Peace And Its (Dis)Contents: A Minority
Perspective
-- Qadri Ismail
To the UNP, or UNF as the case maybe, peace is
synonymous with the absence of war. Look, it tells its constituency (and the
country): we’ve lived checkpointless for many months, the economy is improving,
suicide-bombers have put mothballs in their jackets, acres of aid will be
air-dropped soon and the LTTE will be dragged into a (permanent?) interim
administration. We are delivering on what we promised, a peaceful and undivided
country.
This scenario is dangerously addictive. If its
acceptance by the UNF’s constituency is to be expected, its narcotizing of a
section of the peace lobby is not. The unimaginative pragmatists, the Jehan
Pereras and Pakiasothy Saravanamuttus of this world have – to nobody’s surprise
– puffed on the peace pipe long and deep. More unanticipated is the surrender
of a more creative intellect, Jayadeva Uyangoda. Through their work, their
tireless writing, not to mention speeches at seminars from Bambalapitiya to Berlin,
all of them help consolidate this “peace.” But the thing is, as they well know
but refuse to acknowledge, peace should not be comprehended as the absence of
war.
This
essay seeks to advance a reading of peace from a minority perspective,
insisting that what we understand by the latter term is in need of a radical
rethinking. It also invites another rethinking: by the pragmatists, of their
whitewashing of the LTTE. And it proposes, to those of us who situate ourselves
on the left, that, unlike the pragmatists (elitists, really) we must pursue a
different agenda. We cannot, blithely, uncritically, endorse the present; we
cannot succumb to elitism or the majoritarian perspective. We must find our
inspiration elsewhere. We maybe happy with the absence of war; but we cannot be
satisfied with it.
*
Common sense, of course, knows what a “minority
perspective” means: the opinion of someone, or ones, from a social group (or,
more accurately, an interpellated entity) lesser in number in relation to
another. Thus the Tamil is a minority in Sri Lanka in relation to the
Sinhalese, the Muslim in relation to the Tamil, and so on. So a Tamil argument
would, by definition, represent a minority perspective in the Sri Lankan
context. Even if it adopted a majoritarianist position.
Inspired
by many things, including that brilliantly original and truly underappreciated
proposal of G.G. Ponnambalam, “fifty-fifty,” and the work of the UTHR(J), I
want to propose the following: that a minority perspective is better
understood as one which refuses to find significance or value in number.
What,
after all, did fifty-fifty (seek to) do? It rejected the foundational premise
of representational democracy, majority rule. As the early theorists of
democracy, like Alexis de Tocqueville, argued, majority rule rests on the
premise that “the interest of the greater number should be preferred to that of
those who are fewer.” In other words, it finds value in number. What those
theorists failed to anticipate – and this is evident in the influential
writings of James Madison, in the eighteenth century, as well as John Stuart
Mill in the nineteenth – is the structural possibility of a group being a
permanent minority or being permanently minoritized. Assuming an (ethnically)
homogenous population, Madison and Mill contended that every voter – and don’t
forget the franchise was tightly restricted then – would eventually have his
interests represented by a government, some ruling party. If his party lost one
election, or two, it would certainly win the next. In a heterogeneous
electorate, in contrast, a minority could be perennial; it could always lose
always. This was a possibility these theorists did not expect; and, therefore,
prepare contingencies for. Whether they should have assumed a homogenous
electorate is a question to be addressed elsewhere. But this failure makes the
great liberal theorists pretty much useless as sources of inspiration for
(re)thinking the minority question.
However, the Tamils being permanently minoritized is
precisely what Ponnambalam anticipated for Sri Lanka. And, while unable to
think completely outside the logic of number, he still imagined a scheme in
which value would not be conflated with quantity. Under fifty-fifty, the
majority couldn’t have its way simply by virtue of being the majority. Therein
lying the originality of his proposal.
It
also, long before consociationalism was talked about by political theory, here
or anywhere else, envisaged something like what is now theorized as “mutual
veto.” Under his scheme, all legislation in the Sri Lankan parliament, to be
legal, would have to have been passed by majority and minority representatives
acting as majority and minority representatives. The minority representatives,
in other words, could veto any legislation they deemed discriminatory, or that
they just plain disliked.
But, it must be stressed, the scheme shouldn’t be seen
as an instance of something that sounds unattractive because it is based on
something negative, a veto, as political theory appears to understand it. It is
better read as advocating what, following Adorno (if not his translators) could
be termed mutual participation.
