Chance to hit refresh in Sri Lanka

After coming to power with a thumping victory at the end of 2019, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa Wasted no time in explicitly declaring that it would be a Sinhalese ethno-nationalist state. He opted to inaugurate the island’s ancient Buddhist capital at Anuradhapura, military and Buddhist priest in heavy presence.

In the shadow of the grand Ruwanvelisaya Stupa built by a great Sinhalese conqueror who defeated a Tamil. Island ‘united’Mr. Rajapaksa said this in the first three minutes of his address: “We knew from the beginning that the Sinhalese population of this country … contributed primarily to this victory. I knew I was the President with the Sinhalese votes alone. I can win the position. Tamil And Muslim populationTo share in that victory. But I didn’t get the response I expected.”

eroding support

less than three years later, Mr. Rajapaksa is as unpopular as the head of state As in the post-independence history of Sri Lanka at any time. He rose to power on a wave of Islamophobia that his proxies of the Rajapaksa family had helped escalate after the 2019 Easter attacks. But now there are strong indications that during his vehement stance against Rajapaksa over the past 18 months, even the Sinhalese voters, who so happily gave birth to him, are at odds with the treachery inherent in majoritarian politics. have woken up.

The understanding more than ever that the barbarism of the state Sinhalese often cheered when minorities were in the crosshairs could easily be inflicted on them too. And when majority politicians are cornered, no community is left untouched by their violent scorn. That will be especially true this week, when a protester demanding access to fuel was shot dead by police in the inland city of Rambukana. (This is not a new lesson for Sinhalese. The deadly suppression of a protest in the town of Rathupaswala also helped turn public opinion against Mr. Gotabaya’s elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2013. The difference is that the violence did not come to India. In the context of a national rebellion.)

critical symbolism

For now, the protest movement in the South has only symbolically linked arms to minorities. But less than three years after the Sinhalese boycotted Muslim businesses, it would be a mistake to underestimate the power of this sign. In Colombo’s Galle Face – the epicenter of Sri Lanka’s week-long ‘aragalaya’ (struggle) – Muslims break their fast surrounded by a mostly Sinhalese crowd every evening. A daily torrent of photos and videos of the protests have shown Catholic nuns and clergy sharing words and places with Buddhist monks, men in hats, women in hijabs. Signs and placards at protest sites are in Tamil, as well as in Sinhalese and English. This week, the national anthem was sung in Tamil, despite complaints from a Buddhist monk at the protest, who was asked by the group to calm down and leave. It was the President who prevented the Tamil version of the national anthem from being sung at the Independence Day celebrations.

Not far from Colombo, even in the deep south – historically the most Sinhalese-Buddhist of Sri Lanka’s provinces – the younger generation is beginning to recognize the monster they have fed. Protests outside major urban centers have focused more on immediate economic relief rather than the broader political changes demanded in Colombo. But those movements have not been without their conflicting moments, if only because it is clear that the livelihoods of Muslims (some Tamils ​​live in the deep south) have been devastated by the economic crisis, as have everyone else.

So where does this sudden rise of multi-ethnic, multi-religious unity go? There are no clear direct political routes from this popular sentiment to a pluralistic political transition. What is clear, however, is that in 2015 Rajapaksa was convicted of his alleged corruption, plundering of the rule of law, and his ‘ Pavl Palanay (Family Rule), Sinhalese voters are kicking themselves to re-establish them.

That regret has prompted some introspection; They have never been more learnable, or more primed to accept change. Sinhalese politicians have started taking notice. Sajith Premadasa, the primary opposition figure since 2019, had for the first two years essentially played a milder version of the Sinhalese-nationalist game, which Rajapaksa was leading. As the appetite of the people has changed in recent months, so has their politics. Mr. Premadasa has become a more bold supporter of minority issues. In Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, politicians follow as well as lead. And right now, people are trying to take the state by the collar.

This, more than at any moment in the past 40 years, is the South’s opportunity to hold hands to Sri Lanka’s minorities. His opportunity to break down the walls of Sinhalese ethno-nationalism, which he helped to raise, which Tamils ​​had resisted for decades, and which has been imposed on Muslims in the 21st century.

Partly out of political pragmatism, moderate Tamils ​​and Muslims have shown eagerness to participate in and ‘support’ the protest. But this is a South show. There is no doubt about it.

take stock of sinister ideologies

If Sri Lanka is to emerge from this life-long crisis as a more pluralistic state, Sinhalese must take stock of the sinister ideologies they have instilled in the highest offices, and deeply troubling about the divisive role of the clergy. Must engage in conversation. In politics, the constitution provides Buddhism, among many others, about reducing the ‘paramount place’. Perhaps, however ambitious it is, there may also be a rethinking of the unitary nature of the state, the stage on which Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war was waged.

Gestures are a start. They may be enough for now. But they won’t make sense if they don’t build for systemic change.

Colombo-based journalist Andrew Fidel Fernando is the author of Upon a Sleepless Isle.