The New York Times reports on escalating political violence in eastern Sri Lanka. Much of Sri Lanka’s eastern province is controlled by the LTTE, which has been battling against a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers called the TMVP (Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal) for the last year and half. The group is led by a former LTTE commander called Karuna, and is alleged by some to be operating with the blessing of the Sri Lankan army. In the past year, abductions and assassinations have increased in the region: 190 documented killings occurred this year between February and November, compared to 60 last year:
There is no sanctuary even at a relief camp here for families displaced by the tsunami. Since February three women at the camp have been widowed.Dayaniti Nirmaladevi’s husband was gunned down as he fetched noodles one night. Radhi Rani’s husband was shot after a fishing trip. Koneswari Kiripeswaran lost her parents and her only child, age 4, to the tsunami, only to have her husband shot dead at a bus stop on his way back to work in Qatar.
All three women said their men had been active in political organizations opposed to the notorious ethnic separatist group – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – but had given up politics. It is impossible to verify their claims.
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p>LTTE supporters have been attacked, as well:
Here in Batticaloa the violence is not limited to enemies of the Tigers. One night in late September, Khandasami Alagamma’s husband was eating dinner in the front yard of a pro-Tiger charity where he worked as a night watchman when five grenades were lobbed at the building. He was killed instantly.A visit to Batticaloa turned up a chilling inventory of violence.
On Oct. 1 a mason hired to repair a Hindu temple was shot to death as he slept on its terrace; the police say they do not know why. The day before, the vendor of a pro-Tiger newspaper was shot dead on a busy street. On the Wednesday before came the grenade attack on the pro-Tiger charity, and on the Saturday before that, a tailor was killed inside his shop just after sundown. He is believed to have been an informer, but for which side is unclear.
The atmosphere of intimidation and fear makes finding out the facts of these crimes difficult, if not impossible:
The violence is terrifying for its opacity. Witnesses rarely come forward. The police say they cannot properly investigate. The targets are generally tied to one faction or another and increasingly include police and military informants. There is a gunshot here, an ambush there. No one claims responsibility. Fear and suspicion fuel a disquieting silence.“Really, we do not know who is killing whom,” said the Rev. S. Jeyanesan, the pastor at St. John’s Church here. “People live in fear. People say they only open their mouths to eat. People don’t speak.”
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p>In addition to the threat of abduction and murder, families must also try to protect their children from forced conscription:
In the hierarchy of fear, one of the most frightening aspects of life here is the recruitment of children into battle. They are recruited at schools, village markets and even at Hindu festivals, which draw thousands. Unicef recorded a spike in the practice in July, though the Tigers have long denied recruiting children.How do parents protect them? In Tiger country across a lagoon from Batticaloa, one family keeps two of its teenage boys hidden at home, forbidden even to step out of the yard. To keep them entertained, they have gone into debt to lease a television.
In the same family, a 17-year-old girl has been married off; the Tigers do not take married women. The eldest son has been dispatched to work in the Middle East. Another boy, who served with the Tigers for two years, is in a church-run orphanage to avoid being taken again. “I can’t bring him home,” his mother said flatly. “He wouldn’t stand a chance.”
None of the mothers agreed to give their names, or those of their children, for fear of fatal retaliation.
More on the conflict here.
Ads – thanks for the posting – and for the link to the NYT article – very informative – takes us through entire trajectory of the uprising – some questions that I’d still want to know more about – what was the role of the IPKF in the island wars, why did it lead to Gandhi’s assassination (not that terrorists are rational, but how did they rationalize this) – If and how did it lead to diminishment of their support in Tamil Nadu?
Here’s an excerpt on something else I’d like feedback from other bloggers – do you agree with this assessment of India as a secularist nation – or is this essentially a “hindu” trait – to blue all boundaries – cf. the parallel discussions on “we are all hindu” and the rebuttals
All in all – I’m more informed but not necessarily glad for it – hard though it maybe to believe this seems even more intractable than the Israel-Palestine issue.
Somini Sengupta seems to be better at covering SL than India. What a heartbreaking article.
what was the role of the IPKF in the island wars, why did it lead to Gandhi’s assassination (not that terrorists are rational, but how did they rationalize this)
Indian policy towards the SLankan conflict was schizophrenic. Despite the fact that India provided arms and training to various Tamil militant groups, India didn’t actually want the creation of a separate Tamil state, for fear that this would fuel Tamil nationalist aspirations within India. Rajiv Gandhi technically called for a halt to New Delhi’s support for these militant groups in 1984 (though the groups continued to receive strong support from various state govts in Tamil Nadu). The IPKF was invited to SL in 1987 per the Indo-SL Accord – the first step was to facilitate the supposed disarming of militant groups. I’m unsure of the details but essentially the LTTE (by now the strongest of the Tamil militant groups) refused to comply and it became a $hit show. Meanwhile, alongside rising Sinhalese fears of Indian expansion, the new SLankan President began negotiations with the LTTE and the increasingly unpopular IPKF found itself unwanted by both sides and was forced to leave SL starting in late 1989.
