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JUDE FERNANDO-03/28/2018
The funeral of Mr. Kumarasinghe, held in a remote Ambala village in the Kandy
district, attracted strangers, including politicians and media personalities. Such an
elaborate display of public sympathy would not have happened if the death had
no meaning in the anti-Muslim identity politics. Certainly, no evidence of such
sympathy was apparent at the funeral of a Muslim person killed in the riots.
The incident in Digana was virtually unknown to most of the country’s population
until forces unrelated to Kumarasinghe’s family resorted to anti-Muslim violence,
which spread to other areas. Attacks continued despite the imposition of a
curfew, until about a week after Kumarasinghe’s death. The locations of the
attacks where Muslims are isolated among Sinhalese and Tamils seem to have a
spatial logic that embodies intentional expressions of nation-building narratives.
Since the 1915 riots, anti-Muslim riots have spread elsewhere from their points of
origin. A house occupied by a Sinhalese person was mistakenly attacked for being
occupied by a Muslim, as per the attackers’ “list”. Ironically, almost all Muslim
businesses attacked by Sinhalese mobs sold items mostly produced and
purchased by the Sinhalese. Displacement of vulnerable minorities might result in
them concentrating in certain areas, and in further polarization of the country
along spatial and ethnic lines.
The popular narrative blames the riots on “outside groups from the southern
parts of the country” who have no connection to Ambala village. For whatever
reason, most people in these areas kept silent during the attacks on their
neighbors. Many Muslims, while expressing their frustrations over the inaction of
some government and security forces during the attacks, was effusively grateful
for the courageous efforts of Buddhist lay, clergy, and security forces to protect
them. The Muslims defended themselves by staying inside their homes or moving
to safe houses (some, Muslim) while instructing their youth not to retaliate.
The Prime Minister and media lamented the impact of a week-long curfew and
state of emergency on Sri Lanka’s international image, foreign investments, and
tourism following warnings about travel to Sri Lanka. The situation provided a
boon for shops with stockpiles and informal money-lenders, causing fewer
hardships for fixed-income earners than daily wage earners, including Sinhala
construction workers who worked for Muslims. Many blamed the economically
impoverished for allegedly rioting in return for money and alcohol from
“outsiders.”
Many aspects of this unfolding narrative of anti-Muslim riots are misleading and
unhelpful in addressing the most critical issues that would prevent the recurrence
of violence.
First, those blaming extremist and opportunistic politics for the violence (“the
outside other,” “the failure of the government to maintain law and order,”
“irresponsible social media,” and “external conspiracies against Sri Lanka”) fail to
acknowledge its root cause: personal and institutional racism. Further, while
blaming social media avoids questioning the sources of anger and prejudice
expressed in the media against minorities, blaming “the other” fundamentally
ignores violence’s systematic nature rooted in a country’s political economy and
culture.
Third, the fact that most Sinhalese were not involved in the violence while some
even protected Muslims does not necessarily mean that they do not share the
same ideals as those responsible for the violence. Does it not explain their silence
against the “external” perpetrators of violence? From where do the “handful” of
extremists draw their power and legitimacy? Why did a sophisticated and well-
worn security system fail to prevent the spread of violence and is reluctant to
arrest those ideologues who incite racist violence? Why the lack of public outrage
against the extremists? Why did the media, religious leaders, and politicians fail to
make conscious efforts to publicly discredit the false and prejudicial claims of
extremists?
The argument that racism exists in every community ignores the fact that some
communities are far more vulnerable to racial conflicts than others. We need to
critically examine the social and political origins, hypocrisies, contradictions, and
validity of the arguments that some minorities are culturally and spatially isolating
themselves from the ‘Sri Lankan culture’. It seems we often confuse cultural
isolation with cultural expression, a fundamental right of any community.
The mainstream narrative of the riots seems to absolve society from taking
responsibility for them. Their authors’ main motive seems to be self-preservation,
rather than a sincere attempt to face up to the uncomfortable reality of racism in
Sri Lankan society and a desire to deconstruct the personal and institutional
realms of the racist society, particularly in terms of education and religion.
