One-Sided Interpretations of History and Underlying Grievances in the Shadows

Sri Lanka is scheduled for another presidential election on January 8th.  As a result, the streets are filled with campaign posters and pictures of the two main candidates, more notably that of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent.  His party's blue flag grace the man streets of the country's main cities, with campaign personnel busying themselves plastering posters with photos of him shaking hands with notable foreigners or cuddling a small child on the campaign trail.  His campaign team is on the road through main towns, drawing huge crowds with fiery speeches.

People are understandably enthusiastic about the upcoming elections, but many do not seem so certain that Rajapaksa will easily win the election despite all the obvious pomp.  Indeed, he is still very much credited with bringing the 26-year civil war to an end with total defeat of the Tamil Tigers in a controversial all-out campaign.  But the moniker of the "peace-bringer" can only take him so far, especially considering that the negative consequences of the war is still very much present through a highly one-sided interpretation of the newly unified Sri Lankan identity.

Rajapaksa, for one, has been adamant in pushing for a single identity in the post-ware years.  But his adherence of Sinhala as the national language and Buddhism as the national religion is clearly not going to go down well in a country where 25% of citizens are not Buddhist Sinhalese.  This is especially clear in the coastal areas north of Colombo, where Muslim Sri Lankan Moorish fishing communities have historically been strong, not to mention the extreme north, where Hindu Tamils dominate the demographics historically.

Yet, the outward-facing image Sri Lankans try to present to the increasing numbers of foreigners do not seem to consider the Tamil or the Moorish perspectives.  In the ancient cities of central plains and highlands, tourism authorities portray them as capitals of ancient Buddhist Sinhalese kingdoms that ruled over ALL of the island, projecting its culture across even to southern India.  The rival Hindu kingdom of Jaffna is either briefly glossed over or completely ignored.  Similarly, in the colonial-influenced ports of the south coast, Muslim heritage is barely mentioned.

To summarize, the government seem to want outsiders to think that the Sinhalese are the original owners of the island (proven by the ancient ruins of their capital cities), with their dominance only briefly interrupted by the Portuguese, Dutch, and finally British colonial rule.  Tamil and Moorish presences are footnotes so trivial that the Christian heritage brought by the Europeans (manifested in well-preserved churches) are accentuated as historical and tourist sites more than the hundreds of mosques and Hindu temples dotted around the country.

Undoubtedly, such interpretation of history is pure injustice to the demographic minorities.  In many ways, history is becoming the justification to restructure the entire Sri Lankan society.  Public signage, TV/radio stations, and official documents, previously bilingual in Sinhala and Tamil, are being replaced with Sinhala-only signs, thereby marginalizing the Tamils in the daily workings of politics and economy.  Government funding is disproportionately going to maintenance of Buddhist temples and churches, while mosques and Hindu temples languish, killing religious equality.

For now, these initiatives are still being accepted with dismay by the minorities.  A generation devastated by the war is too averse to go back to open conflicts.  But as the new generation grow up, Rajapaksa and his Sinhalese nationalist policies may be numbered.  His preferential investment in the Sinhalese south (especially in his hometown of Hambantota on the south coast) and continued military rule in the Tamil-majority Northern Province are likely to draw backlash in the electorate.  Even opposition Sinhalese candidates can take advantage of this to secure Tamil/Moor votes.

Hopefully, both Rajapaksa and the opposition are both intelligent enough to realize that victory in a war does not give them the rights to reinterpret history without long-term consequences.  A multicultural nation does not immediately disappear with one-sided conclusion of a heavily religious/ethnically-based military conflict.  To heal the wounds of the war and prevent the future generations from suffering something similar, concessions and compromises for shared powers, rather than shoving the inherent divisions under the carpet, must be the only way forward.