Are we coming close to being a unified nation?

Lionel Wijesiri

There seems to be a real hope for a unified Sri Lanka. We hope to be part of helping that process.

- Helene D. Gayle, President and CEO of Care International, in November 2009

Our military has valiantly fought and just about won a war for the reunification of our territory and the historic importance of this achievement cannot be underestimated. Today, with the complete eradication of terror and after three decades of war, we have become sadder but wiser. Fifty years ago, if we have understood the solemnity and the importance of the concept of a unified nation, we could have prevented the separatist call for the territorial division thus avoiding the bloodshed and wastage of human and national resources.

It is not too late as yet. Let us be honest to ourselves, listen to our hearts, and seek the right answers for few questions. If we can find the right answers, we can look forward to become again a unified nation in double-quick time. Let us start from our own experiences. We all know out of our own experiences that national identities and loyalties are threatened from within (rather than from outside) and they are quite real.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to our nation. Throughout the world, the possibility of “nations within states” and of internecine conflict along religious, ethnic, and linguistic lines seem ever-present. The former Yugoslavia is perhaps the most prominent illustration of state disintegration amid clashes between ethnic and religious groups with aspirations to nationhood.

Yugoslavia even begat a label for this process: balkanization. The cases of Southern Sudan, Chechnya and Iraq are three more recent examples. Moreover, there have also been less famous but still significant mobilizations along ethnic lines in other areas of the world, such as Latin America. Even milder dynamics that likely do not portend state disintegration are still interpreted as threatening national identity. For example, in the United States, some worry that American identity is challenged by growing ethnic diversity, especially when that very diversity is celebrated under the guise of multiculturalism or the “politics of recognition.”

Attachment

My interest in this point follows from the popular belief that the degree of national unity has important implications for the quality and success of a democratic nation. The last thirty years has produced a large-scale shift to democratic institutions throughout the world. This “third wave” of democratization began with transitions in Portugal and Spain, events that were followed by a cascade of transitions in Latin America.

The tail end of the wave, which appears to have crested, is composed of African and post-communist states, many of which include multiple “nations.” The scholars specializing in democracy have identified divisions in national attachment, in some form or another, as one of the most significant obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in these countries.

Sixty two years after the Independence, I believe it’s time for us also to begin investigating more systematically the variation in attachment among the different segments of our population to the motherland. We should focus in particular on how our populations that are “minority” in terms of ethnicity, religion, and language feel about their country.

In this investigation, we should seek to answer two questions. First, do our minority populations feel less attachment to the country in which they live? Second, what political, economic, and cultural factors strengthen or weaken the national attachment of minority populations?

National attachment

Some political commentators believe that in Sri Lanka today, the minority populations typically experience a degree of “distance” from mainstream conceptions of national identity and from the national political and other institutions. Why is it happening? Is it because certain political, economic, and cultural features render them less secure or more “distinct” within the country?

The straight-forward answer is: yes. It is an accepted fact that country-level attributes are important conditioning factors that affect the relationship between individual-level forces and attachment to the state. Which of these factors matter most has important implications for the policymakers at the state level to respond to minority nationalist movements?

In order to answer this question, we have to formulate our concept of what is termed “national attachment.” In simple terms, national attachment is the attachment to the state in which one currently resides. I have used the term “attachment” throughout this article to characterize people’s feelings because it is a general description and does not connote any particular kind of attachment (love, pride, and so on) or any specific content of that attachment.

What I mean is a very general sense of one’s identification with the nation-state. Others may have different definitions, such as, “patriotism” and “nationalism.” These can be very important, of course, but only for determining the consequences of national attachment.

I believe that the nature of a country’s political institutions, its level of economic development, and its salient historical experiences may all influence the attachment and the national pride. Let us study it little further.

Economic development

Two important dimensions of a nation’s political institutions are the economic development and political freedom. Generally, citizens in democratic and economically developed countries have a stronger national attachment because they experience a considerable degree of personal freedom and ease of living. Citizens living in developing countries, on the other hand, often experience substantial hardship relative to citizens in developed countries. As such, they may feel less attachment to their country.

The experience of nation building suggests that ethnic pluralism and cultural blending has been a continuing process in most successful nation states. A multi religio-ethnic identity can itself become over time a source of national identity.

But historical experience also suggests that blending can only be forced at high resource and human cost. The “melting pot” metaphor has seldom applied when a state consists of geographically based ethnic nationalities. The violence and humiliation that routinely accompany the ethnic politics of nation building can no more be avoided by attacking ethnicity than the violence, cruelty and humiliation.

The concept that a people, simply because it considers itself a nation, have a right to its own state remains a revolutionary idea. As long as it remains a revolutionary idea attempts to force the process of nation building will continue to be brutal and bloody. Constitutional innovations granting greater regional autonomy, as in Spain and Canada, suggests that some ethno-motional movements may be prepared to trade off demands for the establishment of a national state for meaningful autonomy within a unified system.

Ideal relationship

When the constraints of the war were over last year, the central government has increased investment in minority areas and accelerated their opening to the outside world. This has begun to result in an upsurge of economic development in these areas. Each of Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority groups possesses a minority culture.

The Government respects minority customs, and works to preserve, study, and collate the cultural artefacts of ethnic minority groups. The government vigorously supports the development of minority culture and the training of minority cultural workers, and fosters the development of traditional minority medicine.

The ideal relationship among our ethnic groups one day should reach a level when we can describe it as “overall integration and mutual interaction”. Until three decades ago, concentrations of ethnic minorities resided within predominantly Sinhala areas, and the Sinhalese people also resided in minority areas, indicating that there have been extensive exchanges among our ethnic groups since ancient times.

With the development of the market economy, interaction among ethnic groups has become even more active in the areas of government, economics, culture, daily life, and marriage.

Linked by interdependence, mutual assistance, and joint development, their common goals and interests creating a deep sense of solidarity, Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups should become a great national family, together building Sri Lankan civilization.