Sri Lanka's Protests Show a Fragile Unity

After this partition, disputes arose among the Hindus who happened to live in the area now designated as Pakistan (which was primarily Muslim) and the Muslims who lived in what was now India (primarily Hindu). War erupted when the new governments in Pakistan and India were unable to manage the mass migration of people who wanted to move to their country of choice.

Relations between West and East Pakistan were strained from the beginning – their shared religion (Islam) was unable to bridge their cultural differences. The population in East Pakistan is predominantly Bengali. The people of Bengal, the region around the Bay of Bengal, have their own language and cultural designation. The people who lived in East Pakistan felt further alienated when Karachi in West Pakistan was chosen as the first capital of Pakistan, and Urdu became the national language.

Bengali nationalism peaked after the catastrophic 1970 Bhola cyclone, which killed 500,000 people when it struck East Pakistan. The population resented the inadequate support they received from the federal government in response to the disaster. An ensuing war for independence resulted in the new sovereign state of Bangladesh in December of 1971. The previously western portion of Pakistan became the country we call Pakistan today.

The British colonists left several legacies in this region. The official languages in India are Hindu and English, and in Pakistan, they are Urdu and English. The British also created a vast railroad system and a series of port cities to transport the resources they extracted and ship them to Great Britain. However, they did not build this system to serve the Indian population. It consisted of individual lines that linked the resource depots located in the country's interior to the coast. It was not an integrated network to help the Indians travel from city to city.

The British East India Company developed three major port cities along the Indian coast to send and receive goods by ship. Bombay (now Mumbai) on the west coast provided access to the Arabian Sea. Madras (now Chennai) on the southeast coast provided access to the lower Bay of Bengal, and Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the lower Ganges Delta along the northeast coast provided access to the upper Bay of Bengal.

The British moved the capital city of India from Kolkata to New Delhi in 1911. New Delhi's central location made it easier to administer the entire country. Kolkata also harbored anti-colonial sentiment and was the center of India's nationalist movements. Several assassinations of British officials took place in Kolkata. See Figure 8.1 for the locations of these cities.

The island country of Sri Lanka was also part of the British Empire, and its ethnic groups continue to be deeply divided, but the map in Figure 8.7 is not shaded to reflect its colonial status. Finlayson refers to this communal conflict at the end of Section 8.5. The population is temporarily unified as it responds to the economic crisis the COVID-19 pandemic caused and the war in Ukraine, which caused global food and energy prices to spike.

Read this article for more on the competing ethnic groups and the effects British imperialism has had on the conflict. Figure 8.9 shows the distribution of languages and religious groups by district in Sri Lanka. The majority Sinhalese clearly dominate the island, while the Tamils generally occupy the northern and eastern periphery. The Sinhalese are an Indo-Aryan group, whereas the Tamils are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group. Note that Figure 8.7 of in the article in section 8.3, Cultural Groups in South Asia, shows a group of Tamil speakers in southern India. The orange polygon of Indian Tamils in south-central Sri Lanka coincides with Mount Pidurutalagalahe, a summit of 2,525 m. Muslims are clearly a minority group.

Sri Lankan students march during a protest over the economic crisis outside the residence of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa

Sri Lankan students march during a protest over the economic crisis outside the residence of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, April 24, 2022. AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crises since winning independence from Britain in 1948. Inflation is at an all-time high and protests are spreading around the country.

Most public anger is directed toward President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Critics point to the Rajapaksas' poor handling of the COVID-19 crisis, and "Gota out" signs demanding their resignations are seen across the country.

Protesters come from all ethnicities and all religions. This seeming unity is notable in Sri Lanka, which has been deeply divided for decades. The country has a violent history of ethnic and religious conflict, and of scapegoating minorities. In recent years, that has been particularly true of Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of the population. As a historian of religion who focuses on Sri Lanka, I have studied Muslims' precarious position in Sri Lankan society amid growing discrimination.


Civil War

Traditionally, Sri Lanka has been divided into three major ethnic groups: the Sinhalese, who make up 74 percent of the population and are mostly Buddhists; the Tamils, about 15 percent, most of whom are Hindu; and Muslims, who are descendants of Middle Eastern traders and mostly speak the Tamil language.

