LOCATING THE SELF

Since the early 1980s, with the official beginning of the civil war, scholarship on Sri Lanka has been dominated by the question of identity, especially ethnic, linguistic and religious identity. In parallel to this, at a personal level, escaping the ethnic reality is almost impossible for a Sri Lankan. I recall very well from different time periods of recent political history how dramatically people identified each other and how rapidly these forms of identification could change. I draw from personal experience, having been born in Colombo but spending my early childhood years in a rural village in the North Western Province, where the main livelihood was toddy tapping and minor agricultural work, and where nearly 80 per cent of the population were Catholic.

Around the mid-1980s, the emphasis on my own social identity changed, and switched from class background as the main distinguishing feature to ethnic identity. I remember passing through the entrance of my primary school, where my fellow schoolmates often gathered and would look at my clothes and shoes, calling out loud as I passed the entrance: ‘Sub eke lamaya enawa’ (which can be translated as ‘the child from the substation is coming’). Sometimes they referred to me as ‘e mahaththayage lamaya’, or ‘Sir engineer's child’. These two names characterised me because of my father's occupation and the class background of my family.

After a couple of years, I attended another school, a Catholic convent, in a nearby town. Compared to the previous school, here the gap between the rich and poor was less striking. However, after the events of Black July in 1983, the way we identified one another suddenly switched from class to ‘ethnic’ identity. I recall walking home with another student who declared she was Tamil. She explained how upsetting the demise of a Tamil politician was for her family and the entire Tamil community. I remember taking a long look at her and trying to see what differences there were in terms of her physical attributes that could help me distinguish her as Tamil and me as Sinhala. Until then, I had no clue I was Sinhala and she was Tamil.