Contestations over Land in Northern Sri Lanka

Rethinking hegemony and resistance in land conflicts in the post-civil war Sri Lankan North.

Villagers from Vasavilan and Palali in Jaffna, attempting to view the 197 acres of land that was occupied by the Sri Lankan military in early 2015. Image: Tamil Guardian

Mahendran Thiruvarangan-Mar 30, 2022

In Northern Sri Lanka, unequal access to land has been a centuries-old problem. The major reasons for the conflicts and contestations over land in this region include: the long history of casteism and its role in denying Panchamar (an umbrella term for five caste-based communities historically subjected to oppression and exploitation in the North) ownership of land; the protracted ethnic conflict accompanied by heavy militarization by the Sri Lankan state (and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the civil war); the state’s attempts to give a Sinhala-Buddhist character to the territories in the North under the pretext of archaeological research; the multiple displacements suffered by the Tamil and Muslim communities during the war; and finally the land grabs done in the guise of preserving the ecosystem and development. To understand these contestations and inequalities, we must pay attention to the hierarchies of caste, class, ethnicity, nation and gender that produce landlessness as a form of social exclusion, political marginalization, and economic dispossession.

Panchamar

In the North, due to caste and ethnic hierarchies, the Panchamar, Malaiyaha Tamil communities, and the Muslims who were evicted from the North in 1990 by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), face severe landlessness today. Jaffna’s caste system was built around the region’s agrarian economy. The Vellalar caste became socially and economically powerful because of their historical control over land. For them, land ownership was a form of primitive accumulation of capital which subsequently strengthened their dominance over other caste groups in the spheres of culture, education, politics and economy. Colonial powers, Christian missionaries, and even Tamil nationalist movements that proclaimed to build a Tamil nation free of caste oppression were unable to disrupt in any significant way the long-lasting hegemony of the Vellalar as the most dominant land-owning caste in the North. Instead, they all had to negotiate their relationship  with the Vellalar elite carefully and even make compromises, to win over the latter’s  support to their agendas and programs. 

Today, the Panchamar caste communities in the North articulate their demand for land in different ways. Sometimes their struggles for land involve acts of occupation and insubordination. For example, in 2017, a Panchamar community in Jaffna defended their right to live on land they had occupied near a disused cemetery against attempts to revive that cemetery. Other members of the Panchamar communities, who were displaced from areas brought under the control of the military during the civil war, are now demanding land rights in the places where they now live. This is to ensure access to proper transportation, health care facilities and good educational opportunities for their children. Many of them have no lands to return to in areas presently controlled by the military, nor do they want lands there because of the lack of physical infrastructure and social and economic development.

In 2017, villagers from several oppressed castes defended their right to live on land they had occupied near a disused cemetery in Puttur, Jaffna. Image: Daily News

Malaiyaha Tamils and Returning Northern Muslims

In Kilinochi District, many members of the Malaiyaha Tamil communities lack agricultural land even though many of them have lived there for more than forty years. Bureaucrats responsible for land affairs in the North treat these communities with disdain, as if they are outsiders without any legitimate claims over the region. Conversations with members of the community reveal that they face discrimination when they apply for land grants or deeds. In Panamkandy, Kilinochchi district, the LTTE had distributed land (that previously belonged to those who had out-migrated) to Malaiyaha Tamil families. However, following the end of the war, the previous owners returned and threatened the new inhabitants with evictions or forced them to buy the land at exorbitant prices.

“A racially motivated environmentalist discourse portrays the returning Muslims as a profit-seeking community that does not care for the environment.”

When the Muslims in Silvathurai, Mannar district, who were evicted by the LTTE in 1990, returned to the North, they found that their lands had already been acquired by the military, as had happened to the Tamils in neighboring Mullikulam. Many of the returning Muslim families lost access to land in the Musali South region in Mannar that they had historically used for their livelihood and everyday needs when the government suddenly declared a portion of their neighborhood a forest reserve. This severing of Muslims from their land was accompanied by a racially motivated environmentalist discourse which portrays the returning Muslims as a profit-seeking community that does not care for the environment. 

Returning Muslims in all districts in the North face a shortage of land as their families have expanded since their displacement in 1990. In areas like Mulliyawalai, the returning communities face the additional burden of establishing proof of ownership of land that they had historically used for agriculture when applying for government grants or support for wells and electricity. The authorities in the North deny or prevent renewal of permits to these communities. Tamil bureaucrats in the North, on the one hand, complain that the Sinhala-Buddhist state poses a threat to the cultural and social existence of the Tamil community. On the other, they use the same state apparatus to deny Muslims and Malaiyaha Tamils their right to live on and use lands they have historical connections to. That is, it is not just the Sinhala-Buddhist state and its majoritarian nationalism, but also dominant, exclusivist forces within the Tamil community that contribute to the landlessness and land-related problems facing the returning Muslims and Malaiyaha Tamils.

