3000 deaths would have occured in 1983, don’t you think?
b. Many people in the present generation were not even born when the said events happened.
c. Innocent Sinhalese/Muslim people too have suffered immensely from terrorism, ethic cleansing etc. but don’t necessarily brand all Tamils as terrorists and live and interact with them on a daily basis.
d. They wonder why you keep shouting “genocide” when 40% of Colombo, the financial hub, is Tamil, many Tamil people hold high-positions in society and even extremist/separatist groups like the TNA still have pariliamentary representation, Tamil is an official language (although that is being poorly implemented) and yet many people are randomly blown to smithereens, which the “racist Sinhalese” have stoically endured for 30+ years, just as innocent Tamils similarly endured pogroms agains them.
The above is not an exercise in distributing blame. As I said, my entire point is that, at the end of the day, most people have had nothing to do with this issue. The idea is to consider the situation from another person’s eyes, and see that things are not as one-sided as we might like to believe. So that’s why it’s important to not even accidentally accuse an entire race of people and/or adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, because it makes you appear to be a Tamil racist who is taking every opportunity to condemn the Sinhalese and/or justify terrorism/separatism. As I said earlier, if you are willing to walk a mile in another person’s shoes, they’ll be willing to accomodate you also.
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You said: “But of course G G Ponnambalam Q.C. was the one playing the race card, right?”
You’ve not understood the point I was trying to make. I don’t think we should be concerned about Ponnambalam at all. The point is that, there really isn’t a single root cause as we might like to reduce it to. It’s a very easy world view when you have a single villain, in this case, “all sinhalese”, which you can hate and blame for all your woes. But even a cursory analysis will tell you that such a gross generalization is a logical fallcy, equivalent in nature to generalizing all Tamils as terrorists. The reality is quite different. Most Sinhalese and Tamil people just want to live and let live. We should never forget that most are very poor and their main order of the day is putting food on the table, not racial politics. The real power struggle was between the elites, manufactured by the British to run their empire, which later escalated into the situation we see today. Please read this 3 part interview: http://www.pjeganathan.org/south-paw/2009/5/4/sri-lankas-conflict-an-interview-with-pact-part-i.html
In a certain sense, there is an air of historic inevitability in the events that unfolded. The people who are paying for the mistakes by a minority of yesteryear’s generations have never had anything to do with these things. What we should be doing today is not to apportion hate, but to logically think about how to forge a society that guarantees equality for all. How to forge a plural society in line with the ideals and morals of the 21st century, not how to defend races, because races are a concept that belong in the medieval ages, not the 21st.
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You said: “When I say the Sinhalese have to do something rather than the Tamils, it is a question of pragmatics. Minorities are helpless. The Tamils have no power so they can’t do anything and, right now, as I pointed out, I don’t think they are in a state to trust anyone. ”
I agree with you. The Sinhalese, as a majority, must be galvanized into action. However, what results do you expect when you grossly generalize all Sinhalese as racists? Why do you expect them to take the blame for crimes from the past, while simulatenously not expecting to be blamed for the crimes of the LTTE? Is it because of your comforting world-view that the “Sinhalese started it”? I hope I’ve said enough earlier to realize why this reasoning is flawed and why we won’t see results from it. Instead, we need to get the moderates of all races to empathize with each other and understand that beneath the superficial differences of “race”, people are essentially the same – human beings.
That’s why I repeatedly say, if we appeal to that common humanity and give up our own racialism, we will see results a lot faster. As I mentioned earlier, all of the positive results we see so far are a result of this kind of thinking. All of the negative results, are a result of the latter type of thinking.
]]>The quote I respond to above is this one:
You said: “And we have all seen the commitment from the poorer people towards obtaining this peace at whatever cost, because 30 years of seeing their country being flushed down the tubes by random terror attacks, losing their loved ones to a senseless war, had steeled them to endure things at any cost. They stay silent on the IDP issue for this very reason, not necessarily because they are racist as you seem to assume.”
]]>(I am sending this again as I messed up the previous response.)
You may not want to discuss the matter with me, but I have the right of response.
You said: “And we have all seen the commitment from the poorer people towards obtaining this peace at whatever cost, because 30 years of seeing their country being flushed down the tubes by random terror attacks, losing their loved ones to a senseless war, had steeled them to endure things at any cost. They stay silent on the IDP issue for this very reason, not necessarily because they are racist as you seem to assume.”
I will accept this as a possibility. I keep asking questions, but people prefer to berate me instead of responding rationally. At long last, someone has answered this question of why Sinhalese are not pounding the pavements, demanding an end of the incarceration camps. But if this is their fear, then the majority need to realise that they are the majority–that means the power is in their hands. When I say the Sinhalese have to do something rather than the Tamils, it is a question of pragmatics. Minorities are helpless. The Tamils have no power so they can’t do anything and, right now, as I pointed out, I don’t think they are in a state to trust anyone. Majorities, on the other hand, can challenge the government and its oppressions. Sinhalese should know that it is within their power to do the right thing by Tamils and other minorities, as well as ensure that their government does not oppress them.
However, I don’t accept that the focus must now be on unity rather than on giving equal rights to minorities. Have you read E M Forster’s “A Passage to India”? It is set in colonial times, and an English guy seeks the friendship of an Indian Muslim in India. He tries to prove that friendship between the races is possible. The book ends with the Englishman realizing that he can never enjoy friendship with the Indian Muslim guy until India is free of colonialism. Because only then can the two men meet as equals. Friendship, unity, is not possible until all parties are equal.
If you think that demanding equal rights is racism or racialism or playing the race card, so be it. I consider equal rights to be the basic minimal provision of being a citizen.
I understand that Ponnambalam only came up with his 50-50 representation demand in response to the all-Sinhalese Board of Ministers formed in the 1930s. Also, he demanded 50 % representation not just for Tamils, but for all the minorities put together. He wanted balanced representation. The Soulbury Commission decided against that and gave Sinhalese greater representation because they thought (wrongly as it turned out) that Sinhalese would organise politically among socio-economic issues and not just around communalism. It turned out that they always united themselves around the race/ethnicity card, around preserving the Sinhalese language, the race and Buddhism. Although the British gave special representation to Indian Tamils, within a few years of independence, the politically dominant Sinhalese were dismantling the constitution’s provisions. Indian Tamils were denied citizenship by a Sinhalese-dominated parliament. Then in 1956, a law was passed to make Sinhalese the only official language. But of course G G Ponnambalam Q.C. was the one playing the race card, right?
Ponnambalam’s idea of 50-50 equal representation may have been somewhat extreme but there were few options in those days. Today, we know that equal representation does not need to be centred on number of seats in parliament, but can be covered in other legislation as well.
]]>You may not want to discuss the matter with me, but I have the right of response.
<>
I will accept this as a possibility. I keep asking questions, but people prefer to berate me instead of responding rationally. At long last, someone has answered this question of why Sinhalese are not pounding the pavements, demanding an end of the incarceration camps. But if this is their fear, then the majority need to realise that they are the majority–that means the power is in their hands. When I say the Sinhalese have to do something rather than the Tamils, it is a question of pragmatics. Minorities are helpless. The Tamils have no power so they can’t do anything and, right now, as I pointed out, I don’t think they are in a state to trust anyone. Majorities, on the other hand, can challenge the government and its oppressions. Sinhalese should know that it is within their power to do the right thing by Tamils and other minorities, as well as ensure that their government does not oppress them.
However, I don’t accept that the focus must now be on unity rather than on giving equal rights to minorities. Have you read E M Forster’s “A Passage to India”? It is set in colonial times, and an English guy seeks the friendship of an Indian Muslim in India. He tries to prove that friendship between the races is possible. The book ends with the Englishman realizing that he can never enjoy friendship with the Indian Muslim guy until India is free of colonialism. Because only then can the two men meet as equals. Friendship, unity, is not possible until all parties are equal.
If you think that demanding equal rights is racism or racialism or playing the race card, so be it. I consider equal rights to be the basic minimal provision of being a citizen.
