Monday, May 11, 2009

Not good news from Sri Lanka

There has been a lot of news coming from Sri Lanka over the past few days, none of it good.  The long standing tension between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sinhalese majority has turned into war in the north and in the east, which are the areas held by the LTTE.  This is very sad.  Nearly everybody I knew in Sri Lanka on both sides of this tension was very kind and welcoming.  No one I met wanted war.


[caption: A group of Sinhalese soldiers gets their regimental flag blessed at the Maha Bodhi Stupa, where a relative of the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment grows today.]

Since this fighting is happening outside the eyes of American news cameras, however, it gives a very interesting chance to examine war and how we feel about it and, even more interestingly from my point of view, how religion and violence are viewed in the United States.

History

Sri Lanka was ruled since antiquity by the Sinha dynasty, which was a monarchy born out of the Sinhalese ethnic community.  They were periodically invaded by armies of Southern India, which brought a good degree of cultural mixing (most notably the introduction of Buddhism in the 3rd century), however, Sinhalese culture remained distinct. During the colonial period, starting int he early 16th century, Sri Lanka became a major center for trade and was frequented by Arab, Portuguese, and Dutch sailors all of whom had influence on the islands cultural makeup.

The Sinha dynasty remained intact as a Buddhist kingdom, however, until the early 1800s when Britain took an interest in the island as an extension of its colonial power in India.  Sri Lanka presented a challenge to the invaders due the location of its central government.  Kandy, known as the hill capital, was virtually unreachable due to the rugged terrain, thick jungles, and presence of malaria, and British armies took heavy losses on their way to the heart of the island.  In 1815, however, the hill capital fell, and Sri Lanka became Ceylon under British rule.

The British used the island to grow coffee and tea with varying degrees of success.  To cheaply harvest their crops, they brought in large numbers of indentured servants from Southern India, who were largely of Tamil origin.  Because of their proximity to the political and financial power of the British, certain Tamils were more cooperative with the British than were the Sinhalese, who remained somewhat stubborn in their opposition to colonial rule.  As a result, Tamils received noticeable benefits from the British in the form of education and political power.

When independence came in 1948, the Sinhalese, who remained in the majority, responded to underlying feelings of resentment towards the departing colonists and the Tamils by enacting policies to keep political power in Sinhalese hands and to correct what they saw as unequal distribution of resources and education.

This, unsurprisingly, resulted in push-back from the Tamils, whose increasingly agitation resulted in riots in 1958. At the same time, a population explosion was underway which produced a sort of underclass of uneducated and unemployed Sinhalese.

These factors, along with the global economic pressures of the 70s resulted in a violent rebellion by a group known as the JVP (People’s Liberation Front) which was a leftist Sinhalese nationalist party. This rebellion was brutally repressed.  During my time at Peradeniya University in Kandy, I heard stories of the government placing the heads of rebels on spikes around the school fountain as a warning to students, and this was on the more “subtle” side of what went on.

The violence begot more violence, and also begot a good degree of ethnic mistrust.  In the Northern, largely Tamil areas, groups of Tamil students began a campaign to remove non-Tamils from Jaffna University, and similar attempts took place on the Sinhalese side in the center of the country. It was a very volatile time, and both sides became more entrenched and distrustful as a result.

The following years were marked by increasing tension.  Thugs working as agents of the government worked to suppress dissenting political views, and voting fraud, including the outright theft of ballot boxes, became a political reality.  The Tamils, as a dissenting group, were heavily targeted by these actions.  In 1983, the increasing thuggery hit a breaking point, and the Jaffna library was burned down.

The library was a significant symbol to both sides.  To the Tamils, it was rightly considered a point of pride as one of the most complete and treasured collections of ancient and modern literature in that area of the world.  To the Sinhalese, it represented the privilege that Tamils enjoyed under British rule.

In response, a group of young Tamil students struck back, calling themselves the Tamil Tigers and later the LTTE ( Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).  The first strike was an attack on a military convoy in which 13 Sinhalese soldiers were killed. 

This was 1983, and is often considered the start of Sri Lanka’s civil war.  It is also used as the point from which “total casualties” of the conflict are measured in the media.

Shortly after the attack, Sinhalese around the country launched viscous raids on Tamil homes and businesses. In brutal and sad neighbor-to-neighbor violence, an estimate 3,000 Tamils were killed, and there are many harrowing accounts of Tamils fleeing or hiding in homes of sympathetic Sinhalese neighbors while their own homes burned to the ground.

In the aftermath of this violence, 150,000 Tamils left Sri Lanka creating a sizable diaspora.  Those who remained congregated either to the central hill region (where there is little ethnic conflict today) or to the north and east (the centers of today’s conflict).

