Propaganda in the late 1970’s contributed to the massive anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983, and it remains to be seen as to what extent the current anti-Muslim propaganda will influence the Sri Lankan State and its communities 
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Sri Lanka has just emerged from a war in which the Sri Lankan state won. Whilst being happy that the war ended with a certain outcome, we could have asked ourselves why we had the war in the first place. Why thirty years of conflict? What needs to be done to prevent such conflict? It seems to me that the answer has been that the way to prevent another cycle of conflict is to tighten up, to pre-empt, and to securitise. In certain areas it is necessary to be more vigilant in security and strategic terms, but the fundamental lesson has not been learned, and that lesson is that we have not been able to formulate, forge or construct a social contract among the constituent components of our citizenry. 
This isn’t a simple dilemma, because there are certain specificities and certain exceptionalities that have to be taken into account. One such specificity is that the island of Sri Lanka is indeed the only place in which there are Sinhalese, those who speak the Sinhalese language in any significantly large number. We do talk about better ordered and fairer societies such as Singapore where there are 75% of Chinese, but then there are a billion Chinese in China. As far as the Sinhalese are concerned, this island is home and this is the only place they can call home. This is a reality. 
Does this mean that the island belongs solely and primarily to the Sinhalese, and that everybody else has to put up with being second class citizens, legally, constitutionally or otherwise? Is that the nature of the only social contract that can issue from the specificity that I mention? I do not think so, not only because it is wrong and undesirable, but also because it won’t work. 
Much depends on how diversity is viewed. This is almost a commonplace: the idea that diversity is a resource. The more variegated we are, the richer we are. Yet to be successfully propagated,  this is an idea that has to be disseminated because the flip side of that, which is the attitude and practice of considering only one’s own ethnic, ethno-lingual or ethno-religious community as the nation, has the same result as inbreeding has in any family. What has been going on is cultural inbreeding and an advocacy of it as some form of authenticity or purity. The consequence of this has been cycle upon cycle of conflict issuing from a sense of mutual alienation. 
If one is able to recognise that diversity means richness and richness is a resource, then one would look very differently at the matrix or the mosaic that is Sri Lankan society. 
So the war having ended in a victory over separatism, the spirit of separatism still lives, and I do not mean in the form of what Government spokesmen inelegantly call “the LTTE rump”. What I mean is that the spirit of separating one’s connectivity from The Other continues. When I came upon the propaganda against the Muslim community in recent years and months, I was reminded about that old joke “it’s déjà vu all over again” because it is exactly the same as what was out there before July ‘83. So the comparison is not today with July ‘83, it is with what led to July ’83, it is the run up to July ‘83. I refer to the years from ‘77 to ‘83, a period covered by the Sansoni Commission, the violence of ‘77, ‘79, ‘81 and finally the massive explosion of 1983. The road to July ‘83 was paved, prepared, and though perhaps not intended in that form, by anti-Tamil propaganda. At the time, it came from within the government. You had anti-Tamil propaganda with illustrations being sent out in envelopes with a stamp of the then Minister of Industry, Mr. Cyril Mathew. It is the same kind of toxic waste material that is being put out today against the Muslim community, though not officially, not from within the government. 
I am particularly worried and anxious, that the current wave of the anti-Muslim propaganda is on population growth rates. Violence in such a context would not be preeminently anti-property but anti-persons, because if the name of the game is numbers, and rates of population growth, and the number of children that the other has, then any violence is bound to seek to address that particular problem. In other words, the solution would be seen as one of an ethnic cleansing or ethno-religious cleansing. 
I am happy that President Rajapaksa did what he did and said what he did on the subject. Then again I also remember that in 1981, not ‘83 but ‘81, President Jayewardene condemned the violence that had taken place in the Hill country. I remember his speech in which he talked of a “crisis of civilization”. This was in ‘81 not in ‘83 but it could not and did not stop the slide to violence. So as John F. Kennedy use to say “Never mind what he says, watch his hands”. It can be said that there are no majority and minorities, but then watch their hands. Is that the way policy is formulated and implemented? Is it really the case that there are no majority and minorities? I am quite unconvinced of this. 
Deriving from the specificity of the Sinhalese and their situation on the island of Sri Lanka, you can go either way: either an exclusionary solution that imposes itself on others or comprehension that the strategic imperative is to avoid isolation. If you start off by saying that we Sinhalese are just 15 million people and that there is nowhere else where there are such concentrations of Sinhalese, no other country but this, then certain other things have to follow. It has to be recognised that there are 70 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu and another 10 million elsewhere, there are one and a half billion adherents of the Islamic faith in the world, and there are two billion Christians around the world. Of course it is not the case that one billion Muslims or 70 million Tamils are going to invade Sri Lanka, but a shift in stance of even 0.1% of those very large numbers in the world would make Sri Lanka’s situation and that of the Sinhalese, strategically untenable. This is my contention as a realist, but this reality is sadly not understood. 