Which
brings me to my own understanding of peace. As before, it is indebted to
Theodor Adorno. Peace, to him, was “the state of distinction without
domination, with the distinct participating in each other.” This is a
profoundly ethical, as opposed to a pragmatic or Hobbesian, imagining of peace.
It does not accept the absence of war as synonymous with peace; rather, it would
make certain demands of all the parties. In the Sri Lankan instance, it would
imply at least three things. One: that a peaceful Lanka would sanction
distinction or what we now tend to call difference; that the aim of peace is
not a country consisting of unmarked Sri Lankan citizen-subjects that
liberalism or the JVP might promote. Two: that no group of such citizens, or
nationals as the case maybe, will dominate the others. The Sinhalese
nationalist desire for such dominance, which it coded as hegemony, is arguably
what produced the war, or conflict, some conjunctures ago. (That and the
consistent Tamil nationalist refusal to be interpellated by such hegemony.) So,
a peaceful Sri Lanka must be one without majorities: the Sinhalese will no
doubt continue to be numerically superior, but they must, structurally,
be unable to dominate the Tamils (and others) in the country. There would be no
political value placed upon such numerical superiority. Likewise, the Tamils
should be unable to dominate the Muslims in any governmental unit proposed for
the northeast. Three: that all Sri Lankans – Tamils, Muslims, Sinhalese,
everybody – indulge in mutual participation, speak to each other, work
together. From which it follows that this understanding of peace is opposed to
separatism or exclusivism or majoritarianism in any form.
Which
is something those contemplating the Muslim question may want to consider.
Their responses to the LTTE’s demand for the northeast to be a single
governmental unit – whether in federal or separate form – has taken one of two
routes. Some advocate separatism in turn: the creation of a Muslim-dominated
unit in the southeast. Others want some kind of special rights for the Muslims
in a Tamil-dominated northeastern unit. In this scheme, which is quite
different from fifty-fifty, to be law, all legislation affecting the Muslims
(only) will have to be passed by a majority of Muslim legislators as well as
the whole elected assembly. That way, they argue, Muslim interests would be
protected.
But some
“practical” questions arise immediately in this regard. How, for instance,
would such legislation be defined? Surely it is the case that all legislation,
potentially, perhaps only excluding that dealing with Hindu or Christian
religious questions, could affect the Muslims? (And here, too, if funding is
involved, the Muslim representatives might want to vote on it. For any monies
going to the others would be monies potentially lost by the Muslims.) Wouldn’t
this lead to endless wrangling as to whether the Muslim representatives have
the right to veto a given piece of legislation or not? And, consequently, a
potentially endless series of demands that the legal system, the courts,
intervene and adjudicate upon? Thus perhaps paralyzing the legislature – or politicizing
the judiciary; both undesirable outcomes.
But
my primary objection to this proposal is an ethical, not a pragmatic, one. As
is my objection to the separate Muslim-dominated unit. For both have no quarrel
with majoritarianism. The first, fearing that the Muslims will be dominated by
Tamils in a northeastern unit, want to dominate the Tamils in turn in the
southeast. (This seeks to achieve peace through intimidation: if you mistreat
the Muslims there, see what’ll happen to the Tamils here! Ameer Ali, incredibly
enough, has recently advocated something like such a course of action. But
threats, as every naughty child knows, cannot produce peace, only submission;
or, of course, resistance.) The second accepts that the Tamils will inevitably
dominate a northeastern governmental unit and merely, mildly, meekly seeks some
concessions for the Muslims.
What
characterizes these responses, and indeed virtually the entire debate around
the question of peace, dominated as it is by the pragmatists, is a lack of
imagination. The debate is unable to think outside the logic of
majoritarianism, because it finds significance only in number. This despite the
fact, again arguably, that it is (Sinhalese nationalist) majoritarianism
that produced our problem in the first place. In which case, more
majoritarianism – and the inevitable production of more insecure minorities –
cannot be the solution. Allowing the Tamils to structurally dominate a
northeastern governmental unit, based on the logic of finding value in number,
will inevitably produce an agitated and insecure Muslim minority. A
Muslim-majority southeastern unit, since it will follow the same logic, would
make its minorities equally insecure.
