Anthropologists On Sri Lanka

Anthropologists on Sri Lanka:
Social anthropologist Prof. Sasanka Perera, in a keynote address delivered at a

conference on Language and Social Cohesion: ''At that time some government officials
said they had no typewriters to give Tamil translations. Later the Government had to buy
armoured cars, modern helicopters and mortar bombs to settle the conflict that could
have been settled with a typewriter. We must never make the same blunder again....
Earlier we all were part of the problem though perhaps in different degrees. Now we all
need to be part of the solution'' - Editorial: Language goes beyond communication, 19
October 2013, http://www.dailymirror.lk/opinion/172-opinion/37324-editorial-languagegoes-beyond-communication.html
The 2009 victory by the government in their long struggle with the LTTE has been
followed by two rounds of elections in which an authoritarian and majoritarian regime
has successfully trounced its slow-footed opponents. Dazzled by their own success, there
is a clear expectation expressed in government circles that the country has now moved
beyond the reversals and argy-bargy that have hitherto made up the political in postIndependence Sri Lanka. With staggering tales of corruption circulating (but rarely in the
countrys battered and cowed press), and the government apparently buying into reports
of its own omnipotence, it would seem to be the end of history all over again: but this
time an end not occasioned by an excess of liberalism, but by its opposite - Performing
democracy and violence, agonism and community, politics and not politics in Sri Lanka,
Jonathan Spencer, Geoforum, Volume 43, Issue 4, June 2012, Pages 725-731
''But that truth cannot excuse human rights violations that currently afflict the nation as
a whole; or for that matter obscure the looming threat of the cultural and political
colonisation of the north by the Sinhala Buddhist majority'' - Biased and Prejudiced
Collection on Sri Lanka, *G. Obeyesekere, Economic & Political Weekly, VOL 47 No. 04,
28 January-03 February 2012 (*Emeritus Prof of Anthropology, Princeton University)
Stanley Tambiah, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University: between
1958 and 1983 there have been seven occurrences of mass violence unleashed by
segments of the Sinhalese population against Tamils.
The Culture, Politics and Economics of Peace in Sri Lanka(2004), Jonathan Spencer,
Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, UK: ''On the whole aid was given in a
politically or ethnically blind way . Not much was built in the North or the East. In the
1980s the major donors grew itchy about the country's appalling reputation for human
rights' violations, but never so itchy as to cut off the funding that kept the regimes going
A thoroughgoing and critical analysis of the political consequences of donor interventions
in Sri Lanka since the 1970s would make interesting reading, and it is a genuinely open
question whether in the long run more has been gained politically from donor pressure
on human rights, than was lost in bankrolling an increasingly bloody regime.''
Sri Lanka: The Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Institutions(2004), Jonathan Spencer,
Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, UK: ''In the aftermath of the events of
September 11, 2001, many commentators succumbed to the temptation to picture a
world divided between liberalism, pluralism, tolerance and peace on the one hand, and
illiberalism, intolerance and violence on the other. The stark choice for the world, we
were told, lay between democracy and terror. This paper will use material from the 20year war in Sri Lanka to challenge this somewhat facile view. In particular, it will argue
that the origins of the ethnic divide between Sinhala and Tamil, lie in the institutional
structure and working dynamic of representative democracy in Sri Lanka.''
Focus on Sri Lanka, Margaret Trawick, Department of Social Anthropology, Massey
University, New Zealand, May 1996:. The danger to me in observing these things was
not so much physical as professional. If I speak too much about what I have seen, I
might not be allowed to return, to see and write more. To be denied the opportunity to
revisit the Tamil people whom I have grown to love would be a greater hardship to me
than to have an arm or a leg shot off. But a greater hardship still would be to lose the
ability - the courage, or the foolishness, or whatever - to speak my mind. What to do?
What to do? Such are the painful decisions of life. .
National Liberation Movements in Global Context, Dr. Jeff Sluka, Massey University, New
Zealanad, Proceedings of the Conference on 'Tamils in New Zealand', July 1996 Wellington, New Zealand: ''This situation, where a state exploits and oppresses peoples
and regions within their own boundaries much the way the European colonial powers
used to exploit and oppress foreign colonies, has been described as "internal colonialism"
(Hechter 1975). Sri Lanka is an example of this.''
Bryan Pfaffenberger, Dept of Anthropology, University of Virginia: ''The Tamil situation
worsened during the 1960s and 1970s as every concession proposed by a Sinhalese
ruling party to deal with Tamil grievances met with opportunistic opposition from the
party out of power.''
Fourth World Colonialism, Indigenous Minorities And Tamil Separatism In Sri Lanka,
Bryan Pfaffenberger (Virginia University), Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 16,
1984: ''Despite the withdrawal of colonial power from Third World countries, forms of
oppression that might well be termed "colonial" still persist in many of them the
oppression wrought by nationalist Third World governments whose regimes fail to
respect the rights of indigenous minorities. The island nation Sri Lanka presents a case in
point. Little public investment appears to reach the Tamil lands.''
Buddhism in the Post-Colonial Political Order in Burma and Ceylon, Edmund Leach,
Daedalus, Vol. 102, No. 1, Post-Traditional Societies (Winter, 1973), pp. 29-54:
Bandaranaikes success in the 1956 elections was, without any question, mainly due to
the well organized and well-financed campaign of the Eksath Bhikku Peramuna (EBP), a
specially recruited team of political monks which was active in every Sinhalese
constituency throughout the country. The EBP was the brain child of the venerable
Mapitigama Buddharakkhita Once in power, Bandaranaike was greatly embarrassed by
his personal debt to Buddharakkhita. but Bandaranaike was unable to fulfill his lavish
pre-election promises to the Sangha as a whole. The Marxist MEP members of his
coalition government refused to accept the communal, anti-Tamil implications of a flat
declaration that Sinhalese was the national language and Buddhism the national religion.
Bandaranaike was also unable to give Buddharakkhita and his relatives the financial
prerequisites which they had apparently been led to expect - Buddhism in the PostColonial Political Order in Burma and Ceylon, Edmund Leach, Daedalus, Vol. 102, No. 1,
Post-Traditional Societies (Winter, 1973), pp. 29-54
''Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese
community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so
systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently
argues that institutional decay. which was produced by the dialectic between majority
rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that
has killed nearly 70.000 people over the past twenty years. It also analyses the influence
informal societal pressures exerted on formal state institutions and how this contributed
to institutional decay. Evaluating the relations that ensued between social organisations
and the Sri Lankan state shows how institutions can prescribe actions and fashion
motives even as it will make clear how the island's varied institutions generated a deadly
political dynamic that eventually unleashed the ongoing civil war'' - From ethnic
outbidding to ethnic conflict: the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war, Neil
Devotta (Hartwick College, USA), Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity
and Nationalism Vol. 11(1), 2005

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Anthropologists on Sri Lanka:

Social anthropologist Prof. Sasanka Perera, in a keynote address delivered at a

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