Rajiv Gandhi (whom I adored when I was growing up in Bombay) was blown to bits by those evil f@#$ers who were afraid that if he won the elections again, would resurrect the Indian state’s opposition to the LTTE.
Note that while Indian soldiers were being killed in Sri Lanka, the DMK in Tamil Nadu allowed the LTTE to openly operate in the state; the LTTE even brazenly assassinated leaders of other Tamil militant groups based there. Things got so bad that the DMK government was dismissed by New Delhi on charges that they were sending state secrets to the LTTE.
It speaks volumes for the weakness of the Indian state and their fatigue with the SLankan conflict that even after an ex-head of state was brutally assassinated, they showed little interest in getting rid of the LTTE. The LTTE was banned and SLankan Tamils (whether refugee or militant) were prevented from access to Indian shores and that was that. The conflict barely registers on the Indian consciousness today, other than what resonance it holds for Indian Tamilians…or for those who loved Rajiv and remember the Indian soliders killed among scores others.
It was the result of an incoherent policy. Peace Keeping Force has to use voilent method to enforce peace. Look at serbia first they bombed them and then they asked for peace keepers. India looked the other way when tamil tigers were being trained and funded from india. Although a big chunk of their support comes from malay,singapore,canadian and even american tamils. And the tigers are savvy enought to make business deals with PLO and even mayanmar. The indians were not forceful in disarming the tigers nor were they forceful with colombo to comeup with a political accomodation. It was quite bizaree. The military was sent for show only. Its quite strange to think that if you are going to resolve something by force you can still be liked by people…The tigers had no illusions about it it was strange to think that indian government thought otherwise.
To correct some typos – I’d refered to a link in my earlier post – that was from the New Yorker not NYT – I’d highly recommend it to those of us who are north-Indian centric – the evolution path is sickening.
Thanks for the detail SMR, GGK – I have an uncle who was an officer with the IPKF – I think I will connect with him on this and get his 2 cents.
Just to put some local context- it isnt unusual for me to walk into a tamil store in Toronto and see the LTTE stripes in a poster or a flag somewhere – it is difficult to reconcile the revolutionary aspect with the terrorist undertones – and that’s the scary bit – the new yorker article lays it out – prabhakaran doesnt want peace – because with peace and democracy comes the threat to his leadership !!! So keep the war going endlessly…
On another note – the Guelph international film festival is screening No more tears. Imight swing by.
anyone who reads SL posts knows that I’m pretty anti-LTTE.
That being said, there were reports all over the island that the IPKF indulged in cheap thrills while stationed in the North. Randomly shooting buildings, schools, people, alleged rapes. The GoSL was embarrassed, Tamils were furious.
Pro-LTTE wave of support among Tamils after IPKS pulled out. Tamils, whether pro or anti LTTE felt betrayed by India, and most Sinhalese thought the govt complicated the situation by inviting India, and everyone suspected the GoSL of back-room deals with India AND LTTE. Total fiasco.
Just read about the holocause studies chair
I wish the sepiate community came together and did the kind of soul-searching that’s needed to pull such an initiative together – 1947 is not that far back – where’s the chair for studies on the partition – who’s studying the psychological impact – but for Bhishma Sahni I dont know anyone who’s explored the tragedy in literature – for that matter – what about a chair for studies into the Sri Lankan pogroms or the chair for studies into the million mutinies now… and counting.
I want to know and learn and put a stop to it goddamit… what does it take? money, political will, desire…?
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blockquote>it is difficult to reconcile the revolutionary aspect with the terrorist undertones
That’s the problem with revolutions, innit? They sound so great and noble, and viva la utopia and all that…but they always degenerate into an Orwellian mess. Whether the USSR, or the Islamacist revolution in Iran, or the LTTE now. Orwell himself wrote of being among the revolutionaries of Franco’s Spain in Homage to Catalonia.
The leaders of the revolution often can’t stand the thought of being sidelined during peace and forestall that day of being let out to pasture. If the revolution itself is the goal, what happens after? Most leaders find ways to keep the revolution always at the forefront, always urgent and threatened by forces outside.
But then, so do many republics.
shut up
“Bhishma Sahni I dont know anyone who’s explored the tragedy in literature”
again dhaavak, you and i have common taste. Bhishma Sahni is a great Indian writer.
about 10 years ago, i went to elie wiesel’s talk. remember, what he always says:
“…to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all…”
sorry for the bad coding. I was responding to dhaavak’s comment:
as for this: what about a chair for studies into the Sri Lankan pogroms or the chair for studies into the million mutinies now… and counting. I want to know and learn and put a stop to it goddamit.
