The Language of Peace Building in Sri Lanka- the Absent Presence

S. Nanthikesan

In the fifties and sixties, Official Language issue was one of the key issues around which Tamil Nationalism mobilized (remember the Sinhala only of SWRD Bandaranayake, Hartals, riots etc). It prompted LSSP leaders to prophesize: “one language two countries or two languages and one country (or some such thing)”. Today, nearly four decades and many lost limbs and lives later, we accepted the inevitable - The Premadasa Government amended the Official Language Act to include Tamil as the ‘other’ Official Language of Sri Lanka.  Yet this gesture has not changed the prospects for just and sustainable peace

While the presidency may have moved away from the hardnosed sinhala chauvinism prior to the nineties [i] , chauvinism continues to flourish at all other levels of the state. One of the symptoms of its ‘health’ is the manner in which Official Language Act has been implemented. While the political leadership might have recognized the need to have the “other” official language, the state continues to follow its old practices of sinhala exclusiveness – indeed this exclusion appears to have worsened in a number of instances in the South, particularly in Colombo. 

On the other side, the militant Tamil nationalism that articulated the legitimate grievances of the Sri Lankan Tamils prior to the early eighties was gradually hijacked by the ultra nationalism of the LTTE.  This ultra nationalism tends to mirror the “arrogance of power” of the State in every way – particularly, in treating the lives and well-being of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities under their control with similar disdain.

I would like to reiterate that the implementation of Official Language Act is only one of the many ways in which Tamil speaking communities continue to be marginalized/excluded in the day-to-day functioning of the country.  Thirty years ago, broad spectrum of the Tamil civil society and progressive/liberal Sinhalese spearheaded the critique of ALL chauvinistic state policies and practices.  Today, these forces have abdicated this space to be colonized by the LTTE (and their ardent votaries).  However, LTTE’s extensive involvement with ethnic cleansing activities (or in the case of LTTE devotees, their silence when it comes to LTTE atrocities), renders their voices without any persuasive power. Tamils who see LTTE as a threat to their democratic future as well as the Sinhala liberal/progressives are mostly silent on the day to day marginalization of the Tamils by the State in the non-LTTE areas. I am troubled by this lack. Any struggle for a just peace cannot ignore the presence of debilitating conditions for a truly participatory democratic system to emerge from our current chaos. 

Consider the anecdotal example of the Ministry of Public Administration and Home Ministry which serves as the main government unit responsible for “Matters relating to the implementation of the Official Languages Policy of the Government” and also houses the Department of Official Language Commission.  Its only web accessible department – the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration - has web page titles in Sinhala and English only!!!  It is equally telling that among the senior cadres listed in the Ministry there was not a single Tamil or a Muslim. [ii]

Regrettably this is not the only instance [iii] … During my one-month visit to Sri Lanka in August this year I was struck by its omnipresence….Wilpattu National Reserve which is not exactly in the Southern Heartland, did not have a single brochure in English or Tamil; it was a great effort to find an English speaking park ranger to guide us – almost everyone was monolingual sinhala speaker. 

Please do not misunderstand me - I am not reducing the Official Language Act to having trilingual signboards everywhere. The difficulties people may have in filing police reports to accessing official documents from registries to having government servants who could provide services in the language(s) of the local population are all impediments to deepening participatory democracy.

Needless to say we are not a rich country. Developing trilingual capacity and seriously implementing official language act require resources. The State has to be selective in its implementation to maximize the resources that it puts to use. For instance, it would make much less economic sense to request sign boards in Tamil or Tamil translations of official documents or Tamil speaking officials in areas where Tamils and Muslims do not live in numbers  (and vice versa). But what we witness is not just about inadequate resources - It reflects the attitude of the state. 

The actions of the current State and other actors point to a conviction that the changes at the macro level are central to negotiated peace: changing constitutions, enacting laws, negotiations among political elite, getting international actors to intervene are all central to bring about a negotiated settlement; concurrently, there is a corollary marginalization of the efforts to secure grassroots level support. No one in their right mind would argue that the macro level changes are unimportant.  Indeed, often they provide enabling conditions for lasting solutions (like the Official Language Act). However, any macro-level solution to succeed in a  sustained manner it needs a) institutions that will ensure the implementation of macro decisions at all levels including the mirco-level; and b) these macro-level decisions have grass roots level support. For instance, the Official Language Act, therefore, would need the creation of institutions at the national, provincial and district and village levels to monitor and implement the Act – from the courts to the police room to the Kacheris (Registries) to the administrative structures to the streets.  In order for these institutions to function with due vigilance, activities are needed to garner support of ‘beneficiaries’ at all these levels.  While it is difficult to expect such stand alone activities to supoprt the Act, it would make perfect sense to link such activities to a campaign to mobilize public support to the broader struggle for inter-ethnic justice.

Without the will to foster institutions to strengthen the implementation and monitoring of the Act at the national, provincial, district, and village level; without the will to solicit support at the grassroots for the Act, the official language bill is doomed to fail. Indeed, this government has moved away from its grassroots campaign in 1994 - to many observers this government seem to be moving away from relying on mobilizing mass base support to relying exclusively on conflict resolution techniques and International community – in short, seeking technical solutions to a fundamentally political problem.

 The efforts to implement the Official Language Act need to recognize its strategic role in peace building at the grass roots – its role in recognizing the shared struggles of co-exiting groups to cope with the day to day hardships of life and address them in an equitable manner; we need to see peace building as an essential step towards bringing in a participatory (inclusive) democracy to the whole country.  Without this linkage, the official language act is just another edict from the top that is doomed to be dead on arrival.

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