But, of course, there are alternatives. Political
theory is not irredeemable. As Uyangoda, who first spoke of consociationalism
in the Sri Lankan context, in that innovative Bandaranaike lecture ten years
ago, well knows. Alas he is too busy being pragmatic these days to think
creatively. This might fly with the donor community; but, as Sumanasiri
Liyanage has implied recently, the left should know better.
If
one is prepared to understand consociationalism as mutual participation,
instead of mutual veto, then a strong argument could be made to the effect that
we on the left should be pushing the negotiators to think along those lines
(and not just for the northeast). That way, in the northeast, a structure could
be envisaged that would satisfy the desires of all three social groups. In it,
representatives of all groups would have to approve any and all legislation
before it is passed. The majority would be unable to dominate.
Indeed, such a constitutional structure (which has
worked well in Belgium, and is proposed for Northern Ireland) is eminently
desirable for the whole country. For it is somehow assumed in the debate on
peace that constitutional change for the south isn’t on the table – and
shouldn’t be. That federalism in the north would also, by some kind of magic,
take care of the interests of the Tamils in the south. That the Muslims and
UpCountry Tamils in the south have absolutely nothing at stake in this debate.
That, in short, Sinhalese majoritarianism can continue to be structurally
unchecked in the south – and we could still have peace in the whole country.
But we can’t. For there to be a persuasive peace, lots
of things must change. Including the flag and the national anthem. Indeed, I
think we can do very well without any bloody anthem. (Think of the time saved
if we didn’t have to stand up for it – here or anywhere else!) Most
importantly, there’d have to be constitutional deconstruction, as they say in
Wellawatte, in the south as well.
The
LTTE, of course, doesn’t care about the other social groups in the rest of the
country, including the Tamils domiciled there. (As A.J. Wilson once perversely
observed, southern Tamils were “written out” of the project of Tamil
nationalism in the seventies.) And it would almost certainly object to
consociationalism being the constitutional norm in the northeast. It would say
that the other social groups should have no influence on how the Tamils conduct
their affairs. This, of course, is consistent with LTTE exclusivism, the demand
for self-determination, internal or otherwise. But, then, could any leftist be
exclusivist? Could she listen to the LTTE, desire compromise with it? Should
she?
Uyangoda,
for one, would say yes. Despite, it would appear, him knowing better. This is a
recent statement of his on the organization:
The enduring commitment to the goal of a separate
state, the unwavering belief in the efficacy of the military path to achieving
that goal, subjugation of political options to military objectives,
ruthlessness in the deployment of violence, terror and deception as means to
power, and the calculated disregard for even elementary norms of democracy,
human rights and pluralism are often posited to be some key characteristics of
this unique movement called the LTTE. These certainly are also some of the key
features that have distinguished the LTTE from all other militant Tamil groups.
The group, to Uyangoda, is “certainly” deceptive,
ruthless, terrorist and has a “calculated disregard for even elementary norms
of democracy, human rights and pluralism.” This makes the LTTE sound like a
lawless gang of thugs (reminiscent of those who run U.S. foreign policy these
days). Nevertheless, in this same article, in reply to those, like the UTHR(J),
who would consider the group fascist or totalitarian, he calls it merely
“illiberal.” (Which makes me wonder what he tells his students is
characteristic of a fascist or totalitarian organization.)
This contention, if perverse, is also brilliant. For
he then goes on to call the UNF government, too, “illiberal.” The difference
being that the government is just “relatively” so, while the LTTE is
“essentially” illiberal. Nevertheless, the common adjective serves to equate
the two objects, justify the overall argument that peace between two
“illiberal” entities is desirable and possible. This is strategically brilliant
because, of course, no ethical being could advocate peace, or compromise, with
a fascist or totalitarian entity. If Uyangoda agreed with the UTHR(J)’s
characterization of the LTTE as totalitarian, he could not promote peace with
it. So he reinterprets the organization, whitewashes it, makes it sound clean
enough to be compromised with.
It should be stressed that I sincerely appreciate the
dilemma here. I do not seek to occupy a dogmatic or naively utopian position. I
wonder, often, whether my hope that the LTTE would, one fine day, just vanish
as a political and military phenomenon, is not as bigoted as the LTTE’s
approach to Tamil dissent. (Being an equal-opportunity anti-nationalist, I wish
the same for Sinhalese nationalism and its Islamic sibling.) I am not opposed
to the current ceasefire and negotiations. But I do not hold that the only
alternative to not being opposed is to support. Such zebra logic – if you are
not with us, you are against us – is best left to the likes of Bush and
Prabakaran (who have more in common than they may appreciate). A leftist could,
perhaps even should, instead be critical, keep elitist/majoritarian politics at
a certain distance, refuse to be seduced by power.