I am cynical, dhaavak. The truth is hard to find, everyone disagrees, and those who remain impartial try to cling so hard to that status that they make a whole other set of mistakes. (e.g. the Norweigians in SL now)
I’ve been caught in arguments with pro-LTTE types who claim the Tamils were in Sri Lanka first, and go back to 16,000 BC to support the argument. Idiocy bordering on insanity reigns supreme.
What is most disheartening is the way second genners cling to their parents biases. The threads here are rife with commenters who write authoritatively on topics that they’ve learned about second-hand.
I left sri Lanka more than 15 years ago now, and after about 5 of those years, thought I should never say I know what SL is like since I no longer live there. I comment here now because there are no Sri Lankans (Tamil or Sinhalese. I count both as Sri Lankans, do think there WAS a sense of national identity) IN sri Lanka who can tell us what’s going on.
sorry, henry hill. I won’t. But you listen to this guy?
Manish, which republics do you refer to? I’ll take elected representation anyday. I was making huge generalizations, true, but rousing support by creating bogeymen is not often the case with a democratically elected society. (present US govt. excepted, of course)
India definitely did benefit from having such enlightened leaders early on, Sri Lanka’s first PM was a good guy. For some reason that tradition of secularism and inclusiveness has continued in India but fizzled pretty quickly on the island. Maybe it’s because Sri Lanka didn’t go through the same kind of communal chaos upon independence?
As for the IPKF, Cicatrix mentioned it, they embarassed themselves and India – there’s a reason no one talks about them today. Their role was nothing but negative, India’s pathetic attempt at trying to project itself as a regional power. India can’t maintain control within its own borders, im not sure what possessed them to believe they could control anything in Sri Lanka, much less an entrenched guerilla force on their home terrain.
They were sent packing but managed to complicate and exacerbate the conflict in the process.
Here are some articles about the IPKF’s involvement by the University Teachers for Human Rights, the organization that the woman in No More Tears Sister (Dr. Rajani Thiranagama) helped establish.
The Psychological Aspects of the Indian Military Action
On the IPKF’s tendency to rape tamil women:
India’s Role – An Overview
There’s a lot in that site about the transgressions of all the involved parties, but much on the IPKF’s sad little run. Read up, then ask your uncle in the army about it.
Dhaavak said:
I hate that I always end up coming off as pro-ltte whenever they get brought up here, but it’s this kind of sentiment that annoys me. Have you really bought into the American hysteria to the degree that you’ll apply it in the same way they do? The Tiger’s are ruthless, but so is the Sri Lankan Army and so was the IPKF. They were (and are) all terrorists, by the dictionary definition. The Tiger’s did it because it met their ends.
Yeah, that’s where I and many others get stuck too.
Nittewa is the closest I’ve come to something like that, and it has its limitations. News from relatives is a pretty good source of info, otherwise, I agree,
ads – thanks for the New Yorker link (and thanks dhaavak for highlighting it – didn’t notice it until you did). I don’t know much about the conflict so it was very useful (and chilling). So many things jumped out but I wanted to highlight this:
How unsurprising. A desi modernist obsessed with seeing and creating hierachies of national identity (Give me a J! Give me an I!…). For all of Nehru’s flaws, the man was mercifully the right sort of modernist.
dhaavak said – I want to know and learn and put a stop to it goddamit… what does it take? money, political will, desire…?
IMHO (and I understand this primarily from the 1947 partition of India and the millions of little partitions that people wish upon India even today), it takes a willingness to accept overlapping identities at least in the political realm, especially in a region as diverse as the subcontinent. States should not be understood as projects to house specific communities. The quote you excerpted in your first comment is very relevant. Not because India is inherently “better,” but because the quote squarely places such conflicts in the realm of the political, and not in some mysterious fog of history.
Here’s a previous post on the New Yorker story.
I’ve heard my parents talk about Sri Lanka in the past, and they speak with a longing and regret that I find heartbreaking. I come from a multi-ethnic family – Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim…but predominantly Tamil. I don’t think it was my kaliedoscopic heritage contributed to my parents’ tolerance, but rather the kaliedoscopic environment they found themselves in. Colombo was amongst the most progressive cities in Asia before this conflict reached a height, and from what I’ve heard, what made it such a brilliant vibrant place was the fact that it was a home to so many people from so many backgrounds who all got along for the most part.
What I find disgusting about the debacle now, is that everyone who has contributed to it had/has absolutely nothing to do with the “problem” in the first place. The “problem” in question is debatably self-created, and indisputably self-perpuated. And the parties involved – the LTTE, the SLA, the IPKF – all are douchebags. Tamil and Sinhalese people have/had/are capabale of living together in harmony. Jaffna tamils and Sri Lankan nationalists from the south never lived together in the first place, and their prejudices are the result of a fright campaign created by governments and administrations that exist only to sustain themselves.
