“After the 2022 uprising, this February 4 is not a trivial anniversary date”

RFI: Sri Lanka is celebrating, on February 4, 2023, the 75th anniversary of its accession to independence, after 450 years of occupation by various powers. Would you say that this anniversary date has special significance in the context of the quasi-revolution that the island-state experienced in 2022?

Eric Paul Meyer : Indeed, one can hardly consider this year, February 4, as a trivial anniversary date, after the popular uprising of an unprecedented scale that Sri Lanka experienced in 2022. The discontent of the Sri Lankan people resulted in the departure in catastrophe of the president in place. This is perhaps a sign that Sri Lankan democracy as it was established in 1948, at the time of independence, has reached its limits. And this insofar as it was unable to give a satisfactory answer to the institutional problems and of cohabitation of the communities which the country knows since its creation.

The inability of the political system to respond to the aspirations of the Tamil minority resulted in a bloody civil war. This conflict, which lasted 26 years and pitted the Sinhalese majority of Buddhist obedience against the Tamils ​​from India, profoundly transformed the conditions of political development in this country. The immutable decorum inherited from the British parliamentary tradition, which we saw at work again recently in Colombo during the election of the interim presidentactually hides the decadence of Sri Lankan parliamentarianism and a political class that is now totally discredited.

The English were not the only powers to have colonized this territory. The first Europeans to set foot in this country, which was formerly called Ceylon, were the Portuguese in 1505, followed by the Dutch, only then by the British from 1796. How did these four centuries of colonization forge the Sri Lankan identity?

The colonization of the island indeed began with the Portuguese in the 16th century, then continued by the Dutch, but the presence of the latter was relatively marginal, because they had hardly succeeded in establishing themselves inland. . The country’s own transformation took place under British colonization. It was in 1796 that the British became effective masters of Ceylon, but did not take complete control of the country until 1815, after subjugating the kingdom of Kandy, which dominated the hinterland.

How did British colonization transform the Sri Lankan territory?

It has transformed the country on several levels. Economically first, with the development of coffee plantations, but also of rubber and especially tea, which have replaced the rice fields. These new cultures upset the traditional economy of the country, with the appropriation of the land not only by the British colonists, but also by a local possessing class, to the detriment of the villagers. They also had an impact on landscapes and ecological balances insofar as the establishment of plantations led to the disappearance of forests and traditional slash-and-burn crops which allowed the regeneration of soil and tree vegetation.

Finally, last but not leastthe expansion of plantation cultivation led the British to bring from South India a labor force of low-caste Tamil proletarians, coolies which have transformed the ethnic face of the country. The latter are also called “Indian Tamils” to distinguish them from the “Sri Lankan Tamils” who have been living on the island for much longer.

During the first decades after colonization, Sri Lanka enjoyed a rather positive image, that of a modern democracy, with regular elections, a high level of social protection and the decline in population growth… A country of plenty!

All of this is complex. It must be said that the welfare state was already in place at the time of the British, and the trend was reinforced during the first decades after independence. The island had the reputation of being a model colony, with a high level of education, including for women, a relatively egalitarian and well-established hospital system, prices fixed by the State for basic foodstuffs. With a large public sector, the Sri Lankan state had the means to redistribute profits.

But all was not so idyllic. During these first post-independence decades, we witnessed the parallel rise of Sinhalo-Buddhist nationalist populism, supported by both the conservative parties and the left that alternated in power. It was an identity populism based on the promotion of the Sinhalese language and the Buddhist religion, essentially targeting the Tamil elite of Hindu or Christian obedience, anglicized, who had taken advantage of the colonial period to occupy important positions in administration and in the liberal professions, particularly in the South and in Colombo.

The Sri Lankan situation in the 1960s and 1970s is reminiscent of what is happening today in India with the ” hindutva whose objective is to marginalize Muslims, while society is plural and the Constitution is secular. This was also the case in Sri Lanka.

Could we say that the seeds of tensions that destabilized the country in the 1980s were sown in the first years of independence?

Certainly. They were sown as early as 1948, the very year of independence, when the conservative government in power in Colombo took the decision to deny Sri Lankan citizenship to some 800,000 “ Indian Tamils » working in the plantations. In 1956, under the left in power, Sinhalese became the official language of the island and in 1972, Buddhism was established as the dominant religion…

We know what happened next: the rise of Tamil separatism, civil war, the bloody repression of Tamil protest in 2009. In an article published in Le Monde diplomatique, dated March 2009, you wrote : “ The Rout of the Tigers [de libération de l’Eelam tamoule] does not solve the tamil question “. Do you still believe that this guerrilla can resume service?

I actually wrote at the time that ” in the absence of a political solution, the possibility of a resumption of the separatist struggle cannot be ruled out “. I remind you that this article dates from 2009. Almost fifteen years have passed since then. It always seems to me that the Tamil question calls for a political solution… The victory of the army cannot be the final answer to the claims. In light of the events that shook Sri Lanka last year, I feel that reconciliation between communities is now possible. By listening to the leaders of the movementAragalaya (“the struggle”) which had mobilized the populations against the Colombo regime, between April and July 2022, it seemed to me that this new generation is able to transcend the ethnic oppositions which have long determined Sri Lankan society.

You are referring to the popular uprising that Sri Lanka experienced following the historic economic crisis of April 2022. Faced with the various shortages that have hit the country, civil society has come together under the name ofAragalaya or “the struggle” and organized the popular uprising against the failing political power. Does this civil society have the political means necessary to achieve its ambition of reinvent democracy as you wrote?

I am not a prophet, I am an analyst and a historian. I don’t know where Sri Lanka is going. I don’t know if Sri Lankan civil society has the means to match its ambitions. But it seems to me that the state of disintegration of the Sri Lankan parliamentary system is such that the population is tempted to question everything, its political class as the representative principle. Close to the ideas of the European radical left, the leaders of this movement do not themselves know what awaits them at the end of their journey. A renewed democracy? Or corruption and authoritarianism?

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