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Appendix 1 - Map of Sri Lanka
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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MAP OF SRI LANKA
1 - Introduction
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Sri Lanka's trajectories of state-building and politics remain interesting topics in scholarly research and public discussion, sometimes but not always for the right reasons. For decades, Sri Lanka has attracted attention as a general topic of interest in a fairly narrow scholarly set of circles, mainly with a focus on Asian studies, area studies and Indian Ocean studies. The country has also been an interesting case study for academic research on subjects ranging from politics, state-building, democracy and post-conflict peacebuilding. The primary lens across the political science studies on the country, however, has come to be that of ethnic conflict. The popularity of the category of ‘ethnic conflict’ in the post–Cold War period was not unique to Sri Lanka (Sadowski 1998), but a global phenomenon, much of it thanks to the popularity of the ‘new wars’ thesis and the West's promotion of liberal peace in pursuit of a new ‘global interventionary order’ by effectively promoting and instrumentally using the non-governmental organisations, at an industrial scale (Richmond 2020).
The country's most spectacular achievements seem firmly stuck in the rapidly retreating past. Once celebrated as a model democracy in the former British Empire, after independence Sri Lanka was lauded for its impressive achievement in terms of human development indicators. Compared to its neighbours, its social welfare policies were seen as a model of social democracy. Among such jubilatory observations, there were periodic incidents of communal violence, even before the idyll was shattered by the onset of civil war in 1983.
Since the island's civil war began officially in 1983, fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has led to the country being recast as no longer ‘Paradise’ but as ‘Paradise Lost’. In much of academic literature, the public media and private portrayals of the country, discourses have become negative, dramatising the grim overtones and persistence of inter-ethnic enmities. A powerful Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, recurring cycles of inter-ethnic violence and corruption at the level of Sri Lanka's political and economic elites are all ingredients in the new mix. These are all dominant themes in recent accounts of the condition of Sri Lanka's state, society and politics. The intensity of the discussion, whether among serious scholars or in a public gathering or in a family discussion, can result in heated debates. Polarisation can be worsened, risking making enemies of colleagues, friends and even family members.
3 - From Nationalism to Ethnic Supremacy
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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While I acknowledge the relevance of the ethno-nationalism discourses for understanding Sri Lanka's past and present politics and state-building, in this chapter I want to draw attention to the importance of class-based roots of ethnic-nationalism. By examining the class roots of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, it becomes possible to shed light on how gradual transformations in class relations under the impetus of changing political and economic conditions have come about since the early 19th century. The importance of historical legacies of class relations in forming the current toxic form of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism can thus add something to the more usual ethno-religious accounts of political transformation and state-building. A more nuanced analytical account of class conflicts within the Sinhalese majority population can help to explain and illustrate how class conflict paved the way for the galvanising of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism as a profound hegemony-building tool in its current exclusionary form.
THE STRANGE STORY OF CLASS ORIGINS OF SINHALA-BUDDHIST NATIONALISM
The genesis of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism can be traced back more or less to the second half of the 19th century, with the first emergence in Sri Lanka of something like a Sinhala ‘identity’ or consciousness (that is, the Sinhalese became aware that they were a distinct group of people) (Jayawardena 1987b: 2). During late British colonial rule, this vague notion of collective ethnic and religious identity was transformed into a distinctly Sinhala-Buddhist form of nationalism. In its early form, it was described as ‘religious nationalism’, reflecting the way that certain politically significant events were expressed in Sri Lanka prior to the country's independence. This phase of late colonial history is commonly described as a period of anti-colonial and ‘first generation nationalism’.
However, in the post-independence period, ethnic identity formation became a more important element in overall Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, alongside religion and anti-Western sentiments (Wickramasinghe 2006: 45). It was in part the result of the British colonial power's systematic categorisation of colonial ‘subjects’ that ethnic and religious identities were mobilised in such a rigid and exclusionary manner. Numerous identity labels were used, involving caste, race, ethnic and religious groupings. All these were an attempt to ‘describe something that had practical and conceptual coherence … for outsiders and observers rather than for Sri Lankans themselves’ (Wickramasinghe 2006: 48).
Acknowledgements
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Bibliography
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5 - State Institutions and Patronage Politics
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Politics in Sri Lanka has been described as a ‘consuming passion’, but a passion that may boil down to no more than the question of ‘who will be employed by the Ceylon Transport Board as the bus conductor’.