What’s disturbing is how easily you all pin all of the blame on the LTTE, and then berate the Tamils who defend them. Though I’m a pacifist, and though I’m opposed to this war, I can’t declare myself “anti-LTTE” because they provided Tamils in the north with something they didn’t have – protection from an authoritarian and destructive Sinhalese regime.
And fuck the IPKF. Everyone here who laments R.Gandhi’s death and then attacks the Bush administration is a fucking hypocrite. The IPKF had no business being in Sri Lanka, and served no purpose other than terrorizing innocent civilians. Dhaavak, your childhood fascination with Gandhi is exactly what it is – childish. Naive and uninformed. The only thing that the SL government and the Tigers have been able to agree on in the past umpteen years is that the IPKF should get the hell out of Sri Lanka.
I dont know… Although thanks for mentioning Bhishm Sahni heres one author who didnt write for the western market,i’m opening a can of worms but there’s a western-indian dichotomy for readers like me who read about india…. there are authors who have clearly market and sell indian extoticness to a nonindian readers, and there are authors whose market is indian primarily Kushwant Singhs A train to Pakistan and Delhi boh stand out in this regard. Then theres Yashpal Amrita pretam and many others.
Everyone here who laments R.Gandhi’s death and then attacks the Bush administration is a fucking hypocrite. The IPKF had no business being in Sri Lanka, and served no purpose other than terrorizing innocent civilians. Dhaavak, your childhood fascination with Gandhi is exactly what it is – childish. Naive and uninformed. The only thing that the SL government and the Tigers have been able to agree on in the past umpteen years is that the IPKF should get the hell out of Sri Lanka.
Moron –
Propoganda demonize the others.., Indian role in the conflict was messy as it did NOT want to antagonize the tamil population, so describing them as having rapist tendencies towards the tamil is quite easy come on write something better.
The’ve been out of srilanka for a long time.
Why does Nehru get all the credit for modern Indian secularism and pluralism? Gandhi deserves as much credit as Nehru for Indian secularism and pluralism. Gandhi had an intuitive understanding of the psychology of the indian masses. He suspended the civil disobedience movement in the 1930’s when it resulted in mob violence. It is frightening to contemplate what India would look like today had the RSS or the communists led the independence movement.
Alex, I am one with your parents in experiencing a heartbreaking sense of loss. My father is Sinhalese Buddhist, my mother is Tamil Catholic, my best friend as a child was Muslim. The places I remember are now either bombed to bits or washed away. It really was progressive, and for the most part, people did get along. I agree entirely that this “problem” was created by self-serving parties.
HOWEVER, I am anti-LTTE because this kind of protection, the Tamil people do not need. And your comments at the end are unnecessary and have done nothing to further this conversation. No one will listen to you if you randomly lambast people who ask sincere questions.
Getting into the IPKF issue on a website that’s predominantly Indian is rather foolhardy, my fellow Sri Lankans. So please mind your manners, and don’t rant. (I know, I’m not too good at that either, but let’s try?)
All I can say is that the University Teachers for Human Rights are a valid entity, created to stop human rights abuses on all sides. Dr. Thiranagama was killed by the LTTE because she was a member who spoke our against their actions, and was labelled a traitor. Ananthan and I don’t always agree, but I’m glad he respects them, as I do.
Dhaavak, I don’t know what your uncle will say about the IPKF in Sri Lanka. There were probably many men who honestly thought they were there on some UN-type mission and meant well. But most Sri Lankans do not look back on those days of the IPFK fondly.
A random question for those who might be aware — anyone here know Arjuna Parakrama? He’s an English professor and politically active in Sri Lanka — though I know very little else about him. I wonder if he is still based in Sri Lanka, or perhaps if he has any involvement with University Teachers for Human Rights.
I took a course in postcolonial literature that Arjuna taught back in the day, when he was working on his Ph.D. He was a firebrand. Bright, articulate, and very entertaining guy. Thanks to him I read amazing stuff like “Woman At Point Zero” that really opened my eyes.
Timepass, no I’d never heard of Arjuna Parakrama, but I’m really glad you’ve brought him up.
I googled his name, and the first entry links to an amazing poem by him.
Interestingly enough, he says
UTHR(J) stands for University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna)
I look forward (well, on days when I feel like being depressed) to reading more 🙂
On a personal note I appreciate that bloggers have generally forgiven my ignorance on an emotionally charged topic.
cicatrix says
Please tell us about it. I for one would like to know more – if this is not too painful for you.
SMR says
Generally I gather that the IPKF committed inexcusable atrocities and was kicked out eventually.
But Ananthan, Alex – do you agree with SMR’s statement? If so – what went wrong and what should have been done different?
Heres Jain commision report Volume 5 onwards describe LTTE act in india
SMR’s analysis is spot on.
