Sinhalese-Tamil Ethnic Nationalism In Real Terms

By Daya Gamage –MAY 2, 2021

Daya Gamage

There is a tendency among academics and others commenting on the separatist war in Sri Lanka to see Tamil nationalism as largely a function of inter-ethnic relations and majoritarian politics within the confines of the island.  In this view, a Tamil ethno-political identity was engendered and amplified in the post-colonial era by discrimination and persecution by the majority community, which is commonly depicted as being driven by a domineering, exclusivist nationalism. 

Scholar Neil DeVotta in his “Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology: Implications for Politics and Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka,” explained in 2007, during the brutal end-game of the war, the roots of the conflict lay in a supremacist ideology based on an ethnic identity that is inextricably fused with Buddhism : 

“. . . Political Buddhism and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism have created the nationalist ideology currently prevalent in government and in the predominantly Sinhalese Buddhist society.  Adherents to this nationalist ideology insist on expanding and perpetuating Sinhalese-Buddhist supremacy within a unitary state; creating rules, laws, and structures that institutionalize such supremacy; and attacking those who disagree with this agenda.  For those who have bought into it, this ideology is sacrosanct and hence nonnegotiable. . . Although such dogmatism may promote political participation, . . . it undermines civil society and fosters illiberalism.”

One problem with this line of analysis is that it often veers into a kind of reductionism that seeks the roots of nationalism and exclusivist aggression within the history and doctrines of religion rather than in social structure, competing economic and political interests, and the architecture of the state. 

Tamil writers in particular tend to blame Tamil rejection of a unified Sri Lankan state on “Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism.” As the respected Tamil academic Ratnajeevan Hoole has expressed it, “The focus on minorities as the agents of secession is . . . misplaced. The principal threat to the unity of the nation is the chauvinism of the majority.” One does not have to defend Sinhalese nationalism to understand that it is a product, at least in part, of the historic memory of centuries of existential threats from larger and more powerful Hindu polities from just across the Palk Strait. Some recent writers have been critical of Sinhalese nationalism for vaunting Sri Lankan sovereignty and unity, but many nations would consider these to be fundamental and legitimate pillars of patriotism. Other scholars recognize that both Hindu and Buddhist nationalisms have been reactive, i.e., both developed as defensive shields against perceived threats from the other.   

This more aggressive interpretation of Buddhist doctrine is not shared by most Sri Lankan Buddhists. By way of comparison, the Sri Lankan government does not enforce institutionalized systems of discrimination and human rights abuses against any of its ethnic minorities the way the Israeli government does toward its Arab citizens, especially in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Despite decades of ethnic conflict, there have been no calls in Sri Lanka for the kind of ethnic cleansing of Tamil-majority areas that has been carried out by Buddhist-majority Bhutan against Nepali ethnics and Myanmar against Muslim Rohingyas. Nor has the Sinhala-majority state subjected its Tamil-majority provinces to the kind of military occupation and repression that India has instituted in Muslim-majority Kashmir.  In Pakistan, security forces have been free for years to use kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial killing to suppress defenders, real or imagined, of the rights of the Baloch people. And, despite centuries of Tamil-Sinhalese co-existence in Sri Lanka, Tamils there have not suffered the long-term pressures for cultural assimilation that the government of Thailand has applied to its minority hill tribes, ethnic language communities and Muslims. 

Nearly 50 percent of Sri Lanka’s Tamils live in Sinhalese-majority districts in the south, where they own property and carry out their occupations peacefully. Statistics show that Sri Lankan Tamils constitute 29 percent of residents in the Colombo Municipal Area, where they enjoy all the facilities and advantages of urban dwellers. In the greater Colombo area both Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils own some three-quarters of the retail shops and small businesses, and have nearly controlling interests in the import-export trades.  Tamils of Indian Origin constitute around 2 percent of the capital area, and Muslims nearly 24 percent. After the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, when blood banks appealed for blood donations—mostly to treat Tamil victims—close to 90 percent of those who volunteered to donate were Sinhalese. During the war the Sinhalese community as a whole was almost unbelievably restrained, not reacting vindictively when LTTE terrorists penetrated the South, murdered Buddhist monks and villagers, massacred 146 pilgrims, and attacked several bus loads of school children and the most sacred Buddhist shrine in the country, the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy.  Although not often mentioned, it is remarkable that there have been no anti-Tamil riots since 1983.  And despite the anti-minority rhetoric of Sinhalese hardliners, Sri Lanka has not suffered from the kind of institutionalized racism that in the United States led to the attempted genocide of indigenous Americans, the murder of Hispanic immigrants, and centuries of violent enslavement, segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Sri Lankan police do not shoot Tamil civilians to death with the same regularity that U.S. police shoot unarmed American Blacks.

The Sinhalese population as a whole did not feel threatened even when the fighting in the North and East led to an exodus of Tamils (now numbering 50 percent of the total community) into southern Sinhalese-majority districts. Because of this religious self-confidence among Buddhists, radical Sinhalese nationalists, who inveigh against alleged threats from Hindus, Christians and Muslims, have not achieved wide political traction in Sri Lanka.

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