—Jupp quoted in McCourt (2007b: 433)Institutions play a central role in constraining behaviour and shaping preferences, goals and strategies, and even identities (Waldner 1999: 19). Where mass incorporation into politics happens before or simultaneously with the elaboration of a national administrative system, that system is likely to be based on patronage politics and patronage appointments (Waldner 1999: 24). The case of Sri Lanka provides some compelling evidence for this suggestion. It shows how important linkages can be made between intra-elite conflicts, timing of mass incorporation of lower classes into nation politics and paths of state-building (Waldner 1999). Such interconnected elements have encouraged the ruling elites to (ab)use state institutions for purposes of political patronage. In general, state institutions play a direct role in enabling political elites to act as intermediaries between the state, the economy and society (Waldner 1999: 24). The example of Sri Lanka shows institutional changes introduced to the state apparatus being closely tied to or even completely aligned to financing an institutionalised form of patronage system to pursue faction-ridden ruling elites’ hegemony-building project.
Critiques of the functioning of state institutions often point to their inefficiency in delivering basic public services, their uncontrolled expansion and the mammoth maintenance costs of public bureaucracies (Hulme and Sandaratne 1996; Samaratunga and Bennington 2002: 87; De Alwis 2009). Similar to observations in the World Development Report (Evans and Rauch 1999: 748), there are numerous works on Sri Lanka that identify politicisation and widespread patronage politics as a worrisome development across state institutions (Ranugge 2000: 51; IDEA 2007; De Alwis 2009: 57). Important work on patronage politics in state institutions links this phenomenon with ethnic conflicts and civil war (Thiruchelvam 1984c; Uyangoda 1994; Wilson 1979; DeVotta 2002; Shastri 1990). Reciprocally, studies have shown how state institutional transformations can impact inter-ethnic relations adversely (Thiruchelvam 1984b: 185–95; Mathews 1986: 33; Thangarajah 2000: 127; DeVotta 2005: 145–47).
From the particular perspective of hegemony-building, this chapter shows how institutionalisation of patronage politics across state institution was invented by Sinhalese ruling elites as a permanent guarantor for financing the party-based patronage system, for political mobilisation and elite instrumental coalition-building strategies against a backdrop of dwindling state accumulation.
Frontmatter
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Appendix 2 - Indication of Background of Key Interviewees (from January to May 2009)
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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INDICATION OF BACKGROUND OF KEY INTERVIEWEES (FROM JANUARY TO MAY 2009)
Preface
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Sri Lanka has always been a fascinating case study due to its gradual transformation from a model democracy to a case of perpetual political violence. The aim of this book is to present a nuanced account of Sri Lanka's trajectory of politics of state-building by situating it in the intersections of state-building and hegemony-building. The book delves into a number of social categories and relations, mainly class, caste and gender, beyond the usual analyses centred on ethnic and inter-religious identity conflicts. It discusses four key state-building processes that came to be converged with Sinhala right-wing hegemony-building processes that were invented and nurtured by the majority Sinhalese elites who occupied state power throughout the post-colonial period. Paying close attention helps analyse how these processes have come about and have been utilised and adapted according to the prevailing global and national ideological and material conditions at a given historical moment. The book aims to re-problematise Sri Lanka's trajectory of state-building by redrawing attention to class relations, specifically intra-ethnic class relations of the majority Sinhala-Buddhist community as a perpetual source of violence. The primacy given to a class-based analysis of the roots and manifestations of social and political violence is aimed at a deeper and multi-level analysis, weaving historical–contemporary, material–ideational and global–national–local elements into one coherent and complex whole.
The book is written from a critical, reflective and interpretivist perspective. It is situated within critical approaches to politics and the state, specifically influenced by the Gramscian concept of hegemony. This is central to the analysis, which shows how ideological hegemony was pursued by the ruling class through the use of various ways of combining coercion with consent. These strategies for securing hegemony were often resisted and contested by countervailing social and political forces, ultimately manifested as a series of violent encounters, protests and forms of opposition. The book has its origins in the author's PhD thesis, defended in 2013. It benefits from in-depth field interviews conducted as part of doctoral work, and subsequently up to 2020, across Sri Lanka, with a wide range of actors, including high-profile political actors, civil servants, civil society actors, non-state armed groups and ordinary citizens from the north to the south. Many interviews were conducted under extraordinary conditions, at the height of civil war in the first quarter of 2009 and then in its immediate aftermath.
