On the question of Muslims

Kandy during riots

By Sivamohan Sumathy-April 11, 2018, 12:00 pm 

In the aftermath of the violence that engulfed the Kandy district, many of us in the intelligentsia have been floundering about, trying to find answers to what has happened. We have responses, quite anguished responses, trying to reason out what the irrationality of the violence targeting Muslims could mean in the short term and in the longer term. My piece here is one such attempt and in my quest for answers I wish to look at how many of the well intentioned responses to the crisis, some of them stronger and sharper than others, nevertheless fall short of offering a critique of the structural aspects on which the violence pivots.I wish to anchor some of my own formulations on two pieces of writing that are symptomatic of precisely the contradictions that confound such responses. I refer to Kishali Pinto Jayawardene’s article "An unhappy Lanka and an unfortunate people" (Sunday Times, March, 11, 2018) and Kalana Senaratne’s"Behind a growing social fissure" (The Hindu, March 22, 2018); both unequivocal in their critique and yet, partaking in the majoritarianism of the violence that they critique.

Jayawardene unequivocally condemns the violence and asks what has happened to our country. And this is a question many of us are grappling with and trying in many ways to find a solution for. She opens her piece with an anecdote, where a fellow traveller on the plane, claiming to be from Mawanella, tells her that unlike earlier times, Muslims in Mawanella are isolating themselves and the Sinhala community in turn has turned away from them. Jayawardene develops this point no further, nor does she refer to the anecdote beyond this narration, but relates this story to illustrate a reason for the breakdown of relations between the two communities. On reading it, one is hard pressed to understand what the import of this narration is. The reproduction of this tired old view of Muslims is annoying at best and dangerous at worst.It is a classic case of a majority blaming the minority and one that characterises a wide range of responses, some even academic in their registers.

One critical piece of information is glossed over in Jayawardene’s article; in privileging the authoritative voice of Mawanella, the "highly educated Engineer"she ignores something that I think is critical,the fact that neither during the Aluthgama violence nor in the Digana violence, there were riots against Muslims of any significance in Mawanella. She may not know that there has been quite a concerted effort in Mawanella post 2001 riots and post Aluthgama violence, initiating dialogue between the two communities, associations, workshops and other activities. The highly educated engineer does not seem to know of this. Whether these efforts are successful or not, or meaningful or not is quite another question. But we shall not sit in judgement over communities with whom we have had very little interaction. In talking about Mawanella and the non-occurrence of violence there, I am not suggesting that the incidents of violence at Digana and Aluthgama are somehow triggered by the Muslims or the kind of Sinhalese who live there. Far from it. Why violence took place in Aluthgama, Ampara(i) and Digana and not in Mawanella in the last few years could point to something interesting and significant and at the same time, not; but one can rest assured that it has little to do with the Muslim community isolating itself, for if one tried even a little to study what happened, one would find that quite a different picture emerges. Further, isn’t it significant that the headquarters of Mahason Balakaaya is in Digana? Does it have any meaning for Muslim-Sinhala relations? Again, is it only because of Mahason Balakaaya having its headquarters there were these incidents? I seriously doubt it and will say NO.While many Sinhala persons had braved the wrath of the thugs and had given shelter to Muslim families, whose courage and commitment cannot be overstated and needs reiteration, we also have stories about how long standing and intimate friends had turned their heads away. The violence in Digana, Kengalle and parts of Akurana, Katugastota and other places is not about a community isolating itself. One needs to seek answers through a more involved and a more sustained exchange of ideas, feelings, understandings of how and why communities live together and in isolation. Above all, one needs to pay heed to the politics and political economy of place, shaping the discourse, in this instance, of ethnicity and nationhood.There is no short cut to these departures, processes and arrivals.