Despite many episodes of violent racial riots and the nation’s move in a racist
direction, academic centers are yet to develop a culture of interrogating how their
respective pedagogical cultures and practices produce and legitimize racism. No
systemic effort has been made to address the multifaceted nature of racism,
despite the wide availability of equality, diversity, and inclusion-focused
pedagogical and administrative tools and in higher education. Instead, we see
outright or masked denial, reframing, normalization, trivialization, defensiveness,
and apathy.
The racism of the extremists and the political culture thrives on the country’s
educational system. Apart from a few notable exceptional individuals, one should
not be surprised that a majority of university students and academics, despite
being at the forefront of many struggles against societal injustices, are silent or
not as enthusiastic when it comes to anti-minority violence. We must not forget
that the racial violence at the University of Peradeniya, the most multiracial
university in the country, was a precursor to 30 years of civil war.
Rare attempts to create spaces for a critical race dialogue were short-lived
because of protests and a lack of enthusiasm among the authorities. Tellingly, the
evolving educational system subservient to dictates neoliberal institutions that
are only interested in grooming students for the market economy.
By suppressing the creativity and imagination necessary for the development of
counter-hegemonic ideologies, neoliberal academics are thus likely to omit or fail
to pay sufficient attention to race, as compared to gender, for example. Not
engaging in racism is about a reluctance to lose privileges and/or fear. In any
case, their critical dialogue on race is constrained by time and funding and often
takes place in NGO-type outfits both inside and outside the academy; they benefit
only a tiny minority of academics and do not filter through to society. One major
impediment to academy’s leadership in fighting racism is religious nationalism’s
ideological and political hold on academic pursuits.
Religion: Race and Land above Dhamma?
Racialized rhetoric of “us” and “them” (majority vs. minority), derived from
religious ideas uniting nation, state and ethnicity/race, have made religion
fundamentally complicit with racism. Racism is inevitable when religious
perspectives of justice and equality are subservient to racialized interests of the
nation state. Challenging the use of such a religiously sanctioned majority vs.
minority binary to justify racial superiority, and violence against the “other”,
therefore becomes sacrilegious; as such, it is non-negotiable, and is protected by
religious obligation. Religious extremists, therefore, act with impunity because
they are confident in the spiritual nature of the power and legitimacy they use to
justify violence against the “other” communities. In the past, the Sri Lankan state
has been less hesitant to immediately arrest and detain clergy involved in anti-
state dissent than in anti-minority violence.
Racism in the political arena and the religions of Sri Lankan culture are also
mutually reinforcing forces. Politicians habitually seek the counsel of select
religious leaders, particularly following communal violence, to give symbolic
validity to dominant narratives of racial equality, rather than addressing the root
causes of violence. During these consultations, religious leaders fail to criticize
politicians’ failure to prevent violence and its exploitation for political gain; they
also do not demand that the politicians arrest those responsible for the violence.
Today, religiously motivated racism in the country is fast taking on a life of its own
defying both the country’s leaders and the state. During the recent riots, a junior
monk advocated violence, challenging and ridiculing the seniors over their
inaction against minority threats to the majority.
No Racism-Free Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism stands in the way of fighting racism, not only because its origins are
racist, but also because its expansion is inconceivable without racism. It is no
coincidence that the global consolidation of neoliberalism is occurring alongside
the growth of racism (e.g. Islamophobia, Christaphobia, and Westaphobia)
worldwide. This is not because neoliberalism generates racist outcomes; rather,
neoliberalism and racism are co-constitutive, meaning that in their own
reproduction, they reproduce each other. Differently put, racism thrives in
neoliberalism and nation-building projects as they are predicated on mutually
reinforcing economic inequalities between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and social
inequalities between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The nation state is the primary disciplinary
arm of capitalism and it has been racist from the time British imposed in on Sri
Lanka.
