Civil War in Sri Lanka and India’s Vietnam: Part I
Rohan Rajesh
“When you deny me my language, you deny me everything”
The two biggest challenges to nation-building in South Asia have been language and religion. Unfortunately for the island nation of Sri Lanka (known as Ceylon until 1972), the two intersected, which led to the longest civil war in South Asian history. The conflict led to the death of 100,000 people and has cast a shadow over Sri Lanka to this day. In the midst of this chaos, India (which had been dealing with its own separatist movements) tried to resolve the conflict, but, in doing so, ended up getting caught in a quagmire frequently likened to the Vietnam War. The result was the deaths of more than a thousand Indian soldiers, the assassination of a former prime minister, and no resolution to the conflict, which continued to rage on for almost 20 more years.
This is the start of a two-part series. In this article, I will give background about the demographic situation in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s colonial history, the major pre-Civil War events, and the rise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In the next article, I will talk about India's involvement in the conflict and its effects.
Background
For centuries, Sri Lanka has been home to many ethnic groups. The two largest are the Sinhalese and the Tamils, both of whom have immense pride in their cultural heritage. While the Sinhalese comprise 74 percent of the population, are 90 percent Buddhist, and speak an Indic language (Sinhala), the Tamils dominate in the north and east of the island (as well as in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu), are 90 percent Hindu, and speak a Dravidian language (Tamil). Matters are complicated by the fact that Tamils are divided between Sri Lankan Tamils, who have lived on the island for millennia, and Indian Tamils, who arrived as indentured servants to work on tea plantations during the era of British colonialism. Indian Tamils were marginalized and less educated than other groups. They were also excluded from citizenship very early post-independence and did not participate in the interethnic bloodletting that followed. Both the Sinhalese and the Tamils often argue about who were the original settlers of the island, leading to two very different outlooks on how the new state should be developed.
The Costs of Colonialism
In 1948, the United Kingdom gave independence to the Crown Colony of Ceylon, one year after partitioning its Indian possessions into India and Pakistan along religious lines. For all three countries, language proved a divisive issue (along with religion, of course). In India, fears of Hindi hegemony (particularly among Tamils) led the government to retain English as a link language. In Pakistan, fears of Urdu hegemony (particularly among Bengalis) led to civil war and genocide in 1971 and the independence of Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese and the Tamils (encouraged by politicians) feared the hegemony of the other, leading to a catastrophic downward spiral.
The roots of the conflict stem from, as usual, European colonialism. Bubbling under the surface of Sri Lankan society were deep-seated resentments among the Sinhalese Buddhist majority over centuries of marginalization by European colonial rulers, particularly the British, who actively favored Christians and insulted Buddhist culture and institutions. At the same time, British divide-and-rule policies favored Tamils in terms of government employment. Tamils’ proficiency in English (due to American Christian proselytization efforts) led to their overrepresentation in the bureaucracy. Thus, anti-British, anti-Christian, and anti-Tamil sentiments developed over centuries of colonial rule. A Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist of particular note was the fiery Buddhist monk and revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala, who, in no uncertain terms, expressed his disdain for Europeans (including Anglophile Sinhalese), non-Buddhists, and non-Sinhalese in racial terms. He belittled these groups and others - including Africans, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, and Aboriginal Australians - while comparing them to the “Aryan” Sinhalese.
However, among the Anglophile elite, Sinhalese and Tamils worked together and viewed each other as the majority communities of equal rank. Unfortunately, this comity paradoxically created the conditions for majoritarianism. When the British introduced limited suffrage, they did so on a first-past-the-post basis with no guarantees for minorities, thus enabling the Sinhalese to dominate electorally. The British and the elites thought that Sri Lankan society was strong enough to prevent majoritarianism based on how the elites operated. When Britain left and universal adult franchise was given, the desire to remove English as an official language (due to its colonial legacy and its role in denying jobs to native speakers of Sinhalese and Tamil) led to burgeoning linguistic recognition demands even though English was the only effective link language. It is here that Sinhalese resentment over the marginalization of Buddhism gained a linguistic character.
