Review: Check Your Sinhala Privilege

originally from the original post on the Check Your Des(h)i Privilege blog

By Ahila, Ram & Sinthujan

The social, political, and economic arrangements of a society can place some people in a privileged position relative to others, particularly with respect to important goods, like institutional representation, economic resources, and even less tangible goods like “respect” and “welfare”. Since societal arrangements are not always brought into reflective awareness, it is unsurprising when even well meaning and well-intentioned members of privileged groups are unaware of how they may benefit from social arrangements relative to members of other groups. Many times have we experienced Sinhalese people unable and unwilling to recognize the privilege they hold vis-à-vis non-Sinhalese groups in Sri Lanka and beyond. Sometimes they may well be aware of some of the difficulties faced by non-Sinhalese. Sometimes they may even work for the betterment of other communities in the island, but this hardly ever translates into wider acknowledgment of the privilege centred around their Sinhala identity.

The denial of these privileges is widespread. Often we find Sinhalese people relativising the inequalities felt by Tamils and Muslims, deflecting the undercurrent of racism that produces systemic and sociocultural inequalities which continue to haunt the island its diasporas.

This list attempts to highlight some of the privileges provided to Sinhala people in Sri Lanka and beyond just because they are, yes, ethnically Sinhalese. Noting these privileges are not meant to antagonize or alienate Sinhalese people but rather raise awareness and self-consciousness about how ethnic identities indeed do play a role in the way they perceive, interact, and ultimately, politicize minorities on the island as well as its diasporas. It is also meant to show the extensive ways that ethnic identity can track inequalities in opportunity and welfare within a society. With this compilation we hope to ignite meaningful conversations and introspections into what it means to be Sinhalese and ultimately what it means to not be Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and beyond.

(Some of our points are directly referenced or influenced by Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”).

Sinhala privilege in Sri Lanka & diasporas

1. You can call yourself Sri Lankan without ever being questioned about the place of your own ethnicity within the national spectrum because your ethnicity IS viewed as coextensive with the national identity. 
2. You don’t have to overthink the question of ‘home’ as much as others insofar as you could easily travel back and forth between your country of origin and your country of residence.
3. You can think ethnic and identity politics are unnecessary because we are all “Sri Lankan”.
4. You can incorporate and assimilate the cultures of minorities to your wishes and negate them and externalize them to your liking.
5. You don’t have to struggle to be recognized as a people, identity and nation with rights and a distinct history.
6. You don’t have to question the writing of history of the country and its people because your presence won’t be unsettled or threatened by the current and dominant narrative.
7. You can see your people’s history and art being exhibited anywhere where there is a label of Sri Lanka or Sri Lankan to be seen, i.e. international exhibitions, museums, galleries, festivals, etc.. 
8. You never have to question Western characterizations of Buddhism as a non-violent religion, despite Buddhist violence against religious minorities being commonplace in Sri Lanka 
9. You can benefit from Orientalist perceptions of Buddhism by automatically being acquitted of accusations of being the aggressor in the conflict by fact of being Buddhist. 
10. You can benefit from anti-colonial and anti-imperial politics as a postcolonial people while ignoring the neo-colonial policies of the ethnic majority government.
11. You can claim that we were all victims when only some of you experienced loss or physical fear for life and security.
12. You can feel entitled to talk about societal, cultural, economic, political affairs of Tamils as if you are an ethnic insider.
13. You can pretend to know it all, just because you have one Tamil or Muslim friend or acquintance.
14. You can talk casually about “forgiving and moving on” because your community hasn’t borne the brunt of ethnic violence.
15. You can talk about reconciliation without ever talking about truth and compensation for historical and contemporary injustices faced by non-Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka.
16. You can deny racial violence in Sri Lanka by deflecting to the JVP insurgencies.
17. You can tell Tamils they are living in the past while you don’t acknowledge how the past has affected their present day circumstances.
18. You can think things have been worse in the past thus we shouldn’t complain so much about the present.
19. You can narrativise others’ issue, frame them, translate them and word them in eloquent English without ever being questioned on your ethnicity and your subjectivities.
20. You can say you want justice for Tamils but when a UN resolution is passed critical of Sri Lanka you feel like standing by and “protecting” your nation.
21. You can publicly mourn the anti-Tamil pogrom of Karuppu July 1983 but remain conspicuously silent on the burnt earth tactics of the 2009 mass slaughter by the government forces.
22. You can say you’re neutral in your position towards the conflict while everyone else is occupied with biases.
23. You can tell diasporic Tamils that anti-government advocacy is negatively affecting their community at home while you will not acknowledge how your virtual silence or obfuscation of “majority-politics” is negatively affecting Tamils and all other people in the island, including Sinhalese.
24. You can tell Tamils post-2009 that the war is over and they can all return now in peace without acknowledging that the larger part of Tamils fled from the state forces instead of the resistance movement.
25. You can say boycotting Sri Lanka or Sri Lankan products, national events, sports, etc., is futile, extremist, immoral and unpatriotic but when you see a Tamil store or restaurant that displays LTTE and/or Tamil Eelam support, then, you start to notoriously avoid it and defame it.
26. You can have no reservations in  calling Sri Lankan Army soldiers ‘heroes’, yet bemoan and criminalizeTamils for calling LTTE combatans ‘heroes’ or ‘martyrs’.
27. You can be liberal enough to consistently write and post about the violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and go mute when the continuing violence against Tamils is thematized. 
28. You can think explaining your minority complex in regards to greater South Asian demographics will explain your disregard for minority rights.
29. When you see state symbols, you can be reassured that your ethnicity is represented through the lion.
30. You can get aggrevated by public displays of symbols Tamil nationalism but have little qualms about the presence of lion symbol in everyday life.
31. You can call Sri Lanka a pluralistic democracy but have little concern over the prohibition of non Sinhalese (Buddhists) to become it’s elected national leader.
32. You can vote in elections without fearing for your safety as a consequence of your electoral choices.
33. You can be appalled by Tamil demands for self-determination through the ballot but never question the self-determination the Sinhalese people benefit from.
34. You can think that putting an orange and green stripe on the Sri Lankan flag is sufficient to be inclusive of all ethnicities and religious groups.
35. You can think that the Sinhala name ‘Sri Lanka’ is neutral and inclusive of all of our identities and experiences.
36. Most of you never had to stop speaking your mothertongue in public or stop wearing identity markers such as religious symbol in the state that claims to represent you to not be identified as being part of your ethnicity.
37. You can fly the national carrier ‘Sri Lankan’ and see your culture represented in the costumes and greetings.

