scholarly journals Analyzing the Fragmented Sri Lankan Muslim Politics in Post-Ashraff Era

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Mohammad Agus Yusoff ◽  
Athambawa Sarjoon ◽  
Zawiyah Mohd Zain
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
The North ◽  
Leadership Crisis ◽  
Muslim Politics

The traditional Muslim politics in Sri Lanka transformed with the formation of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and its active communal politics under its founder-leader, M.H.M.Ashraff. While representing the interests of the Muslim community, particularly those living in the north-eastern region, SLMC through its politics of bargaining and consensus voiced and advocated for the interests, rights and privileges of the Muslim community as well as contributed to their socio-economic and cultural upliftment at the crossroad of ethnic conflict and civil war. Although SLMC received popular mandate from the Muslim community, the party fell into fragmentation with the unexpected demise of its founder-leader in 2000, and splits were instigated shortly. This fragmentation caused a severe effect in the distinct path of Muslim politics in Sri Lanka. This study examines the fragmented nature and the trends of Muslim politics, particularly the politics of SLMC in post-Ashraff era and their impact. This study reveals that the fragmentation within SLMC caused leadership crisis and emergence of many Muslim political parties that promoted ugly politics of opportunism. This trend ultimately reduced the bargaining strength of Muslim politics, negatively influenced representative politics, leading to the negligence and marginalisation of Muslims’ concerns and grievances in national politics. The leadership crisis and regionalism also negatively influenced the politics of SLMC and other Muslim parties in post-Ashraff era. This study also finds that unifying splinter-groups, reforming party structure and procedures, and redefining goals and path of achieving them would not only strengthen the politics of SLMC and other Muslim political parties but also would give a new brand for Muslim minority politics in Sri Lanka.

scholarly journals THE SUCCESS OF ETHNICALLY BASED POLITICAL PARTIES: CASE OF SRI LANKA

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Nirmali Wijegoonawardana
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
General Election ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The North ◽  
Electoral Outcomes

Ethnic identities or policy interests; what influences the Sri Lankan voter the most? This analysis will be done providing particular attention to the case of Sri Lanka. The development in electoral outcomes in Sri Lanka provides an explicitly clear image of how, particular political parties obtain support from particular ethnic groups and in return serve the interest of particular groups. This study will be based on the results of the 1989 Parliamentary General Election and 2010 Parliamentary General Election samples, mainly in the North and East constituencies. The Sri Lankan ethnic conflict offers an overview of the role of political parties and political actors in the competitive electoral system in relation to a conflicting situation. Therefore, this paper will examine as to how, such parties obtain support from particular ethnic groups and thereby safeguard the interest of those groups. Furthermore, this paper will seek to analyze how the, obtaining of moderate support from another ethnic group provides the best outcome but it is insufficient to divert from the interest of the group who provides the greatest support. Hence, this paper attempts at deciphering the main factor as to why it is harder for an ethnic party once established to become multi-ethnic.

scholarly journals The Muslims’ Quest for a Kalmunai Administrative District in South-Eastern Sri Lanka: An Analysis of the Challenges from Their Community and Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Mohammad Agus Yusoff ◽  
Athambawa Sarjoon
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Administrative District ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Coastal Belt ◽  
The Government ◽  
Different Sources

The Muslim community living in the “South-Eastern Region” of Sri Lanka has long been urging the government authorities to establish a separate Kalmunai administrative district carved out of the coastal belt of the present Amparai district, as an institutional mechanism to improve public service delivery and development administration functions in the region. However, the establishment of the Kalmunai administrative district has continually been challenged, receiving criticism and oppositions from different sources, including from the Muslim community and its politicians. This study analyzes the perspectives of Muslim community and its politics towards the demand for the Kalmunai administrative district and its impacts on the political advocacy and methods to achieving it. This study has found that there are different and contradictory perspectives on the matter of the Kalmunai administrative district among the Muslim political parties and in different segments of the community. It is also discovered that the public understanding on the subject of the proposed district is very minimal. The establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district has frequently failed on many crucial occasions mainly due to the lack of consensus among the Muslims leaders regarding the contested subjects of the proposed district. Additionally, this study has observed that the Muslim leaders have conceptualized the proposed Kalmunai district purely based on ethnicity only and have failed to justify it on public and rational grounds. The study has further found that the establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district and its purported positive impacts would strongly depend on making the demand for the proposed district a more secular and public one.

scholarly journals Islam, Politics and Violence in Eastern Sri Lanka

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 730-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Klem
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Islam And Politics ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Academic Debate ◽  
Contemporary Islam

This article bridges Sri Lankan studies and the academic debate on the relation between contemporary Islam and politics. It constitutes a case study of the Muslim community in Akkaraipattu on Sri Lanka's war-ridden east coast. Over two decades of ethnically colored conflict have made Muslim identity of paramount importance, but the meanings attached to that identity vary substantively. Politicians, mosque leaders, Sufis and Tablighis define the ethnic, religious and political dimensions of “Muslimness” differently and this leads to intra-Muslim contradictions. The case study thus helps resolve the puzzle of Sri Lankan Muslims: they are surrounded by hostility, but they continue to be internally divided. Akkaraipattu's Muslims jockey between principled politics, pragmatic politics and anti-politics, because they have to navigate different trajectories. This article thus corroborates recent studies on Islam elsewhere that argue for contextualized and nuanced approaches to the variegated interface between Islam and politics.