On a different note, I do want to question the tendency in some comments here to say that because the IPKF, SL army, and LTTE all have committed atrocities, so all suck equally. I disagree: yes the IPKF committed numerous grave human rights violations for three years, the SL army has done so throughout the conflict, BUT the LTTE is in a class by itself. For instance, the LTTE has engaged in ethnic cleansing (it’s infamous expulsion of 75,000 Muslims, for instance; see my comments in this thread), and its ideology is fascistic to the core). Not to mention that its practice of assassinating Tamil leaders practising a different ideology has the affect of stifling intra-Tamil debate and furthering the cause of binary opposition in SL politics.
SMR’s points on modernism, and the Indian “difference” are (to use Anna’s words– welcome back btw) swoon-worthy.
On a somewhat different note, not unconnected with the topic of the post, one thing that has long impressed me about Sri Lanka is the management and containment of communal conflict. This might seem weird to say when a bloody conflict has been going on for decades, but I am talking about the large numbers of Tamils in Colombo and in other areas outside the LTTE-controlled areas. As far as I am aware, there have not been major instances of communal conflict after the anti-Tamil 1983 violence. That’s pretty impressive, given the nature of the conflict and how common it is in various societies for a particular group to be targeted if elements purporting to speak for that group enagge in terrorist acts etc. Am I off base here? I try and keep up with SL news and articles, etc., but I must confess that I am not nearly as familiar with the history and political backdrop as I am where India, or even Pakistan, is/are concerned, so would like to hear other people’s take on this.
“Getting into the IPKF issue on a website that’s predominantly Indian is rather foolhardy, my fellow Sri Lankans.” Really? I thought that would be precisely the best place to get into it. I would like to believe we are all capable of intelligent discourse (at least most of the time) and that this is an effective venue for it. I have enjoyed reading the comments. Having written my honors thesis on a legal aspect of this conflict, all I can say is nothing is black and white and the more we talk about it the better. The worst thing we can do is forget about this conflict, which most of the world has done (save for simplistic stereotypes about the LTTE).
Via SMR’s link – Volume V
Would be interested in feedback.
Although it seems IPKF had support from all concerned parties, I am still not clear on what IPKF set out to achieve.
The mass suicides are pinpointed as the trigger point for the LTTE’s turning on the PKF. Why was the PKF blamed for this? Surely there must have been latent resentment leading to the tipping point
Some parts of the Jain report indicate that the federal government was at odds with the perceptions and positioning of the state government in Tamil Nadu. Was the TN government party to the accord – or did they feel this was the federal government meddling in what is essentially a Tamil cause? Did this lead to the operation going awry?
On a different note, Mani Ratnam’s “Kannathil Muthamittal” was I thought a very effective representation of the human tragedy associated with the conflict. In particular, the scene where a Tamil village flees in entirety in the face of army bombardment was brilliant. From the “opposite” end, Rajeev Menon’s “Kandukondain Kandukondain” features a character who went to SL as part of the IPKF, lost a leg there, and is embittered upon his return to TN to find that people are at best indifferent…
It was mine but thats no biggie
…some may say to rape tamil women. No it was not clear in india itself thats why they never achieved anything. The SL government wanted them to put pressure on LTTE to dissarm LTTE and the indian central government’s view was better indian PKF than UN,US(remember at that time US was not as friendly with India as its today)
[quote]On a somewhat different note, not unconnected with the topic of the post, one thing that has long impressed me about Sri Lanka is the management and containment of communal conflict. This might seem weird to say when a bloody conflict has been going on for decades, but I am talking about the large numbers of Tamils in Colombo and in other areas outside the LTTE-controlled areas. As far as I am aware, there have not been major instances of communal conflict after the anti-Tamil 1983 violence. That’s pretty impressive, given the nature of the conflict and how common it is in various societies for a particular group to be targeted if elements purporting to speak for that group enagge in terrorist acts etc. Am I off base here? I try and keep up with SL news and articles, etc., but I must confess that I am not nearly as familiar with the history and political backdrop as I am where India, or even Pakistan, is/are concerned, so would like to hear other people’s take on this.[/quote]
The Sinhalese know if there’s another Black July 1983, there’ll be hell to pay c/o the Tigers.
dhaavak
Indeed there was but there was alot of bungling on their part. Following the leads of cicatrix and Ananthan on the UTHR(J) here are the relevant sections on
The build up of resenment and breakdown see Post Accord:The Indian Summer.