The State and Its Apparatuses

“...hegemonic archaeological initiatives are a threat to both cultural pluralism and the livelihoods of neighboring communities. ”

Since the end of the war, governments that have come to power have used the Department of Archaeology, Department of Wildlife Conservation and the Forest Department to dispossess the Tamil and Muslim communities of their land in the North. For example, politically motivated archaeological excavations are currently underway amidst heavy military presence, seeking to establish Sinhala-Buddhist claims over the cultural landscape of the North. Several religious sites and indigenous shrines, especially those that are currently worshiped by Hindus, have been reclaimed as ancient Buddhist sites without any substantial evidence. Even if these sites were once associated with Buddhism in the past, the authoritarian and militaristic manner in which the Department of Archaeology conducts its excavation projects without any regard for the opinion of the local communities turns these projects into hegemonic exercises of majoritarian chauvinism. These actions sever communities from sites of worship which are culturally meaningful to them. Such hegemonic archaeological initiatives ignore the religious and cultural fluidity of these sites in that they have taken on different and overlapping identities over the centuries due to social, economic, and political developments. Instead, they further polarize communities along ethnic and religious lines, posing a serious challenge to cultural coexistence. 

Chauvinistic colonization schemes which use the rhetoric of social justice and welfarism alongside the state’s attempts to re-demarcate district boundaries without consulting minority communities have created inter-ethnic tensions in the North. Recently, Tamil groups protested a move to annex two Sinhala-majority villages in Anuradhapura district in the North-Central province to the Tamil-majority Vavuniya district. The protesters saw this as a chauvinistic attempt to weaken the political strength of Tamils in Vavuniya district and the Northern Province. In the 1980s, in Weli-Oya, previously known by its Tamil name Manal-Aru, the military evicted Tamils from their land and gave it to Sinhalese from the Southern parts of the country. To date, Tamils who lost their lands have neither been given alternative lands nor compensation for the land they lost. To be clear, while allocating land for landless Sinhalese is a welcome step, the process must address the tensions that come with settling Sinhalese in areas predominantly inhabited by minorities in a political context where the centralized state remains majoritarian in character. Using the military apparatuses of the state to initiate and sustain these land allocation processes, and not involving the minorities in developing inclusive land distribution policies, is majoritarian and chauvinistic. 

In April 2021, boards which read 'unnecessary intrusions into this army controlled area are prohibited', appeared overnight at properties belonging to ten different families in Kankesanthurai, Jaffna. Image: Tamil Guardian

The military continues to occupy land in several parts of the North that once belonged to Tamil and Muslim communities including Valikamam North in Jaffna, Mullikulam and Silavathurai in Mannar, and Kepapulavu in Mullaitivu. It is also acquiring new land in the post-war years. Almost every week, there are protests by local communities against the military’s attempts to acquire land under the pretext of national security or archaeological excavation. A powerful protest led by Tamil women who had been evicted from their lands in Keppapulavu by the military drew the attention of the entire country and the international community a few years ago. However, the state did not take any appropriate steps to meet the women’s demand to return their land. The protestors’ demands highlighted the fact that the community relates to land not just in terms of ethnicity—for the women who participated in this protest, land was also a material site that provided livelihood and an intimate space of security.

Land, Identity and Livelihood

In the North, contestations over land are tied to, and inflected by, questions of both identity and livelihood. Many Tamils and Muslims view the state’s attempts to start excavation projects as a threat to sites associated with their cultures and traditions in the region. However, land is not just a cultural symbol, it is also a material site that is a primary source of livelihood for many. When there is shortage of land, or when the land owned and used by the people is abruptly alienated by the state without proper alternatives, people’s livelihoods are adversely affected. This is especially the case for those engaged in agriculture and small-scale production that requires land as a primary resource. Recently, in Mullaitivu district, a Buddhist priest (based at the archaeological site at Kurundurmalai and the Department of Archaeology) claimed that lands in the neighborhood that were historically cultivated by Tamil farmers for several generations belong to a Buddhist site that the Department of Archaeology is now in the process of ‘recovering’. Historically, many Hindus from the Tamil community worshipped the Aiyanar shrine at this site. The Buddhist priest, under the pretext of carrying out excavation work, has obstructed Tamil farmers from engaging in agricultural activities on the adjoining land. The seven Tamil families that own this land amounting to 36 acres are no longer able to use it for cultivation. This is a clear example of how hegemonic archaeological initiatives are a threat to both cultural pluralism and the livelihoods of neighboring communities. 

“In over-emphasizing the role of ethnicity in contemporary land struggles, some Tamil nationalist narratives fail to bring to light the ways in which landlessness is experienced as a form of inequality within the Tamil community along lines of caste, class, and gender”

Furthermore, people’s relationship to land through livelihood can be articulated in gendered terms. For example, at a recent discussion, a group of Muslim women in Mannar, many of whom had lost their land to militarization following their eviction in 1990, expressed the need for more land to engage in poultry farming, net-weaving or small-scale food production in their own compounds. They note that having a bigger compound around their houses allows them to easily engage in production while attending to their domestic responsibilities as mothers and care-givers. Thus, our evaluations of the impact of land grabs need to look beyond identity and culture, to consider the related economic and gendered processes that shape people’s relationship to land.

