POLITY Vol. 6 No. 3 & 4 (DOUBLE ISSUE)
ISSN 1391-822X
THE WAY WE WERE
Rs. 100
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Jayadeva Uyangoda and Pradeep Peiris S ECUL AR T H O UG H T S
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K.N. Panikkar DAMBULLA MOSQUE CRISIS
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Darini Rajasingham–Senanayake TO HAVE MORE WOMEN IN POLITICS
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Rosy Senanayake H AR B O U R L I G H T S
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Sarojini Jayawickrama A COLONIAL CLERGYMAN IN SRI LANKA
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Neville Weereratne Weereratne ‘WRITING THAT CONQUERS’
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Anoma Pieris BEYOND OLCOTT AND DHARMAPALA
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Asoka de Zoysa HANDY PERINBANAYAGAM AND THE JYC Rajan Philips
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M.G. MENDIS IN HIS HEYDAY
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Kumari Jayaward Jayawardena ena DOCUMENTS: LOCAL DEMOCRACY
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DENIAL OF TORTURE
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COMMENTARY
FROM GENEVA TO SANITY
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he theme of Geneva continues to dominate Sri Lanka’s current political debate. The passing of a resolution, sponsored by the US and backed mostly by the Western governments, calling on the government of Sri Lanka to take early and concrete steps towards implementing the recommendations of the Lessons Leaned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), is seen by the government and most of the local media as a serious political setback. It is indeed a political setback to the Rajapaksa administration. Setbacks sometimes compel governments to review policies, adopt new and better ones, and be pragmatic and accommodative. Two months into the Geneva setback, it is still too early for the UPFA UPFA to show signs of such return to sanity. In a way, Geneva is a metaphor for our times in Sri Lanka. It encapsulates some of the key challenges and contradictio contradictions ns which the UPFA government headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa has failed to confront in a politically constructive way in the post-LTTE, post-civil war phase of Sri Lanka’s political change. It also highlights the fact that Sri Lanka’s politics, as much the economy of the country, is not insulated from the global and regional state system. If the government thinks that the path of country’s political change after the war victory in May 2009 is exclusively defined by its constituent parties and allies, the Geneva episodes
suggests otherwise. The world is globalized not only economically, but also politically as well. It is i s time for the government to learn, at least belatedly, that in a politically globalized world, the insulatory and isolationist foreign policy of the government, which is an extension of the hyper-nationalist and populist domestic policy, can only receive setbacks and defeats. At the crux of the Geneva debate was a simple issue: issu e: is the UPFA government ready to alter its domestic policies of Sinhalese nationalism to return to a policy of negotiated peace-building, political reforms and democratization, the main contours of which were evolved in the mid-1990s and after. The basic elements of this twin agenda pursued by the PA and UNF governments with varying degrees of deviation, entailed the following: a negotiated political settlement to the ethnic conflict offering regional autonomy beyond the existing 13th Amendment; continuation of economic liberalization accompanied with political liberalization; ethnic reconciliation through a policy of multiculturalism; and democratization with an emphasis on human rights, media freedom and political pluralism. These are components of what some academics call the agenda of ‘liberal peace.’ In the post-civil war context, two new elements were introduced to this list. They were post-war reconciliation, and addressing issues of accountability on 2 POLITY
allegations of grave human rights violations during the last phases of the war. Meanwhile, it became quite clear that the Government has not been in a mood to incorporate any of these issues in its post-war policy agenda. In fact, all of
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to make use of the narrow window of opportunity that the US and its allies have offered after Geneva in April.
them were incongruous with the UPFA government’s policy and ideology. While defying the Western pressure to adopt a strategy of ‘liberal peace-building,’ th e government went on a political and diplomatic offensive against the West by mobilizing domestic nationalist constituencies on a platform of neo-patriotism and populism. The government has also overestimated its capacity to influence the outcome of the UNHRC by means of its close alliance with China and Russia, and newly won friendships with some authoritarian regimes in the African continent. Although the g overnment’ overnment’ss strategy of polarizing the world w orld in a West and-the rest-of-us framework worked well in its domestic propaganda and mobilization, it was hardly a prudent policy in dealing with a set of powerful states who govern the world economy and the state system at present. While the dust of the Geneva debacle is settling down, the Rajapaksa administration seems to be quietly going along with the US agenda and even the time-frame, proposed in Geneva. As the media reports indicate, the Minister of External Affairs Affairs briefed the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington DC on the government’s own road map to implementing the LLRC recommendations.
The developments surrounding the UNHRC in Geneva also show how the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka’s is slowly, and clearly,, being re-internationalized in a much more intense form clearly than earlier. One can even say that the government’s failure to offer a credible political solution to the conflict has contributed to re-defining re-definin g the conflict. In the post-L p ost-LTTE TTE era, the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict has shifted out of Vanni and Sri Lanka’s territorial borders. It now has a global presence with shifting locations. The government has also, knowi ngly or unknowingly, joined this new phas e of civil war by other, non-military, means. By refusing to seriously engage with the TNA to find a negotiated political settlement, the government is only making the new phase of the conflict totally intractable. Meanwhile, the Geneva debacle offers an opportunity for the Rajapaksa administration to critically review its polici es towards the ethnic conflict, even though there are no signs as yet that the government has begun to do so. If the public squabbling among rival factions within withi n the Ministry of External Affairs is an indication, the blame game goes on quite intensely within the regime as a whole. This blame game apart, the President should realize that Sri Lanka’s political future is closely intertwined with the way he handles the issues of ethnic conflict and democracy in the post-civil war context. No amount of rhetoric about a home-grown solution can keep on postponing a political solution to the ethnic conflict. Its constructive resolution resolution along the lines of a solution that evolved in the late 1980s and after, which are home grown enough, is the most essential pre-condition for Sri Lanka’s future. p
Meeting Clinton and making a new set of promises will not lessen the grave challenges that the UPFA government is facing in the post-war context. If the government continues to follow the tactic of promising much and doing nothing, the credibility of the government will once again be seriously damaged. That will re-open the space for a new stage of external political intervention interve ntion at the UNHRC and other global arenas. The regime isolation will amount to state isolations globally and that will seriously seriousl y ruin the government’s chances
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THE WAY WE WERE Politics of Sri Lanka – 2011 2011 Part I Jayadeva Uyangoda and Pradeep Peiris
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of the UPFA coalition. The basic postulates pos tulates of this approach appro ach appear to be the following:
ajor political developments in Sri Lanka continued to be shaped by a context in which all the political actors in the country have been preoccupied with issues of transition from the protracted civil war which ended in May 2009. This was also the context in which Sri Lanka’s external relations as well as actions of external actors towards Sri Lanka occurred.
(i) Sri Lanka does not have an ethnic conflict as such. What existed during the past three decades has been a terrorist problem. The terrorist challenge to the state, led by the Liberation Liberati on Tigers of Tamil Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has been militarily militari ly defeated. In case the terrorist threat re-emerges, the government should maintain its capacity capacit y to quash such threats immediately by military means.
There were also other significant political developments that were not directly related to themes of post-civil war transition. Developments within political parties, local government elections, government-opposition government-opposition relations, human rights and media freedom are key themes among them.
(ii) Since there is no ethnic conflict with political dimensions, there is no need for a political solution for devolution or powersharing. The attention of the government should be focused not on finding a political solution to a non-existing ethnic conflict, but on rehabilitation and resettlement tasks, along with economic development.
The events in 2011 also demonstrated t hat Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict was far from over, although the civil war ended in May 2009. The conflict has assumed a new shape and character. It takes place in the domestic political arena as well as internationally internationally..
(iii) The Tamil people do have grievances. They primarily emanate from two sources. These are: (a) uneven regional development to which the Northern and Eastern provinces have been subjected since independence, and (b) consequences of the war during the past three decades. The priority of the government should be to address economic and infrastructure development.
Regime Consolidation
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ne of the key priorities of President Rajapaksa in 2010 was the consolidation of his position as the country’s president and the stabilization of his coalition regime. The winning of the presidential and parliamentary elections, held in January and April 2010, respectively, enabled him to achieve a considerable measure of regime stability. Although the president had expected a two-thirds majority victory at the parliamentary election, election , the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) obtained 144 seats in the 225-member Parliament, six seats short of the target. In August 2010 President Rajapaksa succeeded in persuading the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) with eight MPs to join the UPF UPFA A coalition government. This assured Rajapakse a two-thirds majority in Parliament. No government in Sri Lanka after 1989 had managed to obtain such overwhelming legislat ive power.
(iv) The task of national integration i ntegration and nation-building need to be achieved through economic integration of the North and East with the rest of the country. Economic integration, and not devolution, is the essential precondition for post-civil war national integration in Sri Lanka. This new approach of the government to the conflict has produced critical responses as well. They have emerged from local and international civil society societ y groups and in a subdued manner from India as well as western countries. The government’s assumption that the Sri Lankan conflict has come to an end with the military defeat of the LTTE is not shared by critics. Their assertion is that although the military phase of the conflict is over, the conflict continues to exist and therefore it now requires a political solution. Critics also say that if a political solution is not advanced by the government, the ethnic conflict is very likely to become exacerbated, even in the absence of the LTTE.
Government Policy towards the Ethnic Conflict
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he Sri Lankan government’s policy towards the management of ethnic relations in the post-civil war context has been defined by a specific approach which, although not clearly stated, is discernible from its policies as well as broad ideological perspectives shared by key actors 4
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Search for a Political Solution
councils, the government’s position presupposed a framework of ‘Thirteenth Amendment Minus.’ The latter suggested devolution without land and police powers to provincial councils. The inability of the government and the TNA to find common ground on post-civil war political reforms to address the core issues of the ethnic conflict suggested that the issue was likely to remain unresolved in 2012 as well.
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lthough the government does not seem to think it necessary to implement a political solution to the ethnic conflict, it has been engaging in discussions with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on the theme of a political solution, primarily in response to international pressure. This pressure for government-TNA talks for a negotiated political solution has emanated from the USA, India, the EU countries, Canada and to a limited degree Japan. This process of dialogue began in 2010 and continued through 2011. In 2010 the government appointed a committee to maintain the dialogue process. However, the government-TNA dialogue did not produce produ ce any concrete outcome in 2011.
Why was the UPFA government reluctant to concede the TNA demand for the Thirteenth Amendment Plus and expect the TNA to negotiate for a minimalist political solution? Why did the TNA insist on the Thirteenth Amendment Plus? The UPFA government’s vision of a political solution so lution to the ethnic ethni c conflict has been shaped by a number of factors. First, the UPFA UPF A coalition’s core political ideology, i deology, as evolved during the war against the LTTE between 2006 and 2009, did not acknowledge the existence of an ‘ethnic conflict’ warranting a political solution solutio n as such. Second, the way in which the civil war ended in May 2009, with unilateral military victory to the state, led to a condition of ‘victor’s peace.’ Third, Sri Lanka’s political transformation during the past few decades has been in the direction of centralization of state power, rather than decentralization and sharing of state power.
The lack of clarity on the government’s government’s position on a political solution and the t he deep mistrust between the t he UPFA government and the TNA are two factors that have led to the protraction of the dialogue with no concrete outcome. The government from time to time indicated that its framework of a political solution did not include land and police powers to be devolved to provincial councils, whereas the TNA wanted the government “to grant the Northern Province police powers besides the right to manage land and forest reservations” (Sunday Times, 27 March 2011). Although police powers have already been devolved to the provinces under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, no government has implemented that provision. Under the 13th Amendment, provincial councils have limited powers over land and there, too, the constitutional provision provis ion has not been put into effect. The government’s government’s reluctance to fully implement the provisions relating to land and police powers under the Constitution emanate from the argument that this would encourage secession and thereby constitute a threat to the unity and sovereignty of the state. President Rajapaksa has also described the TNA’s TNA’s insistence on land and police powers as demands which “the LTTE has been asking for” ( Sunday Times, 27 May 2011). President Rajapaksa has not indicated any enthusiasm about expanding devolution. Informal comments that the newspapers have occasionally reported about President Rajapaksa’s negative assessment of devolution suggested that he was more inclined towards centralization rather than power-sharing.
Meanwhile, the TNA’s TNA’s position on a political poli tical solution soluti on emanates from its ideological as well as political inheritance. Ideologically as well as politically, the TNA represents the political aspirations of the th e Tamil Tamil ‘nation’ which, as the TNA believes, deserves regional autonomy within a federal framework. Even during the LTTE’s secessionist war, the TNA, and its predecessor the TULF, stood for a federalist alternative to both the unitary Sri Lankan state and a separate Tamil state. Coming down on its regional autonomy demand is not easy for the TNA against the backdrop of a protracted struggle for federalism. More importantly, importantl y, the TNA is the only ethnic eth nic minority party at present to resist the UPFA government’s strategy for political cooperation and cooptation. A key factor that has shaped the UPFA government’s reluctance to work on a political solution with greater regional autonomy is the absence of the LTTE. The government’s thinking seems to be that devolution and the 13th Amendment were necessitated in the context where the threat of armed insurgency for secession was present. Once that threat is removed, political conditions in the country have also changed; and the need for devolution is not relevant as it used to be during the civil war.
Thus, during 2011 the debate on devolution and a political solution to the ethnic conflict clearly indicated the continuing polarization of positions between the government and the TNA. While the TNA put forward its reform agenda of the ‘Thirteenth Amendment Plus,’ implying greater regional autonomy going beyond the power of existing provincial
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Ethnic Relations
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The TNA, which has not accepted, and is even resisti ng, the UPFA government’s post-civil war agenda of development over devolution, also appears to be quite aware of the weakened bargaining position of minority parti es. The TNA addresses this challenge in its engagement with the UPFA government by means of mobilizing international support for its own agenda. It also mobilizes international pressure on the government to initiate action for reconciliation and for a political solution based on devolution. Accountability concerning alleged violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the last stages of the war is also an issue with which the TNA has been concerned. This has prompted some critics to say that the TNA’s agenda has been influenced by western governments and the pro-LTTE diaspora, and not by the actual needs of the Tamil people on the ground.
he minimalist policy framework of the UPFA UPFA government towards the ethnic conflict, as briefly outlined above, has been in existence since 2009. Indeed, it has had broad implications for the government’s relations with all ethnic minorities as well – Tamil, Tamil, Muslim and Up-Country Tamil. Tamil. A key implication is the government’s policy emphasis on involving minority political parties in the economic and infrastructure development development initiatives launched in the Northern and Eastern provinces. This has had a political framework defined by the government for the minority parties. In that framework, the minority political parties should join the government coalition, accept Cabinet positions and offer their support for the t he stability of the UPFA government. All Tamil and Muslim political parties with wit h the exception of the Tamil Tamil National Alliance have accepted this position. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, which had earlier aligned itself with the opposition UNP, also joined the UPFA coalition in August 2010, accepting the perspective of de-emphasizing political rights of the minorities.
As became clear in 2011 2 011 as well, the TNA’s TNA’s political agenda seems to rest on two main strategic components. They are: (a) continuation of the project of regional autonomy for Tamils despite the demise of the LTTE, and (b) sustaining the argument for the priority of a devolution-based political solution while countering the government’s strategy of coopting minority parties and political leaders to the regime agenda.
These developments reflect the new ways along which ethnic relations in Sri Lankan politics have been changing since the end of the war between the state and the LTTE. Earlier, the war and the presence of the LTTE as a threat to the state constituted two important factors in Sri Lanka’s political balance of forces between the state and ethnic minorities. It had also characterized the bargaining power which the ethnic minority parties exercised vis-à-vis the government as well as the UNP and the PA, the two main political parties. The ending of the war has altered this specific equilibrium in favour of the government. Leaders of most minority parties appear to be conscious of the new situation in which their bargaining power is weak. In their new politics of pragmatism, priority is given to what they see as ‘developmental rights’ over political rights. According to the new politi cs of pragmatism adopted by the minority parties, the best way to work towards fulfilling development rights of their communities is to collaborate with the ruling coalition. These parties also need access to public office and resources to maintain their clientelist politics. This to a great degree explains why the SLMC left its alliance with the opposition UNP and joined the UPFA government. It also explains why the minority parties, except the TNA, are not keenly interested in their demands for more devolution. Instead of renewing the demand for a political solution and enhanced devolution, all ethnic minority parties, except the TNA, have come to accept the UPFA government’s agenda of the priority of economic development over devolution.
There has also developed a significant confidence gap between the UPFA government and the TNA, despite a number of meetings the two sides had in 2011. The government’s basic attitude to the TNA appears to be one of mistrust. This mistrust emanates from the government’s view that the TNA was sticking to an extreme position on devolution with which the UPFA had repeatedly disagreed. The government also appears to think that by advancing an extreme position on devolution, the TNA acts as a proxy of India and the West. Meanwhile, the TNA seems to believe that the UPFA government has not been particularly p articularly serious about either reconciliation or devolution and therefore is merely engaged in an exercise of prevarication.
Resettlement and Normalization in the North
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he acceleration of resettlement of those displaced due to war has been a major policy challenge to the government throughout 2011. Initially, Initially, donors and civil society organizations expressed concern that the overall normalization process had been slow. However, with the assistance of UN agencies and with international support, the government took measures to expedite the resettlement of Tamil civilians, particularly those living in camps. According to UN sources,
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national security and special development projects. The ad hoc High Security Zones in Thirumurigandi, Shanthapuram and Indupuram, covering the districts of Mullaitivu and Killinochchi, have also contributed to this problem. The people originally from these areas continue to live in camps as they cannot return (Sumanthiran: 2011).
the resettlement programme initiated by the government has accommodated the return of 421,056 civilians (126,524 families) to their homes and communit ies by the end of 2011 (UNOCHA: Nov-Dec, 2011). The government claims that 95% of the IDPs displaced from the Vanni during the last two years of the war have been resettled. (Fonseka and Raheem: 2011, 64). The UN and donors welcomed this initiative of the government. However, there are still issues remaining with regard to the resettlement of IDPs.
With regard to normalization, militarization is a key obstacle in the North and East. While militarization has increased with regard to security, it has also been incorporated into civ ilian Returning itself, is a challenge for the IDPs, as they have to life. Due to the increasing presence of the armed forces in rebuild their lives, in most instances from scratch. Members the North, the civilian-military ratio has been dramatically mil itary. The armed forces continue of the Muslim community who have returned to their old increased in favour of the military. belongin g to the Tamil Tamil people. It is estimated estimat ed villagers after nearly two decades are specifically facing this to occupy land belonging challenge. In many other instances, IDPs are not permitted that there is one member of the armed forces for 2011). to return to their own homes and land, even though they are approximately one civilian in the North (Sumanthiran: 2011). allowed back to the old village or the divisional secretariat The military has also begun to get increasingly involved in (DS) division. Thus, relocation has created new challenges economic activities in the North by running shops – for of normalization to those returned IDPs. Those people who example, barbershops, grocery shops, restaurants, hotels and do not have IDP status as a result of deregistration still remain vegetable shops. The government appears to think that the civili an life is an essential part of its practically displaced. As of 31 October 2011, there were at military’s involvement in civilian least 1,114 IDPs (311 families) living in transit situations and campaign for winning the hearts and minds of the Tamil people 34,671 (12,138 families) with host families (UNOCHA Report in the North. From the point of view of demilitarization and 37, 2011). At the end of November 2011, 6,732 IDPs (2,044 normalization, it has negative consequences. The families) remained in camps awaiting return t o their areas of government’s preoccupation with security considerations in origin (UNOCHA, November-December 2011). The ones the North has also led to some actions which people in the who have retuned are also facing issues concerning the lack North see as an undue intrusion of the military into their private of basic facilities such as housing, sanitation, education and lives. For example, there have been many instances when health care. Kokkilai in the Mullaitivu District, and people had to obtain the permission o f the military to receive Krishnapuram and Vinayakapuram Vinayakapuram in the Killinochchi District, guests and to have family functions. The blurring of t he lines between civilian and military functions of the administration are examples (Sumanthiran: 2011). in the North and East is a continuing challenge for Other than the IDPs, there is also a community of refugees normalization which requires gradual demilitarization. Still, living abroad. According to UNHCR statistics, there are at governors of these two provinces are ex-military officials. least 141,074 officially registered refugees from Sri Lanka The government’s lack of understanding of the importance who are living abroad. Despite the availability availabilit y of programmes of demilitarization to normalization continues to deepen the to accommodate the return of refugees, the number of Tamil people’s sense of alienation from the Sri Lankan s tate. returnees has been low in 2011, only 1,680. The main challenge in this regard remains the lack of confidence among the External Relations and Controversies he year 2011 demonstrated once again the continuation refugees to return to Sri Lanka, due to feelings of political of the shift in foreign foreig n relations that the t he UPFA UPFA government uncertainty, potential economic hardship and insecurity under President Mahinda Rajapaksa inaugurated during the (Fonseka and Raheem: 2011). last phase of the war against the LTTE. In 2009 and 2010, The land policy undertaken by the government has become there were clear signs of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy tak ing a central to most problems related to the return of civilians and new turn towards closer relationships with China and Russia their resettlement. Access to land is crucial to secured in a context of growing tension in the relationships with the livelihood. The issuing of the Land Commission Department’s US, EU, other western countries and the UN. The main circular no. 2011/04 on 22 July 2011 aggravated the land reason for tension with the West and the UN was the Sri problem of the returnees. This circular temporarily temporarily suspended Lankan government’s unwillingness to respond to their the distribution of land in the North and the East, except for insistence that the government should begin a post-war
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reconciliation process as understood and outlined by them. The Sri Lankan government was particularly unhappy with two points that were emphasized by the UN secretary general and western governments. They were: (a) setting up a credible domestic mechanism to investigate the allegations of ‘war crimes’ during the last phase of the war as a step towards reconciliation, and (b) taking political measures to resolve the ethnic conflict politically through devolution and power-sharing.