Ideally, both Sinhalese and Tamil students should have been made to learn each others’ languages. Unfortunately, for the Sinhalese there was no economic benefit to learning Tamil.
Furthermore, while the Sinhalese were the majority in Sri Lanka, they tended to lump Tamils in India and Sri Lanka together to create a minority complex. Finally, politicians (most notably the left-wing candidate Solomon Bandaranaike) found it expedient to use language to win votes, since by campaigning on pro-Sinhala policies, they could unite Sinhalese Buddhists and Christians. Thus, Bandaranaike won the election decisively. Although Bandarnaike actually wanted to accommodate the Tamil language as well, hardline Sinhalese nationalists prevented him from doing so.
In 1956, Sinhalese lawmakers passed the Official Language Act No. 33, commonly referred to as the Sinhala-only Act because it replaced English with Sinhalese as the sole official language without any mention of Tamil. Tamils feared that they would lose their economic status and would be absorbed by the majority Sinhalese community without state support for Tamil. The passage of the law also reduced Tamil confidence in the ability of the government to address their concerns, especially Sinhalese colonization in traditionally Tamil-majority areas. Tamils also felt betrayed because they felt their contributions to Sri Lankan independence and their support for Sinhalese language development had been ignored. The passage of the law also coincided with Sinhalese mobs attacking Tamils and their establishments over the peaceful protests of Tamils against the law. In 1958, anti-Tamil riots would break out again over proposals to accommodate Tamil, leading to retaliations against Sinhalese in Tamil-majority provinces. Bandaranaike was assassinated by a radical Buddhist monk in 1959, letting his wife Srimavo Bandaranaike win the election in a landslide through sympathy votes. Despite having witnessed the deleterious effects of encouraging Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, Ms. Bandaranaike was even less accommodating of the Tamil language than her husband.
The Tigers
When Tamils peacefully protested, they were met with repression by the military. The Sinhala-Only policy led to a significant number of Tamil youth being denied access to university admission and jobs, leading to more radical demands for independence and less patience with nonviolence. Meanwhile, a new constitution gave the government far too much power, paving the way for illiberal democracy that affected Sinhalese and Tamils alike. The Sri Lankan President, J. R. Jayawardane, used Sinhalese nationalism to legitimize his rule. In 1977, anti-Tamil riots rocked the country. This was too much for many Tamils, leading to the formation of various separatist groups, the most notorious of which was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - “Eelam” is the Tamil name for Sri Lanka. The LTTE and its leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, were ruthless in eliminating rival separatist groups.
An attack on a military convoy by the LTTE led to the infamous 1981 Anti-Tamil pogrom, also known as Black July. The 1981 riot is notable, in particular, because the mob also burned down the Jaffna Library, which contained hundreds of thousands of ancient Tamil manuscripts and artifacts, one of the most destructive acts of biblioclasm in the 20th century. This blatant insult to Tamil identity and history led to more support for the LTTE (the Sinhalese-dominated military’s brutal response did not help), which gained control of the Tamil-majority areas in the north and east.
That said, the LTTE was a horrifically brutal terrorist group. They pioneered (if one can use that term) the use of suicide bombing to massacre and terrify soldiers and innocent civilians. It is estimated that the group had also recruited nearly 6,000 child soldiers during the conflict, including those orphaned by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. They also ethnically cleansed Sinhalese and Moors (who did not identify with Sri Lanka Tamils) in areas under their control. Although the conflict was mostly about language, the LTTE’s targets often included Buddhist temples, most notably the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which (as the name suggests) contains a tooth of the Buddha and is one of the most sacred sites in Sri Lankan Buddhism.
The best description of the Sri Lankan Civil War is two sides with little regard for human rights fought for territorial control, having been riled up by politicians who fanned the flames of ethnic and (to some extent) religious hatred, leaving innocent civilians across the island between a rock and a hard place. That concludes Part I. Stick around for the next article where I will write about how this conflict became India’s Vietnam.