For that, surely, is the lesson to be learned from the
career of the old left in this country. In its heyday, it was as brilliant as
it was dedicated and principled. But the closer it got to government, the more
it compromised, giving up its principles, becoming effectively
indistinguishable from its elitist coalition allies – and therefore, slowly,
slowly, irrelevant.
Which is why, when I read the elitist-pragmatists
these days, I am reminded of the mistakes of the old left. But I don’t despair.
For I can turn to the UTHR(J) for guidance and reassurance. Not that it tells
me things are or will be okay. That, somehow, as Uyangoda fancies, a
“transitional peace” with the LTTE could lead to a “transformative” one.
(Though he forgets to say how). Rather, it is reassuring because it has refused
to compromise, to whitewash the LTTE, to think peace from a majoritarian or
elitist perspective. In so doing, it provides guidance for those of us also on
the left who lead far safer lives (sometimes, like myself, with the immense
security of tenure in the western academy).
Take this story from a recent UTHR(J) report:
Mr Puvaneswaran
from Kokkadichcholai cultivated lands and owned a textile shop. The LTTE
demanded a child from him after it started forced conscription last August. The
man who had dealings with the LTTE refused and pointed out that the
organization owed him Rs 4 lakhs for textiles he has supplied to them. In reply
the LTTE removed his tractor and took over his paddy fields.
Later, Thurai,
the local LTTE man in charge of conscription, came to Puvaneswaran with some
young underlings. Thurai watched as the underlings assaulted Puvaneswaran on
his orders. Hearing about her father’s plight, Puvaneswaran’s daughter, who was
schooling in Batticaloa, came home and gave herself to the LTTE. Then
Puvaneswaran’s goods and the Rs 4 lakhs owed to him were returned.
The LTTE’s record of mass murder is well known. Why,
then, do I choose this story to (re)tell, one which might strike the reader as
insignificant – compared to that of, say, Thiranagama, or Padmanabha, or
Anandarajah? That’s precisely why. For it is not a story that would ever make
the headlines. Who, outside their family, would care what happened to
Puvaneswaran or his (unnamed) daughter? Only, it seems, the UTHR(J).
Then take this, from the same report:
Kanthasamy was a
farmer living in Unichchai in the interior of Batticaloa. During 1990, just
after the Indian Army pulled out, his eldest son was meddling with a shell
stuck at the edge of the tank. The shell exploded killing the boy and wounding
his sister. The LTTE went to Kanthasamy’s house on 23rd March 2002
and demanded a surviving son. Upon Kanthasamy’s firm refusal, he was taken to
the punishment farm in Tharavai. The LTTE released him on 30th March
with orders to bring his son or face severe punishment. Kanthasamy committed
suicide by taking poison near 8th Mile Post on the Badulla Road,
where the road crosses a stream. His body was cremated by relatives who found
it at 8 o’clock the morning after.
As a literary critic, I am suspicious of detail in
empiricist prose. It works to produce the effect of the true, the real, what
Roland Barthes called “the referential illusion.” Why, after all, is it
necessary to state exactly where Kanthasamy committed suicide – or that, near
the spot, the 8th milepost on the Badulla Road, it crosses a stream?
Does it matter to the main point of the story, to the plot? Of course not. But
it is such detail – or “narrative luxury,” to borrow another phrase from
Barthes – that convinces the reader that she is being confronted with the
truth. If its writers went into such exhausting effort to get things right, if
they paid attention to the tiniest detail, if they knew where the stream was on
the Badulla Road, then everything else in the report must also be true.
There
is, though, something profoundly moving in this account that I don’t find in
the bland, professionalized prose of Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch that this report tries to mimic. Its last sentence actually states that
the body of Kanthasamy was found the morning after it was cremated. Such
semantic impossibilities would be factchecked out of metropolitan reports by
some unpaid intern. Here, it signifies differently.
David
Kelley, the British weapons inspector, committed suicide and his story is world
news. Nobody, apart from his family, would have mourned Kanthasamy. Or heard of
his story. Because it doesn’t matter. Except, it seems, to the UTHR(J).
To
the blondes who are facilitating and monitoring the peace talks, his death – if
it came to their notice at all – is a minor event; insignificant, ignorable.
Like that of the EPRLF leader, Robert, and dozens of other political opponents
of the LTTE who have been murdered since the MoU for the unforgivable crime of
expressing dissent. For the blondes, too, find value in number. Argue that, in
the greater scheme of things, these lives don’t really matter because peace in
Sri Lanka would save many more. They oppose (Sinhalese nationalist)
majoritarianism, but only in the form of another majoritarianism.
But
we are not blondes. And the leftist cannot hold such a position. Because, even
if they are right about what they call a peace dividend, the blondes and their
pragmatist peacelobbyist allies are wrong. These lives, these deaths, do
matter. It is the responsibility of the leftist to point this out. To, at the
very least, tell the stories, or retell the stories, that a majoritarian
perspective will and must ignore. To find significance in the singular.
I
don’t buy all the positions of the UTHR(J). Its preachy moralism gets on just
about everybody’s nerves. It seems to have, also, a naïve faith in the
“international community,” which these days is a pseudonym for U.S.
imperialism. After Iraq, surely it is just plain bad politics – if not just
plain stupid – to deem that the U.S. actually cares about other countries. But
I bow down in the face of its commitment, its conviction, its immense courage;
and its intellectual and ethical persuasion: that peace cannot and should not
be understood from a majoritarian, or elitist, perspective.
*
For a
long time after 1983, things looked pretty much hopeless to the left. Peace in
Sri Lanka, next to impossible. You couldn’t find many people to sign a petition
then – and the newspapers wouldn’t print one, anyway. Things look different now.
The LTTE, of course, has had a lot to do with the current state of affairs; but
not exclusively so. If things are changing, we cannot forget the efforts of the
other Tamil resistance groups, or the work of the Sri Lankan or southern
anti-nationalist left and peace movement, including the courageous example of
Uyangoda, who publicly resisted Sinhalese nationalism often at the risk of his
life. If things have changed, their exertions must be reckoned to have
contributed hugely towards this.
Things
look hopeless today, too. The LTTE seems about to inherit the northeast. Even
the Uyangodas of the country are actively encouraging this. But the UTRH(J),
with the lives of its contributors on the line, are resisting. They refuse to
be seduced by the inevitability of the present. In so doing, they give us cause
for optimism of the intellect – and of the will.
References
1.
Adorno, Theodor. 1993. “Subject And
Object.” In Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds) The Essential
Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum.
- Ali,
Ameer. 2003. “Government + LTTE – Muslims = Intifadah: The Cruel Equation
In Sri Lankan Peace Process.” Polity, 1.1.
- Barthes, Roland. 1986. The Rustle of Language. Trans Richard Howard. Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
- De Tocqueville, Alexis. 1988. Democracy In America. Trans George Lawrence. New York:
Harper-Collins.
- Ismail, Qadri. 2000. “Constituting Nation, Contesting
Nationalism: The Southern Tamil (Woman) and Separatist Tamil Nationalism.”
In Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (eds) Subaltern Studies, XI (New Delhi: Permanent Black.
- Liyanage,
Sumanasiri. 2003. “Comment On The Peace Talks.” Polity, 1.1.
- Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.
1987. The Federalist Papers. New
York: Penguin.
- Mill, John Stuart. 1991. Considerations on
Representative Government. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
- Scott, David. 1999. Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- UTHR(J).
2002. Towards A Totalitarian Peace: The Human Rights Dilemma.
Kohuwala: Wasala Publications.
- Uyangoda, Jayadeva. 2003. “Beyond Negotiations:
Towards Transformative Peace In Sri Lanka.” Marga Journal, 1.1.
12. ---.
1993. “Sri Lanka’s Crisis: Contractarian Alternatives,” Pravada 2.5.
13. Wilson,
Alfred Jeyaratnam. 1994. “The Colombo Man, the Jaffna Man, and the Batticaloa
Man.” In Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pfaffenberger (eds) The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and
Identity. Boulder: Westview.
Qadri Ismail teaches postcolonial studies at the University Of Minnesota.
The above is derived from the conclusion to his book, Abiding By Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place and Postcoloniality
(University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming).