6 - War and Peace as Politics by Other Means
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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There is a considerable level of attention paid to analyse Sri Lanka's civil war. Especially since the early 1980s, the majority of the academically oriented studies seemed to have drawn inspiration from the works of Federick Barth on ethnicity (cited in Tambiah 1989) and applied them generously to intra-state violent conflicts in this period. These studies have left a lasting and profound impact on the understanding of Sri Lanka's civil war as mainly an ‘ethnic war’ rooted in the antagonistic inter-ethnic relations between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. Their failure to take critical scholarship produced before the early 1990s on Sri Lanka's civil war into account evaded the opportunity for scrutinising the numerous global and local economic, political and social entanglements that contributed to the war (Jupp 1978; Jayawardena 1984, 1985b; Tambiah 1989; Hennayake 1993; Abeyratne 2004; Bandarage 2009). In spite of the gaps, the notions of inter-ethnic conflict and ethnic war became popular and were even promoted by the Sinhalese ruling political elites and their right-wing forces in the broader Sinhalese society, including some in the Sinhala-Buddhist intelligentsia.
By returning to the global and local literature that applied rich historical-sociological approaches to the study of war, in this chapter I hope to offer a broader interpretation of Sri Lanka's case of war and peace. In this regard, I find the seminal study by Charles Tilly quite helpful to frame Sri Lanka's case of war and peace as it devotes a considerable level of attention to several interlinked variables of war, politics, hegemony-building and state-building. Tilly's main thesis is that ‘state makes war and war makes state and vice versa’ (1985). He famously argued that banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing and war making all belong to the same continuum and are intrinsically linked to the eventual laying out of the capitalist economic foundation of the modern state-building (Tilly 1985: 170). Notably, Tilly drew attention to the use and functions of war as coercive exploitation strategies that fulfilled a crucial role in the modern European state-making processes in the 16th century. As he observed, wars of that time resembled organised crimes that were used by the European state makers and entrepreneurs to consolidate power in the captured territories and to expand the resource-extraction and capital-accumulation process.
Dedication
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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4 - Political Patronage: Underbelly of Everyday Politics
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This chapter presents a historical and contemporary account of patronage politics as an important hegemony-building strategy of the ruling elites in Sri Lanka. It sheds light on how the birth of the political party system during British colonial rule was closely tied to the elites’ nurturing of the political patronage system in everyday and high politics that effectively combined the struggles for political power and domination at the centre and the material struggles of the lower classes in the peripheries.
THE ROOTS OF PATRONAGE POLITICS
The roots of contemporary manifestations of patronage politics in Sri Lanka can be traced back to the pre-colonial era (Swaris 1973). Pre-colonial patronage relations were transformed by colonial interference and administration, but strong elements of pre-colonial patronage survived through three long phases of European colonialisation (Portuguese, Dutch and British) and through the extraversion of economic exploitation, as well as the modernisation of state and society (Jayasundara-Smits 2010: 31). By the end of colonial rule, as in other former colonies, the trust of traditional authority structures in modern liberal political institutional structures implanted by the British was low. Uneven capitalist development in the country ensured that most Sri Lankans remained tied to the largely rural remains of the traditional agrarian society, where provision of needs was fashioned and negotiated through a web of well-established patronage relations that ran through the agrarian economy. The perpetuation of these relationships of patronage was not significantly altered during the years of British colonial rule, and even grew stronger after independence. The absence of a developed market economy and the lack of formal institutional mechanisms to mediate the affairs in the large agricultural sector are identified as factors that facilitated the strengthening effects of these networks in the post-colonial period, which was not unique to Sri Lanka (Archer 1990: 19; Boone 1994: 109).
According to one respondent, the contemporary dynamics of patronage politics rooted in patronage relations in the pre-colonial era is the result of people's experience with colonialism itself (R.1). As he opined further, although these institutions were embraced by the elite political leaders as pillars of the modern state and symbols of modernity, the rest of the society's ways of political communication, incorporation and participation were largely based on traditional and feudal means. These networks were instrumental in interest aggregation and satisfaction.
7 - What Came after War?