I understand that Ponnambalam only came up with his 50-50 representation demand in response to the all-Sinhalese Board of Ministers formed in the 1930s. Also, he demanded 50 % representation not just for Tamils, but for all the minorities put together. He wanted balanced representation. The Soulbury Commission decided against that and gave Sinhalese greater representation because they thought (wrongly as it turned out) that Sinhalese would organise politically among socio-economic issues and not just around communalism. It turned out that they always united themselves around the race/ethnicity card, around preserving the Sinhalese language, the race and Buddhism. Although the British gave special representation to Indian Tamils, within a few years of independence, the politically dominant Sinhalese were dismantling the constitution’s provisions. Indian Tamils were denied citizenship by a Sinhalese-dominated parliament. Then in 1956, a law was passed to make Sinhalese the only official language. But of course G G Ponnambalam Q.C. was the one playing the race card, right?
Ponnambalam’s idea of 50-50 equal representation may have been somewhat extreme but there were few options in those days. Today, we know that equal representation does not need to be centred on number of seats in parliament, but can be covered in other legislation as well.
]]>that’s whay you people don’t get
this has never been a war agaisnt terroism or against the LTTE – it is, was and always will be a war againts the tamil poeple – it is genocide plain and simple
Far more than ethnic harmony, there is ethnic tension and class warfare. Of course if you’re in some hilltop mansion in Kandy, its difficult to see this. On the other hand, the way that the locals try to extort money from you once they know you’re from abroad shows desperation. The barber, three-wheeler guy, the shopkeeper who refused to give me change, the tourist sites that charge foreigners X100 the rate they do locals – if the middle-class/peasant class cannot make an honest living, how can there possibly be harmony. Can a woman even ride a bus in Sri Lanka without being shamed. What about the royal treatment the Government offers tourists – never mind this hulabaloo about NGO’s – a tourist will never ever wait in one of those 12 km long lines which locals are subjected to. Is it any wonder that the locals don’t think twice about dishonesty? Underneath all this is the simmering ethnic tension. After 60 years, the only “political solution” being barely discussed is some proposal that is fully the brainchild of India. This failure of political institutions to evolve – to ACCOMODATE – is prima facie evidence for ethnic disharmony. Sure, there are intellectual solutions – there are even intellectuals to implement such solutions – but there is TOO MUCH ethnic distrust and class warfare for those intellectuals, let alone their solutions – to ever see the light of day. The few brilliant men still left in the civil service – of the Dayan J./G.L. Peiris type – are forced to regurgitate baloney and write highly exaggerated poppycock for the masses. So much for creative solutions – there is only a status quo and dissenters are not allowed. In such a context, what you mistake for “harmony” might be better construed as fear & desperation. In short, it is a fools paradise where those who know better obey without question.
]]>what , country are you in?
have you ever being to SL?
are u Sri lankan tamil or a sinalese?
lest see what you look like?
]]>“By the way, Belle, who are you to “push” Thamils?”
You quote me out of context. I had qualified my statement by saying “If it was really up to me”. Obviously, it is not up to me. I was saying what my position might be IF I were a Sri Lankan, which I am not. This was said in response to someone else who had asked me to state my position.
You also said:
“You don’t have to be a part of the ‘loser society’. The ‘losers’, I am sure, are quite capable of taking care of themselves.”
That is your opinion, that the ‘losers’ are capable of taking care of themselves. I am as equally sure that the ‘losers’ will not be able to take care of themselves.
If my demand for equal rights for Tamils/minorities is what you consider to be a leviathan, why are you surprised at its resentment and bitterness? Didn’t the Tigers start out from that? Have you known any struggle for equal rights to be based on sweet and sentimental feelings?
I agree that it is up to Sri Lankans to say what they want. But to do that, every group in Sri Lanka must come to the table on equal terms. That is why I have consistently said that SL must first hammer out equal rights legislation. Otherwise, whatever agreement they come up with will be a mockery, will not be based on equal give and take.
Logically, I would expect that left to themselves, Sri Lankans will want a unitary state. The majority won’t want their country broken up. The Tamil minority is too exhausted by war and violence and just want to be left in peace to live. Some in the diaspora may want federalism or a separate land, but it should not be their call. Their host countries will not agree to support such involvement anyway, without which they will be powerless.