On the mass suicides and the tipping point see October Days
Guru Gulab wrote
and I mangled the reference… sloppy sloppy… sorry Guru.
ivap wrote
Thanks for the links. will post summary
Stephen Cohen wrote in an unrelated piece The world’s most intractable disputes are paired minority conflicts. Such conflicts are rooted in perceptions held by important groups on both sides—even those that are not a numerical minority, and which may even be a majority—that they are the threatened, weaker party, under attack from the other side. Paired minority conflicts are most often found within states, although many of these, such as the bitter Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka, have international implications. Others occur between states, including that between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. Another state-level paired minority conflict is that of Iraq and Iran, where Iraq fears the larger (and ideologically threatening) Iran, which in turn sees Iraq as the spear point of a hostile Arab world. South Africa and Northern Ireland are two other sites of such conflicts, and in South Asia, Sri Lanka has a paired minority conflict between its minority Tamil population and the Sinhalese. The former believe they are under a comprehensive threat from the more numerous Sinhalese, and the latter believe themselves to be the threatened minority, given the fact that there are sixty million Tamils across the Palk Straits. The Tigers argue that Tamils can never be secure unless there is a Tamil homeland on the island. These conflicts seem to draw their energy from an inexhaustible supply of distrust. It is difficult for one side to compromise on even trivial issues, since doing so might confirm one’s own weakness and invite further demands. Nevertheless, leaders entrapped in such conflicts are resistant to make concessions when they have the advantage, believing that as the stronger side they can bend the other party to its will. As if they were on a teeter-totter, the two sides take turns in playing the role of advantaged/disadvantaged. They may briefly achieve equality, but their state of dynamic imbalance inhibits the prospect of long-term negotiations and tends to abort any effort to have an institutionalized peace process.
Guru Gulab Khatri posted an excerpt from Cohen’s research paper
Guru – I looked through the linked document – and basically couldnt get beyond the point where he indicated that Pakistan is in a righteous aggrieved position for being subjected to vivisection in the 1971 war … etc.
Admittedly, I my view might be colored sepia(sic) – so I decided to look up the article’s bibliography. Here’s the only reference that I saw relevant to Bangladesh – ” Leo Rose and Richard Sisson, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).”
I then looked up Amazon.com for a review – and saw this
This is not consistent with whatever cohen is spewing. Umair, I’d welcome your 2 cts on this as well if you have a mo’…
Maybe I’m getting too hung up on this – but it sounds too much like a contrived article in support of a pet thesis.
well the bit GGK quoted here is pretty accurate re: threatened minority perceptions by both sides in SL
point taken – that’s the current state – but is this really a deep conclusion
The man seems to be twisting facts around his conclusion and I question the guy’s analytical method – sure, there is a common undertone to inter-community strife – at the start there’s the threat or the perception of threat – and then there’s some act that escalates into full-blown warfare – and then there’s the justification of war by each side projecting iteself as the aggrieved party.
Correct me if I am wrong – but in my readings so far 60M Tamils sitting across the Palk strait was not the reason Kumaratunga imposed the language restrictions at the start – there may have been religious, cultural, racist, motivations or there may not – but this fear of the trans national tamil nationhood is new to me – indeed it is borne out by the support from off-shore Tamils, but it seems to be after the fact
The other point I made about the “1971 vivisection” also indicates data twisted in support of a thesis.
well it shouldn’t be. (the fear, not the nationhood). India’s historically tried to annex SL quite often, and the Sinhalese have quite a complex about it. Very proud of soverign nation status, and the fact that India never did conquer SL.
But a Tamil king (1600AD, I think. not sure exactly) did establish a beachhead kingdom in Jaffna….making Sinhalese hot&bothered about invasion to this day, and making the Tamils feel that they have a historic tie to the North.
As for trans national Tamil nationhood…I think SL Tamils feel a bit apart from Southern Indian Tamils actually. Language varies very slightly too, I think, changed with all the passing years.
ok… how has this sense of discomfort evolved over the years – in the period between 48 and 70’s – were there events that proposed or perpetuated the notion that Tamils are the fifth column preceding India’s annexation of the island nation? When you say Tamils in Northern SL consider themselves different from mainland Tamils, is this something you’ve observed personally or is this a commonly accepted fact?
Re: “I think SL Tamils feel a bit apart from Southern Indian Tamils actually. Language varies very slightly too, I think, changed with all the passing years.”
The language is certainly different, but the question is compared to what? The Tamil one hears on SunTV and taught as “standard” Tamil is itself not the Tamil spoken by the Palghatis straddling the Kerala-Tamil Nadu state-lines. Not to mention there are many other Tamil dialects. The “standard” Tamil is itself a rather modern spin on an ancient language (I recommend this book, which is very good)
That being said, I don’t doubt that your wider point, cicatrix, is true: the very fact of an international frontier would lead to a different consciousness over time. Not to mention that my understanding is that descendants of more “recent arrivals” in Tamils have somewhat different politics from “eraly arrival” descendants (actually that’s a question: I’ve been told that; what’s you take?).
I take your point about Sinhala fear of being swamped by the larger entity next door, but just for the record it wasn’t “India” that tried to annex them but whatever the reigning South Indian power was at the time (i.e. I wouldn’t call, for instance, the Chola empire “India”). Of course that as I see it further buttresses your point, as the issue here might be a historical fear of being swamped by Tamils in particular, and not just India in a general sense.
you’re taking this too literally, dhaavak.