Kalana Senaratne’s article, challenging one to theorise on what we need to do, and by proposing a solution through constitutionality, a secular minded state, provides the spring board for what I want to say. That he qualifies secularism and wants a reformist secular state (and in my view welcome) rather than a secular state perse is interesting. I would like to think that he qualifies the secular for the reason that he is uncomfortable with the rigidities proposed by the promotion of a secular state, blind to the normativity embedded in such a proposal. The state accommodates secularism and promotes it while being aware that its polities, communities, have various different allegiances, a prominent one being religion, while other communal identifications could qualify as well. While such a complication of the secular is necessary and welcome, I think Senaratne does not go far enough in that mode, extending that privilege (the privilege of complicating and accessing secular mindedness rather than the secular) to all communities. A certain majoritarian tendency shows up, unfortunately, for I do not think Senaratne wants to be in that camp. Yet, I find that slip or slippage, productive, for it opens up space for a dialogue that Senaratne and others would be interested in engaging with.

What are these majoritarian pronouncements? 1. Muslims are less self critical. than Sinhala Buddhists 2. One must pay heed to allegations of land grabbing by Muslim leadership. 3.The state must pay heed to allegations of increasing radicalization of Muslims in the east as it can destabilize it. 4. Muslims have a particular kind of approach to religion that is different from the Buddhist approach to religion 5. Buddhists are more liberal minded than Muslims. It is true that Senaratne sounds somewhat tentative on all these pronouncements, and yet, that very tentativeness makes all of them possibilities. Yes, I will concede they are possibilities, but are so not in the way he’s proposing; possibilities arising out of a singular truth- That the Muslim is somehow tangential to the idea of nation, the Sri Lankan nation and has to reform himself if he wants to belong. This undertone of dominance, centering Sinhala Buddhism in its theoretical framework, makes Senaratne’s claims and pronouncements very disconcerting.

Apart from the quite astonishing remark about how Muslims are less self-critical than the Sinhala Buddhists (!) and the related point about how the Buddhist approach to religion is different from that of the Muslim, which I am going to ignore for the moment, the other concerns he raises necessitate a response. I find it interesting that he makes a claim to history and locates the current social turmoil within the historical period of post war conditions. He recognizes the present moment as the post war moment and speaks of the radicalization of Muslims in the east, interestingly given as ISIS inspired! While nobody, not even in the time of war, had found any evidence of a militant Islamic organization, drawing succour from ISIS, ALQAEDA or Taliban, and there is absolutely no such evidence visible today in the east, he suggests something of that sort as a primary concern.

But there is a more fundamental question that I want to raise here and that is not about evidence of Muslim militancy, but is about militancy itself, ethnic, class based, gendered, and regional. Our terminology is not innocent and is coined through a discursive that is both local and global. Therefore, when he cites radicalization of Muslims as a fear of the state, it is not militancy itself that he deplores, but the militancy of Muslims.What about Tamil and Sinhala radicalization movements? Why are they to be dubbed as militancy and are to be endowed with some kind of legitimacy (even when feared and suppressed) while militancy among Muslims (real or perceived) is to be feared and delegitimized from the outset? I would ask Senaratne to turn to the discursive here, look at his own assumptions and frames of thought. What is radicalization really? If it’s a short hand for various forms of militancy among Muslims (real or imagined), what does it say about us? From what context do we borrow that term? How do we, Muslims and all, understand that term?

As Senaratne should know, the east was embroiled in the complications of ethnicization for more than 30 years, dating from perhaps pre-independence times. These ethnic complications and tensions have spilled over into the post war period and shape the nature of politics in the region. Land in the east has been a particularly contentious subject. I am sure Senaratne is aware that, even if not the most, at least some of the densest areas in the country are located in the east and are Muslim majority areas; this has to do with the way in which eastern Muslims have been confined to small pockets of land and land available to them has shrunk. Many Muslim communities living elsewhere in the region had to relocate themselves in Muslim majority areas, like Kathankudy, during the war. The 2004 tsunami aggravated the situation. Land grab accusations aimed at a minority community are always to be viewed with suspicion; and one can argue any land grab allegation has to be examined carefully before any public pronouncement is made. See "Muslim geographies and the politics of purification in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami" by Shahul Hasbullah and Benedict Korf in the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 2009.

(To be continued)

Sivamohan Sumathy is attached to the Department of English, University of Peradeniya.