Sinhala privilege Sri Lanka

1. You can receive access to areas and facilities in Sri Lanka with the mere ability of speaking Sinhalese and carrying a Sinhalese name.
2. You can visit the North and East as war and poverty tourists and call Tamils who are unable to travel to their homes as being disconnected.
3. When you visit the North and East, you don’t have to worry about the traces you leave, the people you meet and their respective safety.
4. You can engage with the military without being insecure about the position you’ve put yourself in.
5. You can buy land and property in any geography without feeling threatened by settler colonialism
6. You can critique the government and still be invited to private dinner parties and banquets arranged by the government.
7. When you see signboards, you can be reassured that your language is always present.
8. When you read signboards, you can be assured that the grammar of your language isn’t misused.
9. You can more readily produce art and literature about the conflict and get national and international recognition.
10. You can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of your own ethnicity widely represented.
11. When you are told about your national heritage or about “civilization,” you are shown that people of your ethnicity made it what it is.
12. You can be sure that your children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their ethnicity.
13. You don’t have to care about the politics of tokenism because you are part of the ethnic majority that can tokenize minorities.
14. You can be sure of having your voice heard in a group in which you are the only member of your ethnicity
15. You can pass checkpoints after checkpoints and be pretty well assured that you will not be harassed.
16. You do not have to educate your children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
17. You can be sure that your children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms.
18. You can be sure that you will not be excluded from the education or employment sector because of your ethnicity.
19. You are never seen as speaking on behalf of your ethnic group.
20. You can criticize the government and talk about how much you fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
21. You can be pretty sure that if you ask to talk to the “person in charge”, you will be facing a person of your ethnicity.
22. You can go home from most meetings of organizations you belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
23. You can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another ethnicity is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize yours.
24. If you declare there is a racial/ethnic issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial/ethnic issue at hand, your ethnicity will lend you more credibility than a Tamil or Muslim will have.
25. You can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, you can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
26. Your culture gives you little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other ethnicities.
27. You can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
28. You can be sure that if you need legal, medical or social help, your ethnicity will not work against you.
29. You can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of your ethnicity.
30. You can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of your ethnicity
31. You will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
32. You can elect chauvinist politicians and yet pretend to champion “democracy” and “liberation” for Tamils.
33. You can venture into broken homes and people on your war tours and assume to know it all.
34. You can say genocide hasn’t happened because no one you met on your tour in occupied and militarized land mentioned the “G word”.
35. You can support charities in the North and East while never having to acknowledge the institutional history that created today’s conditions.
36. You think that Indian soap operas are negatively influencing the youth in Sri Lanka by instilling Hindu popular customs by assuming Hindu culture is a foreign product despite 15% of the islands population being native Hindu.
37. You go to Prabhakaran’s bunker in Mullaitheevu on a war spectator tour and shake your head about the “luxuries” he enjoyed while you ignore the extravagant lifestyle of almost every Sinhalese leader.
38. You think “self determination” is unwarranted and yet think British colonialism was bad for the Sinhalese but consider Sinhala neo-colonialism as “growing together”.
39. You never admit to the power relation that will always belie any Sinhala-Tamil relation.
40. You think inflation in the South is equal to engineered impoverishment and displacement in the North and East.
41. You think that string hoppers and kottu roti are enough to make a happy masala out of all of us
42. You think fear of suicide bombers is equal to the fear of the omnipresent hands of state terror.
43. You think that anti-Muslim attitudes are unconnected to the racism and xenophobia experienced by Tamils.
44. You can go to the police and court and expect to sign papers in your own language.
45. You don’t have to fear being harassed, tortured or raped based on your ethnic background.
46. You don’t have to fear being racially profiled and stereotyped as terrorists despite state-terrorism
47. You can defy ethnic majoritarian government policies and yet fear fewer reprisals.