It didn’t “evolve” in those years…at least in the sense of Tamils being a “fifth column” or even that India would bother annexing again (India had its own problems at the time). Where are you getting this?
My point was that the Sinhalese historically felt protective of their identity since India was back to being Hindu, only one other country was Theravada Buddhist, no one else spoke Sinhalese which also had a unique script, India’s so near and gigantic, etcetc..
British forbade sinhalese in school, etc…but even after Independance there wasn’t as huge a surge of Sinhala-only pride as you might expect, given the points above…
look, here’s the Wiki Sri Lanka history link. Please read if you’re really curious about this, because you need backstory to understand.
As for your last question, note that Wiki says:
I tried to explain the schisms in the SL Tamil population here. And yes, it is something I’ve observed personally in the Tamil side of my family as well ask, afaik, commonly accepted fact.
i’ve both observed it personally and found it to be commonly accepted. i could be wrong, but i thought that the two communities end up creating separate cultural orgs (here in the US, for example) because they are so “different”. and yes, the versions of tamil which are spoken in each country do vary, to my mostly useless ears; i can understand one better than the other.
on a personal note, i remember learning about some of this because a sri lankan tamil friend married an indian tamil, and this wasn’t a drama-free process, at ALL.
again, just based on my limited personal interaction with tamil people from both countries (i know way more indians vs SLs, quite predictably), i’ve noticed that despite whatever difficulties they might have faced there, my SL tamil friends feel very sri lankan. i felt like that almost trumped being tamil, if that makes sense at all. if anything, my closest SL friend feels closer to mallus than tamils, and i privately wondered if this didn’t have something to do with this weird division between india and SLs tamil communities.
That will depend on each personÂ’s opinion, IMNHO it explains how certain 0-sum games arise.
Correct me if I am wrong – but in my readings so far 60M Tamils sitting across the Palk strait was not the reason Kumaratunga imposed the language restrictions at the start – there may have been religious, cultural, racist, motivations or there may not – but this fear of the trans national tamil nationhood is new to me – indeed it is borne out by the support from off-shore Tamils, but it seems to be after the fact
The reason SL engaged in their activities in the 50Â’s were that they felt that as part of the larger brit empire they (the SL sinhalaÂ’s in particular) got a bad deal and got over run by other cultures tamil included. Currently the stalemate is explained quite well using cohenÂ’s paired minority paradigm. It is that SL tamils feel that they are minority in SL And SL feel that they are a global minority as the tamils outnumber them globally and are well connected.
Lets get facts straight. Cohen is not a partisan of India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal, China, Tonga Island but America. He worked at the state department in South Asian matters and currently is at brookings, His viewpoint is not pro anything but what serves American interests, and all his work is in that context. So donÂ’t get that hung up on weather he sees India in the same light as many Indians do. Please explain how you see cohenÂ’s analaysis of Pakistani viewpoint is twisting data?
sorry, Wiki link!
I was just comparing spoken SL Tamil to my mistaken sense of a ‘generic’ Indian Tamil, Umair. I wasn’t making comparisons on any deeper level, I assure you 😉
My link to the schism issue addresses the recent/early arrival debate.
Please ignore 44 i didnot select quotes properly
That will depend on each personÂ’s opinion, IMNHO it explains how certain 0-sum games arise.
The reason SL engaged in their activities in the 50Â’s were that they felt that as part of the larger brit empire they (the SL sinhalaÂ’s in particular) got a bad deal. Currently the stalemate is explained quite well using cohenÂ’s paired minority paradigm. It is that SL tamils feel that they are minority in SL And SL feel that they are a global minority as the tamils outnumber them globally and are well connected.
Lets get facts straight. Cohen is not a partisan of India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal, China, Tonga Island but America. He worked at the state department in South Asian matters and currently is at brookings, His viewpoint is not pro anything but what serves American interests, and all his work is in that context. So donÂ’t get that hung up on weather he sees India in the same light as many Indians do. Please explain how you see cohenÂ’s analaysis of Pakistani viewpoint is twisting data?
oh god is this gratifying to hear!!
It’s what I think, it’s what my (tamil) family relatives think (hell they’ve all married Sinhalese! and marrying an Indian WOULD be D-R-A-M-A) so I haven’t, for the life of me, understood the SL commenters who’ve shouted me down with “The LTTE are the saviours of the Tamil race!” slogans.
I get some juicy personal emails soon after I comment a lot about the LTTE, lemme tell ya. I know so many other half-Sinhalese/half-Tamil people, besides me… All I know is a sense of SL nationhood that’s more inclusive (in it’s own misbegotton, banana-republic sort of way) than anything the LTTE has ever proposed.