However, if equal rights is not given to the Tamils, the diaspora will want to intervene, and their host countries will support such a quest. Given that Tamils now don’t have even basic rights and are without leaders, the international community and UN should step in to assure their rights should the SL government fail to do so on its own accord. Equal rights for Tamils is non-negotiable.
]]>“Can you please explain why people aren’t out in the streets of Sri Lanka demanding better treatment for the IDPs? If it isn’t about being callous and uncaring, what is it about?”
If you want to go that route, I can show you that someone with a polar opposite view could ask a similar question. I hasten to add that it is not my view at all and as much as I find it distasteful doing this, I merely want you to consider something from an opposing point of view. Here it is: Can you please explain why most Tamils aren’t taking to the streets condemning the LTTE for their atrocities if they aren’t terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? Are they not reaping the fruits of their labour?
Your explanation is that you “know” that this is not the case, despite their inaction. Someone with an opposite view might say they “know” that Sinhalese do care, despite their inaction. I hope you don’t get hung up on details like Heshan or someone and understand the point I’m trying to make.
In fact, how do *you* explain why many in the south sent assistance to the IDPs in the north? Why do you refuse to see the good side? Is it because it collapses the condemning world view you’ve built around yourself?
Now for the reason why I feel many people really are silent on this issue. The reason is that they do buy the argument made by the govt. That many of the people in the IDP camps have brainwashed LTTE cadres in their midst or have close family ties with the LTTE, and that they represent a real threat to peace if they are let free without adequate screening. And we have all seen the commitment from the poorer people towards obtaining this peace at whatever cost, because 30 years of seeing their country being flushed down the tubes by random terror attacks, losing their loved ones to a senseless war, had steeled them to endure things at any cost. They stay silent on the IDP issue for this very reason, not necessarily because they are racist as you seem to assume.
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“Yes, indeed, racial thinking drove the creation of a monstrosity like the LTTE . It started with the Sinhalese nationalism drive. Don’t you remember? Or do you have selective amnesia?”
Belle, again you seek to justify your racialism by showing that Sinhalese Nationalists are the single core reason for all these issues. I’m glad to see that many Tamils do not share such a simplistic, reductionist world view and understand the issue at some depth. Sinhalese Nationalists are a problem yes, but does that make Tamil Nationalism any better? And secondly, your cause-effect analysis is completely flawed, any historian will attest to the fact. Go back a little earlier, and you’ll see that Ponnambalam was one of the first to bring out racial politics, demanding 50-50 representation. Go back even earlier and you’ll see how the British sowed the seeds for prolonged ethnic conflict through their divide-and-conquer policies.
The point is, there is no point trying to find a root cause and foist the blame on a single people, because there *is no* root cause. It’s a complex interplay of various factors that has brought us to this stage. Perhaps you should give Sivanandan’s revolutionary rhetoric a miss and contemplate this issue with some academic detachment?
More importantly, the most important thing for you to understand is that the generation that lives today is not the same one that lived 50 years ago. The younger Sinhalese generation cannot identify with your mindless hate because many weren’t even born when these said events happened. That’s why I said, if you want them to empathize, appeal to everyone’s common humanity, driving in a racial wedge will yield you no results, because the younger generation will wonder why they need to pay for crimes they never committed?
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“Not otherwise. So really, there is no reason for you to issue ominous threats at me.”
You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick again. I don’t care to issue any ominous threats to you. I was merely trying to make you understand that all the positive results we see so far, from Tamil being made an official language, to people shifting from primitive tribal identities to a broader “Sri Lankan Identity”, to the south helping the North, were all achieved by appealing to the common humanity in us all. What has your racially motivated rhetoric achieved other than death and destruction?
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Belle, I won’t discuss this issue any further with you because like Heshan and Stigmatist, you don’t seem to understand that people are already on your side if you’re willing to be on their side. As Manushi said, change cannot come from one side only. I would follow your very own advice of looking in the mirror, because I have already looked in the mirror long and hard, and that’s why I’m not here campaigning for any single race!
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