Channel 4 Video Documentary he controversy on the alleged war crimes took a particularly intense turn when a British TV channel, Channel 4, released on 14 June 2011 a video documentary entitled “The Killing Fields.” The Channel 4 documentary emerged against a backdrop of an intense controversy caused by a report submitted to the UN secretary-general in 2010 by an advisory panel.
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While releasing the film, Channel 4 claimed that the film featured “devastating new evidence of alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.” The film was screened in several world capitals and at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when the UNHRC session was underway. The film soon became a medium through which western governments and human rights organizations put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to prove their point that there had been credible and serious allegations of war crimes that warranted a domestic or international inquiry. The UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Christof Heyns, was reported to have said, after viewing “The Killing Fields” that the documentary contained footage that was evidence of “definitive war crimes” (Sunday Times, 19 June 2011).
Regarding a third point on which the West and UN insisted, the government seemed to be in agreement. This concerned the immediate resettlement of displaced Tamil civilians and their rehabilitation, along with a programme of economic and infrastructural development in the North and East. The government in fact worked in close cooperation with UN agencies and western governments on rehabilitation and resettlement programmes. The UN Panel Report major political issue that remained intensely controversial throughout 2011 was the report by the UN panel submitted on 12 April and released a few days later. The UN panel was appointed by Secretary General Ban-ki Moon to examine “modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes.” The three-member panel was also asked to consider “the nature and scope of any alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka.” The secretarygeneral claimed that the appointment of the panel followed the joint statement made by him and President Rajapaksa after the secretary-general visited Sri Lanka shortly after the end of the war in May 2009.
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The government’s response was that the film was totally biased against the Sri Lankan government, and based on dubious material that could not be verified. Technical Technical experts consulted by the government even determined that some of the footage of the documentary was not genuine. Channel 4 stood by its claim to authenticity of the footage. The government in turn produced its own video film fil m entitled “Lies Agreed Upon?” and screened it in foreign capitals. Regarding the agenda for reconciliation and a political solution, the government’s position has been that: (a) there were no war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military duri ng the war, and (b) the political solution was not actual ly necessary while the government’s commitment was to a ‘home grown’ solution, as opposed to an externally inspired solution. The Sri Lankan government appeared to be particularly unhappy with the insistence by western governments that there should be a credible domestic inquiry into allegations of war crimes, as proposed in the UN panel report. Occasionally, the government also hinted at the possibility of a western plan for direct intervention in Sri Lanka for a regime change on the pretext of ‘war crimes’ investigations. Consolidating economic and political relations with wit h China and Russia, two members states of the UN Security Council, Counci l, became a foreign policy priority for the government in i n 2011.
The panel reported that there were a number of allegations of serious violations of internationa internationall humanitarian and human rights law committed by both b oth the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka, some of which could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The panel also recommended that the government of Sri Lanka should respond to the serious allegations by initiating an effective accountability process beginning with genuine investigations. The response of the Sri Lankan government was total rejection of the panel report. The government asserted that the report was fundamentally flawed and based on biased material without any verification. The government also took the position that the report’s recommendations amounted to undue interference with the sovereignty of Sri Lanka by the UN.. UN 8
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Thus, 2011 is the year in which the issue of ‘war crimes investigations’ investigat ions’ dominated Sri Lanka’s Lanka’s domestic political debate as well as the Rajapaksa administration’s foreign relations. While aggressively and assertively campaigning against western and UN insistence on investigations on alleged ‘war crimes,’ and steering the country’s foreign policy along a new Beijing-Moscow axis, the government also made use of the ‘threat’ of war crimes investigations in its propaganda to bolster public support. During the local government elections campaign in June 2011, President Rajapaksa repeatedly brought up this issue, to portray himself, hi mself, his government and the armed forces as targets and victims of western and colonial hostility.
would lead to India’s losing its own sphere of influence. China provided more military assistance to Sri Lanka than India during the war against the th e LTTE. LTTE. China has also emerged as the major source of economic backing to the Sri Lankan government, investing particularly in port and infrastructure development, and cooperating in defence matters. Cultivating closer economic and political ties with China and Russia is crucial for the t he Rajapaksa administration’s domestic and foreign policy agendas. The government needs their backing at the UN, particulary in the Security Council, in case the West West initiates a process of war crimes inv estigation. Closer economic ties with the two cou ntries have assumed a new significance in the context of the government’s tense relations with the US and EU countries. Earlier, Sri Lanka lost concessionary access to the EU market when the GSP Plus facility was suspended in July 2010. The government has also been unhappy with the political conditionalities attached to western economic assistance. The EU conditions on the improvement of Sri Lanka’s domestic human rights and labour standards were clearly seen by the government as an arbitrary, political interference. China, Russia and even Japan follow a policy of closer economic relations with Sri Lanka, with no overtly political conditions a imposed.
Relations with India and China anaging relations with India has been a particularly complex task for the Rajapaksa administration in 2011 as well. The complexity arose from two sources. T he first is the Indian government’s insistence that the Sri Lankan government should implement, without delay, a political solution to the ethnic conflict through a dialogue with the TNA. The second was the growing closeness of Sri Lanka with China, particularly in the aftermath of the war. With regard to the Indian government’s emphasis on a political solution, the Rajapaksa government’s government’s wavering commitment to a political solution based on devolution had led to some concerns in Tamil Nadu as well as New Delhi. As a sponso r of the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution in 1987, 1987 , the Indian government continued to hold the view that devolution as laid down in the 13th Amendment should constitute the base for a post-conflict settlement process. The Indian government’s enthusiasm for a devolution-based political solution was not totally shared by the government of President Rajapaksa. President Rajapaksa appears to view the 13 th Amendment as being an externally imposed and, therefore, unacceptable solution to Sri Lanka’s L anka’s homemade conflict. He has also indicated that the 13th Amendment offers too much power to provincial councils.
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Reconciliation
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he issue of post-war reconciliation has repeatedly surfaced in 2011 in Sri Lanka’ Lanka’ss domestic politics as well as in foreign relations. rel ations. The UPFA government’s strategy has been to shield itself from western pressure for war crimes inquiries by insisting that the government prefers a homegrown process of reconciliation. While launching a domestic and international campaign to question, critique and delegitimize the UN panel report, which had suggested an international process of inquiry, the government insisted t hat it had already initiated a domestic process for investigation and reconciliation through the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The LLRC was appointed by President Rajapaksa on 19 May 2010 with a broad mandate to inquire into the following matters that may have taken place during the period between 21 February 2002 and 19 May 2009:
The China factor in Indo-Lanka relations has geopolitical implications. Apart from India-China rivalry that goes back to the 1960s, China’s aggressive pursuit of its presence in the South Asian region has posed new challenges to India, which has viewed South Sout h Asia as well as the Indian Ocean as its legitimate sphere of presence and influence. China has also been backing Pakistan, India’s Indi a’s rival in South Asia. Closer cooperation with Nepal and Bangladesh has also enabled China to emerge as an influential extraregional actor in South Asia. The concern in India is built around the apprehension that China’s economic and political presence in South Asia
· The facts and circumstances that led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement operationalized on 21 February 2002 and the sequence of events that followed thereafter up to 19 May 2009; Whether any person, group or institution insti tution directly or indirectly bears responsibility in this regard;
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· The lessons to be learned from those events and their attendant concerns, in order to ensure that there will be no recurrence; The methodology whereby restitution restitutio n to any person affected by those events or their dependants or their heirs can be effected; The institutional administrative and legislative measures that need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national uni ty and the reconciliation among all communities, and to make any such other recommendations with reference to any of the matters that have been inquired into under the terms of the warrant.
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The government also argued that since the LLRC was the beginning of a domestic process, the international actors should allow this process to function before calling for any international inquiry. However, critics of the government’s approach have found the LLRC process both inadequate and faulty. For example, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring mon itoring Sri Lanka’s political and an d human rights issues, commented in its report on Sri Lanka in 2010 that the LLRC’s mandate did “not explicitly require it to investigate alleged war crimes during the confl ict, nor has the LLRC shown any apparent interest in investigating su ch allegations in its hearings to date” (Human Rights Watch:2011) Watch:2011) LLRC Interim Report he LLRC, having heard public evidence, submitted an interim report in August 2010 making recommendations to the government in five areas, namely, (i) detention, (ii) land issues, (iii) law and order, (iv) administration and language languag e issues, and (v) socio-economic and livelihood issues. With regard to detention, the interim report proposed the creation of a “special mechanism” to examine the cases of Tamils held as LTTE suspects and recommend an appropriate course of action on each case. The report also proposed to set up a special unit at the Ministry of Justice to publish the list of names of persons in detention and to prevent the arbitrary arrest of those released. On land issues, the commission wanted the government to issue a clear policy statement that private land would not be taken over by the state for resettlement purposes. On the question of law and order in the North and East, arising out of the presence of armed groups engaged in extortion, abduction and other criminal activities, the recommendation was to initiate measures necessary to disarm such armed groups. On administration and language issues, the interim report recommended takin g steps to provide interpreters to facilitate communication
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between Tamil Tamil citizens and administrative adminis trative agencies. On socioeconomic and livelihood issues, the recommendation was to encourage the free movement of persons on the A9 road and greater coordination between military and civilian officials for normalization of civil administration. The government appointed the Inter-Agency Advisory Committee to implement the recommendations. However, even in 2011, the progress of the implementation of the recommendation has been slow. This provided a backdrop for a new debate in 2011 about the role of the LLRC in the reconciliation process. Western governments and international human rights organizations began to suggest that the final report of the LLRC should address the allegation of war crimes. Some critics expressed serious doubt about the role of the LLRC, even though the government described the LLRC as a credible, domestic accountability mechanism, capable of delivering justice and promoting reconciliation. For example, Amnesty International in a statement issued on 7 September 2011 stated that the LLRC, in reality, was “flawed at every level: in mandate, composition and practice” and called for an “international, independent investigation” into allegations allegation s of war crimes. The government, while dismissing these criticisms as premature and unwarranted, proposed to its critics crit ics to wait for the LLRC’s final report. In fact, when the LLRC’s final report was submitted to the president on 15 November 2011, there were also domestic and international expectations that it would prove its critics wrong. The key recommendations of the LLRC, made in its final report, can be summarized under four thematic headings, as follows: i. Investigations: (a) The report recommended further investigation of some incidents that caused death or in jury to civilians to determine the possible involvement of security forces, (b) investigations into specific allegations of disappearance after surrender or arrest, (c) appointment of a special commissioner to inquire into allegations of disappearance, (d) inquiry into alleged incidents of serious violations of human rights, including the killing of 4 students in Trincomalee in 2006 and of 17 aid workers in Muthur, Muthu r, and (e) an independent investigation into the Channel 4 video. ii. Improving the Human Rights Situation: Other than the above proposed investigations, the LLRC recommended the appointment of an independent advisory committee to monitor and examine detention and arrest of persons under
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any regulations made under the Public Security Ordinance or the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The LLRC did not recommend the repeal of either the emergency laws or the PTA. Other recommendations to improve the human rights situation were: (a) framing domestic legislation to specifically criminalize enforced or involuntary disappearances, (b) preparing a centralized and comprehensive database containing a list of detainees and make the list available to their next of kin, and (c) disarming of all illegal armed groups. iii.Resettlement and Normalization of Civilian Life: (a) granting legal ownership of land to those who have been resettled, (b) creation of increased employment opportunities to those in the former conflict-affected areas, (c) non-use of the land policy of the governments as an instru ment to effect changes in the demographic pattern of a given province, (d) setting up a National Land Commission (NLC) in order to propose appropriate future national land policy guidelines, (e) providing compensatory relief for persons affected by the conflict (including (inclu ding ex-LTTE combatants and next of kin), and (f) phasing out the involvement of security forces in civilian activities in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
Sambanthan, the TNA leader, described the LLRC report as having “categorically fail[ed] to effectively and meaningfully deal with issues of accountability”(The Hindu,19 Dec, 2007) (The Hindu, 19, December, 2011) The TNA’s TNA’s response was specifically critical of the report’s finding that the government security forces had given the highest priority to the protection of civilians in their offensive against the LTTE. The report also concluded that the security forces had not deliberately targeted civilians in the No-Fire Zones during the last phase of the war. This finding went against the assertions made in the UN panel report as well as the position taken by the TNA and international human rights organizations. The TNA renewed its call for a full investigation of “the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by bo th the Tamil Tigers and the government forces.” The initial reactions from western countries were somewhat cautious, but skeptical. Lady Catherine Catheri ne Ashton, the EU’s EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, in a statement issued on 16 December 2011, expressed the hope that the report woul d “contribute to the process of reconciliation” in Sri Lanka. She also encouraged the Sri Lankan government to “engag e with the UN Secretary General and the relevant UN bodies” on the issue of accountability.1 India too expressed a somewhat similar hope, but stressed issues of reconciliation and devolution. devolutio n. A spokesman of the External Extern al Affairs Affairs Ministry expressed the hope that the Sri Lankan government would “act decisively and with vision” on devolution of powers and national reconciliation. India also stressed the importance of putting in place “an independent and credible mechanism” to investigate allegations of human rights violations, as brought out by the LLRC. (Sunday Times, 26 Dec, 2011).
iv. Reconciliation and Peace-building: (a) making an effort in good faith to develop a consensus on devol ution of power and building on what exists for maximum possible devolution to the periphery as well as for power-sharing at the centre, (b) enabling school children to learn each others’ language and making the three-language policy compulsory in school curriculum, (c) stationing in all government offices of TamilTamilspeaking officers at all times and bilingual officers in police stations on a 24-hour basis, (d) designing a proactive policy to encourage mixed schools to serve chil dren from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, (e) engagement with ‘hostile (T (To o be Continued,. Vol. 6 No. 5) diaspora groups’ constructively and address their concerns, (f) singing of the national nati onal anthem both in Sinhalese Sin halese and Tamil languages, to the same tune, (g) strict enforcement of the Endnotes law prohibiting hate speech which would contribute to 1 Statement by the spokesperson for EU High Representative communal disharmony, and (h) declaration of a separate event even t Catherine Ashton on the publication of the report of Sri Lanka’s Recon ciliation Commission. Available on http:/ and date to express solidarity and empathy with all victims of Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation /www /www.consilium.europa.eu .consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Da /uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressd ta/docs/pressdata/EN/ ata/EN/ the conflict. foraff/127030.pdf.
The reactions to the LLRC report have been mixed. Indeed, opinion became sharply polarized between the government and its supporters on the one hand, and critics of the government and the LLRC on the other. While the government and its spokesmen saw the report as showing the way forward, external critics were quick to highlight its inadequacies and shortcomings. The strongest reaction came from the TNA, the main Tamil parliamentary party. R.
References Northern n Provinc Province: e: Fonseka, B., and Raheem, M. 2011. Land in the Norther Post War Politics, Policy and Practices, Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Government of Sri Lanka. 2011. “Extraordinary Gazette No. 1699/ 35.” Colombo: Government of Sri Lanka, 31 March.
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2011: 1: Sri Lanka. Human Rights Watch, World Report 201
Ministry of Mass Media and Information. 2011. “Registration of the Websites Has Been Started.” 8 November. http:// www.media.gov.lk/news-events-349.htm (retrieved 6 February 2012). “Polls Chief Regrets Misuse of State Media,” Daily Mirror , 19 March 2011.
Sumanthiran, M.A. 2011. “Situation “Situatio n in North-Eastern Sri Lanka: A Series of Serious Concerns.” 23 October. dbsjeyaraj.com: http:// dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/2759 (retrieved 6 February 2012). UNOCHA. 2011.” Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update.” Colombo: UNOCHA, November-December. UNOCHA. 2011. “Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update.” Report 37. Colombo: UNOCHA.
Skanthakumar, B. 2011. “Silent and Powerless the Human Rights Skanthakumar, Commission of Sri Lanka in 2010 .” http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/ Silent_and_Powerless_ANNI_Report_2011.pdf (retrieved 6 February 2012.
Dr. Jayadeva Jayadeva Uyangoda is a Professor of Political Science Sci ence University Universi ty of Colombo, Pradeep Peiris is i s a doctoral student in Political Science at the University of Colombo.
Available From the Suriya Sur iya Bookshop
Social Scientists' Association No. 12, Sulaiman Sulai man Terrace Terrace Colombo - 05 12 POLITY
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SECULAR THOUGHTS Without equality, democracy and social justice, which are three interrelated factors, secularism cannot exist as a positive positi ve value in societ society. y.
K.N. Panikkar This essay is based on a paper presented at a seminar organized by Social Scientist and SAHMAT in New Delhi to felicitate historian Romila Thapar and her contribution to secularism.
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omila Thapar counters the misuse of the past; her study and interpretation of ancient Indian civilization civilizat ion has served as a major intellectual resource. Secularism in India appears to have begun its journey with a dead weight around its neck – an irreconcilable resolution of realizing communal harmony without creating the material and ideological foundations to t o generate and sustain it. Without equality, democracy and social justice, which are three interrelated factors, secularism cannot exist as appositive value in society. I HAVE known Prof. Romila Thapar for about 45 years, most of it as a colleague at the Centre for Historical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Romila, as she is called by almost everybody – from her eight-year-old grandnephew to all of us present here – had helped to set up, organize and give a distinct academic orientation to the centre. Her commitment to the interest of the centre has always been a notch above personal considerations, a principle without which no institution of excellence can be built. The exacting standards she set for colleagues and students by her personal example of continuous scholarly pursuits provided the ambience for the academic work of the centre. That she has been a team person who believes in democratic functioning of institutions institutio ns has accentuated the quality of her contribution.
in the struggles of the present. So it was during the recent Hindu communal resurgence, using history as a means of mobilization. In countering counterin g the misuse of the past, Romila’s study and interpretation of ancient Indian civilization has served as a major intellectual resource. The importance of Romila’s work is not limited to the retrieval of secular history from the biased interpretations of colonial and communal historians, which in a variety of ways many others also have accomplished. Her contribution is of a different order, order, marked by a qualitative change in the prevalent method of historical reconstruction. Her intellectual journey from the times of her initial research on the history of Asoka to the more recent interpretation of the Somanath temple episode reflects a quality of scholarship ever vigilant to engage with the latest trends in the discipline. Not that alone. She combines with remarkable ease scholarly pursuit with social commitment in a manner that her wellinformed opinion lends direction to many a public issue. The controversy over the Babri Masjid is perhap s the most wellknown example. In the campaign against “the poli tical abuse of history”, a term she coined, during those difficult days of Hindutva resurgence, exploiting the history of Ayodhya, Romila was in the forefront – writing, speaking, protesting and fasting in defence of the ideals o f secularism. The Hindu communal cabal hated her because they could not disprove her facts or refute her interpretation or contradict her arguments. At the same time, she entertained serious reservations about the practice of secularism, particularl y its pursuit by the state. It is most appropriate, therefore, that the seminar to felicitate her is devoted to a critical reappraisal of the way secularism was conceived and practiced.
In the field of historical research, Romila’s works stand apart, both in narration and in interpretation. in terpretation. The writing of ancient Indian history during the post-Independence era found in her one of its outstanding practitioners, who brought together modes of analysis and interpretation with a theoretically nuanced innovative methodology. The quality of her contribution to historical scholarship is so well known that it needs no reiteration, so also the fact that the large corpus of her work has been a major intervention in contemporary social and political life. The past often figures as a powerful force
Debate on Secularism
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he concern of academic debate and public discuss ion as well as creative representation of secularism has been mainly political: the relationship between state and religion, interrelationship between different communities, and interdependence of secularism and democracy. A common bond connecting these three issues is the quest for religious harmony, which in course of time came to be identified with secularism. In politics, almost everybody swears by it although
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very few practise it. The identity of secularism with religious harmony is well pronounced in creative representation. The popular Hindi film industry, for instance, has exploited its emotional possibilities in blockbusters such as Sholay and Zanjeer by celebrating the sacrifice of characters committed to the pursuit of religious religi ous harmony. In contrast, serious cinema has demonstrated how fragile the commitment to religious harmony can be, as was so brilliantly captured in Govind Nihlani’s Tamas, based on Bisham Sahni’s novel by the same name. The journey from Sholay to Tamas indicates the vast areas of emotion, consciousness and culture that stil l remain unexplored both in academic investigations and in creative representations. As secularism appears to be weakening in the face of the more emotional appeal of communalism, understanding the vicissitudes of the former beyond their political dimension demands closer attention. Looking back from the vantage point of 63 years’ experience, experience, the practice of Indian secularism presents a mixed bag of achievements and failures. It has succeeded in weathering one crisis after another, so much so that all discussions on secularism start and end with a consideration of either past or impending crises. Yet, secularism has withstood the intellectual scepticism about its relevance by the critics of modernity or its rejection as an alien system by communal ideologues. Moreover, legal and institutional structures have managed to safeguard the secular space through constitutionally guaranteed public institutions. It is indeed true that aberrations have taken place in all these spheres, yet secularism has survived, often precariously, but nevertheless with sufficient strength to make the syst em work. As Martha Nussbaum has observed, Indian society soci ety had reached the brink of religious fascism, but had successfully pulled back, not because of the tactical error of communal forces but most probably because of a tradition – the popular commitment to secularism. It was because of this commitment that the country overcame the trauma of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, responded powerfully to the massacre of the minorities in Gujarat orchestrated by the local government, and denounced the attack on Christians in Kandhamal by Hindu fundamentalist groups. On all these occasions, Indian secularism asserted itself in a manner that forestalled any further disruptions.
failure – of secularization in Indian s ociety. Its origin can be traced to the emergence of a public sphere which provided the space for a rational critique of religious practices. The Indian experience shared some of the general features, particularly the attempt to reduce the dependence upon supra human agency and to narrow down the areas of life in w hich religious ideas, symbols and institutions held sway, but had its own specific character, influenced by social, cul tural and political specificities. Yet, the process of secularization that Indian society had experienced was qualitatively different from what happened in most other countries, including countries in Europe. In Europe, secularisation was integral to the intellectual and cultural movements represented by the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Central to these movements was the influence of humanism, which accorded primacy to human beings and their problems of existence. Even if the social depth and intellectual intensity were missing, the Indian historical experience was not devoid of an effort to privilege the secular. However, the social base of secularization in India being a weak and culturally colonized middle class, it was incapable of ushering in an intellectual and cultural transformation, which would lay the foundations of a modern society. Yet, the colonial period did witness a rational critique of religious practices, a humanist alternative for social ethics and a universalist philosophy for social harmony. In the absence of a social base powerful enough to nurture these ideas, they could not usher in a secul ar alternative that could transgress the caste and religious boundaries and create an independent ethical code. This was compounded by the nature of social and religious reform which, instead of dissolving caste and religious influence, i nfluence, tended to reinforce them. t hem. As a consequence, social identities were built around primordial loyalties, which served as a major factor in the making of political consciousness. This trajectory of social development forced the secular to retreat into the space in which religious ideologies held their sway. The Indian form of secularism struck roots in this space dominated by religious ideologies , the formation of which was partly aided by the socio-religious socio -religious reform and partly by the intervention of the colonial state.
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he character of secularism in India can be understood only in the context of the social composition and cultural make-up of its society. The communities of the pre-colonial period, experienced in their local settings, both material and ideological, a fundamental change during the colonial administration. A feature that influenced this process was the religionization of small and diverse communities that
Secularization
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his is not to suggest that the biography of Indian secularism can be written as a success story. Far from it. The assaults on secularism witnessed in the recent past were partly a symptom of the weaknesses – some might even say 14
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existed on the basis of their economic and social functions. Their sense of identity identity,, circumscribed by the local conditions, was slowly eroded by the forces unleashed by colonial rule. The 4,000-odd communities that the Anthropological Survey of India had identified, on the basis of their life patterns, belief systems and social structure, eventually came within the parametres of one religion or the other. The constitution of religious communities was thus a predominantly colonial phenomenon. In pre-colonial times, religion was a perceived and experienced reality, but it did not generate trans-local consciousness. A partial change occurred because of the community-based conception of society and consequent administrative measures propagated by colonial rule. Communal conflicts, which became quite frequent during the colonial administration, further strengthened community consciousness. For the colonial state the conflicts were not politically unwelcome. Administratively, however, it was necessary to contain them. As a result, two strategies were employed by the colonial state for their resolution: suppression of violence, on the one hand, and the creation and incorporation of civil society into the colonial system, on the other. The first was invoked when violence threatened to disrupt the normal transactions, and the second, as a longterm policy of hegemonisation. In pursuit of the second the government gave representation to Indians in administrative, legislative and advisory bodies on the basis of a fair distribution of patronage to the members of different religious communities. Be it representation in the organizations sponsored by the colonial government to ensure its presence and influence in civil society or elections to t o legislative councils or nomination to executive and advisory bodies, the government took care to distribute patronage according to community affiliation. The official recognition of the representative character to religious communities had unintended consequences: first, it facilitated the construction of internal solidarity and cohesion of communities, and secondly, it imparted to the communities an overarching character.
times, it became more extensive and frequent under colonialism. Apart from the mobility due to administrative and military reasons, there was also movement for personal reasons. In 1830, Engula Engu la Veeraswamy Veeraswamy went wen t on a Kasi yatra from Madras and wrote a journal describing the land and the people he encountered. Similarly, Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Versikar, a Chitpavan Brahmin, travelled to North India in 1857 for rendering religious services, and his experience on the way sensitized him about the popular sentiments against colonial rule. He also has recorded his experience in a travelogue. The experience of Veeraswamy and Versikar was part of the formation of a larger communitarian identity. A consequence of this physical mobility was that by the middle of the 19th century the social horizon of the people had transgressed local boundaries. The process of secularization occurring in the context of the historical experience encapsulated above had led to a rearticulation of the relationship between state and religion as well as of different religious communities. What the Indian form of secularism did was to address these two dimensions, but without ensuring the social reach of democracy and justice and, more grievously, grievous ly, without effecting cultural equality. As a result, both state- and society-centric approaches to secularism were exclusively enclosed in the problematic of religious consciousness and hence led to continuous tension between the religious and material conditions of existence. The former was concerned with the relationship between state and religion while the latter focussed on inter-religious relations. Jawaharlal Nehru had told Andre Malraux that the secular project in India was not limited to the creation of a “secular state in a religious society, but the creation of a secular state in a multi-religious society”. This important distinction demanded a three-way resolution: first, determining the relationship between state and religion; secondly, assigning relative distance between state and different religious communities; and thirdly, ensuring harmonious relationship between communities. The solution proffered was the incorporation of all three issues within a single remedy – namely, secularization of the relationship between the state, religion and community. The solution was based on an Enlightenment view of religion which opposed revelation, dogmatism and superstition. At the same time religion as such was not rejected.
The formation of communities was aided by colonialism in yet another, even if indirect, manner. The changes in the system of communication and improvement in infrastructural facilities brought about by colonial modernization, in i n however limited a manner, considerably increased physical mobility across the country. The pan-Indian religious communities were no more an object of imagination alone; instead they became part of the experienced reality. Although travel for pilgrimage and trade was common even during pre-colon ial
Having thus ensured that the Indian state would not be “irreligious or anti-religious”, the principle of neutrality 15
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towards all religions was adopted. The intercommunity relationship was a more difficult issue, as it was integral to social consciousness, which can be created only through continuous intervention. In the light of such an understanding and approach, the secular project tended to work towards the realization of religious harmony. But secularism is not a product of religious harmony. In fact, religious harmony is achievable only if secularism is in place. But in the conception of secularism in India, religion was implicated in a manner that the state could not dissociate itself from religious matters. Moreover, the realization of secularism depended upon its reconceptualization with secular political and cultural values embedded in it. But the conception of religious harmony as secularism was not sufficiently inclusive to realize this possibility.
Several histories have been written and continue to be written to elaborate this thesis. The secular history, however, is not necessarily the history of secular rulers or of secular tendencies. The secular is implicated in the historical process as a whole, namely, in the social, cultural and ideological realm of social existence and their representations. A departure from a communitarian view is therefore a necessary step if secular history is to be retrieved from the problematic of religious harmony. Much of the energy of secular history h as been expended for disproving the colonial and communal view of the Indian past being the history of continuous struggles between religious communities and for establishing the tradition of harmonious relations of religious communities. The new directions in secular history his tory have to seek out avenues of historical investigations, like shared values, inclusive inclu sive social engagements and common cultural participation.
For realizing Inclusiveness, Cultural Equality is Essential.
An Alternative View
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he inter-community relations have been so discredited in the recent past by the incidence of intermittent religious conflicts that secularism, it is argued, has reached a stage beyond redemption. The inability of the state to observe religious neutrality and to maintain equidistance from religions and the resurgence of communalism which has compounded it are the main reasons attributed to this discomfiture. Moreover, secularism was posited exclusively within the realm of religion, and other areas of human existence, like culture and economy, were not incorporated into the secular conception.
During his radical phase, Nehru had envisioned a modern state completely dissociated from religious concerns. A departure from it to accommodate religious pluralism was in all probability due to the influence of Gandhi for whom religion was “the source of value for judging the wort h of all worldly goals and actions”. The Mahatma, considered “the spiritual father of Indian secularism”, sacrificed his life for HinduMuslim harmony; yet, harmony remained a distant dream.The question, therefore, is that if religious harmony is not secularism, what else constitutes it in a multi-religious society? The answer perhaps lies in the ability of the state and society to internalise values and ethics, informed by reason and humanism. The social reality that the Indian form of secularism has sought to address is religious plurality and the tensions arising out of it, for which the peaceful coexistence of different religions was adopted as the solution. History has been invoked to trace its antecedents in religious harmony and cultural synthesis from medieval times. As a part of this secular project, Sufi and Bhakti traditions have been invoked, the contribution of liberal rulers like Akbar has been celebrated, and the composite nature of music, architecture, painting, and so on was retrieved. The earliest representative view of this history is the work of Tarachand – who incidentally was handpicked by Nehru to explain the th e Indian secular tradition traditio n to the Western Western audience – on the evolution of a composite culture through Hindu-Muslim interaction.
Among the advocates of secularism, Jawaharlal Nehru was quite conscious of the importance of taking cognisance of the compulsions of material life. During his early radical phase, he had emphasised the role of economy in the construction of a secular society: “The real thing to my mind is the economic factor. If we lay stress on this and divert public attention to it, we will find automatically that religious differences recede to the background and a common bond unites different groups.” This opinion of Nehru can be interpreted to mean that secularism can be a reality only within the rubric of social justice. That is why Baba Saheb Ambedkar considered secularism not only a political issue but also a moral issue. In this, Gandhiji and Ambedkar Ambedkar appear to share the same ground. But, in the final analysis, neither Gandhi’s ethical notions nor Nehru’s materialist ideas nor Ambedkar’s sense of justice figured as the principles guiding secularism. The conception of secularism as religious harmony is based on a monolithic view of religion, which does not take into 16
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account the differentiation within it. Within each religion there are several cultural and social groups, between whom both contradictions and complementarities exist. As a result, religious pluralism and cultural pluralism connote entirely different realities even though they are used as interchangeable by many. The assumption of Indian secularism that the tensions arising out of religious pluralism can be overcome by harmony is unreal because of the cultural and social hierarchies that exist within religion. Because of the prevalence of these hierarchies, attempts to bring about religious harmony cannot cover all followers of any religion. The approach to secularism exclusively through inter-religious relations cannot lead to an abiding solution. Being so, secularism in India appears to have begun its journey with a dead weight around its neck. It carries the burden of an irreconcilable resolution of realising communal harmony without creating material and ideological foundations to generate and sustain it. Implied in this reality is that the communal harmony attempted at the religious level leaves the internal contradictions untouched. The importance attributed to religious harmony is indeed logical, given the reality of a multi-religious society. But it is not sufficiently inclusive to reconcile the cultural differences. For realising inclusiveness, cultural plurality is not sufficient; what is essential is cultural equality. The Indian form of secularism draws upon cultural plurality, which does not dissolve but accentuates differences and thus tends to undermine secularism. Integral to the concept of secularism, therefore,
is cultural equality; so also are democracy and social just ice. Without these three interrelated factors facto rs – equality, democracy and social justice – secularism cannot exist as a positive value in society. The meaning of the Indian form of secularism, beyond interreligious harmony, which the Constitution had sought to implement through practice, has not been internalised by state and society. No definition of secularism was prescribed at the time of adopting the Constitution or even when the concept was introduced into it in 1976.The meaning, therefore, has been a subject of unending debate. A clearer reformulation of the concept and recovery of its meaning is now required in the light of historical experience and contemporary realities. It cannot be accomplished either by romanticising the indigenous past or by dismissing the ability of vernacular culture to engage with it. The alternative lies in imparting the concept and the values of democracy and social justice and cultural equality. I would like to end by recalling what Prof. Romila Thapar said in 2002 in her foreword to my book Before the Night Falls: Forebodings of Fascism in India: “Secularism has to be retrieved from being a pale shadow of what is projected as religious co-existence, to a system of values and actions that come from insisting upon democratic functioning and human rights.” The success of secularism will depend upon such a reorientation. Courtesy Frontline
K.N. Panikkar was Professor of Modern Indian History at the Centre for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
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DAMBULLA MOSQUE CRISIS: NEEDED A POLICY FOR MULTICULTURALISM AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake ri Lanka has a long and proud tradition of religious coexistence, which is attested by the presence of multireligious, sacred sites throughout the island, as well as its uniquely mixed cultural geography. geography. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Muslims have historically shared public space.
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where attempts are being made to relocate a mosque and kovil. Unfortunately during the war, centuries of religious coexistence were slowly eroded by ethno-armed actors and nationalist politicians on all sides, as well as politicized religious organizations.
The solution to the unfolding Dambulla Mosque crisis must hence build on, protect and nurture these traditions of religious syncretism, pluralism and coexistence in the country. After years of conflict when the need of the hour is reconciliation and social integration, the segregation or removal of established shrines or places of worship would set a negativ e precedent that amounts to a form of religious and ethnic cleansing.
The current dispute is indicative of the need for a wider national policy and institutional instituti onal architecture and capacity to pro-actively promote and mainstream multiculturalism in the arts, religious establishments, as well as in the national education system and curriculum, at war’s end. Such an initiative is in any case necessary for post-war reconciliation so that the country may regain its proud traditions of multireligious coexistence and pluralism that were eroded during thirty years of armed conflict. There is need for a formal space for interfaith dialogue and negotiation in the interest of ethno-religious harmony when disputes arise, which may best be convened by the Ministry of National Language and Social Integration with the appropriate civil society expertise and institutional capacity and perhaps the help of UNESCO. Similarly, politicians and religious leaders must take the initiative to foster a tolerant public sphere and enable sharing of public religious space while respecting local communities and minorities.
Kataragama, the Madhu shrine in Mannar and Sri Pada are ancient and famous multireligious sites of worship, where Hindus and Buddhists, as well as Muslims and Christians, have come together for worship for centuries, as evident in the country’s archaeological and historical records. For instance, there is an ancient Sufi shrine in the Kataragama sacred area that houses Hindu and Buddhist deities and related religious complexes. The British colonial administrator, John Still, recorded in his book Jungle Tide Tide, which was published over a hundred years ago in 1911, that he witnessed a Muslim father bring his ill son to the shrine at Madhu church, which was known to be a powerful and healing sacred place. Sri Pada is a multireligious site in the central hills. In contemporary religious practice a majority of Lankans are pluralist and pragmatic, and tend to gravitate to multiple religious sites to give alms and seek the blessing and favour of various gods while ‘hedging their bets,’ so to speak. In Colombo it is not difficult to find a singl e small street harbouring a kovil, mosque, temple and church each next to the other (e.g., Mayra Place). Indeed, the Sri Lanka Tourist Board would do well to highlight highli ght and market Lanka’s unique multireligious culture in its brochures along with Lanka’s Buddhist heritage! These historical facts should be the basis of any discussion, negotiation and settlement of the current crisis in Dambulla,
Dambulla is part of the cultural triangle area which is a world heritage site as demarcated by the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO.) Like other such world heritage sites in the Southeast Asian region, several of the Cultural Triangle sites epitomize Lanka’s Hindu-Buddhist syncretic religious culture. This is similar s imilar to the great temple complexes in Southeast Asia such as Angkor Wat and Anchor Thom in Cambodia, and Borobudur and Prambanan in Indonesia, which are adjacent Hindu and Buddhist complexes from the Sri Vijaya period. It is relevant to note here that Buddhism and Hinduism derive from the same religious tradition, although althoug h Buddhism evolved as a critique of certain Hindu traditions and practices in India and contemporary Nepal. Buddhism also came to Lanka from Tamil Nadu with the landing of Sangamitta, daughter of Emperor Asoka, in Jaffna. Hinduism and Buddhism have coexisted for centuries in Lanka as in many other parts of south and east Asia.
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Erosion of Multicultural Co-existence
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enturies of religious coexistence were slowly eroded during the conflict years due to a deliberat e targeting of interethnic and interreligious ties and the LTTE’s policy of ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Sinhalese they perceived as a security threat, as well as due to the lack of a policy to promote and mainstream multiculturalism in the secondary and tertiary education systems and ensure harmony and coexistence. Post-war the challenge is to regain the multicultural past and learn once again to share public religious space while respecting local communities. As the “Multicultural National Vision for Peace in Sri Lanka,” which was drafted after consultations in the various regions of Sri Lanka in 2003, noted in its preamble:
given Hinduism and Buddhism’s common heritage in the subcontinent and centuries of coexistence and tolerance, Hindu-Buddhist ties have survived surviv ed the worst days of the war but are increasingly under pressure in the post-war period with the rise of a militarized public religion. A pattern of land grabbing that is destructive destructi ve of centuries of cultural and religious coexistence, and giving Buddhism (a highly tolerant religion) a bad name, has emerged. Multiculturalism in the Mixed Cultural Geography in Lanka The “Multicultural National Vision for Peace in Sri Lanka” defines multiculturalism thus: Sri Lanka is a plural and multicultural land. Multiculturalism refers to the island’s cultural diversity inclusive of three overlapping linguistic categories (speaking Sinhala, Tamil and English, and regional dialects dial ects including Veddah Veddah languages); four great world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, and their sects, as well as indigenous deities and spirit beliefs); more than six ethnic groups recognized in the National Census, and a number of overlapping and cross cutting castes and sub-castes. sub-castes . Various Various ethno-national groups gro ups based on linguistic, ethnic, regional and religious elements, such as the Burghers (Dutch and Portuguese), Sinhalese (Kandyan and Low Country), Tamils (Sri Lankan and Malayaha), Muslims (Moor and Malay), Parsis, Colombo Chetties, Vannialatto (Veddah) and several others have emerged as significant identities; several of these categories are composed of distinct sub-categories. Additionally, the island’s population may be sub-divided sub-divi ded according to gender, class, and regional cultures depending on the rational for classification.[2]
Sri Lanka was long famous for its rich social diversity and the harmonious co-existence of various communities. Since independence, however, there has been a failure to define and realize an inclusive national vision from the perspective of this distinctive heritage. Instead, divisive divisiv e politics and policies have fostered deep social, cultural, political and economic schisms and engendered violent armed conflict. The two decades long armed struggle in the north (with primary focus on ethno-linguistic difference) and the uprising in the south (with primary focus on class disparity), reflect an inadequate post-colonial national vision and strategy, and an inequitable regional distribution of power and wealth … we propose a renewed and inclusive multicultural vision for the country based on the principles of security and dignity for all groups and persons, and respect for cultural and religious diversity. Our attempt here is to address the causes of the conflict while recognizing the deep scars that th at the violence of the last decades has rendered upon the island’s historically multicultural society.
Sri Lanka’s Lanka’s cultural diversity and complex mix of identities is not unique. Most modern nations are plural, diverse and complex. However, in the postcolonial period, diversity has been perceived as a threat rather than a gift. The result has been marginalization and discrimination against smaller and less powerful groups on linguistic, ethnic, religious, caste and/ or class bases, giving rise to various forms of violent political conflict. In turn, many of these conflicts have resulted in riots, attacks, forced displacement and/or colonization of regions occupied by one community by another, and the building of enclaves and territories dominated by one ethnic group or another.
Since independence cultural and political discrimination in governance, the lack of equitable development policies, and failure to preserve and respect local and cultural knowledge have become endemic. Competitive ethnic and religious politics became institutionalized. Democracy came to represent the ‘tyranny of the majority,’ while a political culture premised on the notion that ‘might is right’ became entrenched in the various regions of the island. At times both parties in the war deliberately conceived to destroy multicultural coexistence and benefit politicians and or warlords in the country who sought power by playing the ethnic and religious card to capture vote banks. However,
Acknowledgement of Sri Lanka’s ancient multiculturalism and mixed cultural geography entails recognition that a majority group in a region is bound to respect and protect those who
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are in the minority in that particular region. Every group or individual is in a minority minorit y outside his/her own territory, region or neighborhood, and in an increasingly integrated and globalized region and world individuals individ uals and groups must be free to move with security and dignity.
Pada, the Pada Yathra pilgrimage from Jaffna to Kataragama along the east coast, etc. 2. Those responsible for the crisis in Dambulla, who broke the law, propagated hate speech, disturbed the peace and threatened religious harmony, with implications for all other parts of the country, must be held accountable to ensure that this does not happen in the future. Meanwhile the Buddhist Sangha may hold an inquiry and discipline those political unBuddhist monks responsible for leading mobs and violating Buddhist values, principles of tolerance, the dhamma and vinaya, if found accountable.
A balance of power between regional/local majorities with regard to respect and protection for the perso ns and property of regional/local minorities is a sine qua non for sustainable peace. It is also necessary to reverse the pattern of ethnic ghettoization and ethnic cleansing of regional and local minorities that occurred during the twenty years of armed conflict and the riots prior to it in the north and south of the country.
3. There is need for a Ministry Ministry to pro-actively pro-actively promote and mainstream multiculturalism and enable interfaith dialogue, negotiation and ethno-religious harmony when disputes arise. Such disputes need not and should not wait to be referred to the highest in the land! Rather, independent expertise from civil society and not just religious leaders and politicians (who are often part of the problem by playing the ethnic card to win votes, territory and power), need to be engaged. This is particularly the case after thirty years of armed conflict and as part of the reconciliation process. Perhaps UNESCO could be invited to help build national capacity and institutions to develop and mainstream a national policy for multiculturalism, coexistence and reconciliation.
Several multireligious sites attest to a history of peaceful coexistence among the various religious communities in the island. These sites of multireligious significance are especially to be celebrated in the aftermath of a polarizi ng conflict. We propose that sites such as Sri Pada, Kataragama and Madhu shrine, with their diverse traditions, be recognized and celebrated as multireligious multireligio us zones of peace and amity. At this time, negotiation to ensure protection and accommodation of the mosque and Hindu shrine, which were long established prior to the establishment of the Dambulla sacred area and are not “unauthorized structures” towards ensuring that Lanka remains a multireligious space and country, is necessary. The historical fact of sharing public space among religions should be the basis of any discussion and settlement of the current crisis in Dambulla, where Buddhist and Muslims should be both accommodated in the same place since both have the right to be there and own the lands.
4. As the LRRC and the “Multicultural “Multicultural National Vision Vision for Peace” recommend, legislation and a bill on the “Prevent ion of Incitement to Racial and Ethno-religious Hatred” should be brought into effect so that those who indulge in hate speech and attack people or property of other communit ies and turn them into scapegoats may be held accountable.
It is hence to be hoped that the solution to the Dambulla crisis would: 1. Build on existing traditions of multireligious coexistence of sharing of public space and religious syncretism in Sri Lanka, which has a long and proud tradition of religious coexistence. This tradition of religious coexiste is evident in historical sacred places and contemporary practices Kataragama, Sri
Finally, as the United Nations World Conference Against Racism affirmed in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, ‘diversity is a gift rather than a threat.’ The Sri Lanka Tourist Board would do well to promote the island as a uniquely multireligious land and organize a tour of Lanka’s multireligious sacred sites. Finally, it is to be hoped that the month of May, when the third anniversary of the end of war is celebrated, will be a month of reconciliation and remembrance of the past, and of present victims of violence from all religious and ethnic communities in the island.
Dr.. Darini Rajasingham -Senanayake Dr -Se nanayake is a Social Anthropologist.
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WE HAVE TO HAVE MORE WOMEN IN POLITICS Rosy Senanayake
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ri Lanka was one of the forerunners in the fight for universal suffrage since 1927; in this region we were one of the first countries to give women the right to vote and contest. In 1931 when the battle was finally won we had 4.5 percent in the council. However we are yet to move forward from this achievement – almost eighty years later there are only 13 women in an assembly of 225. In this context it is mandatory that the fight for equal representation of women in decision making bodies starts at the local government level. In the proportional representation system it is very tough for a woman to fight elections and win because there are a number of stumbling blocks: the gun culture, character assassination and the financial commitment. Therefore even if a woman wanted to get into politics, their families would never allow them because of all the hindrances. Even in parliament with the exception of myself and one other, every other woman had a ready made voter base. Therefore we are looking at the Local Government Bill that is to be debated in parliament on the January 17. Previously the Bill called for 40 percent mandatory youth representation in the nomination list, however in the newer version of the bill this has been changed to 25 percent mandatory women or youth representation. Even this concessionary action was taken due to the fact that we have a very strong Women’s Movement in this country comprising a number of political leaders such as Mrs Ferial Ashraff and myself, as well as leaders from civil society so ciety and nongovernmental organizations. A strong caucus of women committed to improving the position of women in decision-making decision-ma king institutions from every sphere, including the supreme decision making body the parliament, and every other possible sphere of life. However this 25 percent of youth or women means no thing, because it can be filled with either youth or women. I have been fighting for at least 30 percent of mandatory representation of women on the nominations list to ensure that women have a prominent say starting from the local government level. I have spoken to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Dinesh Gunawardene many times on the
importance of ensuring that there is this mandatory inclusion of women in politics, at least for a few terms. The new Bill is a combination of proportional representation and the first-past-the-post-system; therefore depending on how many votes a certain party obtains, they are given a number of candidates to be appointed. Therefore the United National Party proposes that the first two or three individuals who are nominated to the local government bodies are women. Therefore the women do not necessarily need to contest but she can help people to obtain the votes, therefore you will have a certain number of women in each council. Sajith Premadasa is also proposing an amendment to th e Bill where he proposes there be 50 percent youth and women, where women get at least 25 percent mandatory representation. We have to have more women at the grassroots level representing their interests, because if you take India they have over a million women at the grass roots level. These are women who were totally discriminated and had no political edge in the decision-making realm, but thanks to Rajiv Gandhi who fifteen years ago brought in a quota at the local level and now they have women actively involved in representing the needs of their communities. Women have proven to be more sincere, transparent an d committed and it has been proven that women do a better job than men. As a consequence of this successful exercise in 2010 on International Women’s Women’s Day, Day, March 8, India brought in a Bill to ensure 33 per cent female representation on the national level. There was unanimous agreement, however they wanted the Bill to be well debated and therefore had it passed the following day day.. If we compare ourselves with the rest of the region we are lagging behind countries like Nepal, Maldives and Bangladesh. These countries have implemented legislation that ensures representation for women in positions of power. Furthermore certain countries have an act on the landmark resolution on Women, Peace and Security or the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325; however Sri Lanka has no such act.
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By no means should we stop the fight for equal representation at the grassroots-level, because although Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (CEDAW) and a number of other conventions, we fail to have any proper legislation passed in parliament in favour of women. Therefore having more women in parliament will ensure that the protection of women is ensured by law.
There are number of eminent women, who would be very committed towards serving the nation in the political arena if the environment was created for them. Female literacy surpasses that of men and even when it comes to university entrance women have the edge, however when it comes to the decision making realm we find very few women represented at the higher levels. This needs to change and the Local Government Bill is the first step towards that change.
Rosy Senanayake is a Member of Parliament
Just Out From the SSA
The Political Economy of Environment and Development in a Globalised World. Essays in Honour of Nadarajah Shanmugaratna Shanmugaratnam m Edited by Darley Jose Kjosavik Kjosa vik and Paul Vedeld Vedeld
Rs. 1150/-
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BOOK REVIEWS
HARBOUR LIGHTS: THE POETRY OF YVONNE GUNAWARDENA Sarojini Jayawickrama Gunawardena, Yvonne, 2011, Harbour Lights: More Collected Poems, Colombo: Bay Owl Press, Pages, 82, Price Rs. 700/-
Although much of Gunawardene’ Gunawardene’ss poetry is intensely personal, her wide ranging vision focuses on a world beyond this private one. The fate of a child in one of the bombed refugee camps in Chatilla and Sabra engages her and inspires her poetry in “The Legacy”. The `face glazed with hurt’ of `the little boy in the torn shirt’ is seared into her mind and impels her to write. She ponders over the deeper implications of the carnage unleashed on the innocent, the cycle of hatred and revenge inherited by the victims and the victimisers who wil l follow the relentless maxim of an `eye for an eye’.
T
he experience of living in countries and cultures other than her own underlie many of Yvonne Yvonne Gunawardena’s poems. Some have their context context in Sri Lanka and are are tinged with nostalgia for a way of life she no longer experiences. Others are animated by the expatriate life experience, in that the sensibility, the perceptions and the perspective that t hat moulds them are generated generated by that specific experience. Her poetry is structured into three sections, “Now”, “Then” and “Landscapes from Memory”. These are not discrete segments for themes from one seep into the other, as when the past trespasses into the present or vice versa and creates a different understanding of each. Intensely emotional experiences release the springs of creativity, and some of Gunawardena’s most powerful and moving poems are generated from such situations, ones t hat resonate in the readers’ minds and touch a chord of empathy. A marked feature of her poetry is the restraint and dignity with which she handles and gives expression to her emotions. In “Visiting the Rose Garden” she reins in her feelings at a moment of intense personal personal grief. There is a poignant evocation of death, the transience of life, and a belief in the after- life, expressed in terms of nature’s nature’s cycle: ‘the petals will turn to ash and the ash/will, come spring, bring forth more/roses’. The movement movement of the lines focuses the emphasis on `roses’ and the juxtaposition of the gorgeous colours of the roses with the colourless grey ash reinforces the contrast between life and death. Death is not presented presented as an experience fraught with fear and dread but as a l onged for repose, ` ...now you will/ dream and sleep in the silence your/inert flesh so craved’. craved’. Death is not the destruction of the physical self but its merging into oneness with nature, `... We leave you/to be one with a thousand roses’. The poem ends with a sense of closure.
She shifts her focus to events at home, from the boy in the refugee camp bereft of his mother, to the mother who has lost her son in a comparable situation of brutality and violence. In “Requiem for Richard”, a poem powerful in its indictment of senseless killing and violence, Gunawardena mourns the loss of a young life cruelly cut off in its prime. `W `Weep, eep, weep one more body lies/low on a wind-whipped beach. / Howl, howl before the evening dies. / Let them not silence you/ with phials of anodyne’. These lines are framed as though they are a chorus voiced by the castrati – male singers in an opera. The device is very very potent, dramatising the scene scene and investing the lines with a visual impact, the alliteration and the assonance underscoring the cruelty of the murderous act. She passionately asserts the importance of crying out against such atrocities and keeping memory alive, – `the flame’s fire burning’ – raging against the injustice of the killing. In a series of poems (in “Then”), Gunawardena explores and analyzes her expatriate expatriate situation. An ambivalence marks marks her stance towards her `adopted’ country – England Eng land - in which she has lived for over three decades and `transplanted’, herself in, ` ... a seed blown over/ from the distant tropics, germinating/ here through some quirk of time.’ “ Letter to England “ evinces this ambivalence. As a newcomer to the country, the English springtime, the `pastel shading’ of the landscape, `fields layered with greening cress’, draws her to the country, country, yet this feeling is not mutual. She senses an absence of acceptance, and experiences a feeling of
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alienation. England’s response to her is one of indifference and boredom even at her `intrusion’ into its society. society. She reciprocates spiritedly, and in her turn `tests’ England at her `chillest depths’ (the phrase functions at both the literal and metaphorical planes), but succumbs once again to the beauty of the spring and her mood softens. She is animated by contending feelings of attraction to, and distancing from, the country.. This dialogic interplay of contradictory and shifting country viewpoints, moods and tones invests the poem with complexity. In exploring and analyzing analyzing her own expatriate expatriate condition Gunawardena reflects the predicament of most expatriates who have traversed a similar path, uprooting themselves from their own cultures and of necessity having to transplant themselves in an unfamiliar one. “Divisive Inheritance” encapsulates the alienation Gunawardena experiences in her `adopted’ home. A land of `frozen people’ people’ is how she perceives it. The image of `double `double glazing’, which shuts one in or out, conveys the isolation imposed on her. her. Her wry comment on her `semi-detached’ children underscores underscores her negative response to life in England. The coupling of `semi-detached children’ with `detached houses’ makes its own witty and ironic comment. In the use of imagery we see here a feature of Gunawardena’ Gunawardena’ss skilful use of poetic devices where the image functions synonymously on a literal and metaphorical plane, conveying different layers of meaning; `frozen people, `semi-detached children’ , and `double glazing’ all function in t he same way, concentrating a richness of meaning in brief telling phrases. Other poems express Gunawardena’s Gunawardena’s bonding with the country from which she once felt distanced. “Mornings in Regent’s Regent’s Park” can be likened to a paean for Regent’s Regent’s Park. In language of luminous beauty, beauty, `sun-skimmed leaves’, ` butterflies in their rainbow rhythms’, rhythms’, `the wisteria’ wisteria’ss amethyst lushness’, lushness’, she conveys the almost rapturous delight that fills her. As an artist does with a palette of varied colours she paints a visual picture using language creatively. creatively. `Regent’s Park is a celebration’, she says in a moment of epiphany, couching in lyrical terms her response to its beauty and `limitless space’.
rooted here, so many centuries ago’. They are not recent expatriates but now have a sense of belonging to the country, their forefathers having come many generations ago; no longer do they suffer a feeling of being `alien’. Gunawardena crafts her poetry with an assured touch when she writes of the home she has left but for which she has a deep and abiding affection. affection. Most of these these poems are in “Landscapes of Memory”, the segment which in my view contain some of Gunewardena’s best poetic compositions. The seeds of these poems are in her memories of life in Sri Lanka and they are refreshed and sharpened by experiencing them in the “Now” on her intermittent visits to Sri Lanka. They are sensitive vignettes of Sri Lankan life experiences or idyllic word pictures pi ctures as in “To the Waterfall”, Waterfall”, a poem that reveals Gunawardena’s skilled employment of figurative language. The images are tactile and and visual and impact on our sensory perceptions - the cascading water is a `...spray/ sliding down in veils of cool white/ foaming crystal – shimmering, moss -encrusted/ falls of water.’ These poems also record memories of a charmed childhood shared with her siblings. Recollected in the present (2008), they are perhaps filmed over with a patina of idealisation. In some instances she tends to romanticize the land (Coming in to Land) - `...I see this island/ has a child - like innocence; its/ mountain ranges, spread out like / the wings of guardian angels,/ glow euphoric with the rising sun.’ At first glance, “The Elkaduwa Road” Road” (2009) (2009) presents `a perfect world’, a prelapsarian one where the `guava trees are sun -kissed, and the `waterfall `waterfall did not dry up’. This ideal world is undercut by being framed as a dream. It is only illusory. Gunawardena’ Gunawardena’ss awareness that such perfection can only be illusory and can find realisation only in a dream world infuses the poem with nostalgia for a childhood, and more significantly for a life, that cannot be re-experienced. Past memories have the immediacy of “Now” – the present, and her evocation of them in poems such su ch as “The Rains Came to Wattegama” Wattegama” is a graphic portrayal of the havoc unleashed on the people by flood waters. We see here a characteristic characteristic feature of her craft; her way of seeing things differently. The devastation devastatio n caused is seen as a divine chastisement: `You prayed for rain and so it came/as if the Lord in his anger had said,/”Take this, and this and that and more,/take it all and pay for it.”. The punishment is remorseless and and unrelenting. There is here an allusion, I believe, to the Old Testament story of Noah and the Ark which invests the events with a greater import. import. But the poem ends on a note of hope and renewal with the blossoming of the water hyacinths, the `incomparable blue, dream-like flowers’ which rise from the muddy waters.