Domestically, those who conduct the anti-Islamic propaganda are also those who are opposed to devolution, but they do not seem to understand that if Muslim sentiments were to shift away from the Sinhalese, there would automatically be a shift to a Tamil speaking majority in the Eastern Province. The anti-Muslim elements do not seem to understand that in the diplomatic arena Sri Lanka has always counted on the support of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and that those states constitute a very important factor in many UN and multilateral fora. 
We already have a problematic relationship with India to the extent that it voted against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in Geneva last year. A drive against the Muslims, perhaps not on the part of the State, but on the part of Sinhala extremists, would hardly contribute positively to our relations with Pakistan, which stood by us consistently during decades of war. I am not sure how intelligent it is to have troubled relations with two of our neighbours. Of course there is also the factor of the revenue that comes in from the Middle East job market. 
Even if for pragmatic, strategic reasons, it has to be understood by the State and by society that the anti-Muslim surge is profoundly counter productive and almost suicidal. It will only lead to further isolation of the country and of the majority Sinhalese. The minorities who are seen by Sinhala extremists as Trojan horses are in fact the bridges between the Sinhalese and the outside world, given that there is no other collectivity or concentration of Sinhalese elsewhere. The Muslims, the Tamils, the Hindus, the Catholics, all of these are the points of intersection between the Sinhala Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka and the world outside. They are the bridges and if those bridges are burned the Sinhala heartland will find itself isolated, which ironically, is exactly the situation in which those hostile to Sri Lanka want to place the State and the Sinhalese. 
It is not very helpful to see this as a struggle between the bad State and good civil society because the political history of Sri Lanka, certainly post independence, has been one in which elements of civil society have played a far more retrogressive and reactionary role than the State itself, and when the State has taken those positions it has been due to the pronounced and prolonged pressure from the most chauvinist elements within civil society. Mr. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike did not advocate Sinhala only when he founded his party in 1951, nor did he do so when his party contested elections for the first time in 1952. He did so only in 1955 when the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress set up the Buddhist Commission to coincide with the Buddha Jayanthi, and put out a report ostensibly on the rights of the Buddhists but actually made pronouncements on the status of the Sinhalese Buddhists and the Sinhala language. 
It is from within civil society that these ideas have sprung and it is also within civil society that the battle will have to be waged, not simply against the State, or against a political leadership. This is a battle of ideas, of consciousness, that has to be waged within the State and within civil society. Both State and civil society have to be viewed not as antipodes but as terrains of contestation. 
I return once again to the reality of Sri Lanka being the only place on the planet where the Sinhala language is spoken by a large collectivity and where those who consider themselves of Sinhalese ethnicity constitute a majority. That is axiomatic. If so what are the solutions? 
One is that of equal rights in every sense, constitutionally and legally. I am for it because I find it abhorrent that there should be any form of discrimination. What we have today in our constitution is structural discrimination, where one language and one religion, in a multilingual and multi-religious social formation, are given a privileged place. Would the populace be ready to level that playing field, to return —or go forward to what I call Soulbury Plus, that is the Soulbury Constitution with a stronger safeguard against discrimination? 
If that is not a viable option, then we have the solution of the autonomy at the peripheries. There again, there is the fear of a centrifugal motion where by an autonomous province would or could secede over time. 
I was one of those who was very sceptical about this domino theory, or this theory of an escalation ladder, until recently when the issues of Scotland and Catalan independence in Spain came up, where even within a non-federal system, devolution has over time not stopped separatism but actually fed into demands for a separate independent state. I am not saying that devolution automatically does so, but we have to recognise that there are problems, dangers &amp; legitimate threat perceptions. 
If so, then I think what we need is a hybrid or mixed solution where if we cannot guarantee absolute equality of citizenship in the constitution, we should build in very strong anti-discriminatory legislation. I think it is easier to do that than to say that we are going to remove the privileged place of Buddhism. It is easier to set up institutions which have teeth and which would be a watchdog against discrimination. We can also defend notions of provincial autonomy which are centripetal and not centrifugal. One really must have a policy mix. To me, it is the only ethically appropriate and strategically prudent way to go. 
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<pre>Image from: http://www.onlanka.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/lanka-president-with-muslim-leaders.jpg</pre>

Anti-Muslim Extremism and Dilemmas of Diversity in Sri Lanka

Part of my duties as an Ambassador of Sri Lanka take me to Spain and I am acutely aware that the parliamentary party, which was the preeminent representative of militant Basque nationalism, Herri Batasuna, was banned by Spain, which I admire as a liberal society. 