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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In the previous chapter, I argued that the Sinhalese ruling political elites’ pursuit of war and peace was politics by other means and the numerous elite-invented discourses of war and peace served as an important hegemony-building strategy with the Sinhalese masses. One Marxist parliamentarian I interviewed on the verge of the announcement of the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) observed that at that time ‘in general the Sinhalese are happy about the LTTE defeat’ (R.13). However, another respondent with no open political party association noted at the time of the interview during the last days of war in May 2009 that ‘today, people like war, they focus on a set of selected events’ (R.11). In the words of an academic with United National Party (UNP) affiliation, ‘in 2003, there was a muted sense of security, under that context people supported peace. But today in the context of heightened security the same people support war’ (R.18). Contrary to popular belief, immediate political developments in post-war Sri Lanka suggest that military defeat of the LTTE was not enough to complete the elites’ hegemony-building project. One foreign journalist noted,
A number of factors helped sweep him [Rajapakse] to re-election victory on Tuesday: his fiery rhetoric and sure popular touch; his emphasis on his role in last year's war victory; and ordinary people's sense that their streets are simply safer than they have been for the past 30 years because of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. (Charles Haviland, BBC News, 29 January 2010)
Various dynamics in post-war high politics and state-in-society relations meant that ruling elites holding on to state power needed to invent new alliance-building and hegemony-building strategies, beyond manipulative tactics associated with Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist rhetoric. This was mainly due to their limited capacity to offer most Sri Lankans the hope of overcoming material economic struggles given the serious structural problems in the economy (IPS 2011: 15). The entrenched war economy remained one of the few sectors still growing after the end of the war (Jayasundara-Smits 2018: 4). The removal of the LTTE as an anti-hegemonic political force, the arch-rival of Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony, meant that they could no longer be blamed for the country's deepening economic woes.
List of Abbreviations
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2 - Politics of Judgement
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When I write, I do it to change myself and not to think the same thing as before.
—Michel Foucault (2000: 240)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.
List of Tables and Figure
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Afterword
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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As this book is being readied for publication in a few weeks’ time, Sri Lanka is being swept by a serious economic and political crisis. The unfolding of the crisis in the coming weeks and months and the strategies the ruling regime will resort to will play a very important role in shaping the future trajectories of state-building, the elites’ hegemony-building project and addressing the broader issues pertaining to social justice.
Since the beginning of 2022, the country has slid into a deep economic and political crisis. This is a major setback for Gotabaya Rajapaksa's presidency, who came to power in 2019 promising a brighter future. Since early April 2022, people have been increasingly taking to the streets and chanting ‘go home’, the latter directed at the president. The majority of the protesters are drawn from urban, lower and upper middle class Sinhala-Buddhists, the same constituency who voted the Rajapaksas in. As the economic crisis is worsening by the day, the political crisis in Colombo is heating up too. At the time of writing of this afterword, the government has lost its simple parliamentary majority; its cabinet of ministers have resigned and parliamentarians from the ruling party have declared independent status. Despite protesters’ calls for resignation of the Rajapaksa brothers, they are making every move possible to cling on to power.
The looming economic and political crisis was already evident shortly before the year 2021 ended as the hold of the Rajapaksa family on the Sri Lankan state tightened. Some aspects of the economic crisis could have been better handled just six months ago if the ruling regime had listened to independent economic analysts and sought early financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to address its growing sovereign debt crisis. The Rajapaksa regime's economic mismanagement of state resources through continued rewards to capitalist cronies and family members further reinforced Colombo's economic decline. Even on the edge of the worst economic crisis since independence, the rapid passage of the Port City Bill raised concerns of some citizens and the media, who noted that the bill mainly benefited close friends and relatives of the Rajapaksas, while reinforcing close ties with Chinese state companies.
Contents
- Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Index
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An Uneasy Hegemony
- Politics of State-building and Struggles for Justice in Sri Lanka
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Sri Lanka has been regarded as a model democracy among former British colonies. It was lauded for its impressive achievement in terms of human development indicators. However, Sri Lanka's modern history can also be read as a tragic story of inter-ethnic inequalities and tensions, resulting in years of violent conflicts. Two long spells of anti-state youth uprisings were followed by nearly three decades of civil war, and most recently a renewed upsurge of events are examples of the on-going uneasy project of state-building. This book discusses that state-building in Sri Lanka is centred on the struggle for hegemony amidst a kind of politics that rejects individual and group equality, opposes the social integration of marginalised groups and appeals to narrow, fearful and xenophobic tendencies among the majority population and minorities alike. It answers the pressing questions of - How do the dynamics of intra-Sinhalese class relations and Sinhalese politics influence the trajectories of post-colonial state-building? What tensions emerge over time, between Sinhalese hegemony-building and wider state-building? How did these tensions manifest in majority and minority relationships?