A mirror image of the Sri Lankan expatriate is presented in a lighter vein in “A “A Sunday Morning”. Morning”. It is a picture of ` ...Upright ladies/ fervent in collars and cuffs, hats/ trimmed with berries and genteel lace.’, – clothes, completely unsuitable and incongruous in a tropical climate – foll owing the Sunday morning ritual of going to church. church. They are the descendants of the Dutch with `names that t rip off the tongue – like/ Seibel, Arndt, Jansz and de Jong.’ It’s a tongue-in-the cheek portrayal that Gunawardena paints, touched with humour; `they shone like pure metal in an / alien setting, having 24
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Evocative descriptions do not function simply on the plane of graphic word pictures but are imbued with deeper significance as in “Non-Pareil”. In this poem, written after a visit to “Horton Plains”, she sees an equivalence between totally disparate entities, the `tiny yellow-speckled butterflies,/ compulsively dancing to their doom/ in a seasonal pilgrimage to Samanalakanda .’, self destructing themselves , and the revolutionary revolutio nary youth of the Jathika Vimukthi Vimukthi Peramuna, `wild – eyed young men/sprouting beards and revolution/...driven by the Fates and Furies to flutter/ blindly forward and dash their brains/... on the state’s state’s unyielding, monolithic visage.’ Her imagery yokes together completely dissimilar entities – a distinctive feature of her verse. In her poems contextualized in Sri Lanka we see Gunawardena exploring other dimensions of life there. Her deep social consciousness impels her to scrutinize events in her “island home” through a critical lens, as in “Independence Square”. Seeing a photograph in the London Times of 2009, captioned “Victory Parade”, of `...legless/ men, [who] skilfully manoeuvred/ themselves into the pristine prist ine square’ but `smiled stoic through their pain’, she perceives the hollowness of such state sponsored `celebratory’ events. Scrutinizing the underside of Sri Lankan life, the fissures in its social fabric, she articulates a strong indictment of the insensitivity and indifference of society to the suffering of the many in “Feasting and Fasting” and in “A Lost Paradise”: `Booby traps, claymore mines, a suicidal femme fatale/ and more helpless refugees. Who cares? Our houses are/ emporiums, our debates flatulent, flatulent, our appetites sensational/ and our “fahionistas” drip diamonds diamonds “as large as the Ritz”.’ (All three poems deal with the “Now” of Sri Sri Lankan Lankan life). This sense of a lost paradise is a leitmotif in many of her poems. They express a feeling of regret, sadness sadness and loss at the rupturing of a way of life through the brutalizing and desensitizati on due to war and violence. “Evening in Ahungalle” ruminates on the same theme: `...the land is fractured/ In the water young bones lie/ in shreds like splintered wood.’ She refers too to the bartering of our rich resources, even of our selves, the trafficking in human bodies, `... we/ sell ourselves, the sea, the endless sand.’ Allusion rather than direct statement is a feature of Gunawardena,s poetry. In my view there is a subtle reference here to the paedophiliac activity on the southern beaches, the corrupting by-product of the tourist industry.
home”, and the country she has “adopted”. The focus of her poetry is not confined to this theme. Family life and relationships are presented in cameo-like portraits touched with humour and irony. irony. In “Portrait of Three Three Children”, she depicts the gender “battle” between herself and her male siblings with incisive wit. Her rebellious spirit resists the specific gender role assigned to her, her, a “Cinderella” poised between her two brothers in the photograph, symbolic of her position in the family. family. But she has to ruefully accept accept defeat; it is a foregone conclusion `for the power struggles had been clearly defined/ to create our future cricket heroes.’ In the same vein she treats another domestic “battle”, this time between husband and wife, in “Trumpet “Trumpet Concerto”. Other poems speak of her nuclear family. famil y. In “School Report”, the writer of her son’s report complains that. He is excellent in this subject/... tends to daydream in the class”’.She, knowing her son’s special genius in numbers, fathoms that while others played noughts and crosses his play with numbers was productive; the numbers he scribbles on a page are the equations that he `day-dreams’. We see in this brief poem po em her facility in creating economically, economicall y, etching in lightning strokes everyday scenes or events, here of her son doing his homework, packing them with interest. In “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue”, Gunawardena’s Gunawardena’s intimate association with music speaks through the poem, and she conveys its aural magic as she presents her daughter’s performance of Bach. The movement of the music is captured as it rises to a crescendo `... line by line he dips/ and he soars weaving his aural tapestry,’. Gunawardena’s love for music and the skills she has acquired through training in its discipline have been transposed onto her craft of poetry writing; to use a phrase from music, she shifts to a different key. key. Her long apprenticeship with music, marks her poems with a harmonious flow and a taut and economical structure, where she endeavours `to extend each brooding motif into a logical harmony’ (Waiting for a Visit from the Muse”, 1986). Yvonne Gunawardena’ Gunawardena’ss poetry projects a voice from the diaspora, but it is one firmly attuned to her original homeland. The double-ness of vision she displays as she observes and comments on both ‘adopted’ and ‘home’ country stems from this ‘divisive inheritance’. The slim volume of poetry “Harbour Lights” is a rich resource of the poetry of one adept adept in her craft who brings a deep and sensitive insight into her writing. Her poetry is indeed a harmonious synthesis of evocative words, musical rhythms and artistry which she weaves into a tapestry of scintillating colour.
I have dwelt almost exclusively on Gunawardena’s exploration of her expatriate condition, the contending pull of her “island
Sarojini Jayawickrema is the author of Writing that Conquers Re-reading Knox’s Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon 25 POLITY
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A COLO COLONIAL NIAL CLERG CLERGYMAN YMAN ON SRI LANKA’S LANKA’S NA NATURAL TURAL BEAUTY AND IT’S HEATHENS '
'
Neville Weereratne
R.K. de Silva, 2011, Poetical Sketches of the Interior of Ceylon. Benjamin Baileys original manuscript of 1841, with an Introduction by Dr R K de Silva. London: Serendib Publications, Price Rs. 4200/It would have been quite impossible for Dr Rajpal de Silva to have avoided describing his discovery of this manuscript as anything but ‘serendipitous’ considering that he made this “happy and unexpected discovery” discov ery” by accident, in the Oxford Dictionary definition definit ion of Horace Walpole’s Walpole’s epithet.
contradiction between a bigoted missionary and a romantic lover of nature. Language is the vehicle of comment and in the various guises he assumes, Bailey is at once the poet deeply in love with the island whose adulation is overtaken by an over-zealous clergyman. Not every prospect pleases him. These ‘Poetical Sketches’ are a new and rare experience in our encounter with the colonial expatriate. Bailey’s work consists of a formidable formidable output of some 190 sonnets. It requires, in my mind, an equally devoted reader to sustain his interest while the poet meanders through mountain mount ain and valley, very much like the rivers themselves that carved their way through this landscape.
Dr de Silva found Benjamin Bailey’s sonnets thirty years ago in an antiquarian bookshop in London and it is his industry that has provided us with a well-delineated portrait of an extraordinary character. For want of information to the contrary, I rather think he would be the one remembered in the ‘Bailey’ Street of the Fort in Colombo, between Millers and Cargills.
Benjamin Bailey (1791 1853) was a clergyman, Archdeacon of Colombo, a contemporary and friend of the th e poet John Keats who described the priest as “one of the noblest men alive at the present day.” The images he evokes of the Sri Lanka of his time are ardent. Wherever he looked, it seems he encountered nothing short of an earthy paradise. The Rev Bailey’s Christian faith was greatly encouraged by what he saw, and he is unrelenting in his admiration of these revelations. revelati ons.
I would like also to take this opportunity to acknowledge Dr de Silva’s splendid work in his exceptional three volumes devoted to the visual impressions of the Dutch and the British during their days in Sri Lanka. These books are worthy of recall after the twenty years and more since they first appeared: Ear Early ly Pri Prints nts of Ceyl Ceylon on published in 1985, Illustration Illustrationss and Views Views of Dutch Ceylon, th 1602 1796 in 1988; and 19 Century Newspaper Engravings Engrav ings of Ceylon-S Ceylon-Sri ri Lanka in 1998. They were all meticulously crafted, both in the exacting research Dr de Silva devoted to them, and in the style and perfection these productions achieved. This new publication turns the page, as it were, from the pictorial records made by the colonialists of those times to poetic expressions of an Englishman in the early years of the British Raj in Sri Lanka. They are unambiguous expressions and are, in their way, as compelling in their interest as the response of the artists using various techniques. The pictorial artist was no critic of the landscape: he loved what he beheld, else he ignored it. In this instance, in stance, however, we have a painful
Dr de Silva’s publication contains the three parts that constitute the ‘Poetical Sketches of Benjamin Bailey’. Part 1 consisting of 52 sonnets was published in 1841. Part 2 is made up of 80 sonnets, and Part 3 of 58; and all al l three parts appear together in the present volume for the first time. This publication also includes copious and most interesting notes which elucidate for the reader the experience upon which the poet draws. In addition there is also a small group of poems all devoted to extolling the islands beauty. The notes reveal the man as well-read and scholarly as we might expect of an Oxford alumnus. I am not competent to comment on the li terary value of these works except to say that they certainly fulfil the intensions of their author. The sonnets follow the required 14-line construction, and, as I said, lavish line upon line on the countryside. Bailey travelled extensively in the twenty years
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he spent in Sri Lanka and his eulogies seem to stem from a solitary contemplation of the world around him. He derives great consolation from what he sees and with the piety of the true believer, thanks God for them. In Sonnet LIV in Part 2, ‘Influence of natural objects on the mind’, he recounts each detail of this marvellously unfolding landscape: I have been asked, what spot of this fair Isle, Whose beauty hath for many days been spread Before me, I preferred. I have not heed To the true feeling of my bosom while I answered. But if mountain pile on pile, Innumerous vales where scarcely foot can tread, If rivers rolling o’er their rocky bed, The rushing waterfall, the rippling rill, Forests that darken on the mountains brow, And fling a mystery o’er the deep ravine; If all that crowds upon my memory now All that the heart hath felt, the eye hath seen, Can please, or sooth the soul, I only know I have been soothed wherever I have been.
He fulminated vehemently against Buddhism when the Governor, Lord Torrington, Torrington, withdrew withd rew an injunction “to do away with the hateful ConneXtion with the heathen Idolatry and Atheistical Buddhism of the Island” in 1849. Bailey wrote six long and strong letters to the “Ceylon Times” of those days under the pen-name of Vetus, taking in his stride the Roman Catholic Church whose practices he thought allowed for the “reverence of images”, and “assimilated s o much the idolatry of the Buddhist in the Wihare, and the mixed worship of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Dewale…” His intransigence in these matters was to lead to his dismissal from the appointment he held and to his return to England in 1852 where he was to die the following year. This was also the time when Queen Victoria, exercising her prerogative as monarch, ordered the removal of all restrictions placed upon Buddhism and Buddhist practice in Sri Lanka. She restored the rights of the people to practice freely the religion of their choice. Temples that had been torn down were rebuilt or repaired and some in the South bear witness to this magnanimity in the portraits of the Queen, sometimes with Prince Albert, painted over their entrance facades.
Bailey identifies the many places he visited. His spelling of their names is quaint but in today’s to day’s usage he considers Kandy, Warakapola, Kadugannawa, Katugastota, Dumbara, Gampola, Ramboda, Nuwara Eliya, Pidurutalagala Pidurutal agala and so on, in Part 1. And again in Part 2, Bailey writes of Utu wankanda, Kundasale, Namunakula, Idalgashinna.
Neither would it appear that Bailey had much regard for the people of the country whom he thought were “ignorant” and “barbarous”. He often regrets “these savage Despots” did not appreciate what they had been gifted by t he hand of God. In this view he had an ally in Bishop Heber of Calcutta, the composer of hymns: What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle: Though every prospect pleases and only man is vile; In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God are strown; The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.
And yet many more in Part 3. Wherever it is, Bailey is in raptures. I picked the sonnet on Diyatalawa arbitrarily but it is as typical as any in this collection of sonnets. He wrote:
Even at moments of ecstasy Bailey could not bear the sight of the Buddha image carved in stone, which he ridicules. In a sonnet called ‘Buddha Erect’ (XV in Part 2) he writes:
…Alone, While in my ear with notes of thanksgiving The birds and falls and murmuring water si ng In love, as well as might I feel thee, One Father of All! Diatalawe, none Among the mountains of this isle will cling With brighter beauty to my memory Than thou…
The Idol but a mighty baby seems, Standing Erect. His posture gives the air Of Imbecillity. Imbecil lity. The Worship Worshipper, per, Did he not wallow in the muddy streams Of aged superstition, of his dreams Of ignorance might from this face beware, That inexpressive vacancy of stare Of the Colossal Infant…
For all that, Dr de Silva’s diligent research reveals Bailey to have been incensed by what he described as the ‘heathenism’ and the ‘idolatry’ practised by the Buddhists and the Hindus of the island. 27
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I think that Bailey’s problem lay in his abhorrence of the ‘heathen’ religion which tainted his appreciation of the people. That he yet harboured a forgiving and understanding heart is revealed in a rare piece pi ece called ‘The Kandyan Village’ (XXVIII of Part 2) in which he finds the people “with eager and inquiring looks all al l stand / And gaze and smile…/ And happy are the faces in this land /Of nature and simplicity”. He is even prepared to concede that “The Kandian sings or chants his country song… not untunefully… Allured to dance, /A child with its fond mother in this throng / Of happiness is seen”. And he is moved to exclaim: “O may Life’s chance / Ne’er bring me where Love’s current runs less strong!”
Bailey’s letters to the “Ceylon Times” are vehement po litical diatribes. His sonnets, to the contrary, are generous expressions of innocent, unbridled pleasure. If we are to overlook the prejudice that mars his acceptance of the people of a country which provides him with such inspired eloquence, we may yet extract from these poetical sketches some truly delightful moments. It is Dr de Silva’s remarkable achievement that he has successfully resurrected the priest, the poet and his prejudice from an ancient leather-bound volume of Bailey’s original work. It is an overwhelmingly difficult task, a feat of exceptional discipline and scholarship, which calls for our sustained applause.
Forthcoming from the SSA:
Senake Bandaranayake Continuities and Transformations: Studies in Sri Lankan Archaeology and History Archaeology (330pp, 120 illus.) This new book boo k is an important contribution to the study s tudy of historical dynamics. Proceeding from an archaeological perspective, it sees Sri Lanka as ‘an island laboratory for studying historical change.’ This collection of 9 articles articles deal dealss with theoretical issu es, hypotheses and generalizations in the study of the material remains of Sri Lanka’s historical civilization. All previously published, but in i n widely widely scattered or inaccessibl inaccessible e sources, these writings together make for a construct larger larger than the sum of its parts. Continuities and Transformation Transformation covers a variety of subjects: – fr – from the agrarian transition transition of protohistoric times t imes om the to traditions of premodern urbanism extending over to millennia – from – from early early periodization periodizati on efforts of Sri Lanka’s historical trajectory to hypotheses on unity and differentiation, toward locating the specificity of our tradition in a matrix of Monsoon Asian cultures – from patterns and semiotics of power and authority in architectural pl planning anning to social dimensions in arts production and consumption.
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‘WRITING THAT CONQUERS’: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF ROBERT KNOX Anoma Pieris Jayawickrama, Sarojini, 2004,‘Writing that Conquers’: Rereading Knox’s Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, Colombo: Social Scientists’ Scientist s’ Association, (reprinted), (reprint ed), Pages, 349, Price. Rs. 850/Our knowledge of the history of our country is necessarily biased, due to our general lack of self-reflexivity and the selectivity of our national memory. memory. My own understanding of history is gleaned from nationalist text books, which are reproduced in the ideological spirit of the Mahawamsa and bent on glorifying Sinhala kingship; or from its polar opposite: colonial travel narratives that cast our people as pagans that needed to be civilized. Textuality, i.e. the written word, predominates and in both cases is given an authority, which in each case is grossly over-rated. Just as the Mahawamsa has as its objective the legitimization of dynastic kingship, the colonial narrative presents the colonizer as saving the native population from the tyrannical rule of those very kings. Much of the history of resistance to British occupation can be found in historical novels such as The Last Kingdom of Sinhalay by Elmo Jayawardene (2004), who narrates the treacheries and resistance to the British surrounding the fall of Kandy. Understandably, the bulk of this work concentrates on the Kandyan period, a period charged with political strife and territorial contestation, as European powers competed for space and commercial monopolies over our specific geography. The anthropologist Michael Roberts in Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period (2004) describes how both Sinhalese and Buddhist sensibilities were being shaped and projected both politically and culturally during the Kandyan period, differentiating the Sinhalese from both colonizers and peoples of other races. Sarojini Jayawickrama’s book Writing that Conquers adds to this discussion of the Kandyan period as yet another contribution to its history. history. Her research re-reads An An Historical Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon by Robert Knox following the scrutiny of textual histories provoked by postcolonial studies. If we were to analyze the politics of the colonial text, would we draw quite different conclusions about our history? she asks.
the rule of Raja Sinha the Second are acquired from what has become a seminal text: Robert Knox’s An Historical Re l at io n of t he Is l an d Ce yl on . The book is an anthropological narrative by an English sailor of the t he East India Company who was held captive by the king of Kandy for nearly twenty years. During this period Knox observed the habits of the people around him, the villagers, courtiers and what he saw of the king, recording it after his escape and return to England. His book, published in 1681, became an immediate success informing the British public about a territory that was available for colonization. Its religious overtones only superficially disguised its true objective of establishing the relative superiority of Britain and suggesting the need to deliver the Ceylonese from their feudal existence. It is the minute detail in Knox’s account that captures the reader’s imagination, allowing him or her to construct a colonialist’s coloniali st’s version of native life. Knox’s encyclopedi encyclopedicc account gives intimate knowledge of community structures, marital relationships, cooking and eating habits, social customs, dwelling types and construction methods with special attention to the relations between the king and his subjects. On its publication, accompanied by lithographs, it proved to be one of the most popular representations of Ceylon to be produced and disseminated in Europe during that period. Translations were made into French, German and Dutch. Jayawickrama compares this text to that by Daniel Defoe, Robin Ro bin so son n Cru so soee, regarded by many of us as a boy’s adventure story but equally replete with imperialist motives. By placing her analysis within the frame of postcolonial literary critique and employing comparisons with colonial period texts from other colonized cultures, Jayawickrama demonstrates how Ceylon too was drawn into the th e larger orientalist project project to colonize through the written word.
In this regard, Jayawickrama’s re-reading of Knox addresses a familiar destabilization experienced by all ‘nativ e’ readers on encountering a western version of their history. While the form of the narrative typically ask s the reader to identify with the protagonist, Knox, and to imbibe his values and positioning, the necessity to sympathize with his predicament Our knowledge of the Kandyan kingdom during the and empathize with his interpretations interpretation s of the Kandyan kingdom Seventeenth Century at a quotidian level and the details of jolts our post-nat post-national ional subjecti subjectivity. vity. It places Sri Lankan 29 POLITY
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readers outside the space of the narrative and its reception. It is from this liminal space outside the reciprocity of Western authorship for Western audiences that Jayawickrama approaches the writings of Robert Knox, deploying her knowledge of the complexities of a Buddhist Sinhalese subjectivity to challenge both his version of history and his motives.
categorize, essentialize and objectify the native subject, equating difference to primitivism, savagery, infantilism and inferiority. She says “Writing becomes a process of subordination and domination when in the act of representation one voice becomes privileged, silencing and suppressing others in the colonizing tones and gestures which inscribe difference, demarcating margins and creating centres and peripheries”.
What were Knox’s motives when writing this history? Did his careful record of the Kandyan kingdom, the activities of the king and his subjects, prepare the stage for British colonization of Kandy and therefore the whole island? Taking a range of subjects apart through careful analysis, Jayawickrama suggests that Knox’s impressions of the Kandyans were filtered through his own ideas of English morality,, commercial interest and Individualism, all of which morality was veiled in the language of a benign Christianity. She also describes how, due to his own narrow patriarchal and puritanical world-view, Knox’s impressions of the Kandyans, particularly of Kandyan women, were often quite contrary to what we know of the culture. Similarly Similarly,, his interpretations of Buddhism were confused in their translation into a Christian vocabulary.
Jayawickrama’s re-reading of Knox addresses a generation born on the cusp of independence, Sri Lanka’s own midnight’s children (or those for whom the collective memory of February Fourth 1948 resonates significantly), who were caught in the struggle between two imaginations from the East and the West. West. Her education in a missionary missionary school in Colombo was symptomatic of the education system at the time, with strong colonial overtones and a Christian morality constructing the proper objects of history. history. Buddhism, feudalism, and the ‘tyrannical’ kings of the Kandyan kingdom kingd om were scrutinized and marginalized in order to buttress the flailing confidence of the colonial project in its twilight years. It subjected Buddhist students, like herself, to a particular moral dilemma that revealed the ideological undercurrents in colonial historical sources.
Jayawickrama delves delv es even further to argue that Knox’s desire to represent the natives in the e terms came from his own deep-seated insecurity as a prisoner of the Kandyan king. The court of Raja Sinha the Second was a heterogeneous space including people from diverse religions and several other European prisoners. As a prisoner, Knox no longer held the privileged space of the colonizer and found himself vulnerable to the Kandyan socio-geographical context. Jayawickrama places Knox in a liminal space between colonizer and colonized, anxiously preserving his own precarious self–image by differentiating it from the natives. This anxiety of the self, which Jayawickrma observes was European, predominantly white, male, Christian and middleclass, accompanied the colonial project, but became fragmented and insecure in a space which was unknown, uncharted and unfamiliar. The collapse of Knox’s confidence heightened the desire for self-affirmation and self-fashioning against the image of the East, the native and the unknown culture.