In 1983 a civil war broke out between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil separatists that lasted until 2009. Violent tensions between the island's two biggest groups had existed for years, with the Sinhalese majority believing Tamils had received preferential treatment under the British. After independence, the situation reversed: for example, Sinhala became the only official language, meaning that Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans lost jobs in the public sector.

The constitution assures the religious freedom of all, but Buddhism is also given a special status. It states, "The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster" the faith.

The war caused the deaths of at least 100,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians, though estimates vary. As many as 100,000 Tamils might still be displaced. Both sides were accused of war crimes, including at the end of the war, when Mahinda Rajapaksa – now prime minister – was president, and his brother Gotabaya, now president, was secretary of defense.

Government officials deny abuses, and have tried to block the United Nations' ongoing investigation.


New Tensions

After the war the country's third-largest ethnic group, Muslims, became the new target for Sinhalese nationalists, who claimed that Muslims had both economic and ideological ties with the Middle East. A hardline Buddhist group called the Bodu Bala Sena encouraged anti-Muslim sentiment, and accused halal food industries of sponsoring international terrorism.

During Easter 2019, local Muslim terrorists inspired by the Islamic State carried out an attack killing over 250 people in several Christian churches and hotels. This was the worst attack in Sri Lanka against civilians since the civil war ended in 2009, and prompted more discrimination against Muslim citizens

Buddhist nationalists supported Gotabaya Rajapaksa's election as president in 2019. Since then, the government has proposed plans to ban full-face veils in public and to shut down many Islamic schools. During the pandemic, the government forced people who died from COVID-19 to be cremated, in violation of traditional Islamic funeral ceremonies.

In 2021, Amnesty International released an 80-page report about anti-Muslim prejudice in the country. The researchers urged Sri Lanka's government to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has been used to target prominent Muslim activists.

Muslims stand while praying inside a structure with metal walls.
In this Nov. 14, 2019 photo, Muslims offer prayers inside a temporary mosque set up next to a mosque damaged by a mob during 2018 riots in the outskirts of Kandy, Sri Lanka. AP Photo/Dar Yasin

Muslims have also expressed fear of land grabs, which Rauff Hakeem, the leader of the largest Muslim political party, the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, has called his community's biggest concern. Land seizures by the army have been major concerns for Tamils, as well.


Unity or Division?

For now, ethnic tensions appear to be on hold. The common foe is the Rajapaksa family, as protesters demand that the president and prime minister step down.

People sit on long blankets outside for a meal.

Sri Lankan Muslims wait to break the Ramadan fast at a protest site outside the president's office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 20, 2022. AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena

An official spokesman from the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, who requested to remain anonymous, told me that Muslims' participation in protests has "surprised the government. Christians who came in thousands after Easter Sunday mass and the clergy of Buddhists in thousands all over the island came together under one banner as Sri Lankans. Not as Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim or Christians."

Yet Muslims are often stereotyped as wealthy. Given Sinhalese nationalists' past accusations that Muslims have suspect economic ties with the Middle East, some, including contacts of mine inside the country, have voiced concern that leaders could channel ethnic tensions to blame minorities for the country's economic downfall. Pro-government social media campaigns have frequently targeted minorities like Tamils and Muslims.

"The current protest movement's focus on the commonality of experience, while understandable, does little to reassure Tamils and Muslims that they are safe from ethnic scapegoating for the country's economic woes," Mario Arulthas, a doctoral candidate studying Tamils and nationalism at SOAS University of London, wrote in a recent column. Such scapegoating is "a tactic the state has historically used as a distraction during times of crisis, resulting in pogroms against these communities."

As Sri Lanka goes forward, its citizens will confront not only the aftermath of the economic crisis, but these legacies of suspicion among ethnic groups.


Source: Andreas Johansson, https://theconversation.com/sri-lankas-protests-show-a-fragile-unity-for-now-181756
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Last modified: Friday, April 7, 2023, 2:56 PM