With aid from the Archaeology Department, Sinhala Buddhist monk, Galgamuwa Chandabothi Nayaka Thera, blocked seven Tamil families from cultivating 36 acres their land. Image: Tamil Guardian

While ethnicity occupies a central place in many land-related contestations in the North, ethnicity as an analytical category can be of limited use in understanding land-based inequalities in the region. For instance, those who live in camps for war-displaced come predominantly from Panchamar communities. While the war turned them into a displaced population, centuries of caste-based oppression had already made them a landless community, long before the onset of the war. Unlike well-to-do Vellalar Tamils who were able to purchase land and houses in other parts of the North, or migrate to the Southern part of Sri Lanka, or to Europe, North America and Australia, some Panchamar families have been stuck in camps for nearly three decades. This is mainly because of the economic dispossession their community has historically faced on account of their caste. Therefore, ethnicity alone is not a sufficient category to explain the predicament of these camp-dwellers as a landless and displaced population. In over-emphasizing the role of ethnicity in contemporary land struggles, some Tamil nationalist narratives fail to bring to light the ways in which landlessness is experienced as a form of inequality within the Tamil community along lines of caste, class, and gender. This flaw has serious social and economic ramifications for people on the peripheries, and their struggles for land, housing, livelihood and dignity. 

Jaffna’s Muslim villages remain destroyed 25 years since the eviction of 75,000 Muslims by the Tamil Tigers from Sri Lanka’s North. Image: Sri Lanka Brief

Resistance

Land-related problems in the North stem from complex, interlocking layers of power and dominance. Hence, the solutions to these problems cannot be linear, singular, or piecemeal. The state uses welfarist, environmentalist, cultural, and national security discourses to justify its attempts to alienate land. The workings of the state cannot be reduced to frameworks of Sinhala majoritarianism, because dominant Tamil actors also use the structures of the state to deny Muslims, Malaiyaha Tamils, and Panchamar access to land. Similarly, ethnicity cannot be the sole framework to understand and find solutions to land-related contestations and land-based inequalities in the North, as communities’ access to land is shaped by long histories of casteism, class, and gender-based social hierarchies. Resistance should be cognizant of all these processes. 

Even as the state and other dominant actors engage in land grabs, communities on the margins continue to demand land for housing, agriculture, and other economic activities by way of protests and public campaigns. When a land commission initiated by the People’s Alliance for Right to Land conducted its hearings in the North in 2019, members of these communities spoke about how land matters to them, their families and children, and how they have fought for access to land. Those who were displaced and evicted from their land demand the return of the land they lost during the war and new land in places where their expanding families can easily access education and transportation. In so doing, they frame their demand for land not as restoration of the status quo that existed prior to their displacement but as a larger quest for social equality, economic justice, and a more egalitarian society. It is noteworthy that in some of these initiatives, like the ones at Sencholai and Kepapulavu, women are at the forefront of these struggles.  

“Due to ethnic polarization caused by divisive nationalist politics in the North, the Tamil and Muslim communities find it difficult to come together even when it comes to challenging land grabs by the military.”

While this resistance and resilience to state and other forms of authoritarianism generate hope among the communities that face dispossession and exclusion, there is a need to reflect on how our resistance can be made more inclusive in ethnic and cultural terms. We also need to think about why resistance should rise above the narrow territorial claims made in the name of nationalism. The eviction of the Muslims en masse from their lands in the North in 1990 by the LTTE should be seen not as incidental in the larger context of the civil war, but as ideological, and as an outcome of exclusivist sovereign claims made by a state in the making—Tamil Eelam (the separate Tamil state the LTTE sought to build in northeast Sri Lanka). Due to ethnic polarization caused by divisive nationalist politics in the North, the Tamil and Muslim communities find it difficult to come together even when it comes to challenging land grabs by the military. 

Furthermore, when challenging hegemonic archaeological initiatives, we should ensure that our objective is not to build counternarratives that are at the service of another identitarian, nationalist project seeking to validate cultural purism and ethno-religious homogeneity across time. This means that we need to historicize and contextualize the identities associated with sites under excavation in order to chart the shifts in cultural practices. We also need to recognize instances where cultures and religious traditions have coexisted around these sites and re-imagine archaeology as an exercise that also concerns the present so that it does not alienate communities who are presently associated with the sites under contestation regardless of what the past reveals.

Resistance initiatives should recognize the symbiotic relationship between the environment and human communities by not allowing chauvinistic discourses to dominate our attempts to engage with the environment in processes of resettlement and development. We need a sustained conversation on how communities can build solidarity across divisions created by the majoritarian state, Tamil nationalism, and caste-based hierarchies. While land struggles in the North have their specific histories and contexts, the North cannot isolate itself from land struggles in the rest of the country and more widely in South Asia. Initiating conversations and building alliances that cut across regional and national borders is a vital process that can help us conceive, democratize and advance our land struggles in the future.      

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Mahendran Thiruvarangan has a PhD in English from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is interested in postcolonialism, decolonization, literature, land and radical democracy. In 2019, he served on a land commission set up by the People's Alliance for Right to Land.