The generation that followed those born at independence, the children of our midnight generation born into a republican Sri Lanka, has little awareness of this sensibility for they were swung in the opposite direction by a defensive nationalism. Immersed in an an equally equally uncritical revisionist narrative that demonized the colonizer, students of the nineteen seventies and eighties, like myself, grew up with scant awareness of discourses outside the national narrative. Knox and all colonial sources were completely suppressed in the collective amnesia of a post-colonial consciousness. By the nineteen nineties colonial history made a comeback, promoted by tourism, stripped of its political asymmetries asymmetries in a nostalgic and sentimental yearning for a past era. It coincided with the Raj Revival: TV series like The Jewel in the Crown, that played on the exotic, Far Pavilions, and Heat and Dust that chaotic image of the East through a process that Edward Said described as orientalizing the ‘other’(meaning nonwestern cultures and peoples). The Raj Revival was a biproduct of the Imperialist ambitions of Thatcherite Britain punctuated by the Falklands war and the construction of British-ness against the influx of migrants from Britain’s former colonies. In Sri Lanka, the colonial past seeped back into our architecture through images and artifacts and, supported by the hotel industry industry,, its picturesque ambience was captured in a life-style paradigm embraced uncritically by many Sri Lankans.
Jayawickrama observes that the representation of the ‘other’ is textually fashioned and although the language of the travel narrative may purport to be neutral, and may appear to be an objective report on an individual’s experience, all writing is ultimately political, and shaped by covert agendas. She observes that in travel writing a shared repertoire of tropes 30
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Jayawickrama’s voice, framed by these shifting pedagogical positions, writes history at the interstices of a generational shift and a national beginning. She speaks for a generation that, unclouded by the terror of the post-nationalist era, are able to deconstruct the politics of partisan positions. She speaks against the tenor of the Raj Revival in literature and in cinema and its aggrandized, romanticized constructions of the colonial period and its orientalist constructions of us as ‘natives’. We must learn to read behind the lines of the historic text and gain a more nuanced version of our own
history with an awareness of the return of colonial power relations in new forms of imperialism and globalization (most visible in our hotel industry and labour relations). More importantly in a time when competitive ethnic histories laun ch media wars in cyberspace, and we are divided by the identity games of political parties, Jayawickrama speaks for a generation who understood that identity is a fragile construction in a world where there are no absolute cultural positions.
Anoma Pieris is an architect with an academic focus on cultural the ory and has degrees from the University of Moratuwa and the Massachusetts Massachusett s Institute of Technology Technology and a Ph.D from the University of California. She is the author of several books on architecture.
Available From the SSA
Suriya Bookshop No. 12, Sulaiman Sula iman Terrace Terrace Colombo - 05
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BEYOND OLCOTT AND DHARMAPALA: COMING TO TERMS WITH BUDDHIST RITUAL AND TRADITION? Asoka de Zoysa Blackburn M. Anne 2010, Location of Buddhism, Colombo: Social Scientists' Association. Pages 237, price Rs. 850/-
P
ost War Sri Lanka seems to be experiencing a Buddhist Revival: Mass Pinkamas are held at historical temples, where thousands lamps are lit and thousands of trays of jasmine are offere offered d to the Buddha. Mass ordinat ordinations ions of young boys are frequent. One cannot ignore the influx of young monks from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Cambodia in the Buddhist monasteries. More and more universities and academies offer degrees and diploma courses in Buddhist Studies attracting monks and students from the Asian region. New disciplines such as Buddhist Psychotherapy keep emerging. Preaching in verse (kavi bana) and recitation of Paritta texts ( pirith pirith) are available on CDs sold side by side with Sinhala pop songs. Buddhist TV channels and radio stations bring spirituality to the living room. Frequent exhibitions of relics too can be added to the list. The Sri Lankan pilgrim’s itinerary too has expanded to the North and the East visiting new sites re-claimed for Buddhists Buddhist s in former LTTE-occupied LTTE-occupied areas to witness miracles at these sites. A critical edition of the Tripitaka using texts from Myanmar, Thailand and Laos enhancing digital technology are some novel features. Can such a surge in religious activity be seen as a Buddhist Revival? If not, when was the last Buddhist Revival ? Anne C. Blackburn’s latest book Locations of Buddhism (2010) harks back to a period in the early colonial days when Buddhist monks active in the pirivenas and gentry from the Sabaragamuwa province and entrepreneurs in the upcoming towns and cities of the south and the South and Western provinces launched many projects to nurture Buddhist scholarship and address the missionary activity activit y of the British. Much has been written about Colonel Olcott and Anagarika Dharmapala, but little information is available about the projects launched by Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala (1827– 1911). The book is published at a time when Buddhists of Sri Lanka, living in a multi-religious background, articulate grievances and challenges to be faced in a new millennium of globalized politics and competitive entrepreneurship.
“a well connected, high-caste Buddhist family had a horoscope made for the newest addition to their family, a son” (Blackburn 2010 p. ix). The biography of this scholar monk is not narrated in the typical t ypical linear way, which often is boring to the reader. It is broken from time to time, when the author takes the reader back to the society and politics of the earliest years of British rule. Already in the Preface Blackburn very swiftly sketches the growing economy of the coastal belt around the Galle harbor and the Christian presence and missionary activities in the island. New ritual space was necessary for Buddhists moving into the new cities and towns to meet these challenges. As such, the functions of the Buddhist temple had to be redefined. Above all since 1815, when the British took over the control of the entire county, Buddhism lost the royal patronage. Buddhist monks were divided into three fraternities: “Siyam”, “Amarapura” and much later “Ramannya”. “Ramanny a”. According to Blackburn’s study, one of the key interests of Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala was to unite the Sangha (Buddhist clergy) under royal patronage, through his networks in south-east-Asia south-east-Asia;; an aspect many researchers have overlooked. Visiting some temples in Akurässa, Hikkaduva, Kathaluva, Dodanduva, Ginivella, Ambalangoda and Kalutara, I am often confronted with the nagging question of the sponsorship of the temples. The vast expanse of interesting murals in the viharas , elaborate preaching halls with beautifully carved preaching thrones, libraries with comprehensive collections of palm leaf manuscripts indicate that these coastal areas were a hive of Buddhist activity in the mid 19th century. After reading Blackburn’s study, I feel that the populist notion that Buddhist Buddh ist consciousness was revived when the printed information of the Buddhist-Christian debates between the years 1873 to 1877 reached the theosophist Colonel Olcott in the United States, needs rethinking. Blackburn traces Buddhist scholarship to the years beyond Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala: The names Mohottivatte Gunananda, Ratmalane Dhammaloka and his pupil Ratmalane Dharmarama, Valane Siddhartha, Vaskaduve Sri Subhuti and Battaramulle Sri Subhuti, may show a somewhat shaky but unbroken tradition going back to the great revival movement under King Kirti Sri Rajasimha and Ven. Ven. Välivita Saranamkara of the mid-eighteenth century.
What most fascinates me is the novel style of Blackburn’s book. The Preface takes the reader back to the 1820s when 32
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The reader in the first chapter is transported to 1868 when “an edited manuscript of the Vinaya (a collection of Pali texts on monastic life and discipline) was brought in state from the Sabaragamuwa town of Pelmadulla downriver to Kalutara on the southern coast and, then through a series of southern towns and villages to the major port city of Galle.” (Blackburn 2010 p. 1). One of the chief editors of the editorial council and Sangiti (recitation of canonical texts to establish consensus regarding regardi ng variants in reading) was Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala, who was officiating as the chief monk of Sri (Adam’s Peak) since 1867. Sixty monks had been Pada (Adam’s invited to the formidable project to edit the Pali texts of the Tripitaka, using Siamese and Burmese manuscripts to Pelmadulla. Sponsorship for this historical project was borne by the radala- leaders of the Sabaragamuwa region. Iddamalgoda, the chief custodian ( Basnayaka nilame ) of the Maha Sam Saman an Deva Devalaya laya in Ratnapura took over the patronage previously held by the king. Blackburn then shows the importance of this project in the backdrop of the Buddhist-Christian tensions of the late 1840s and the intra-monastic Vinaya -debates between the established Siyam Nikaya and the newly ordained monks of the Amarapura Nikaya. Her source material for these chapters vary from Tissa Kariyawasam’s Ph. D dissertation (1973), Ven. Yagirigala Yagirigala Prajnananda’s Prajnan anda’s two volumes written in Sinhala on Ven. Sri Sumangala (1947) and published writings w ritings of Ven. Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala. Blackburn gives the title Locations of Buddhism to her book. One may understand the locations as geographical locations, Pelmadulla, Hikkaduva, Ratmalana, to Kotahena, Maligakanda where Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala establishes the Vidyodaya Pirivena in 1873. What is most fascinating to read are the names of dayakayas associated with each location which may hint on their own political and agendas in entrepreneurship. entrepreneurship. Reading between the lines, one may be able to answer question why these towns on the coastal belt or locations in Colombo came to be sites of resistance. For example, it is not a coincidence that the Vidyodaya Pirivena is located vis-à-vis to the Maha Bodhi Society, surrounded by Sinhala printing establishments in Maligakanda, close to the location where the Ananda College stands today in Maradana. The middle chapters bring in the new agents of the 1880s and 1890s in the common quest of addressing the challenges posed by colonial rule and Christianity: Colonel Henry Steele Olcott and Don David Hevavitarana (later known as
Anagarika Dharmapala) are introduced here. Blackburn first compares how Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala and Olcott understood “Buddhism”, reviewing the agendas of the Ven. Sri Sumangala’s Sumangala’s Vidyodaya Vidyodaya Pirivena and Olcott’s Buddhist Theosophical Society. She then moves to printing activities of the newly established presses publishing two news papers: Sarasavi Sandaräsa of Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala and the “Theosophist” of Olcott. The spoken word at the temple is now available on print, using usi ng Sinhala typography. For the section on Anagarika Dharmapala, Blackburn draws much from the seminal work of Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere (1988), Obeyesekere (1972 and 1992), Michael Roberts (1997 (19 97 and 2000) and Alain Trevithick (2007). Blackburn’s stance on Anagarika Dharmapala is interesting: She introduces him: “D. D. Hevavitarana was sixteen when Olcott and his colleague Helena Blavatsky first arrived in Lanka”, “When Olcott and Blavatsky first reached Lanka, young Hevavitarana was at loose ends”… “he worked as a clerk for the Department of Public instruction”… “he offered translation services to Olcott, became involved as an editor of Sarasavi Sandaräsa”. In the next section she narrates: “In 1891 after a transformative visit to Bodh Gaya (…) Hevavitarana, (who in 1883 had adopted the heroic and optimistic name “Dharmapala” or “Dharma Guardian”) became consumed by the prospect of bringing Bodh Gaya under Buddhist control and protection (Blackburn p.116-118). She very clearly shows the emerging new generation of activism, which maybe was less engaged in promoting Sinhala education and Buddhist scholarship but following an agenda to defend. Disputes between Ven. Sumangala, Olcott and Anagarika Dharmapala are spelled out well, although the Hevavitaranaa family regarded Ven. Hevavitaran Ven. Sumangala as the “family priest”. The fifth chapter is titled Sasana and Empire. “In April 1897, the Siamese King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) reached Sri Lanka on a state visit en route to Europe. From the perspective of Hikkaduve and many other Lankan Buddhists leaders it was a celebrated opportunity, a chance to make direct personal contact with the only Buddhist monarch, who had retained a degree of independence in the face of French and British imperial designs on southern Asia” (Blackburn 2010 p. 143). The opening of this new chapter explains its objective. Citing Pali and Sinhala correspondence and newspaper articles, it brings in new material to the research of the revival movement of the fin de d e siècle .
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The theoretical background which academics generally insist should be placed in the beginning of the research, emerges finally, only in the concluding sixth chapter. This does not mean that Blackburn, working on the lines of historical sociology and hermeneutics, does not value the importance of what academic supervisors call “theoretical underpinning”. She narrates a biography with a strong conviction of what she wishes to project through her study, may be in a more “inductive way”. In the sixth and concluding chapter called Horizo Horizons ns Not Washed Away she locates her study of “Colonialism and Modernity” in the context of the body of research available in authoritative writings: Kithsiri Malalgoda (1976), Richard Gombrich (1988), Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere (1988) and George Bond (1988) and the earlier lesser cited works of C.D.S. Siriwardana (1966), Smith (1966), Swearer (1970) and Wriggins (1960) representing one school of thought which saw a shift in Buddhist activity from “monastic to lay authority” and another strand under the key words “modernization” and “modernity” emphasized in the works of Ames (1963 and 1973) and Bechert (1963 and 1973). Quoting Obeyesekere’s research of 1972 Blackburn sees the term “Protestant Buddhism” having two meanings: (a) “Its norms and organizational forms are historical derivatives from Protestant Christianity (b) more importantly, from the more contemporary point of view, it is a protest against Christianity and its associated Western political dominance prior to independence” (Blackburn 2010 p. 198). She further comments: “The terms Bu dd hi st Re vi va l, Protestant Buddhism and Buddhis Buddhistt Modernis Modernism m have now long been used as comprehensive terms with which to describe the character of late nineteenth – and early twentieth-century Buddhism in Sri Lanka, despite periodic attempts by historians of religion and colonialism, and critical theorists of colonialism, to further nuance claims made in the name of Protestant Buddhism ... The preceding chapters make very clear that, even in central urban Buddhist institutions and associations linked to new forms of lay Buddhist participation, we do not see a substantial decline of monastic power and presti ge, but rather continued collaboration between laypeople and monastics”(Blackburn 2010 p.199-200 emphasis added ).
The style of this chapter is compact and requires more than one concentrated reading. Thankfully it is not placed at the beginning. The reader may turn the pages back to the beginning and look for details in the first five chapters. Blackburn’s arguments inspire one to re-read the works she cites. Her Locations of Buddhism are centered around the Pirivena- Monasteries, Sri Pada or Adam’s Peak and the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. As such, she does not force herself to view Ven. Sumangala’s Sumangala’s engagements in “traditional” and “enlightened” categories or in “things pertaining to salvation” and “things of this world”, as Gombrich and Obeyesekere named them in 1988. Above all, Blackburn does not overlook the ritual significance of important temples nor juxtapose Buddhist scholarship and ritual practice of Buddhists to carve out a “pure Buddhism” that appeals to the West. This book shows the networks operating before the advent of “Protestant Buddhism” moving from the much hackneyed track followed by the researchers that opens with the Buddhist-Christian confrontation confrontation of the 1870s. For the reader acquainted with writings of the 1970s, Blackburn’ Blackburn’ss book poses many questions, inviting the reader to look beyond Olcott and Dharmapala and also to review Buddhist revival movements from a more broad-based and multidisciplinary standpoint. This means taking endeavours of monks in the field of education, preaching, networking with south-Asian monks and royalty into consideration. It also incorporates the agendas of local urban entrepreneurs who sponsored the projects, Kandyan and Sabaragamuwa aristocracy taking up the role of patrons and usage of modern media of that time, like the printing press, into the study. Much of this information is available in Sinhala recorded in the “Charitapadanas ” or eulogies written on Buddhist monks and newspapers of that time. To me, Locations of Buddhism has shown that the endeavours of Ven. Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala were not to “revive” but energize Buddhism receiving less patronage from the colonial ruler. ruler. After a lapse of over twenty years, a deep study of Buddhism of the colonial day based on texts has finally emerged, which can show methodologies for new research on Buddhist activism of post war Sri Lanka.
Dr. Asoka de Zoysa is Professor in German Studies, Department of Modern Languages University of Kelaniya.
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HANDY PERINBANAYAGAM AND THE JAFFNA YOUTH CONGRESS Learning lessons from an inspired era Rajan Philips
Kadirgamar, Santasilan, 2012, Handy Perinbanayagam Memorial Volume Volume and the Jaffna Youth Youth Congress Congress, Colombo: Kumaran Book House, pages 339, Price Rs. 1500/-
30 years in age. Perhaps naming the organization as ‘Youth Congress’, was a reflection of the youthfulness of its founders. It was unique in that it was a youth organization without allegiance to any parent organization . In fact, it was its own parent organization challenging in every way the established orthodoxy of Jaffna society, especially its casteism. The JYC leaders were committed to non-violence and democratic values.
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remarkable achievement of the book project is the simultaneous release of Part 1 of the book in all the three languages of the land. The parity of language, India’s cultural support and the occasion for learning lessons are all in keeping with the Gandhian inspiration to freedom, the inclusive nationalistic ideals and the emphasis on education and the privileging of national languages that were the hallmark of the Jaffna Youth Congress, Handy Perinbanayagam and his illustrious contemporaries. The short lived history of the Youth Congress is forever associated with introduction of universal franchise in 1931. In an act of inspired notoriety, the Youth Congress spearheaded Jaffna’s boycott of Sri Lanka’s inaugural election to the State Council established under the Donoughmore Constitution and involving one of the early exercises of universal voting rights anywhere in the world. The Youth Congress like many others rejected the Donoughmore Constitution for falling short of full independence, but only the Congress translated its rejection into practical action.
The 1931 boycott and its consequences The circumstances of the boycott and the intended and unintended consequences that flowed from it for Tamil politics as well as national politics offer many lessons about Tamil society and politics as well as their creative and destructive tensions with Sri Lankan society and polit ics. The Memorial Volume chronicles the circumstances and the events of a brief but tumultuous period in the history of Tamil political society without embellishment and faithful to the dictum that “facts are sacred.” It is for others to connect the plethora of dots in the subsequent evolution evol ution of Tamil politics and develop critical perspectives for historical analysis and prognosis. At the height of the 1931 boycott, the leading lights of the Jaffna Youth Congress (JYC), including Handy Perinbanayagam (HP, 1899-1977) were just over or under
Despite being called the Jaffna Youth Congress, the organization was anything but peninsular in outlook and stood for a free and united Lanka committed to universal values and ideals. The use of the place name (Jaffna) in the title was mostly geographical identification without political connotations. The linguistic emphasis was on privileging national languages (Tamil and Sinhalese) as opposed to English, and not as the basis for narrow linguistic nationalism. It is also significant that the JYC founders were inspired by Gandhian ideals of all-India nationalism rather than the antiBrahminical but pro-colonial politics of the Justice Party in Madras, precursor to South Indian Tamil nationalism. As Silan Kadirgamar has noted, the boycott activities of the JYC did not go unnoticed in the South. Philip Gunawardena described the JYC as the only organization “displaying political poli tical intelligence” and called on the rest of the country to follow the lead Jaffna was giving. Four years later in the midst of founding the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Colvin R. de Silva declared that the roots of the LSSP were inasmuch in the JYC in the North, as they were in the Suriya Mal movement in the South. But whereas the LSSP was able to build a mass base and become a force to be reckoned with in the South and to a lesser extent in the North, the JYC had disappeared even before the arrival of the LSSP. Counterfactually, it could be asked if the JYC leaders had contested the 1931 election, the course of Tamil politics would have been different. As it turned out, none of the JYC founders was able to win an election and become a parliamentarian. A number of them
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contested in elections after independence as candidates of either of the two Left parties. The boycott of the elections in Jaffna reduced Tamil representation in the State Council, the outcome was not popular in Jaffna after the euphoria over the boycott ended, and the JYC ended up paying the ultimate price for it. In t he South, outside of the Left circles, the boycott was misinterpreted as a response to the failure to secure communal representation even though none of the JYC leaders ever had any truck with the school of communal representation. The fact of the matter is that the first State Council, elected through universal franchise, also became the first communal hothouse. This led to the emergence of full throated communal politics in the North and in the South. The JYC had come and gone.
The sudden rise and the rapid fall of the JYC, says more about Tamil Tamil society than about the youthful idealism or naiveté of the JYC founders. The numerical size of the community was a factor in the sudden rise of influence of the JYC, and it was equally a factor in its demise. Most of the principal JYC leaders were great teachers and accomplished intellectuals. Even without electoral success, they were held in high esteem by the people, and even without becoming parliamentarians, they continued to be leaders of the people. We can only contrast the JYC experience with the more recent and tragic experience of the Tamil Tamil society involving invol ving a new generation of youth neither inspired by Gandhian ideals nor committed to universal values, non-violence, or democratic norms. Courtesy Island
Rajan Philips is a Researcher.
Now Available Available in the Suriya Sur iya Bookshop
Social Scientists' Association No. 12, Sulaiman Sulai man Terrace Terrace Colombo - 05 36 POLITY
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M.G. MENDIS IN HIS HEYDAY Kumari Jayawardena
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ne of the prominent trade union leaders of the 1940’s was M.G. Mendis, who was in the Left movement of the time. As a student at the Buddhist-Theosophist School (Mahinda College) he had been deeply influenced by Indian nationalism and during the second civil disobedience movement in India in 1930, he had discarded his European style-clothes and adopted the ‘national’ dress. Mendis was also influenced by Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe, an old boy of this school, who in 1931 had addressed the students. Mendis, who became a teacher at a Buddhist school joined the Suriya Mal movement in 1933, and after the formation of the L.S.S.P L .S.S.P.. in 1935 was the joint Secretary of the party. Following the split in the L.S.S.P. Mendis became the General Secretary of the United Socialist Party, and the editor of the party’s English journal, the United Socialist .
Communist Trade Union Activity
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he most important advance made by the Communist s in the early years of the war was in the trade union field, where they succeeded in replacing the L.S.S.P. as the chief political influence on the working class. The Communists were highly critical of the trade union leaders of previous decades. A.E. Goonesinha was criticized for his failure to lead the “class struggle” in Ceylon:
Led by the Communists.4 The Toddy Tappers Tappers Union became the strongest trade union in the non-estate sector, and the success of the strike gave a fillip not only to the Union but also to Malayali workers in urban factories. In 1940, the Toddy Tappers Union and the Colombo Workers’ Workers’ Club combined to form the United Socialist Party (U.S.P.), after the split with the LSSP. The second phase of Communist activity was the leadership given to the trade union movement by the United Socialist Party in 1940. The war had caused a certain dislocation in employment and a sudden rise in the cost of living, giving the U.S.P. a platform for agitation among the workers of Colombo. At their Congress in November 1940, the U.S.P. urged the workers to “close their ranks, strengthen their trade unions and wage a struggle for security of service, war bonuses, 25% increase in wages, and an eight hour day.5 In an article on the need for effective trade unions, M.G. M.G. Mendis stated that the war was “radicalizing the workers,” because the rise in prices, threats of dismissal and the dislocation of trade and industry had worsened the conditions of the working class; “it is only now that the workers are realizing that it is by combination and combination alone that they can defend their own rights against the encroachments of capital.6 The U.S.P. gave leadership to 16 trade unions which had a total membership of 3,300 workers.7 The most important of these was the All-Ceylon Toddy Tappers’ Tappers’ Union, and the AllCeylon Harbour Workers’ Union. In June 1940, a strike occurred among a section of the workers in the Harbour warehouses who demanded an increase in wages to meet the rise in the cost of living. Under the leadership of the U.S.P. the strikers formed themselves into the All-Ceylon Harbour Workers Union, with Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe as President, and M.G. Mendis and K. Ramanathan as Secretaries. The strike which lasted three days was settled when the main employer, the Ceylon Wharfage Company, agreed to give an increase in wages. 8
Goonesinha never realized the role and function of trade unions … (he) merely organized a general labour union of all workers by … when he saw that genuinely championing championing the cause of labour meant consolidating strikes struggles, fighting for labours immediate demands and pursuing a policy of class against class, he slowly and steadily retreated so far that today he is the friend of the Imperialists. 1
The trade union activities of the Communists in the early years of the war can be divided into three phases. First, was the formation of a strong union among toddy tappers 2 The great majority of the toddy tappers were Malayalis, a group of emigrants who had, since the depression of 1931, been subjected to attack and demands for their repatriation to India by Goonesinha’s organizations, and also by many of the Ceylon politicians. In December of 1939 and in early 1940, there were a series of disputes and strikes3 involving the toddy tappers and the renters.
The U.S.P. was also successful in starting the first trade unions among the workers of the large British tea and rubber packing factories in Colombo. These included the British Commercial company, Harrison & Crossfield, Brooke Bonds, 37
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Lipton & Co. Henderson & Co. (100 members) and Mackie & Co. (75 members). The union at Mackie & Co. was successful in getting eleven dismissed workers reinstated in 1940. In the same year the U.S.P. formed unions among press and hotel workers, domestic servants, shop assistants and the workers on unemployment relief schemes. Small unions of thirty members each were also begun at the India Pipe Company and the Cargo Boat Despatch Company.9 The advance of the U.S.P. in the trade union field was du e to the success of the Malayali toddy tappers’ strike in early 1940. These workers spread the news of their success to other Malayali workers in Colombo firms. The Labour Department reported, “the U.S.P. U.S.P. exploited the situation fully and captured Malayali labour and organized them in trade unions … Malayali labour, buffeted hither and thither by racial animosity and stern employers found a platform in this new party, to ventilate their grievances.”10 The majority of the U.S.P.. trade union members and many of the un ion officials U.S.P were Malayali, and during the first years of the war, they formed the backbone of Communist support in Colombo.
United Socialist Party existed in isolation; the need to unite these unions into one trade union body was recognized by the U.S.P., and on the 14 th of December 1940, the Ceylon trade Union Federation (C.T.U.F (C.T.U.F.) .) was formed. The founders of the new union were the leaders of the U.S.P., ¯ Dr. Wickremasinghe, M.G M.G.. Mendis, Mendi s, P. Kandiah, A. Vaidyalingam and K. Ramanathan. A Buddhist monk, the Rev. Saranankara was elected first President Presiden t of the C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. Others associated with formation of the C.T.U.F.) C.T.U.F.) were several skilled ski lled workers from engineering and tea and rubber packing factories who had been active in the U.S.P. trade unions T.W T.W.Pedrickhamy, .Pedrickhamy, Marshall Perera, P.D. P.D. David, L. Kulatunga, D.C. Hettiarachi, B.H. Peiris, and A. Gunasekera. Other prominent members were A.D. Charleshamy, who had been an active supporter of A.E. Goonesinha’s Union, and Ariyaratna, an ex-L.S.S.P ex-L .S.S.P.. executive committee member. The Malayali founder members of the C.T.U.F. included P. Shankar, a full time U.S.P. trade unionist (who had organized the toddy tappers), and several Malayali workers.
The Harbour Strike of 1941
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Of the three other Union Uni on leaders who were active in 1940, P. P. Kandiah was a graduate in Oriental Languages from Cambridge, where he participated in Communist politics during his stay there from 1936 to 1939. On his return to Ceylon, Kandiah became a lecturer at the Universit y, joined the U.S.P. U.S.P. and devoted a great deal d eal of his time to organising organisi ng trade unions. A. Vaidyalingam, Vaidyalingam, a graduate g raduate in mathematics of the Ceylon University, went to Cambridge in 1936 on a Government Scholarship and did the Mathematical Tripos; he too was actively involved in left politics while in Cambridge and also became interested in the organisational problems of trade unionism. Returning Returni ng to Ceylon in 1939, Vaidyalingam joined the Colombo Col ombo Workers’ Workers’ Club and later the U.S.P. and concentrated his efforts on trade union work. K. Ramanathan was a journalist who had been a member of the L.S.S.P.; he as active during the Toddy Tappers strike and edited left-wing newspapers in Tamil and Malayalam. In the formation of the U.S.P., he worked in organizing trade unions in Colombo.
The Ceylon Trade Union Federation
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he third phase of trade unionism which as the most important advance in trade union activity by the Communists, was the formation of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation. The trade unions which had been formed by the
he most important labour dispute that took place during the early years of the war was the strike of harbour workers in July 1941. This strike marked the appearance of several trade unions in the port led to important wage increases being granted to these workers. The strike also caused concern among the government and military authorities about the danger of strikes dislocating vital work in the harbour during the war, and resulted in the government proclaiming the harbour an essential service under the Defence Regulations. The Harbour Strike was also the last major strike supported support ed by the C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. before its change in policy poli cy towards strikes consequent on its later support of the war effort. The repatriation of many Indian harbour workers in 1939 and the reduction of unemployment during 1941, had led to a shortage of labour among the permanent labour force in the Colombo harbour.12 The work available was at irregular intervals because ships came in convoys during the war, leading to periods of intense activity and intervals when no work was available. The burden of thi s fell on the permanent labour force, as the casual workers did not have the experience or the stamina to work at great pressure, and the wages paid to the workers varied with the total output of a work gang.13 The reduction of the wages of the permanent labour force that resulted, led to great discontent. The strike ended after nine days when the Unions accepted the Government’s offer of a Commission Inquiry by the Controller of Labour and an interim award within a few days;
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The Controllers interim report clearly brought out the urgent need for an all-round increase in wages, and recommended an increase of Rs 3/- per 1,000 bags of rice going to the contractor or overseer.14
government provided for the sale of Ceylon’s total output of tea, rubber, plumbago, copra and coconut oil at fix ed prices.
The C.T.U.F. took the initiative in the renewal of the strike and issued leaflets stating, “we cannot be patient any longer, we have got a splendid opportunity let us avail ourselves of it, workers, do not come to work today,”15 The strike was illegal as the harbour had been declared an essential service in July 1941, and eight C.T.U.F. leaders (including M.G. Mendis¸ K. Madavan, K. Edwin and Lionel Kulatunga) were arrested and charges with inciting workers to strike. The government appointed the controller of Labour, F.C. F.C. Gimson to report on the strike and decided to publish the Gimson Report immediately and thereby secure a return to work by the strikers. The strike was called off on 27th November after the workers had been assured that the Report would be implemented. The employers resisted the minimum wage recommendations (Rs 30 for a married man and Rs 25 for a bachelor per month) and the 25% increase of wages to workers on coal cargo. The Governor, finding that the employers “refused to accept voluntarily certain vital recommendations” 16 used his authority under the Defence Regulations to declare particular services in the harbour to be “essential work” which made it obligatory for the employers to accept the decisions of the Commission appointed by the government. The harbour strike was a major victory for the C.T.U.F., C.T.U.F., and represented the first important trade union success in Sri Lanka since the twenties. The strike demonstrated the fact that the workers were in a strong position to obtain concessions; the revival of trade and the growing shortage of labour, combined with a sudden rise in the cost of living increased the bargaining power of the workers; further, at a time of crisis (because of the war) the government was anxious to avoid industrial discontent discon tent and was willing to make concessions. But the harbour strike which illustrated the potential strength of the labour movement was also the last major strike of the war years. From 1942 until 1945, the opportunity for militant industrial indus trial action, was foregone, and the workers were restrained by b y the C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. which by 1942, changed its policy towards labour agitation.
The Communists, who had from 1940 onwards worked in the Colombo Workers’ Club, the United Socialist Party and the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, came into the open with the formation of the Communist Party. The leaders of the party were composed of the older group of L.S.S.P. L.S.S.P. members of the thirties, (namely Dr. Wickremasinghe, M.G. Mendis, Saranankara Thero and T. Duraisingham), Duraisingham), re-inforced by two groups of university graduates, from the Ceylon University and from Cambridge. The years 1945 to 1947 formed the period of the greatest upsurge of trade union activity in the history of the Sri Lanka labour movement. The economic uncertainties of the postwar years, and the restraint on labour activity during the war, were partially responsible for the outburst; but the main factor that caused the labour unrest was the political ferment of these years when the issue was self-government and the end of colonial rule in Ceylon. The CT.U.F., claiming to represent 25,000 workers, sent a petition to the State Council in September 1945, urging the government to provide better employment opportunities, and it was suggested that this could be achieved through industrialization as “we do not think we can solve our problem by ‘back to the land’ policies of peasant agriculture or by being a feeder of raw materials for the imperialist market.”17 The demand was also made for the repeal of the ban on strikes; “now that fascism has been defeated … strikes are one of the chief weapons of the working class and we are not prepared to give up the right of its use any more”). 18 Other demands included an 8 hour hou r day in all trades, a bonus of three months pay to workers in essential industries, a national minimum wage, pension rights, full trade union rights rig hts for government workers, the release of a worker impris oned for sedition,19 and the reinstatement of an active C.T.U.F. worker dismissed for union activities.20 In September 1945, the C.T.U.F. organized a march of workers to the State Council to present the petition. Led by M.G.. Mendis, over 10,000 workers joined the procession, but M.G were prevented by the Police from approaching the State Council and the Board of Ministers refused to meet the C.T.U.F. leaders. The workers then held a meeting in Price Park at which Mendis said that because the Ministers had refused to listen to the workers’ demands, they had to make use of the strike weapon which had been discarded during the war. In spite of strikes being illegal, a token half-day
The Inflationary Conditions 1942–45
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fter 1942, the Ceylon economy was geared to the war effort, and government intervention interventi on in economic matters increased. Agreements signed between Ceylon and the British Britis h
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Footnotes
strike was called in September 1945 and 8,000 workers on the tramways, the commercial firms,21 the municipality22 and harbour23 workers joined the strike; three of the tramway workers who were active union members, were dismissed for being ‘ringleaders’ of the strike.24 The result of this action was a further strike among all tramway drivers dri vers and conductors and sympathy strikes by workers at the Municip ality, the tea and rubber packing stores, and the harbour and engineering firms.
1
The C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. which claimed that there were 30,000 3 0,000 workers on strike, encouraged the strikers to take direct action, and members of the Communist Party and the th e C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. (includin (including g Hedi Keuneman) prevented the trams being run by ‘blacklegs’ by sitting down on the tramlines. There were scuffles with the police, and M.G. Mendis and other trade union officials were arrested. The strike assumed serious proportions, for many of the workers in essential services had stopped work. The government decided to refer the dispute to arbitration, but the strike was settled through the intervention of the Mayor of Colombo. The three dismissed workers were reinstated and the strikers agreed to resume work. This strike, which had lasted six days, was an occasion for the C.T.U.F. to make its impact as a ‘fighting’ trade union organization. During the war years militancy in the form of strikes had been kept at a minimum through the activity of the C.T.U.F. C.T.U.F. but immediately the war was over, the C.T C.T.U.F. .U.F. was determined to assert itself in the trade union field. The settlement of the strike was acclaimed by M.G. Mendis as an “outstanding victory”25 and a victory procession of workers wo rkers went round the streets of Colombo. The Communist weekly Forward reported: “it is the C.T.U.F. and the Communist Party who are now known as the undisputed leaders of the working class of Colombo”.26 M.G. Mendis was perhaps the “undisputed M.G. “und isputed leader” and most prominent trade-union activitist activitis t of this militant period in the urban trade-union movement. His active participation continued in the 1950s when he was involved in several notable struggles. In later years too, he was a prominent activist in the Communist Party and a member of parliament. He is remembered today as a courageous fighter for the rights of the working class of Sri Lanka.
The United Socialist , 19 Nov. 1940. “Trade Unionism in Ceylon” by M.G. Mendis. 2 Tappers were employed in climbing coconut trees and extracting the juice from the coconut flower which was made into an intoxicating drink. 3 A threatened strike of the toddy tappers in Dec. 1939 led to an agreement being made between the renters and the Union on increased wages and improved working conditions. The failure of some renters to abide by the agreement led to strikes of tappers in Kandana on Feb. 1st and in Kandy on Feb. 5, 1940. A settlement settlement of the dispute was reached after further negotiations between the Toddy tappers Union and the renters with the Deputy Controller of Labour acting as arbitrator arbitrator.. This agreement represented a great success for the Union as nearly all demands were conceded by the renters. 4 The Secretary of Toddy Tappers Union (M.G. Mendis and its President, (K. Ramanathan) were members of the dissident section of the L.S.S.P L.S.S. P. who broke away from the party in 1940. 19 40. 5 The United Socialist , 19 Nov. 1940. Trade Unionism in Ceylon by M.G. Mendis. 6 ibid. 7 Labour Dept. File T 18, Part I. 8 ibid. 9 Labour Dept. File, T 18, Part 1. 10 ibid. 12 CDN, 25 Jan. 1941. 13 CDN, 6 August 1941. Report of Controller of Labour on Harbour Strike. 14 CDN 6 August, 1941. 15 ibid. 16 CGA. File C.F C. F. A112/40. Letter of Governor to Sec. of State. 8 Dec. 1941. 17 CGA. File CFA/112 CFA/112 1940 CTUF Petition of 16 Sept. 1945. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. “The dismissal of D.P.Jayawardena, Factory Sec. of Hay ley & Kenny is a definite case of victimization and an attempt to destroy trade unions … an organized attempt to hit at the rights of the working class.” 21 Mackwoods, Harrison & Crossfield, Hayley & Co. Vavasseurs, Vavasseurs, Ceylon Cold Stores, Adamjee Oil Mills, Hoare & Co. British Commercial Co., Ceylon Commercial Co. 22 Hulftsdorp scavengers, Maligakanda Water Works, Municipal Workshops. 23 Workers W orkers of Wharfage Co. Cargo C argo Boat Despatch Co., C o., Narottam & Pereira. 24 File CFA/112/6 loc. Cit. 25 File CFA/112/6 loc. Cit. 26 Forward , 26 Sept. 1945.
Kumari Jayawardena is the author of Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon.
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DOCUMENTS
The SSA carried out study in 2009-2010 on the theme, “State Reform from Below:Local and Community Initiatives Initiat ives for Peace Buildi Building, ng, Development and Politi Political cal Reforms in Sri Lanka.”. In the course of this study, the SSA’s research team examined issues relating to local democracy and local governance in rural Sri Lanka. This document is one of the several policy briefs emerged as outputs of this research initiative.
SSA POLICY BRIEF ON LOCAL DEMOCRACY Reforming Local Government: Ideas for Better and More Democratic Local Government
Why Local Government?
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Introduction
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eforming local government has been on the poli tical and policy agendas of Sri Lanka’s governments since independence. The Choksy Commission of 1954, the Moragoda Committee of 1978, the Presidential Commission of 1998, and the National Policy on Local Government of 2009 are important landmarks of the continuing interest in local government reform. The present UPFA government recently took steps to change the system of elections to local government bodies, seeking to reintroduce the ward system with limited space for proportional representation. The government’s proposal for establishing a system of Jana Sabhas at the community level of local government also indicates a possible reform perspective. p erspective. During the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) deliberations a few years ago, some political parties, too, showed a keen interest in strengthening local government in Sri Lanka. Some even suggested the revival of the Gam Sabha system.
ocal government is usually understood as ‘government beyond the centre.’ It is the branch of government closest to the people, which looks after the essential local needs of the citizenry. This is why in popular imagination local government is seen as the ‘door step government.’ From the point of view of the theory of democracy, local government is the site where ‘more democracy’ is available to ‘common people’ at the ‘local level.’ Political theorists also see local government as the arena where the problem of the distance between voters and representatives can be overcome. The detachment of voters and their elected representatives is a shortcoming in representative democracy. Some argue that this problem of detachment between the representative and the represented can be overcome by facilitating greater and continuous participation of people in governance. According to this approach, local government provides the best site for continuous popular participation. In brief, local government is accepted as the level of government that can facilitate more democracy.
Local Government in Political Theory
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olitical thinkers have often recognized the capacity of local government to make room for more democracy. For example, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher of the mid-19th century who wrote a major book about democracy, considered local government as the mainstay of local democracy. He also saw local democracy as a school of political education and a safety valve of democracy for the entire nation.
