“The fact is that in modern Ceylon a strong Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist identity has been established. That identity seeks to lay the largest claim to all that is available in the state coffers. The claim is sustained by the Westminster-style, democratic system given to the island by Britain. This system, in the final instance, depends on the counting of numbers. The Sinhalese constitute the numerical majority.”

- A J Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict (1)

“So, comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her.
Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.”

 - Frantz Fanon (2)

In 1931, Ceylon was on its way to be the first colony under the British empire to become a ‘democracy.’ Not a free state, but a democracy nonetheless, because the island was granted universal suffrage: all Ceylonese men and women above the age of 21 could vote. Under this new form of government, numbers distributed power. The Sinhalese community constituted 65% of the population and became the ‘majority’ community, while other ethnic communities such as the Ceylonese Tamils, Malayaga Tamils, Muslims, Afro-Lankans, Veddas, and Burghers had the category of ‘minority’ imposed on them.

This wasn’t the intention of their British rulers. The new Donoughmore constitution of 1931 was a paternalistic experiment to see if Britain could teach their colony, formed of many distinct and diverse communities, to let go of their ethnic identities and think as one. Britain wanted to make Ceylon a nation-state and there was only room for one nation. Community oriented thinking was seen to be a backward and ‘unfortunate’ consequence of their previous governing tactics (3) . It was essential for Britain that their colony evolved and embraced the principle of political equality in their image. Each individual would be granted one vote and it was assumed that this would lead to equality; the individual would triumph over the community and give rise to an all-Ceylon polity. The British were so committed to stamping out ethnic alignment in politics that universal suffrage was introduced to the island without any protection for minorities despite explicit and palpable fear amongst smaller communities. The experiment failed miserably and paved the way for intense political inequality, fuelled by the logic of majoritarian rule and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.

The first time I engaged in a critical discussion about democracy was in one of my interviews to study Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at university when I was 17. I applied to study PPE because it involved two subjects that I found interesting at school (Philosophy and Economics) and didn’t veer too far from the subjects that Tamil parents approved of. It gave me the appearance of being a rebel without quite being one. The goal for me in my politics interview was to not let my potential professor know that I was inept and pretty uninterested in the subject:

"So, what would you like to talk about?"

Startled and relieved by the open-ended nature of the question, I responded without thinking.

"Democracy."

"Okay, so what do you think of democracy?"

I recited: "I think it’s a great way for people’s voices to be heard, everyone is treated equally, and politicians are held accountable by people."

He nodded and then responded: "Interesting, how would ‘tyranny of the majority’ factor into your thoughts?"

Eager to show that I could think critically and learn, I replied: "That’s a great point, I think that is always a danger, but safeguards can help protect minorities.

Thinking back to the interview now it’s a bit of a stretch to call the conversation a critical discussion. It did not feel like a discussion with an open-ended conclusion. This conversation was unlikely to have an impact on the way I saw the world. I already knew that democracy was good.

 ***

In 1934, Ganapathipillai Gangaser (GG) Ponnambalam entered the colonial government as a representative for his hometown constituency of Point Pedro in Jaffna. He did not buy into the idea that rule by numbers meant political equality and was most famous for fiercely pursuing ‘fifty-fifty’ representation in parliament. It built on the earlier ideas of the Jaffna Association and proposed that half the seats in parliament go to the Sinhalese ‘majority’ and the other half be distributed amongst all other communities. ‘Fifty-fifty’ would limit the extent to which one ethnic community could dominate the others. 

Despite receiving widespread support from the Tamil, Malayaga Tamil, and Muslim communities it was ultimately rejected. There were many reasons that led to its rejection but a key factor was a feeling that Tamils and their other ‘minority’ collaborators were asking for too much. They were being too audacious and asking for more than what they were entitled to, given their small numbers.

There is no such thing as a perfect history of resistance. Our histories are made up of people like us, who are complicated, flawed, and often contradictory. It is painful to reconcile the GG Ponnambalam who was a force for radical equality with the GG Ponnambalam who joined the Sri Lankan government in 1948 and became complicit in its cruel decision to strip Malayaga Tamils of their citizenship.

In 2016, I started studying for a Master’s degree in Human Rights. I was driven to learn as much as I could about Tamil history after a chance encounter earlier that year with a Tamil activist. I wanted to know why the world had been so hostile to Tamil demands for self-determination and why it remained silent as tens of thousands of Tamils were slaughtered by the government in 2009. With a naïve understanding of human rights as an undeniable force for good, I thought that the degree would give me answers. Self-determination, after all, was a human right.

My search for answers was transformative and, at times, a painful process that led to some answers but raised new, perhaps more important, questions. The more I learned the more I unlearnt, and the more I unlearnt the more I saw there was yet to learn: 

I learned that ‘human rights’ only entered popular vocabulary in 1948, when the newly formed United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Self-determination was not included in the list of agreed rights and it was the revolutionary spirit of Third World (4) anti-colonial movements that led to it being legally recognized as a human right over a decade later (5) . 

I unlearned that all humans were automatically entitled to human rights. The UN is a political organization made up of its member states and it is up to each state to provide their citizens with human rights. Politics and power determine whether human rights violations will be tolerated or not. 