The equivalent would be the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Sri Lanka, which quite correctly is not proscribed. Not only is it not proscribed, but it has also participated in elections and those elections were held fairly swiftly after the end of the war. There were two rounds of elections &#8211; national parliamentary elections and municipal or local authority elections &#8211; and they have gone very well. In fact, the ruling coalition lost despite a heavy military presence in those areas. So you have the reopening of democratic space and the re-enfranchisement of the Tamil people in those areas. And they have, perhaps perfectly naturally, opted for the TNA which is really the main representative of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka. There is also a process of dialogue with the Government of Sri Lanka. However, that process has proved to be fretful and fraught. One of the reasons could be that the TNA, perhaps under the gun, was perceived as a fellow traveller of the Tigers and has so far chosen not to make any kind of self-criticism or an opened criticism of the <a href="http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/shrilanka/terroristoutfits/LTTE.HTM">Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTTE)</a>. So just two years after the war, there is a hangover of memory and the atmosphere is really problematic. But there is at least an effort at dialogue, although it has not produced any kind of speedy progress. But the TNA is in Parliament and that is important. Elections have been held. 
I ask you to bear in mind that we have many voices from Asian friends, gently urging and nudging us in the direction of ethnic reconciliation through reform, and I do not see this as a negative factor. However, on the issue of sovereignty and on the related issue of an international inquiry into the conduct of the war there are no pressures at all from any part of Asia. So I think Dr. Henry Kissinger was correct when, in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/books/on-china-by-henry-kissinger-review.html?pagewanted=all">his last book </a>on China, he makes the point that though Westphalian sovereignty is no longer a touchstone in Europe, you have an almost classically Westphalian notion of sovereignty in Asia including Eurasia, from Russia onwards, and among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bric.asp#axzz1lOYDVldr">BRICS</a>), as well as in the global South as a whole. 
I look at the issue of accountability primarily as a political scientist and from a comparative politics point of view. I am struck by the fact that what I consider to be an exemplary progressive democracy, Brazil, headed by Dilma Rousseff &#8211; who was herself a guerrilla and a political prisoner, tortured by the military junta &#8211; has only recently instituted a commission of inquiry into the conduct of the military junta from 1964 to 1988. In Argentina, we have known for a long time of the notorious torturer and executioner, the so-called Angel of Death and naval captain Astiz. And Astiz has been sentenced only now for the crimes that he has committed from 1976 to 1979. I could go on. When I look at Bangladesh, there is a commission of inquiry into the atrocities committed in 1971, four decades ago. And there are many societies which have moved from conflict to post-conflict society, and from authoritarian regimes to democracies, who have deliberately chosen not to open up the issue of accountability until a new generation and a new mentality has been formed. 
In Sri Lanka you have a widely popular army, popular because it put an end to 30 years of suicide bombers. I really do not think that any democratically elected government is going to risk being the first in the world to open up the military to an international inquiry on the successful conclusion which is considered, by most of the citizenry, to be a liberation from terrorism. So I do believe that accountability is important. But I also do believe that universality works through the particular. And the particular which I refer to in South Asia is the stage of political development and the need to ensure that stability and democracy is not jeopardised, because democracy is always fragile. So I do believe that every society, as part of its sovereign right, decides on when it will confront certain issues of collective trauma and how. And I believe Sri Lanka is no different from these other societies. 
Does Sri Lanka subscribe to universality of values? Yes but I will be honest enough to say that there is a problem. There are some of us who really adhere to belief in universality. Formally, the Sri Lankan state did, because it had signed up to so many conventions and was an active part of the UN system. But there is an ideological struggle going on as in every society. Societies in economic crisis have always this tendency to turn inwards, outwards and so on. So there are those who would say that universal values are just a disguise for the West and that societies need their own values. 
The most important thing is that we are human beings; therefore, on deriving from the universality of the human condition, there are universal values which are the highest values. But we must be realistic enough to understand that there is unevenness. In the theoretical sense, we have to be aware of two major errors. One error is to deny universality and regard instead regional or local parochial cultural values as higher. This is an ongoing battle in my society. And another error is the lack of understanding that universality itself develops unevenly. 
Ideally, one day, if the United Nations itself were made more democratic and representative, with more power to the General Assembly and more representation at the Security Council, then perhaps this would be easier to resolve. The debate usually polarizes between those who say no to national sovereignty and no to individual rights and those who say yes to national sovereignty and that individual rights are obsolete. But we return to the original Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Article 3 states that “all sovereignty flows from the nation.” So there you have almost a perfect synthesis and equilibrium of the rights of the citizens and the sovereignty of the nation. And we have lost that, theoretically and in practice. Can a citizenry exist without its constitution as a nation?
<pre>Photo Credits: AFP </pre>

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka