THE EXPERIENCES OF TAMIL WOMEN: NATIONALISM, CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER, AND WOMEN'S POLITICAL AGENCY

-- Nanthini Sornarajah

This is the first of a three part discussion by Nanthini Sornorajah on Tamil women’s negotiation with nationalism and the construction of gender. This first section offers a broad introduction to how these issues have been conjoined - from a discussion of how notions of ‘motherhood’ entered Dravidian nationalism in South India to a discussion of how women were admitted into the fold of LTTE cadre in Sri Lanka. Subsequent sections will focus more closely on women, nationalism and armed combat (See Vol. III; No. 1 - Forthcoming May 2004) and, women’s dissenting voices resisting nationalism (See Vol. III; No. 2 - Forthcoming August 2004).

Introduction

In recent years Tamil women fighters in Sri Lanka belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have burst into our visual horizons insistently demanding our attention, holding up their spectacular feats of commando attacks, sabotage operations , suicide missions and assassinations, as evidence of their proud achievements towards their own emancipation. These `singular achievements' of the women fighters of one of the most terrifyingly efficient guerrilla forces of the world today, have impressed not only military analysts but also the international media, and even academics and feminist activists as evidence of a radical transformation of women's position in a ‘traditional’ South Asian society.

Tamil women have much to celebrate about in their recent history of survival in a bloody, fratricidal war. However the celebration of Tamil women's involvement in full scale armed combat as `revolutionary' and as a process contributing to their `emancipation' should be evaluated in the context of an objectified perception of ` South Asian womanhood' which does not pay sufficient attention to the specific manner in which Sri Lankan Tamil gender identity has been constructed and how this construction has historically evolved. This perception does not acknowledge the tensions that exist between nationalist and gender issues and views Tamil nationalism as an essentially liberatory process

It is obvious, that the civil war itself, arising out of the national struggle, has had a devastating impact on society and serious socio economic implications for the lives of Tamil women. Women who were confined to the home suddenly found themselves in the absence of men, to be responsible for whole families. They are the leaders of family units during displacement. Women were seen to be bargaining and arguing for their families with military and civilian bureaucracies, subtly subverting the processes of officialdom for the sake of their families day-to day survival during war. Women's horizons have broadened and as unintended consequences of the war, their physical mobility, assertiveness and networking abilities have been enhanced albeit under duress. Whether this has actually advanced their position in terms of power relations in a fundamental way, within a patriarchal male dominated society is questionable. It is also important to evaluate the ways in which these processes have spawned forth forms of subjugation and oppression that reinforces male domination in new ways.

The task of this essay is to critically evaluate this and in doing so we have to examine women's involvement in the national struggle by raising two questions: First it is important to assess how Tamil nationalism becomes a gendered process, what implications constructions of gender difference have for relations of power within the nation; secondly, how do these gendered power relations encourage or constrain the development of a distinctive political agency for women.

Tamil women in the post colonial setting:

Sri Lankan state's oppressive practices against the Tamil people, and the rise of a nationalist response and the ensuing civil war have impacted on women's lives on a massive scale. This has without doubt propelled them into participating in resistance politcs at various levels. In addition to the imperative of Tamil nationalism the social construction of gender in Tamil society, and patriarchal relations of power interact to produce a crisis situation for women within the familial sphere as well. This has also been a catalyst for increased political activity amongst Tamil women.

The popular perception about the social positions of Tamil women in Sri Lanka was that they were in many ways more privileged that many of their sisters in the sub continent. Literacy was very high. General educational levels were also high by South Asian standards. While families tended to concentrate on educating their sons well first, there is very little cultural opposition to women being educated. The introduction of free education equally to both males and females meant that vast numbers of women became literate, and even went on to higher education in substantial numbers. Even though university students represented only a small percent of the population, in some years at the University of Jaffna women outnumbered men in faculties like medicine and the arts. (Hoole:89:1).

The retrogressive features of the Brahminic or the Dharmashastric system that was practised in Tamil Nadu were totally absent in Sri Lankan Tamil society. Customary laws such as the 'Thesawalamai' enabled widow remarriage, and elided under age marriage. Practises such as shaving the widow's head, or sati were totally absent in Sri Lanka. (Thiruchandran:97:51) Women would inherit immoveable property such as land, and house as dowry which was given to her at the time of marriage. She kept her dowry as her own possession, and could reap an independent income from it and could dispose of it as she pleased. Her properties could be inherited only by her daughters and-not sons. Property inheritance laws were based on a principle of equality of rights between sons and daughters. The British colonial amendments to the customary law introduced a situation where women had to now dispose of their property only under the supervision of their husbands. This strengthened the patriarchal hold on women, changing the emphasis on the importance of her female relatives to her male relatives, particularly to that of her husband (Goody: 73:111-37).

Even so at a superficial glance it would appear perplexing that rising standards of education and employment and other standards of `relative wellbeing' did not elicit a better response from women in enhancing their individual and collective participation in politics.

The most burning social issue deemed to be affecting women and family was the institution of dowry and the ideology that surrounded it. Prior to Tamil women experiencing violence and dispossession at the hands of the state, the most burning issue deemed to be affecting Tamil women across class and caste positions was dowry. Popular newspapers and women's magazines carried short stories and poems about the scourge of dowry. Controversy over dowry led to the break up of families, domestic violence and even suicide. Due to the lack of dowry many women remained unmarried leaving them destitute and second class members of a society where a high premium was placed on marriage for women. It also meant that a brother had to wait to be married till the last sister was downed. He himself could recoup through his own wife's dowry. Dowry giving was a very public event, as it occurred during the negotiation and resolution of a marriage which brought families and villages together. (Goody:73: 116-118) The woman who dowried well brought to the marriage the material basis such as land house and cash, for the husband and wife to start a family off.

Due to the penetration of the neocolonial economy and changing economic and social relations the dowry instead of being a source of economic independence staus for a woman it became sufficiently inflected through practice within a structure of patriarchal relations, to become a weapon in the hands of the man. Everything that a woman brought was part of her dowry. Not only the material wealth, but her education, and even employment became part of her dowry as it strengthened the material base in reproducing the family. A woman's earnings, her education, her labour and all her assets became implicated in her position within the family. A well dowered woman was more desirable like a chaste and virginal woman. The dowry both literally and symbolically became a powerful weapon of imprisoning her within the familial sphere. The extraction of the dowry became the main ideological force that governed familial relations.

Sivamohan remarks on the importance of the ideology of dowry for nationalism: " ....chaste womanhood rehearses the Tamil middleclass sexualized desires of land as dowry brought along by the wife-woman which was recruited by the narrative of the nation-land-woman continuum." (Sivamohan: 97:2)

The Early phase:

In the gendering of Tamil nationalism, the notion of `motherhood' is symbolically used in several different ways. Early Tamil nationalism of the 50s and the 60s was around the issue of language. The form of nascent linguistic nationalism that arose in Sri Lanka was an echo of the linguistic and cultural Tamil nationalism espoused by the Dravidian movement in south India. The `secular' and non-religious character of South Indian Tamil nationalism replaced the traditional Hindu deities with Tamil language as the mother goddess, virgin lover, and subject of devotion and piety and object of desire and practice. (Ramaswamy: 97) This movement had a tremendous influence on Sri Lankan Tamils who till recently looked towards South India for cultural inspiration and sustenance. DMK influenced publications films and poetry filled the minds of young Tamil activists who imbibed a similar attachment to 'Thamil thai'(Tamil mother) or `Thamil annai' (Tamil mother). After the enactment of the Sinhala only Act in 1956, this trend became marked in Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. The plight of the mother of Tamils the youthful, virginal Tamil language in the hands of the dastardly Sinhala state was the mono theme of that period. The Tamil nationalists equated the suppression of the Tamil language with the obliteration of the Tamil community. Tamil mother's sons were exhorted to rise up and rescue her from her plight. Here the figure of the woman and the mother is an inert and passive, embodying the linguistic community of Tamils.

As the struggle evolved and territorial claims about a traditional Tamil homeland emerged the body of the mother becomes a marker for the `mother land'. This is discursively shifted to another construction of the mother - the land or soil of the mother - where the Tamil Eelam mother resides. The land and the Tamil Eelam mother are one and the same.

The traditional Tamil homelands is an important concept that evolved in the 1960s, at a time when state aided land colonisation in Tamil areas by Sinhala settlers became intense. When the Tamils realised that the state was aiming to permanently alter the demography of the Tamil hinterlands the notion of protecting Thamil Annai - the Tamil mother, the language mother shifted to one of reclaiming and fighting for the motherland. The territorial aspirations in the form of an independent state became the fight for the Thamil Eelam - mother land. Until then nationalism remained a concern of the lower and middle classses of the Jaffna peninsula who were unhappy with discrimination in obtaining government jobs promotions and even state higher education which was based on language. The emphasis on language also shifted onto an emphasis on `We Tamils', the ethnicity.

Now the borders of the nation were territorial, marked by the limits of where Tamil was spoken, symbolically represented by the Tamil Eelam Thai. The territorial dimension helped evolve Tamil cultural nationalism to full fledged nationalism with aspirations for nationhood. This shift did not occur in a significant manner within the cultural nationalism of Tamil Nadu where there was no significant threat to the territorial integrity of the Tamil areas.

While the nation itself is symbolically represented by a mother-woman what happens to women's subjective agency within this imagining. The national imagination returns to the past to the poetry of the Sankam period (1 B.Q. The legend of the Veera thayar (brave mothers) of the heroic poetry of `love and war' is appropriated to construct the new Tamil mother who would send her sons to war. The Veera thayar (brave mothers) do not mourn their sons who valiantly fight in the battlefield facing the enemy directly . The disown their sons when they run away from the battle field. The image of the Tamil woman is from the past, atavistic, and inert not acting for herself, but standing by to celebrate male valour.

The narratives from purananooru are familiar to all Tamil children from their primary school years , and later they are figure in election speeches, nationalist pamphlets, and other discursive materials. Photograph captions of women setting out to participate in the 1961 Satyagraha agitations for language rights carried slogans about the modern Veera Thayars or as the new mothers of purananooru who were preparing their sons to send to war. (Jeganathan:95:162)

It was commonly known that after the 1983 pogroms when militant movements began recruiting young males in large numbers, mothers placed the vermilion mark on their foreheads, observed temple poojas before sending them for training. During an earlier phase, in the late seventies young men would queue up the podium during campaign meetings to receive similar marks on their forehead in blood, swearing their allegiance to the motherland. Here a person standing on the platform usually a male would cut his hand and keep the mark on the forehead of the youth. Here these rituals involving the notions of blood, the Tamil mother's honour, male valour rendered the agency of the women inactive, relying on her sons, who were routinely dispossessed and humiliated by the Sinhalas during every pogroms. Significantly she is the mother of sons and daughters do not figure in this imagination.

While the images of the `mother land' and representation of the Tamil language as the `Tamil mother' remained very potent, the political agency of individual women remained very low. (Thiruchandran:97:33-39) Thiruchandran concludes that the involvement of Sri Lankan women in democratic forms of agitation and parliamentary politics in rallies and demonstrations were relatively high, while the rise of individual women to positions of power within political parties was very low. High profile women's involvement came about within a structure of patriarchal relations where they became involved as a result of the involvement of the men in their families. Tamil women's participation at the grassroots level, prior to the current nationalist phase, with the exception of one notable example which is the Satyagraha struggle of 1961, has been very low. Involvement at the leadership level is even rarer. There is no statistical data available specifically about Tamil women's voting patterns or their participation in mass level politics. The first Tamil woman MP was not elected, but appointed in 1980, by the then UNP government, a majority Sinhala Party, to replace her brother who had died. The Tamil parties never sent a woman MP to parliament. Even a prominent and versatile (Tamil ) Federal Party woman activist like Mangayarkarasi Amirthalingam, was always passed over in favour of less talented and lesser known men, when it came to nominating candidates for elections. The wives of political leaders of the Parliamentary parties were satisfied to be involved in their role as the `nurturing mothers' or `nurturing good wives' of political men. (Jeganathan: 95:161).

Militant nationalism and women

I focus my analysis on women's presence within the dominant Tamil militant movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). There were five major militant groups including the LTTE. The other four were systematically targeted and militarily suppressed by the LTTE between the mid to late eighties and are no longer actively opposing the Sri Lankan state, and are not politically significant in armed oppositional politics.

The Tamil militant movement which began in the mid seventies started to grow at a fast pace after the 1983 nation wide Sinhala pogroms against Tamils. The LTTE which was militarily dominant established complete control in the terrain of resistance politics by the mid eighties. This was achieved mainly through sheer military force, by fighting swift and fratricidal wars against the other militant groups More importantly, LTTE's military campaign was successful as it was the legitimate militant heir of the hegemonic Jaffna Tamil - Saiva - uppercaste - nationalist bloc. For instance the EPRLF with its more Marxist orientation had in its ranks minority Tamils i.e. people from the oppressed castes. EPRLF lacked both moral and financial support from the majority Tamils, because it was called that `movement of low caste Tamils'.

Even though women had been involved with the LTTE in their individual capacity since its inception, the decision to recruit and train women came in the mid eighties. The recruitment of women in large numbers was a controversial issue within the Tigers. The Tigers had built up a reputation for themselves as a tightly knit band of dedicated fighters who had turned their backs on worldly life for the sake of the cause. Their moral authority and legitimacy was based on their life of `purity' free of alcohol, women and other worldly comforts. Abstinence, particularly from

Sexual relations was an important part of the Tigers' code of conduct'. The image of the Tigers as `resolute, moral and pure' men particularly appealed to the Jaffna Tamil Hindu, upper caste base of hegemonic Tamil nationalism.

At this point women were not taken in as full time members, as the notion of women containing a `dangerous sexuality' was widespread, and that they would distract the men from their firm resolve to fight for their motherland was uppermost. Women could with their dangerous sexuality, sow dissension amongst the men, and this would sully image of the movement in the eyes of the people. (Hoole: 92: 327)

Thiranagama reports the words of some women in the community in the aftermath of the IPKF war when the LTTE was forced to withdraw to the jungles after its numbers had depleted,

“The Tigers were all right till these women joined them. They have spoilt the ovement and the boys' dedication" (Hoole:92:329)

Here again the gendering of the liberation fighter occurs upholding the `pure and dedicated male fighter'. Women were perceived to be incapable of the kind of determination and valour found in men and would only undermine and pollute the sanctity of the struggle with her dangerous sexuality. This reduction of women to be a repository of dangerous sexuality remains at the heart of the subsequent shifting constructions of gender within Tamil nationalism.

Prior to the active recruitment of women into the.movement in 1985, there had been individual women who had joined the movement but without the backing of an autonomous women's movement. When these women began to question and reflect keenly about their subject-position they found themselves in a situation where they were forced to leave the movement as they were labelled as being an evil influence on the men. The majority of the women who became involved were from rural backgrounds, from the more undeveloped areas outside Jaffna peninsula. The war had a more devastating impact in these areas, and consequently women had suffered more economic hardship and ersecution. Women from more middle class backgrounds particularly Jaffna joined the student wing of the LTTE, motivated by their " narrow visions of patriotism "(Hoole:92:329).

The LTTE could not hold out any longer, when women who had experienced, seen and heard of atrocities by the state's security forces, and witnessed the growing militarisation of the Tamil regions, were clamouring at their doors to join the movement to fulfil their patriotic duty. Secondly Militant groups such as the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) who had a more Marxist orientation and People's Liberation Organisation Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) which had populist leanings began recruiting women in large numbers. The LTTE did not want to be left behind, as it knew that it was not possible to maintain high recruitment levels of men. The imperative was numbers. Thirdly the rate of men joining the organisation began to fall at that time, especially after LTTE's attacks on the other movements.

Adele Ann reports that a small unit was first trained in India who were brought to Sri Lanka to fight in confrontations against the Sri Lankan Forces. In 1986a larger number of women were recruited and were trained in a camp in Tamil areas. These numbers grew again in 1987 when there was another phase of recruitment resulting in the setting up of a women's military unit and rampninJ4 women. (Ann:93:7-13) It is clear that the LTTE did not recruit women in a bid to broaden its ranks and the levels of democratic practice within it to include a section of the community that had hitherto not been represented.

Bibliography

Ann, Adele, 1993, Women and Revolution, Publication Section, Madras, S.India

Goody, J.R, Tambiah, S.J., 1973, Bridewealth and Dowry, U.K, Cambridge University Press, UK.

Hoole, Rajan, Somasundaram, Daya, Sritharan, K., Thiranagama, Rajani, 1990, The Broken Palmyra Sri Lanka, The Sri Lanka Studies Institute, California.

Ramaswamy, Sumathi, 1997, Passions of the Tongue, U.K, The Regents of the University of California

Sivamohan, S., 1997, `Embodied Nation and Postcolonial Praxis', Paper read at the 12 Annual South Asia Conference at Univ. (California Berkeley).

Nanthini Sornarajah is a Sri Lankan Tamil academic currently based in Kualampur, Malaysia. She works in the area of gender and nationalism.