I learned that the right to self-determination no longer meant a right to independence, non-interference, and sovereignty. Its potential to combat domination was fleeting and by the 1990s it had been successfully stripped of its revolutionary value. The right to self-determination instead became a duty for all states to make themselves in the West’s image – it became the right to a liberal democracy. 

I unlearned that colonialism was a thing of the past. I met activists from the occupied territories of Western Sahara, Palestine, and Puerto Rico and my eyes were opened to the ways that Europe and the US still subjugate the Global South in more insidious ways.

I learned that the language of human rights had become a vehicle to justify Western domination in the non-West (6) . Western powers had decided that human rights could only flourish in liberal democratic societies. They had a responsibility (once again) to save ‘savage’ societies by transforming them into liberal democracies. 

I unlearned that democracy necessarily entailed political equality. Democracy, in its current forms, gives power to the few after securing enough votes from the majority. 

I learned that, in the eyes of those in power, the most that Tamils were entitled to as a “minority” community in a democracy was protection… if that.

***

Following independence in 1948, politicians in Sri Lanka were keen to remove English as the official language of the country. It was the language of their colonizers and less than 5% of the population were literate in it. It had been agreed by both major political parties that English would be replaced with Tamil and Sinhala and that the two languages would be given parity of status. 

Shortly before the election, SWRD Bandaranaike who was running against incumbent prime minister John Kotelawala, capitalized on Sinhalese nationalist sentiments and switched his position to push for the now infamous “Sinhala Only” policy. Sinhala would become the only official language of Sri Lanka. The immense popularity of this policy amongst the majority of the population resulted in both parties turning their backs on their promise of equality. Tamil rights were discarded as necessary collateral damage in the race for power. Bandaranaike won the election and “Sinhala Only” came into effect in 1956, triggering more ethnic pogroms for decades. Bandaranaike’s success cemented the new status quo for any subsequent election campaign in Sri Lanka: Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism had to be given prominent place and minority interests could be included as an afterthought… as long as it was okay with the majority.

I remember waking up to the news of the Sri Lankan general election in 2019. Gotabaya Rajapakse had won and would soon become the president of Sri Lanka. While the news didn’t shock me, it did fill me with despair. Gotabaya was the orchestrator of a genocide against Tamils in 2009 and his election campaign had capitalized on rising anti-Muslim sentiments on the island following the Easter bombings earlier that year. Proudly recalling his successful elimination of Tamil ‘terrorism’ in 2009, he claimed to be the right man to eliminate the threat of Islamic extremism.

I spent the day reading about the results and the same themes emerged. Anti-Muslim rhetoric had dominated Rajapakse’s election campaign and votes had been distributed largely on ethnic lines. Rajapakse had won most of the Sinhalese vote and his opponent, Sajith Premadasa, had won most of the Tamil and Muslim votes. Voter turnout had been extremely high with more Tamils and Muslims voting than usual. Anger boiled inside me as I realized that Tamils and Muslims had done the most they could do to protect themselves against the return of the Rajapakses. That is, the most they could do in a liberal democracy anyway – they had shown up, they had voted. But all for nothing. Their voices would not be heard. They were not political equals. Their votes could not hold Gotabaya Rajapakse accountable. The people of Sri Lanka had democratically elected a racist, Islamophobic, war criminal to be their president.

As Tamils, we have intimate knowledge of the ways in which democracy can sometimes do more harm than good. So, how do we move forward in a way that gives everyone a voice and leaves no one behind? As we continue to unlearn lasting legacies of colonialism, it is important to see the form of democracy that is employed in Sri Lanka as a component of that legacy, one that was imported to the island as an experiment and one that routinely suppresses the voices of the most marginalized. Decolonizing our mind entails thinking beyond the boundaries of current ‘democratic’ institutions, and creatively thinking about how to organize a politically inclusive Tamil (future) nation.

1. Wilson, A. Jeyaratnam. 1988. The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict. 32. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press; Discussions on ethnic categories often left out Indigenous and Black peoples on the island despite their hundreds of years of presence further questioning the validity of representation in politics.

2. Fanon, Frantz. 2002. ‘Conclusion’. In The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.

3. See Scott, David. 1999. ‘Community, Number, and the Ethos of Democracy’. In Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

4. Terms like the “Third World” and “Global South” cannot be separated from histories of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism with which they are deeply entangled. Often referring (but not limited) to parts of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania the terms can position these areas as on the periphery of, underdeveloped in relation to, culturally different from regions in the US or Europe. See Sajed, Alina. 2020. ‘From the Third World to the Global South’. E-International Relations.

5. See Husaini, Sa’eed. 2021. ‘The Anti-Colonial Revolution: An Interview with Adom Getachew’. Tribune Magazine, accessed 6 February 2021. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/02/the-anti-colonial-revolution/.

6. See Anghie, Antony. 2005. ‘Governance and Globalization, Civilization and Commerce’. In Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

About A Sivakunchary

A Sivakunchary is a PhD student. They enjoy experimenting with illustration, baking/cooking and crafts and love games nights with family and friends.