The title of this piece purposely uses the word Lanka and not Sri Lanka. The name and concept of 'Sri Lanka' was reified in the country's republican Constitution of 1972, at a time when the prefix Sri was problematic for the minority communities because it symbolised Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism. Indeed only a decade earlier, there had been a major 'anti-Sri campaign' in the North in effacing the number plates of vehicles with the Sinhala character 'Sri', particularly since it came soon after the 'Sinhala Only' language polices of 1956. During the much-needed shift from the colonial legacy, the colonial name Ceylon was abandoned as was the Soulbury Constitution in 1948 when a republican Constitution was created.
These changes, however, came with the tragic move to entrench majoritarianism and centralisation of power with a unitary structure of the state as guaranteed by the Constitution. Buddhism was given a privileged place in the country and there was little protection for minorities. This would polarise communities, provide room for Sinhala nationalist mobilisation and fuel the conflict that was to come. This article also uses the concept of 'Southasia'. This is not the 'South Asia' of SAARC and its state-centred notion; nor is it that of the 'area studies' of academia, which attempts to produce a regional 'object' for analysis. Neither is it borrowed from the neoliberal reference to regional security and emerging markets. Rather, I am thinking of a Southasia of shared histories, movements and struggles of the peoples that have inhabited our region.
With these terms in order, let us turn our attention to the particular problem of the internationalisation of Sri Lanka. The last decade has seen considerable engagement by the Western and regional powers. The much internationalised Norwegian peace process of 2002 brought in the US, EU and Japan as co-chairs of the peace process and its donor support, which merged conflict resolution with neoliberal reforms. This particular formulation of neoliberal peace was very much related to the global 'war on terror' and the neo-colonial concept of 'failed states'. Conflict resolution was the discourse used to bring together a 'terrorist' organisation (the LTTE) and a 'failed state' (the Sri Lankan state) to attempt an undemocratic deal between these two armed actors. Thus, the internationalisation of Sri Lanka took the form of post-Cold War imperial discourses of 'conflict resolution', 'war on terror', 'failed states' and 'neoliberal reform'. The escalation of the war following the failure of the Norwegian mediation brought in the regional powers of India, China, Iran and Pakistan as supporters of the Sri Lankan state's war effort. Despite the different geopolitical positions and approaches of these varied global and regional actors, the larger framing and internationalisation of the situation were the prerogatives of stability, security and development.
It is important to note that the global interests of stability, security and development are not necessarily in the interests of democratisation, pluralism and the empowerment of the peoples of Lanka. All this is not to take a nativist position on the island, which has been devastated by the political problems of minorities, the social and economic devastation of the war, and the economic marginalisation of the rural populations and the working classes. This is where the kind of concepts we use to characterise state, society and movements also shape the understanding of our problems. Thus, the characterisation of both the LTTE as 'terrorist' and the Sri Lankan state as 'failed' must be considered problematic. Others have characterised the LTTE as an organisation with a fascist political culture, and the government of Mahinda Rajapakse and its abuse of state power as one of deepening authoritarianism with oligarchic ambitions. Such a different use of concepts and a differing discourse also leads to a very different politics with respect to the problem of Lanka: from one of stability, security and development to one of democratisation, pluralism, empowerment of minorities, as well as social and economic justice.