In the diasporas

1. Most of you haven’t lost your property and identity when you left the country while countless others, mostly Tamils, have because of state oppression.
2. Most of you established yourself abroad with more social, economic and cultural capital than most Tamils ever had.
3. Most of you haven’t gone through the traumatic experience of fleeing and becoming refugees.
4. You can question the legitimacy of refugee status granted to Tamils (past and present) but don’t question the depth of discrimination , inequalities and racial violence in the country that made them refugees in the first place. 
5. Most of you don’t have to fear the dispossession of property back home.
6. Most of you don’t have to fear the nationalisation of your savings in banks back home.
7. You can benefit from the facilities established, such as shops and restaurants, by Tamil refugees who have eased your transnational cosmopolitan life by bringing you Sri Lankan items into your diasporic existence.
8. You can think that being economically established in the diaspora erases the losses experienced back home and the claims to ancestral lands and a political solution for Tamils.
9. You can assume every diaspora Tamil to be socio-economically well-to-do.
10. You can blame the ‘Tamil diaspora’ for being physically removed from the island without ever once asking why so many had to become so in the first place.
11. You can be quick to project your anti-Tamil sentiments on diasporic Tamils yet can claim to not be ethnically biased in Sri Lanka.
12. You  canmake countless of generalizations about diasporic Tamils while claiming plurality and diversity for Sinhalese.
13. You can think of diasporic Tamils as being attached to parochial concerns without ever admitting to your own diasporic condition.
14. You can blame ‘the diaspora’ for its support of the Tamil resistance and yet get never be blamed for your support of the government.
15. You can apply for a visa to Sri Lanka without wondering what the government will do with your records.
16. You can obtain visas for countries like India without fearing rejection based on ethnic and/or political association.
17. You can have access to Sri Lankan institutions abroad and at home like no one else has.
18. You don’t have to fear being filmed if attend an anti-government demonstration.
19. You don’t have to fear for the lives of your family if you voice open criticism against the government.
20. You don’t have to worry about having your Sri Lankan scholarships revoked if you participate in protests against Sri Lankan state policies.
21. You think that Sri Lankan student societies should suffice for making Tamil students feel politically and culturally represented in universities.
22. You can think MIA is a terrorist because she articulates anti-Tamil violence through her art but praise Sinhalese rapper and actor DeLon for his nationalist pro-Sinhala stances.
23. You can post videos on YouTube about what is Sri Lankan that only responds to majority Sinhala cultural references. Isn’t that so Sri Lankan?

Many of you will call us racist for having called you out on your privileges.



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Opinion: Notes about Puttalam and the 2013 Provincial Elections

by Gogol G.

Three provincial councils of GoSL will have elections in exactly 3 weeks. Much media attention is given to the Northern Provincial Council's elections for various reasons. Those reasons all boil down to the fate of Tamils and "Tamil Eelam" -- the traditional areas of inhabitation, and thus homeland, of Tamil-speaking people. Some have presciently described the fate of Tamil Eelam, but what then of its borders? One answer is the incisive, witty quip from Kittu about painting by colours wherever GoSL has bombed and attacked. Most Western and Indian media describe it in terms of SL's current provincial divisions, namely the Northern and the Eastern ones. But that omits the Puttalam district from the full map of Tamil Eelam. Under current GoSL boundaries, Puttalam is 1 of 2 districts in the North West Province, and the North West Province, just like the Northern Province is 1 of the 3 councils having elections next month.

