On the question of Muslims

Kandy during curfew

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

(Continued from yesterday)

Tamils in the region also have faced and are facing similar problems and it is to be presumed that Sinhala communities in the easthave a set of concerns that are peculiar to them.In the war years, the Coalition for Muslims and Tamils produced two documents that had traced the ways in which the state was redrawing the boundaries in the south-east; these articles can be found on http://ctmpc.blogspot.com/.One of the other allegations concerns Muslims of the Musali region, a community that has been living in the most trying circumstances as IDPs in the Puttalam region and had since 2010 resettled in their former places of abode and their surroundings. We need an empathic understanding of history, a history of the people, and not just a history of the constitution and the history of the state.I want to point to the works of S. H. Hasbullah, Farzana Haniffa, Mirak Raheem, the work of Women’s Action Network, Chulani Kodikara, Sharika Thiranagama, to name just a few, for somebody who wants to take this further.

If we are to have a nuanced understanding, we need to look both toward the state to understand what it is and away from it and towardcommunities and their social locations. Kishali Pinto Jayawardene never queries the social position of her co-traveller; we know so little about him, and yet he carries an authority denied many others. A relatively empowered being, a Sinhala male with the means to be jet setting in these times, his elocutionary power is enormous (at least at that moment), and she feels obliged to take what he says at his word. We hear neither the words of Thilaka Pushpakumari, the wife of PG Kumarasinghe, who was murdered by four men (Muslim) nor the words of the Muslim woman who boards a plane to work in the household of another empowered family in West Asia.I do not wish to prioritize the voice of working class women, suggesting they are automatically of a superior moral calibre. I refer merely to voices of privilege that speak with no investment in looking at politics beyond their own privileged positions.Class and gender are critical forces acting here,but do not seem to inform analyses that see the state and the nation as monoliths and as static.

There is much in Senaratne’s article that is strongly articulated, particularly his critique of violence emanating from purportedly Sinhala Buddhist quarters. I don’t want my own critique to detract from the value of that indictment. Here, I point to the theorizing that needs to pay attention to the politics of the state and the politics of the nation if we are to speak of reform.The state and its constitution are not static and impartial entities; a robotic apparatus that can be amended,but nevertheless has the potential to be impartial and has the potential to stabilize and ensure amity just through some force of will. In this understanding, the security of the state seems paramount.But the state is a political being and is invested in the hierarchies of the nation. In asking for a reform of the state,we cannottake its hegemonies,the hegemonies of class, gender and the nation, as the normative and for granted. We need to interrogate our attachments to the nation too, the dominant nation-state paradigm.

Secular mindedness as a concept seeks a reform of the state, where, while the state is secular, it also functions through an accommodation of group affinities. Senaratne views secular mindedness as something that Sinhala Buddhist communities need to navigate andaddress.While he is unclear on what he means by secular mindedness, he is rather clear about whom the reformist call addresses: It addresses the Sinhala Budhist polity, leaving the minorities out on a limb and thus raising questions about the place of minorities ( and in this instance, Muslim in particular) within the Sri Lankan national paradigm. It looks like the Muslim is positioned as the limitof the secular minded state, defining its contours. Secular mindedness allows for certain allegiances, and those of the Muslim too, if s/he is willing to be converted to the normative of secularism. The content of that would be the content of what other ethnicities would deem to be natural, hegemonically speaking. So, a Sinhala Buddhist’s normative conduct would be the touchstone for what it means to be secular minded. An accommodation, where the Muslim defines the no go area –the "descent" into fundamentalism?–as he stands with one foot in and one foot out.

Looking to reforming the state apparatus, in the understanding of it as an autonomous and independent entity,one is compelled to ask:who/what is it independent from?: the politics of place and the politics of nation are two interrelated aspects Senaratne divorces from constitutionality. And it behoves us to pay heed to the pluralities of the three forces, place, people and politics. There is a range of fractures here that need to be understood and there is a range of alliances that can be made; and those alliances may not happen in the name of Sinhala Buddhism, Muslimness or Tamil nationalism. There are other alliances that are impending; but those alliances need to pay heed to their own possible hegemonies within their operations. Secular mindedness is a welcome concept and it might be interesting to debate it here and elsewhere, but not in the cause of reinstating majoritarian dominance, but in deconstructing it and pointing toward multiple engagements with different minority (not just ethnic minority) concerns. Secular mindedness would be interesting if one approaches it not through the lens of majoritarian affiliations, but through the imperatives of life on the margins exemplified by minorities.

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