The simmering ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and the militant
Tamil nationalism associated with it have attracted a great deal of interest to
the subject of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. This has generated a growing body
of literature, both scholarly and otherwise, on various aspects of Tamil
nationalism and militancy.
Surprisingly, there has been little attempt so far to take stock or critically
assess the achievements of this body of work. The objective of the present discussion is
to reflect critically on this body of scholarship—to observe its major trends and orientations and perhaps, more importantly, to pin-point areas of neglect and
areas that need further enquiry.
Keeping this goal in mind, the paper subscribes to a broad definition of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism both in terms of its nature and chronology, and critically surveys the scholarship that traces its inception
from around the mid nineteenth century to its more recent militant manifestation.
It does not however by any means attempt to provide a comprehensive survey. Rather it seeks to focus on the dominant trends in this scholarship,
particularly that dealing with the more militant phase of Tamil nationalism.
A striking feature of the historiography of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka generally is that despite the enormous sufferings caused by nationalism, it is rather unreflexive and under-developed, particularly in comparison to the rich body of literature available on nationalism in India.
There could be a number of reasons for this. One of the more obvious is that that there was no
significant popular mass-based all-Ceylon anti-colonial movement, anti-colonial forces in
the country being confined to a small coalition of Left/liberal elites whose ideological hegemony over the masses may have been even more limited than was the case in India, which has been characterised as a case of ‘dominance without hegemony’...
I would like to thank the following people for their useful comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper: Militon Israel,
M.S.S. Pandian,
S. Anandhi, Rajan Kurai, N. Sivahurunathan and
Ravi Subramaniam. I would also like to acknowledge the valuable discussions I had on this subject with
professors S. Sivasegaram and
K. Sivathamby.
This brief critical survey of the literature available in English on Sri Lankan
Tamil nationalism reveals that, despite some notable advances, much remains to
be done— particularly with respect to the militant phase of Tamil nationalism.
Although more is known about the early phase of Tamil revival/nationalism during
the colonial period, the almost exclusive focus of this scholarship on the
Navalar-centred Tamil/Saivite revival has tended to preclude a broader
exploration of the heterogeneity and complexity of Tamil elite formation in Sri
Lanka. The fascinating— almost symbiotic—partnership between the Tamil
Protestant and Saivite elites is also occluded by this preoccupation with the
Hindu side.
And the same could be said for the next phase of Tamil nationalism
which has largely been covered from a purely political history perspective. The
story of defensive Tamil nationalism as Peravai—whose radical goals included
inter alia the empowerment of the lower classes/castes irrespective of
ethnicity, the empowerment of women, etc.
Among the relatively small body of scholarly works in English on the militant
phase of Tamil nationalism, the dominant approach of recent years has been one that
leans towards a kind of ‘othering’ of Tamil militancy and nationalism.
In one way this is not
surprising, given the theoretical shifts that have occurred since the 1980s in Anglo- American social science—particularly its embrace of
post-structuralism and
postmodernism. But it is a tendency that has obscured more than it has revealed. If indeed we take seriously
the Broken Palmyra’s charge that the
LTTE is a fascist or neo-fascist movement, it is all the more imperative that we come to grips
with both the class/caste basis and the class forces behind the LTTE and how, as a
movement, it was able to subvert rival movements who offered a more liberationist, if not more empowering, alternative.
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'Beyond 'Benign' and 'Fascist' Nationalisms:
Interrogating the Historiography of Sri Lankan Tamil
Nationalism'-
Dr. Ravi
Vaitheespara in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