Whether Puttalam "belongs" in Tamil Eelam is a contested point, and there are good reasons on both sides why the contestation exists. But before delving into history, let's try to see how emerging regional security issues play out into the future.

If the reports are true, India is being infiltrated by Pakistani militants who are using Sri Lanka as a launchpad and entering through Tamil Nadu. There is also the ongoing saga of fisherman from Tamil Nadu being directly punished by the SL Navy, and no real end in sight despite the political hay people make. This makes the narrow waterway separating Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka an important area in terms of security, and all along the areas of land nearest each other on both sides are Tamils. Puttalam is an important part of this stretch, too, as it faces Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), a developing port, and Kanniyakumari. The best way for the future of the Palk Strait to remain stable and an area of commerce is if Tamils are on both sides of the negotiating table, representing the lands that they administer respectively. And that much is clear given the way water resources in South India -- namely, the rivers -- have been mis-/shared. And, not surprisingly, the non-constructive, negligent attitude that India has maintained towards Tamil grievances over river water vis-a-vis Kerala and Karnataka is the same attitude it applies to Tamil grievances vis-a-vis the SL Navy. When we take the linguistic and ethnic identity issues out of the equation, resolving issues like over-fishing or security can be achieved in constructive ways.

And then there's the environmental issue. If it were up to Southern Lanka, they would drill for oil in the Mannar basin for all it's worth. If there is an oil spill, it's only Tamils who would be directly affected, right? Although India is wary of the oil reserves being sucked dry by China before India has an opportunity to get at them, the concern is not only a hypocritical self-serving one. This is the same sort of cavalier attitude that India maintains to the protests of Tamils in Koodankulam who protest a Russian-built nuclear plant in this coastal town also on the Mannar basin. If the power plant experiences a meltdown, it will only be Tamils who are affected. Both oil drilling and a nuclear reactors are severe natural disasters waiting to happen. Just look at the oil disaster in the US coast around the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. When you factor in the fact that this part of South Asia is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, just like the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the consequences can be severe. Just look at the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, also located on a earthquake fault line and tsunami-prone body of water. Only 2 years later are we hearing news that the disaster is much worse than we thought, and that radioactive particles can reach all the way across the Pacific Ocean as soon as 2014. The coral reefs in the Mannar basin are an important and delicate part of the ecosystem that does not stand a chance to survive against these short-sighted exploitative schemes. So both locally and globally, the environment and the people are severely threatened by the callously negligent decisions of colonial-minded rulers in Delhi and Colombo who don't speak their language nor care about their lives and livelihoods. And when it comes to ideas like the Sethusamudram idea to dredge up the Palk Strait, the benefits are small and the risks are great, for the same reasons as mentioned above. In fact, there is no real trade benefit when you consider the depths required to accommodate the next generation of super-barges plying the seas. The only benefit is slightly easier access of Indian submarines, and that, too, would be mooted if the radars that Pakistan is installing in Jaffna are accompanied by sonar. But ultimately, the Sethusamduram idea should be decided by the people of the Palk Strait, and that is best done when the concerned parties are on the same page, speaking each other's language, so to speak.

So why are Tamils the majority of the people on both sides of the Palk Strait? This is not a coincidence, but it is the legacy of a history of Tamils in these areas for more than 2000 years. We know that there were Tamils in Mannar at least 2000 years ago based on the buried city called Maanthai. The Thiruketheeswaram Temple near Mannar is a remnant of this bustling port city that connected major Indian Ocean trade, from China to the Middle East. It is probably worth repeating that the South Indians who could sail to Australia 4000 years ago, bringing some of their culture and their more advanced technology with them, also had settled Ceylon, since Ceylon was so close and unavoidable on any trip south or east. Throughout time, Puttalam was 1 of 2 capitals of the Jaffna kingdom, the other being Jaffna, of course. What made Puttalam valuable was the pearling industry in the Gulf of Mannar maintained by Tamils for over 3000 years. It is also well known that in those times, for ancient Rome, salt and pepper were so valuable that they were used in lieu of currency to pay their soldiers, or at least the ones "worth their salt", as the phrase originated. The Puttalam Lagoon, between Puttalam town and Kalpitti at the end of the peninsula, is an ideal place for valuable salt pans, and this is perhaps where Puttalam gets its name. (The Dead Sea no doubt also provided a source for salt, but the pepper had to come from present-day Kerala and perhaps SE Asia.)