Why should Sri Lanka’s Lank a’s local government be reformed? What new elements should be introduced? What objectives should any new reform of local government serve? Reflecting on these questions would be helpful to envision a sustainable system of local government that will deepen Sri Lanka’s democracy, enhance the quality of democratic governance and make local government meaningful to peopl e’s lives. Before reflecting on these questions, let us first try to understand the meaning and significance of local government in a democracy.
In de Tocqueville’s Tocqueville’s assessment, local lo cal democracy was a school of political education because it taught people how to use power democratically before they became national political
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leaders. Local government, according to de Tocqueville, constituted a complementary ‘second track’ of governance, which made possible stable governance at the ‘first track,’ that is national, government. Citizens trained in the ‘primary school’ of local democracy would be politically enlightened, independent and experienced. They would be able to protect the everyday life of their fellow citizens and communities against encroachment by the national government.
also blamed the local government system for not playing “an outstanding role in the mainstream of administration and development.” The Commission even went on to say that the framework of local government in Sri Lanka is “outdated” and “at [a] crossroads at present.” In a study being carried out by the Social Scientists’ Association, some of the major weaknesses of Sri Lanka’s existing local government system as a sphere of democratic local governance were identified. The following are these weaknesses:
John Stuart Mill, 19th century English polit ical philosopher, believed that local government could provide a means for dividing government authority so that excessive centralization of central government authority could be checked. According to Mill, local government could even become an alternative to the central government. Therefore, Mill advocated the autonomy of local government. Mill also saw the democratic potential of local government. He believed that local government could be an effective training ground grou nd for citizens in the practice of democracy. Mill argued that local government bodies, unlike national government bodies, offered many citizens citi zens the chance of being elected. By performing local functions, local citizens could receive political education. It offered political space for those who were excluded from the national processes of democracy. Thus, Mill saw the value of local lo cal government in broad-basing opportunities for political participation and creating conditions for greater social inclusion. This appreciation of local government gave rise to the concept of ‘local democracy.’ According to some theorists, as a form of local democracy, local government bases itself on the decentralization of power. It provides opportunities t o use local knowledge to meet local needs. It al so provides the most accessible avenue for political participation. People feel most competent to engage in local politi cs. At the same time, people can have a sense of ownership for local initiatives and in turn ensure the sustainability of services if the participatory element is respected by the local authority.
Weaknesses in Local Government in Sri Lanka
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here is both official and popular recognition that Sri Lanka’s local government has been in a state of ‘crisis’ for some time. For example, the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Local Government Reforms (1999) noted that Sri Lanka’s local government has become “just another subject in the administrative structure.” It is “weak in resources, not effective in management.” The Commission
(i) Dominance of the central government in the affairs of local government : Ministries, institutions, agencies and personnel of the central government have greater authority, resources and presence over local government bodies. As elected institutions of governance, local government bodies are placed at a level below the prov incial councils. A host of agencies of the central government function at the local level. They include the offices of the District Secretariat, the Divisional Secretariat, local offices of various government ministries and departments, Grama Niladharis and other officials such as the Samurdhi officer, cultivation officer and family health officer. One consequence is a shift in the balance of power in favour of agencies of the central government. This has created disparities between elected institutions of local governance and bureaucratic institutions of local administration, at the expense of local democratic processes of governance. (ii) Political dependence for resources: The dependence of local government institutions on politicians and parties in power for resource allocation is widespread. Almost as a general rule, pradeshiya sabhas in the t he periphery have access only to limited financial resources. Annual Annual grants for salaries, members’ allowances and a very limited amount of capital grants, mainly for roads, are the areas of support from the central government which come through the provincial council. Local authorities are supposed to generate income from their own sources, as permitted by the governing legislation, such as the Municipal Councils Ordinance, Ordinance, Urban Councils Ordinance and Pradeshiya Sabha Act. These local sources of income include property rates, taxes, licence duties, tax on vehicles and animals, trade licences, rents on markets and trade stalls, parking fees, fines and stamp duties. These provide only a thin revenue base for local authorities, preventing them from performing even their limited development mandate.
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(iii) Lack of dynamism: There is a general perception that local government institutions are inefficient, inactive and therefore lack dynamism. Even many local government representatives accept lack of dynamism as an inescapable reality. Some critics even highlight issues of corruption, nepotism, lack of energy and initiative, disregard for procedures, administrative inefficiency, underutilization of assets and inability to effectively respond to the development agendas of the central government. (iv) Absence of people’ people’ss participation: Although in theory local government should facilitate people’s participation in local governance, Sri Lanka’s local government institutions are not known for facilitating such participation. Even the limited opportunities available for consultation of th e people through committees of urban councils and pradeshiya sabhas are utilized neither by the councils nor the citizens. Local government institutions have not developed a culture of governance that requires citizen input and popular participation. As a result, local government has lost its democratic character and become totally controlled by political parties, officials and the central government. In brief, local government is not a form of government by the people, or for the people. As a result, currently almost all local authorities have lost credibility as governing bodies of the people. (v) Local power elites: The absence of popular participation has led to local government emerging as a space dominated by local power elites, linked to political parties and public office. This explains why local government elections have become moments for intense and sometimes violent power struggles among local power elites, as well as among immediate family members of powerful national and provincial politicians.
(vii) La Lack ck of ac acco coun unta tabi bili lity ty an and d res respo pons nsiv iven enes esss: One widely held criticism of local government in Sri Lanka is the absence of mechanisms and practices for either institutional accountability or democratic accountability. Institutional accountability is an outcome of proper rules, regulations and procedures to ensure ‘upward accountability’ – that is accountability to higher authorities such as the provincial council and central government. Democratic accountability entails accountability to citizens who elect local government bodies. The lack of democratic accountability is accompanied by the lack of responsiveness to people’s needs and day-today requirements, such as requests for building permits, trade licences, etc. (viii) Lack of accessibility : Even the lowest units of local government bodies, pradeshiya sabhas, are not easily accessible to people, due to institutional and political reasons. Since most citizens view the local government bodies bod ies as either irrelevant or not particularly useful to their everyday needs, people are reluctant to access local government institutions. In rural areas, the pradeshiya sabha office is often located far away from the people. Marginalized social groups and women rarely find local government institutions useful to their needs. Under conditions of extreme politicization of rural public life, citizens of the losing party have no inclination to access their local government bodies. All this has led to the detachment of local government from the people.
People’s Criticism of Local Government
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s our study found, people as citizens also have a fairly critical understanding of Sri Lanka’s Lan ka’s local government. The main points of citizen criticism are as follows: (i) Alie Alienat nation ion of loca locall gove governme rnment nt represen representat tatives ives from citizens: Most members of local authorities do not maintain close links with the people once elections are over. After winning the election, members are more inclined to ‘serve their kith and kin’ than those who voted them into power. Candidates who lost an election have no interest in sustaining any meaningful links with the voters between elections. They reemerge during the next election, sometimes on a different political party list.
(vi) Perpetuates social and political exclusion: Democratic institutions have a social role to play in societies like Sri Lanka. That role is to facilitate social transformation and provide space and opportunities for marginalized and excluded social groups to share benefits of democracy. The poor, women, oppressed caste communities, marginalized communities and ethnic minorities are examples of such groups whose social upliftment local democracy should promote. Sri Lanka’s local government institutions do not serve this objective of social change, social equity and societal democratization. Therefore, local government as a whole has become socially conservative, perpetuating social and political exclusion.
(ii) Local elected power as a stepping stepp ing stone st one to corruption: Most elected members are corrupt. They do development work only when such work enables them to make money from contracts. Getting elected to a local government body marks the beginning of a career for personal and family wellbeing, as well as for upward political mobility. 43
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(iii) Lack of imagination and creativity: Even when a chairman or members want to do something for the community, the local councils do not have adequate resources. They expect the central government or the provincial council to provide them with resources. Councils do not think innovatively about how to strengthen the resource base necessary for public work. They are not innovative or imaginative enough to marshal local resources and launch new initiatives for development. This is because local authorities have no concept or long-term strategic vision for involving people in the area in decision-making or resource mobilization. They do not have the habit of consulting citizens who elected them. ‘They know everything. So, why should they consult voters?’ (iv) Lo ca l go ve rn m en t re pr o du ce s m al e po we r in governance: Articulated by women political and social activists, this critique points to the continuing alienation of women citizens from local government institutions. This women’s critique points to a number of dimensions of male dominance in local political structures. Women rarely get opportunities to contest local elections, since they are treated by party bosses, both national and local, as candidates who ‘cannot win elections.’ Sri Lanka has recorded the lowest percentage of women representation in national and local legislative bodies in the Asian region.
How to Respond to the Crisis and Criticism?
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here is a general recognition in Sri Lanka that the country’ss local government is in crisis. Criticism of local country’ government, as outlined above, is also generally shared by many. Policy makers, scholars and donors are quite aware of the crisis as well as the criticism. In response, three perspectives have emerged in recent times to rectify the weaknesses of local government.
the units of governance that are closest to the people and lowest in the order of institutional structure of the state) as the guiding principle for Sri Lanka’s local government. (ii) Strengthening the institutional capacity of local government : This perspective seeks to address the institutional weaknesses of Sri Lanka’s local government. Ideas proposed include: (a) reforming existing laws to broaden the revenue base of local authorities, (b) new legislation to ensure better financial management and accountability, (c) training and capacity building in all asp ects of management, (d) provision of better infrastructure facilities facilities such as buildings, office equipment and e-governance facilities, and (e) training programmes in participatory budgeting. (iii) Bring Bringing ing local govern government ment under the control of the central government : This is a new perspective being advanced by the present UPFA government. It has two components: (a) to ensure that all, or at least most, local government bodies are politically controlled by the UPFA, and (b) local government bodies are controlled by the central government. The argument for this approach is both political and developmentalist. The political argument is that as elected bodies of governance, local government institutions should generally implement the political polit ical agenda of the ruling party. The developmentalist argument is that the local government should play a direct development developmen t role in the country, and the best way to ensure this goal is by bringing local government under the political as well as administrative control of the central government. This will also ensure central government financial support, better management and accountability as well direct guidance and supervision for local government.
Should Local Government Be Brought under Central Control?
(i) Making local government g overnment the ‘third ‘thi rd tier’ of government : This perspective seeks to address the question of institutional neglect of local government by granting it constitutional and structural status as a separate sphere of governance. This was a key recommendation made by the Presidential Commission on Local Government Reform of 1999. This position was endorsed by the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government in its Policy Statement on Local Government, issued in December 2009. This perspective also proposes a ‘new vision’ for Sri Lanka’s local government. This ‘new vision’ seeks to make local government independent from the control of the central government as well as of provincial councils. It advocates ‘subsidiarity’ (strengthening (strengthening
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rom the point of view of democracy, the answer to this question is ‘no.’ Democratic governance requires autonomy of local government, and not its control by the central government. Central government control of local government will lead to the serious erosion of local democracy, democracy, which has already been weakened by a variety of other factors. What Sri Lanka requires is not less local democracy, but more local democracy. This can be achieved by ensuring greater autonomy to local government, accompanied by a programme to overcome other institutional, administrative and managerial shortcomings.
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An Agenda for Institutional Reform
The second is the expansion of the revenue base of local bodies through amendments to existing laws.
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mong scholars and practitioners of local government in Sri Lanka, there is shared argreement that an agenda for reform should be based on the principle of institutional autonomy of local government. Greater, and not less, autonomy is a necessary condition for overcoming the present crisis. This autonomy should cover three spheres: (a) political, (b) institutional, and (c) financial.
An Agenda for a Stronger Culture of Local Democratic Governance
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s the popular critique of local government in Sri Lanka clearly indicates, institutional autonomy alone is not adequate to make local government relevant and meaningful to citizens. Reform should address this question of citizen alienation. This Thi s calls for a reform agenda aimed at democratic capacity building of local government. Some proposals arising from the popular critique are as follows:
Political autonomy of local government calls for accepting the principle that local government bodies need not be an extension of the regime in power at the centre. Local government elections should not be viewed as an extension of national election campaigns either. This will enable local political actors involved in local government as well as citizens to focus on local issues, local agendas and local development needs. Ensuring the local character of local government is necessary for the democratic rebuilding of Sri Lank a’s local government.
(i) Reintroduce the ward system to enable closer interaction between citizens and their local representatives. (ii) Make the lowest of the local government units smaller than the present pradeshiya sabhas. The present Grama Niladhari division can provide the ideal size of the lowest unit of local government to ensure better accessibility to citizens as well as closer citizen engagement with local representatives.
Institutional autonomy calls for establishing local government as a separate tier of government, ensuring it constitutional recognition and status. This should aim at gu aranteeing local government relative independence from provincial councils as well as from the central government. It should also be accompanied by a programme of institution building necessary for a separate sphere of government. Institutional autono my is necessary to make local government an active, robust and dynamic level of governance.
(iii) Assure representation in local government bodies to women, social and ethnic minorities and the poor through a quota system. This is a positive lesson to be learned from India’s Panchayati Raj system, which has a quota system of representation for women and depressed castes/tribes. Assured representation is necessary to overcome the political exclusion at the local level that arises from social exclusion. The principle behind this reform is ‘democratic inclusion.’ This is one way that ‘more democracy’ can be made available to ‘common people’ at the local level.
Financial autonomy should aim at strengthening the financial base of local government bodies so that they can serve the public and implement programmes of development without depending on external sources of support, such as the provincial council, line ministries and central government. Financial autonomy can be ensured through two main poli cy reforms.
(iv) A change of law alone is not adequate for making local government more democratic. It requires action on the part of citizens and local citizen groups. While laws must be introduced to engage citizens in planning, implementation, budgeting, monitoring and accountability, proactive citizen participation is necessary for democratic local governance. The following are elements that constitute a democratic culture of citizen involvement in local government:
The first is direct annual development grants to local government bodies by the central government, irrespective of the political party in power in the local bodies. To ensure autonomy, an independent Local Government Finance Commission should be established. The Commission can determine, allocate and monitor this process. For local bodies in economically underdeveloped areas, where people are mostly poor, sources of tax income are meager, and development needs are greater, more economic assistance should be extended on the principle of equalization.
(a) Sri Lanka’s rural society has many voluntary citizen associations. These citizen associations can form themselves into a forum for: (i) discussing policy priorities for their local body, (ii) identifying development needs and priorities of the community, (iii) inviting elected representatives for discussions
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Deepening Local Democracy
and engagement, (iv) preparing development programmes for the community along with budgeting, and (v) monitoring the progress and activities of the local council. The principle that guides these activities is the creation and maintenance of a local forum for democratic deliberation.
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he reform ideas suggested above can be viewed as the basis for regenerating Sri Lanka’s local government. However, local government can work better only if there are political conditions and the will for the sharing of political power with citizens at the lowest level of governance. The reform ideas outlined above have the capacity to deepen Sri Lanka’s local democracy. democracy. The deepening of local democracy is a precondition for better local government. Better local government is a condition for better democracy.
(b) Citizens or representatives of citizen associations can attend monthly council meetings to monitor council deliberations and provide feedback. When councilors know that their meetings are monitored by citizens, they tend to work better and be conscious of direct accountability to citizens.
Members and officials of the Village Council, Mirissa. A picture taken in 1967.
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SRI LANKA: IS THE POLICE SPOKESPERSON LIVING ON THE MOON? A Statement Statement from the Asian Human Rights Ri ghts Commission
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oday, June 4, in the Daily Mirror on line edition the police spokesperson, SP Ajith Rohana, is quoted as saying “Generally, as a practice torture never takes place i n Lankan Police stations.” This police spokesperson, who is also said to be an Attorney-at-Law, is further quoted as saying: “Torture is often misconstrued by the Media and the public. When the Police go to apprehend a suspect, if there is resistance the Police will use force in order to arrest him. This isn’t torture; nor is using force to prevent damage to public or private property torture”.
Commission which has already been seen by thousands of people both in Sri Lanka and outside. He may see SRI LANKA: The Police Torture Epidemic in Sri Lanka — a documentary In 2011 alone, the AHRC published 102 Urgent Appeals cases which are also available on the internet here. There are already 25 cases published for 2012 to date.
Perhaps, this Attorney-at-Law and the police spokesperson may have never read any of the judgements of the Supreme Court regarding the torture that has taken place in Sri Lankan police stations. These cases are in the hundreds, and the kind of physical torture includes assaults which have resulted in kidney failure (the case of Gerald Perera), instances where oedema on the brain has been caused due the victim's head being placed beneath heavy books which were then struck with bars (the case of Lalith Rajapakse), and so many d eaths which have happened after custodial torture, on e of the most recent being that of the death of Mr. Chandrasiri Dasanayaka of Thalpitiya at the Wadduwa Police Station and the killing at the Dompe Police Station which lead to the people attacking the station and so many hundreds of other cases. SP Rohana seems to be a police spokesperson who does not appear to read. The Daily Mirror on the very same day reported in its print version several cases of torture under the title ‘Suspects claim police brutality after arrest’. One of the suspects is in serious condition and he has also been admitted to a hospital. It would have helped SP Rohana to have looked at some audio visuals if he is not in the habit of doing any reading. Had he examined YouTube, YouTube, he would have hav e been able to watch wat ch over a hundred and fifty Sri Lankan victims of torture speaking of their ordeals with graphic detail. It is not too late for him to have a look at these firsthand accounts of torture by the victims themselves by just taking the time and trouble to go to YouTube.
It may of course be no use to give reading material to this police spokesperson, but if he does care he may also read a special compilation — torture & ill-treatment in Sri Lanka. Further in 2011, the AHRC also reported on 325 cases of torture in the book Police Torture Cases — Sri Lanka 1998-2011. Of course, there is no point in reminding the police spokesman about the last report of the United Nations Committee against Torture which dealt at length on the torture taking place in Sri Lanka. And about so many communications of the UN Human Rights Committee where the Committee expressed views in favour of the victims of torture who went before it. SP Ajith Rohana made this statement denying that the police in Sri Lanka have a reputation for engaging in routine torture in order to defend the new bill introduced to parliament giving the police the power to detain suspects charged under some offenses for up to 48 hours instead of the 24 hours, which has been the rule that has existed for over a century. If the police engage in so much torture within the 24 hour limit, how much torture we will see when helpless suspects have to spend twice that amount of time inside a police station. The reported cases of torture clearly indicate that most suspects who are tortured brutally are in fact, innocent persons who have been taken into custody without any evidence and often the purpose of the arrest is to find a suspect for crimes that the police have failed to resolve. With the introduction of the new rule of detention for 48 hours, many more persons will be made substitute
If that is too much trouble, then, he could look into this documentary published by the Asian Human Rights
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criminals after brutal torture forcing them to confess to crimes they know nothing of.
The IGP likewise should call the police spokesman and question him about his statement on police torture in Sri Lanka. The IGP should show the police spokesman the letters he has been receiving about persons being tortured at police stations.
Police torture in Sri Lanka has also become a lucrative business opportunity for police officers. The families are willing to spend whatever they have in order to protect their people from being tortured. Now, this opportunity for making money by the abuse of the powers of arrest and detention will naturally increase. Besides this, Sri Lankans are today unfortunate to have people in the officer cadre blatantly lying to them without shame. Tomorrow a former Attorney General will be summoned to court to answer questions about a statement he made at the last session of the UN Committee against Torture when he was representing the Sri Lankan government. He said that he was aware of where Prageeth Eknaligoda, the missing journalist, is now living in some country abroad. He is now being called upon to explain this statement.
It would be less embarrassing for the IGP if he would appoint a police spokesman who has the capacity to read the judgements of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court and High Courts and also read the reports published by newspapers and human rights organisations. About the AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a Hong Kong-based Kong-based human rights group.
Forthcoming from the SSA . k n i y l d n e i r f y l l a t . n ) e m m o n c o . r i s v n n o e s u d r e a s k a @ b o f l n i i o ( e . l d b a t t L e ) g t e v v P ( c i s x n o o t S n o & n e , n e t e a r r f a C n O u V r a h K t y i b w d d e e t t n n i i r r P P
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