Why should political theorists read about Sri Lanka? Dr. De Votta's study, designed explicitly as a "book that theoretically and systematically covered Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict" (p. xviii), suggests that Sri Lankans have declined to be guided by Hobbes, Locke, or Rawls in their political behavior. They do not see themselves as autonomous individuals interacting with other autonomous individuals in order to obtain various goals. Anderson's "imagined communities" exist in Sri Lanka, but there is no such community that includes all of its residents..

Rather, Sri Lankans see themselves as members of competing ethno-linguistic groups: the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese (74% of population in 1981) and the mainly Hindu Tamils (18% of population in 1981) (p. 22). The Sinhalese view Sri Lanka as their land rather than as the land of all the island's inhabitants. The Sinhalese asserted their sole control of the land in establishing Sinhala as the official language in the 1950's and Buddhism as the state religion in the 1972 Constitution. In turn, the marginalized Tamil population demanded the establishment of a separate state in the linguistically Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Indeed, this marginalization created a feeling of common nationality among Tamil speakers who were previously divided by caste and origin ("Indian" vs. "Sri Lankan" Tamils). The Tamil demand for a separate state has resulted in a bloody civil war that has not yet been resolved.

There is a second implication for political theorists. De Votta does not believe that "age-old hatreds" are a sufficient explanation for conflict. There were certainly pew-modern clashes between Sinhalese and Tamils or between Hindus and Buddhists, but there was cooperation also. He shows the "conflict" history to be the product of 19th and 20th extremist Sinhalese including the bhikkhus (Buddhist monks). De Votta unfortunately does not perform a similar analysis for the growth of Tamil identity. Neither is the conflict merely the result of the numerical domination of the Sinhalese. 69% of Sri Lankans may have spoken Sinhala when the island became independent in 1948 but that is not that different from the 65% majority of German speakers in multi-lingual Switzerland.

Instead, De Votta's argument is an institutional one. The British gave power to an "efficient", majoritarian state, creating a system in which "ethnic entrepreneurs" could come to power by appealing only to Sinhalese. Once disaffected members of the country's elite (above all S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in the 1950's) learned this trick, it became general. Whenever over the next 3 decades one of the major Sinhalese parties (the UNP and SLFP) tried to reach accommodation with the Tamils, its rival (as well as the minor SInhalese parties including the 'Marxist' ones) outbid it among the Sinhalese population. Among the Tamils, this produced an analogous process in which the LTTE, the secessionist Tamil guerrilla movement, became dominant in the Tamil community after 1975 by killing rival, moderate, Tamil leaders The Tamil community tolerated this process as these leaders had demonstrated their ineffectiveness in stopping the SInhalese. In effect, De Votta contends, Sri Lanka entered independence as a liberal but not a democratic state. The masses were limited to choosing among their "betters" (not that different from the Virginia of 1789). The democratization of Sri Lanka meant its de-liberalization.

To what extent is this conflict mainly a linguistic one? No doubt, those who use English (and De Votta cites no sources in either Sinhalese or Tamil) describe it as such. A "linguistic" conflict seems more "modern" than a religious one. But, it is more complex than that. One major obstacle to establishing an autonomous Tamil language area in the Northern and Eastern Provinces is that there is a Tamil language majority in the Eastern Province only by counting its Muslim population. Although Sri Lankan Muslims historically speak Tamil (or at least a dialect of it), their political leaders have refused to be part of a Hindu majority region. Similarly, the demands to change the official language from English (mainly taught in Christian schools), to nationalize Christian schools, to establish Buddhism as the state religion, and to institute statist economic policies during Srimavo Bandaranaike's governments of the 1970's came from interior (Kandyan) Sinhalese and were aimed at low-country Sinhalese who were seen as Christian or Christianizing. To explain Sinhalese-Tamil tensions in Sri Lanka, one must look to the extent to which those tensions were the product of social changes within both the Sinhalese and Tamil linguistic groups.

We thus return to our starting point. On De Votta's own figures (p. 138), Kandyan Sinhalese were the only community in which per capita income grew faster than the national average in 1963-77, a period of intense Sinhalization. Sinhalese enjoyed preferential treatment in entering Universities and government service. Their settlement of the newly irrigated north center of the island meant economic betterment (or the hope of it) for many Sinhalese. Thus, supporting Sinhalese nationalism was in the individual interests of many SInhalese, especially those of the interior. When this is considered, much 'irrational' Sri Lankan political behavior fits into the familiar (Hobbes-Locke) terms of the English tradition.

De Votta's analysis is better at explaining the conflict than the steps to end it. One would not know from his discussion that the explicitly Buddhist JHU received only 6% of the vote in the last parliamentary elections or that the candidate of the extreme nationalist JVP obtained 4.1% of the vote in the most recent Presidential elections when running against candidates at least partially committed to a peace process. The remaining "Indian" Tamils have been granted citizenship. Insofar as Sri Lankans see a possibility of a more prosperous life by participation in the world economy (for which English is essential) rather than in squabbling over government jobs, one can hope for a peaceful resolution (probably in accord with De Votta's suggestion of autonomy for Tamil-majority areas) to this conflict.

Steve Oren, Independent Scholar

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