Despite the passage of a few millennia, Puttalam was still a part of the Jaffna kingdom by the time the first European colonialists arrived. During the British period of colonial rule, Puttalam remained Tamil-speaking. Parts of it were given to Muslims for help with British counter-insurgency, but as the article says, "What remains as territorial demarcation of Muslims which was once ceded a Muslim territory by the Tamils should remain as such and there is no need to reclaim it as Tamil area." In British colonial tradition, provincial lines were drawn to split groups of people so as to weaken them as much as they were to convenience the wealth-extraction part of the colonial apparatus. Despite that, even at the beginning of the 20th century, a majority of Puttalam district was Tamil speaking. Due to conversions by the Portugese of coastal people to Catholicism, coupled with efforts to Sinhalicise the Tamil-speaking Christians during the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist movement spurred by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, Tamils adopted Sinhalese and Sinhalese names. For these people -- "Negombo Tamils" -- language and identity has become a fluid thing in what is a short period of time in the bigger picture. So what used to be a Tamil province in 100 years' time appears as if it is majority Sinhalese.

(Side note: the type of "Buddhist revivalism" espoused by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, considered the father of modern Singala Buddhism nationalism, is really just glorified racism buttressed by the rationale of a parallel universe. Dharmapala was born as Don David Hewavitarne into a Christian family and was influenced by the occultist sect of colonialists, the Theosophical Society, before discovering his new identity.)

(Side note: the question running through Tamils' minds is, with the rapid pace of unabashed and unbridled Sinhalicisation and colonisation happening in the Vanni by GoSL, will the Vanni demographics change so fast that what happened in Puttalam will take only 10 years, not 100 years?)

In the last 20 years, the demographics changes in Puttalam district have come from an influx of Muslims and Tamils from the north during the war. Most notably, the LTTE kicked out Muslims from Jaffna in 1990 overnight, thereby sending them to Puttalam. The formerly displaced Muslims now face a perplexing dilemma, where they feel more settled in Puttalam now than they do to their former home in Jaffna. The government agents in the Northern province, as well as NGOs, prioritise the issues of war-affected Tamil IDPs over those of the Muslims who were kicked out to Puttalam, citing that the Muslims have not experienced the same hardships, destruction, and loss of life. As the Northern Muslims now settle down in Puttalam, there are issues between them and the Muslims of Puttalam who have been there since the times of the British (as the British maps attest). So we can see that in a current map of the demography of Ceylon, the Muslim representation of northern Puttalam surprisingly survives. And we see that southern Puttalam has a noteworthy presence of Christians.

One of the villages in southern Puttalam that has surprisingly retained its Tamil identity is Udappu, which is a destination of Tamil NDPs from the Northern province (to a lesser degree than the Muslim displacement from Jaffna). Udappu residents speak a Tamil Nadu dialect of Tamil (different from Jaffna/Batticaloa Tamil), supposedly from its 400 year history as a settlement of fishermen from Tamil Nadu. And this is reminiscent of the question of the Upcountry Tamils, who are also descendants of Tamils from Tamil Nadu with a history of a couple of centuries -- what & where do they see themselves in a future where political rights are somehow guaranteed for everyone in the island? Surely, they will not live in sub-human closet-sized houses, without education, without citizenship, picking tea leaves as economic slaves. The Upcountry Tamil refugees who fled to India recently were given asylum in camps that were set up by the Indian government in the Nilgiris hills of Tamil Nadu, reminiscent of the landscape they came from. But the living conditions of those asylums in Tamil Nadu by the Indian government were just as bad, if not worse, then what they escaped, if that's possible. So it is not surprising that the affinity of Upcountry Tamils towards India is fading, and for good reason, but they're still Tamil and they need a place to belong to. It is apropos to mention here that one of the districts with a Tamil-speaking majority in the south is Nuwara Eliya, which is contained in the Central Province, and that is, along with the Northern Province and the North West Province, 1 of the 3 provinces going to the polls in 3 weeks' time.

So as CaFFE gets ready to monitor the upcoming elections, and the TNA is hard at work campaigning, and the UN and the world are keenly watching how GoSL behaves throughout the elections, and Mahinda Rajapakse knows he remains the island's potentate regardless of the provincial elections, all eyes will be on how the most brutalised of people in Ceylon register their voice in a secret ballot in the Northern Province. But while that is going on, away from the lights and media attention, Tamil-speaking people in the North West Province and the Central Province, hopefully, will be doing the same.

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