OK, you know you have a film freak when even THIS thread gets you all filmi:
Re: Sri Lankan Tamil: Kamal Haasan in “Thenali” (rotten film)
Re: Palghati Tamil: Madhavan in “Nala Damayanti”…
darn, wished I KNEW some Tamil, but even to my Tamil-illiterate ears, both the above sound very very different from the Tamil of most Tamil films…
Anna’s point is well taken too: I think one has a parallel with North Indian Muslims and Pakistanis; here, there is NO difference in the Urdu spoken by NI Muslims and that spoken by the descendants of “muhajirs” (refugees), mostly settled in Karachi and Hyderabad (Sind), yet in the diaspora they will be in separate organizations for the most part; i.e. even if the Indian Muslims want a “Muslim” organization it typically is an INDIAN Muslim organization (the IMC-USA is a good case in point). And note that here there is no relevant historical fear of domination either, demonstrating that national boundaries (and the attendant ideologies) can themselves account for different orientations.
why should I tolerate misinformation – in the Indian context or otherwise?
His thesis is basically – “the source of the conflict is a latent fear of being usurped or absorbed by the other”.
Knowing what you do, from what you’ve read – what would you conclude about the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict? or on the Indo-Pak wars? especially when he throws out arguments about “60M Tamils across the Palk straits” – so do you agree that the Indian Tamils were exerting an irresistible pull on the SL Tamil population, and were gaining ground? Do you agree that India perpetrated the 1971 war to deliberately carve out Bangladesh? Because that’s what I take away from his article – not in so many words but in the gaps in his data – he is seeking to balance blame across all sides. He may just be incompetent but I think he’s blinded by his thesis
Re: 1971: I’ve read the Sisson/Rose book, it’s quite useful (in large part because there isn’t much else out there). I have not had a chance to read the Cohen bit, but my two cents for what it’s worth:
From what I’m reading on this comments thread, Cohen’s thesis might not be inconsistent with the description of the Sisson/Rose book. With regard to Cohen’s thesis, the case of Pakistan presents an interesting situation. This is because although Muslims were a comfortable majority in pre-1971 Pakistan, and a minority in pre-1947 India as a whole, the ideology of the two nation theory was that they weren’t a minority AT ALL, but were in fact a nation. To my mind this tension was never resolved, and even after 1947 one gets a sense of the anxiety underlying the enterprise (of the “they want to swallow us up” variety), ironically at precisely the moment when the proponents of the two-nation theory had realized both pillars of the theory: nationality on the basis of being Muslim (Islam as ethnicity as it were, a radical innovation), as well as a state that demographically reflected that. On my reading the anxiety proceeds both from a core contradiction inherent to the two-nation theory (why do so many Muslims remain in India? and after 1971: why are two-thirds of the sub-continent’s Muslims not in Pakistan?) as well as a logical outcome of the two-nation theory– namely that the two-nation theory must, if it is to be true, be PERFORMED, i.e. the boundary between that which would impinge on the separateness posited by the theory must be vigorously policed.
In the person of the Bengali Muslim, the post-1947 Pakistani state faced its most profound crisis. The Bengali language was written in Devanagari script, Bengalis do not have any association with the markers of Muslim identity put forth by the Muslim League’s elites pre-1947 (Urdu, heirs to an Indo-Persian heritage, etc.), and the preferred dress women used in East Pakistan was not of the sort in accord with Jinnah’s speeches in the 1940s that Muslims and Hindus were different in, among other things, language, customs, food, and dress. These examples might seem absurd (they certainly seem appalling to me), but absurdity is no guarantor against acceptability, sadly. The upshot over time became that the Pakistani state (run almost entirely by West Pakistanis) began to see Bengalis as a fifth column, not really for India so much as for “Hindu-ness” generally, and it was very common for Bengalis to be demonized by the ’60s as “half-Hindus” and the like. The remarkable thing about this was that Bengalis in fact constituted the MAJORITY of the population of Pakistan. The Pakistani state came to acquire a distinct view of itself as (although a nation), beseiged– as a “minority” on the sub-continent. “Liberation” from India did not address the problem because it presented the specter of demographic domination by “half-Hindu” Bengalis, a problem related to the earlier one. Thus Cohen’s view (at least based on what I’ve read here) about “minorities” is not inconsistent with the whole Bhutto/Mujib/Yahya etc. angle. To put it another way, Bhutto (taking him as an example) was certainly power hungry, but HOW and WHY did his open refusal to accept the simple outcome of general elections (Mujib’s party won more seats than Bhutto’s) resonate so widely with the Pakistani state and even the public in West Pakistan? I submit that it was because Bhutto’s refusal to concede to Mujib tied into some of the issues I’ve touched upon above: to put it another way, Mujib’s victory didn’t “count”, because Mujib didn’t represent the “real” Pakistan, but only “half-Hindu” Bengalis who were culturally contaminating the two nation theory.
[What was the solution? For the military-industrial complex running Pakistan, the solution was simple: democracy would have to be dispensed with at least as between East and West Pakistan; recall that prior to 1971 virtually all governors of East Pakistan were non-Bengalis hand-picked by the central government.]