Social justice key to social harmony

Athulasiri Kumara Samarakoon

With the military victory of Armed Forces over the LTTE, the country has seen an end to a long-fought war. In my opinion, now in the absence of war, Sri Lanka faces challenges mightier than the civil war.

The biggest challenge that we confront today, some might argue that it is the resettlement of internally displaced people (IDPs) or economic development, to me is the restoration of social justice to all sections of the society. (And also I am not denying that speedier resettlement and economic development play a bigger part of assuring social justice to the Tamils affected by the conflict).

As a multi-ethnic, society today, we must look into the problem of social justice with an open mind. Conflicts that the post-independent Sri Lanka was inflicted with are due to the lack of serious discourse on social justice. As a nation with a long tradition of democratic practice of governance, today, the country has received breathing space to contemplate the matter of social justice.

Social justice was what all rebellious and terrorist movements have sought from the State.

Historically, Lankan State has always been able to crush anti-state elements and protect its democratic character, which could be a unique case with regard to a peripheral state in the global capitalist system. JVP’s two uprisings, in 1971 and during 1987-89, were militarily crushed and the LTTE also was made to suffer the similar fate. While the JVP has entered the democratic process, the LTTE has not thought it over and its global linkages might still be working against the Lankan State. Realistically judging, the global campaigns that the LTTE carry out using cyberspace, mostly, might continue for sometime. For a complete silence of all the international organs of the LTTE, Sri Lanka has to deal amicably with its international counterparts, both Western and Eastern. In the Asian context, the country has received immense assistance from South Asian friends and Asia’s fastest growing economy, China. In the Western hemisphere Sri Lanka has not fared much bad but the LTTE’s propaganda machines have catered to the West’s popular market for third world conflicts. So, in countering the LTTE’s propaganda and refreshing our friendship with the misinformed West, the country needs to restore social justice that would gradually but steadily strengthen the democratic forces and cure the structural problems.

American political philosopher John Rawls has dealt comprehensively on the subject of social justice in his magnum opus Theory of Social Justice. Also his book is regarded one of the most influential works in the 20th Century. In the Rawlsian philosophy, justice is accompanied with fairness. Among other conceptions which consists the concept of justice as fairness include the principle of liberty, fair equality of opportunity and the principle of difference. At a glance, it seems that these principles are rooted in the liberal democratic theory. In a democratic polity, liberal governance of civil freedoms, economic rights and minority’s faith in the system have to be guaranteed at all cost. When we apply the concept of social justice as espoused by John Rawls it is undeniable that the State has fairly attempted to guarantee fairness of opportunity through a welfare distributive mechanisms.

With the market forces entering the system in the late 1970s, there has been an upturn in social and economic spheres. When it comes to the ethnic question, a well-known academic like Newton Gunasinghe argued that much of the causes for the problem could be found in the arbitrary introduction of the open economy without any assurance to the local producers. Especially the farming community of the North was affected and they were uprooted from their traditional livelihoods. So, the open economy has mostly not guaranteed social justice though it helped Sri Lanka enter the globalizing world of culture and economics.

The dire need of the hour is to ensure the ethnic minorities their place in the economic, social, political and cultural spheres. Equality in citizenship rights, if assured through constitutional means which could be an indigenously designed or already existing but so far not implemented, the foundational pillars of social justice would be established solidly.

In talking about social justice, the democratic norms put much emphasis on the civil liberty of the people. The fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Universal declaration of Human Rights have been accepted by our country and we are bound to act in accordance with them. Unrestricted access to information by the people is also an important political right which leads to a more transparent function of public and private institutions. Since the war weariness of the public is now decreasing, the next thing the civil society wants the State to assure is their civil and political liberties. For a healthily functioning democracy, the Government in power should always advocate unrestricted freedom for dissenting voices as long as they are not heard violently.

Violence had coloured every aspect of the polity prior to the end of the war. The extreme use of violence by the LTTE brought their own collapse and they could not win over the hearts and minds of the Tamil people as a whole.

However, the reality is that the Tamil people, who were caught in the war for the past 30 years now, need to be integrated into the State, and their rights secured in every direction. The programs undertaken by the Government to develop the infrastructure and livelihoods of the North and Eastern people are commendable, but the economic development must be accompanied with a course of constitutional changes which is now in the making.

The problem of multiple identities in pluralistic societies is a common issue in South Asia. For instance, India’s immensely diverse, multi-linguistic polity could be one of the most heterogeneous cultures in the world.

However, the regional giant has been able to, since its independence, manage the diversity by accommodating all the cultures in the polity. The respect shown for linguistically different regions which is given through the regional autonomy is commendable in the Indian context.

While the Asian region as a whole on the rise in the economic front, India is doing great. If we want to follow the similar path to economic success, the issue of social and political fragmentation must be stopped at once.

For that to achieve, Sri Lanka must strive to create more social justice, fairness of opportunity and spaces of liberal freedom with a bigger heart.

The writer is lecturer in Political Science, Social Studies Department, Open University, Colombo