Since, the Sinhalese and the northern Tamils have hovered between high tension and outright war.  The LTTE, though weak by conventional standards has survived by employing unconventional tactics.  They are credited with inventing suicide bombings, and are also accused of using child soldiers.  They are famous, among other things, for equipping their cadres with cyanide capsules intended to be bitten in the event of capture to avoid interrogation.

The goal of the LTTE is to create an independent state called Tamil Eelam in the northern and eastern portions of Sri Lanka.  The goal of the Sinhalese government is to eliminate the “terrorists” and unite the country under (what realistically amounts to) Sinhalese rule.

Though there is a great degree of dispute on this point, my impression is that a good amount of the violence that took place during the 20 year stalemate was committed by the LTTE against Tamils.  Conditions in the North and the East have steadily worsened, and those civilians not affiliated with the LTTE are harshly intimidated into either voicing support or serving among the LTTE cadres. It is highly inadvisable to be a prominent Tamil politician who does not support the LTTE. There were also notable attacks on Buddhist religious monuments, with reprisals and crackdowns following from the Sinhalese.

Today’s “blood bath” is the result of Sinhalese armies moving in to Tamil controlled areas in the north in an effort to finally crush the LTTE. The LTTE, probably expecting little mercy, are fighting a guerrilla war and using human shields in some cases. It is sad, it is brutal, but it has been going on for some time and is in many regards not surprising.

In 2005 there was a lot of news about global trends towards global religious conservatism. Examples included the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and Central Asia and the growth of the Christian right under Bush in the United States. Under the radar, a similar trend took hold in Sri Lanka.  The 2005 election was between Mahinda and Ranil.  Mahinda was a Sinahalese Nationalist, who vowed to fight the terrorists. Ranil was more militarily moderate, less nationalist and more open to the global community.  Mahinda won the support of politically active Buddhist clergy who commonly appeared at his rallies, and Ranil’s Buddhism was questioned. Similar to other areas of the world, religious nationalism won the day, and Mahinda, for all intents and purposes, has been carrying out exactly what his campaign rhetoric suggested he would.

What I learned from it:

Now, this situation can teach us a lot about religion, nationalism, and violence, especially when it is compared to other global conflicts.  Mahinda, by combining Sinhalese pride and paranoia with the imagery of Buddhism tapped into a very deep well of emotion, and has succeeded in mobilizing his nation to take violent action without significant dissent.  This use of Buddhist themes runs contrary to the view of Buddhism in the West as a simple philosophy of peace, or as a religion about self-improvement rather than politics. 

At the same time, the island’s Muslims, numbering somewhere around 40,000, have been almost entirely passive throughout this conflict.  They tend to keep to themselves among both Sinhalese and Tamils.  They practice their religion freely and in the open and have rarely been the targets or instigators of violence.

Looking at this situation, there seems to be nothing inherently within Islam that makes it a violent religion.  If there was, Sri Lankan Muslims would be involved in the violent acts seen on the island.  At the same time, common conceptions of Buddhism have been turned on their heads.  It is now Buddhism, a “religion of peace” that is being used to promote and justify violent actions towards another ethnic group.

The religious rhetoric floating around in this conflict suggests that it is not religion itself that is the cause of the conflict, as is sometimes thought to be the case in the Middle East.  Instead, religion is a rallying cry used to mobilize forces in an existing conflict; it is a shared language through which to express frustration, but it is not the cause of frustration.

It seems to me that the root causes of violence in Sri Lanka are not religious but rather 1) perceived or actual economic disparity and 2) perceived or actual ethnic divisions that correlate to economic disparity.  There is a similar situation in Palestine, though the actors are different. What we have is the simple reality of too many people competing over too few resources in the context of a power vacuum left by colonial withdrawal.

Does the conflict suggest that Buddhists and Hindus are two diametrically opposed groups that have been warring over a piece of land since time immemorial? No. Does it suggest that opposing religious beliefs are proof that the conflict will never be resolved? No.

If anything, this conflict shows that religious beliefs are one of many types of rhetoric that can be deployed to stir up populations which are already opposed for historical and economic reasons.  Religious rhetoric helps solidify a strong tribal mentality which paints the world in two colors, and which insists that there is a marked inequality and injustice extant between the two groups. It also doesn’t hurt that both Sri Lanka and Palestine experienced significant colonial intervention and subsequent irresponsible extraction.  God help Iraq in 50 years, so to speak. It is also worth taking stock of how religious themes are used to codify and amplify tribal and cultural divides in our one’s own society, as certainly recent American actions abroad were helped along politically by pseudo-religious language.

At the end of the day, I return to my initial point which is that on both side of this conflict I have met kind, friendly, warmhearted people who only want to raise a family and get on with life. Buddhism is not functioning in an “evil” way, just as Islam is not functioning in an evil way in the Middle East.  What it is doing is exploiting decades old prejudices and insecurities which remain unaddressed despite the violence.

What is happening now is sad, pure and simple, and we can all hope that the violence comes to an end.