Neoliberal growth policies, by the admission of their own proponents such as the
IMF, continue to propagate inequality, economic volatility, and economic and
ecological vulnerability and displacement, in turn jeopardizing their own
expansion. Neoliberalism, in response to these crises, follows two contentious
policies. It attempts to free individuals from all forms of social and cultural
constraints that stand in the way of its success while being sufficiently flexible to
use said constraints to manage the crises emerging from the same successes.
In fact, neoliberal policies mandate that individuals use any means at their
disposal to maximize their self-interests, even racism. Only racism bolstered by
the logic of neoliberal competitiveness explains why the mob burned the textile
shop owned by a Muslim trader which was next to a similar shop owned by a
Sinhalese, both of whom have been friends, neighbors and business partners for
many years.
Both state and society tolerate such destruction of minorities’ property and
wealth, far more than dissent against the transnational capitalist class. In fact, it
is racism that makes the majority less concerned about the neoliberal
dispossession of the entire nation, and more focused on the wealth and property
owned by the minorities. The latter is insignificant when compared to what the
country is losing in economic wealth to foreigners and the domestic capitalist
class.
Racialized religious and cultural meanings (such as land) and power, which justify
anti-minority violence, hide the fact that anti-minority riots, as a racist response
to deep-seated economic crises of neoliberalism, stem from difficulties over
maintaining popular legitimacy in the face of rising inequalities.
The state’s political legitimacy is threatened by such growing economic and
political insecurities, especially when religious extremists give insecurities a
spiritual meaning, promising to rid insecurities by cleansing the nation of external
aggressions and by targeting the ostensible aggressors: vulnerable minorities. As
a result, racialized religion is pitted against the minorities, rather than
radicalization of society against neoliberalism and those disproportionately
benefitting from it.
Neoliberal institutions leave the state with no options other than to respond to
economic crises by implementing ever more aggressive neoliberal policies and
suppressing dissent against neoliberalism, even though it deprives the state, as
well as most of its population, of wealth and autonomy. The state, under these
conditions, follows contradictory policies: on the one hand, promoting policies
that individualize the social order and atomizing the individuals to pursue their
self-interest free from any social and cultural constraints, and on the other,
endorsing exclusive and divisive collective identities as a means of managing the
crisis resulting from neoliberal economic policies. Such depoliticization creates a
vacuum to be readily filled by racism and xenophobia and mobilized in society’s
competition for resources and power.
At the same time, the “nationalized” education system is also intrinsically tied to
neoliberalism, as it fails to critique the neoliberal-racism nexus on the one hand,
and create spaces for alternatives on the other. Education is primarily about
supplying manpower to service the neoliberal economy and disciplining society to
further neoliberal economic interests. Religion, in return for financial patronage
and popular legitimacy, offers blessings to those who profit from neoliberal and
ethno-nationalism policies. At the same time, religion also provides tangential
help (such as the transfer of charitable, obligatory, or voluntary donations and
micro-credit) to help and empower the people in need to survive through active
participation in neoliberal market place, and to make the best out of “disaster
capitalism.”
The majority (clergy and laity) of religious and educational establishments neither
advocate nor become a part of movements that espouse radical alternatives to
neoliberalism and/or racialized national identities. Both religion and education
cannot be a voice against racism when they are complicit with (and dependent
upon) racialized nation-building and neoliberalism, especially while the current
phase of capitalism makes the market the way, the method and the end of all
rational and moral behavior.
There is hope
Racism in educational and religious practices must take their fair share of
responsibility for people becoming victims of racist propaganda by social media
and extremists. A broad-based anti-racist program to build trust, empathy, and
solidarity between different racial groups, which takes on the uncomfortable and
potentially risky responsibility of deracializing the educational and religious
establishments, is necessary to address mutually reinforcing inequalities and
injustices spawned by neoliberalism and nation-building.
Education and religion should be sites of resistance against and just solutions to
racism. Anti-racism ought to be an everyday practice, a way of life, rather than a
‘project’ in response to given incidents of racial violence.
Posted by Thavam