The Complexity of Loss

DR. KALANA SENARATNE on 05/30/2016

Troubled by the burgeoning demands for accountability, the erstwhile Rajapaksa-government developed a homogenous narrative about how to respond to the cries of the war’s victims for truth and justice. Promoted as a ‘Sri Lankan approach’ to transitional justice, this narrative – the construction and promotion of which was ably assisted by key actors of the country’s legal profession – emphasized the importance of ‘restorative justice’ understood as giving prominence to forgiveness and tolerance when dealing with violence, and not to prosecutions of alleged perpetrators of crimes (‘retributive justice’). With a committed reluctance to investigate, the Rajapaksa-government which had successfully executed a war against the LTTE, had no other option but to promote such a narrative. Though less prominent today, its appeal has not yet diminished.

A recently published book effectively challenges this dominant narrative. In Confronting the Complexity of Loss: Perspectives on Truth, Memory and Justice in Sri Lanka (Law & Society Trust, 2015), Gehan Gunatilleke – a human rights lawyer, academic and civil society activist – provides an important account of the complexity of loss and the plurality of the narratives of loss which need to be taken into account in promoting justice to those victims of violence. Gunatilleke’s attempt is “to understand the attitudes of victims and survivors towards truth, memory and justice” (p. 2), and he does so by examining the views of victims of three events or episodes of violence: the victims of the JVP-insurrection (of the late 1980s); the victims of the war between the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE; and the victims of human rights abuses of the post-war era.

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Gunatilleke begins his exploration, in Part I, with a brief overview of the context of ethnic and religious relations in Sri Lanka. While it introduces and discusses the key events of violence the participants of the study have had to confront, this part contains a brief dip into the history of ethnic relations (p. 9-20), which provides the backdrop to the violence that took place in Sri Lanka’s recent history, such as the war (concluded in 2009) as well as the more recent violence carried out by ultra-nationalist Buddhist groups in the south.

One of the key aspects targeted by Gunatilleke is the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist narrative. Relying on the works of historians and social scientists such as the late Prof. Leslie Gunwardana, Prof. Sasanka Perera et al, the book sets out a brief critique of the Mahavamsa (a historical chronicle which is often considered to be shaping much of Sinhala-Buddhist understanding of the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamils). In the course of this critique, Gunatilleke makes reference, for example, to the claim made by the Prof Gunawardana to the effect that the famous Dutugemunu-Elara war was merely aimed by the former at capturing territory, both from Elara as well as other regional rulers. “Yet the accounts contained in the Mahavamsa have dominated the consciousness of the Sinhalese majority…” (p. 11). Gunatilleke argues that this historical narrative which portrays the Tamil as ‘foreign’ has got accepted as fact, and that even history textbooks in schools draw “heavily and uncritically” from sources such as the Mahavamsa (p. 10). Tamil nationalism emerged as a reactive force to minority-marginalization – and though non-violent at first, became “fundamentally violent eventually.” (p. 20). He also refers to the complex relations between Sinhala-Buddhists and other religious groups, such as Christians and Muslims, and the struggle for both space and power that has been central to these relations (ibid).

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