scholarly journals Tamil Identity in Sri Lanka: A Secular State of Becoming

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anushka Perinpanayagam
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The North ◽  
Growth And Change ◽  
Tamil Identity ◽  
Secular State

<p>Since the island nation of Sri Lanka attained independence in 1948, it has experienced periods of civil unrest marked by riots and government implemented curfews. In the mid-1980s this agitation erupted into civil war between two parties: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government. Each is associated with a different ethnic group and a very particular nationalist rhetoric. Kristian Stokke and Anne Kirsti Ryntveit, "The Struggle For Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka,”Growth and Change 31 (2000): 285. The LTTE, a group of militant separatists, claims to represent the Tamil population of the north and east, while the Sri Lankan government is mostly comprised of politicians belonging to the island's ethnic majority - the Sinhalese. Serena Tennekoon, "Newspaper Nationalism: Sinhala Identity as Historical Discourse," in Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict, ed. Jonathon Spencer (London: Routledge, 1990), 205.</p>

Vijaya and Romulus: Interpreting the Origin myths of Sri Lanka and Rome

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN STRATHERN
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
North East ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
The North ◽  
Origin Myths ◽  
The Stranger

AbstractThe story of Vijaya, has long been central to the Sinhalese idea of themselves as a distinct ethnic group of Aryan origin with ancient roots in the island of Lanka. The ‘national’ chronicle of the Sinhalese, the Mahāvaṃsa (circa fifth century ce) presents Vijaya, an exiled prince from India descended from a lion, as the founder hero of Sinhala civilisation. In a companion article to this, I argued that the narrative of Vijaya and other founder-heroes in the Mahāvaṃsa revolves around the theme of transgression, and that this puzzling fact can only be explained by a consideration of the symbolic logic of the ‘stranger-king’ in origin stories and kingship rituals worldwide. In the present article, I look at other ways of explaining the narrative of Sīhabāhu, Vijaya, and Paṇḍukābhaya. First I break down the narrative into four different origin stories and consider their distribution in a range of texts from South Asia in order to reflect on possible textual inspirations for them (and even consider parallels with the Greek tale of Odysseus and Circe). Second, I consider the possibility that the narrative concerning relations with Pāṇḍu royalty reflects immediate political imperatives of the fifth century ce. Do such interpretations negate the assumption that an organic communal process of mythogenesis has been at work? In the final section this methodological dilemma is approached through comparisons with the way in which scholars have looked at the origin myths of ancient Greek and particularly Roman society. Lastly, these reflections add further weight to the global comparative model of the stranger king, for the stories of Romulus and Vijaya share an emphasis on alien and transgressive beginnings.In 2009 the Sri Lankan government finally destroyed the conventional forces of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) as the civil war that had afflicted the island since 1983 was brought to a violent denouement in the north-east of the Vanni region. From some of the subsequent celebrations by the Sinhalese majority, it seemed that the President Mahinda Rajapaksa was hailed not only for having rid Sri Lanka of a violent menace, but for having, in one sense, re-created the island. The country could now attain the kind of genuine independence and wholeness that had been lacking for much of the period following decolonisation in 1948. After the victory, Rajapaksa was hailed as a ‘great king’ and his admirers were not slow to draw historical analogies with kings and founder-heroes of the past. Such heroes typically have to wade through blood to obtain political mastery; the Lankan chronicles imply that such is the price that must be paid for the re-establishment of society or civilisation itself.

scholarly journals Reorienting the Study of Citizenship in Sri Lanka

PCD Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Nira Wickramasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
Majority Rules ◽  
Multicultural Citizenship ◽  
Analytical Frameworks

In Sri Lankan scholarship the second component, namely 'citizenship' is virtually absent from the public discourse. The obvious reason for the elusive presence of citizenship is, as previously mentioned, the inevitable invasion in every sphere of peoples lives of issues of nationalism, subnationalism and conflict in the past thirty years owing to the Tamil insurrection in the North and East of the island. In the 1980s and 1990s while the world was embroiled in debates over cosmopolitan and multicultural citizenship Sri Lankan studies were concerned with issues of power and democracy and remained locked in outdated analytical frameworks of nation, ethnicity, and community. For historical reasons citizenship has not had in the Sri Lankan scholarly field the seminal and near obsessive presence that nation and state have occupied. Another reason may be that liberal and radical scholars - defenders of minority rights - have been suspicious of majoritarian appeals to some ideal of 'good citizenship' where minorities will eventually be expected to play by majority rules. Although by the 1990s the terms had become a buzzword amongst thinkers in the North, citizenship remained in fact one of the least theorized notions in Sri Lankan studies where a generally instrumental understanding of the term that includes common defense of personal freedom, establishment of basic conditions of social justice and maintenance of civil peace prevails. In Sri Lanka, the tie between citizenship and nationhood, however, can never be wholly deconstructed or ignored. In this light, this paper will proposes future possible areas of study.

scholarly journals Problems Faced by Muslim Converts in Sri Lanka: A Study Based on Anuradhapura District

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Ahamed Sarjoon Razick ◽  
Mohamed Anifa Mohamed Fowsar ◽  
Ameer Rushana
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Married Couples ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Voluntary Organizations ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Significant Finding ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Financial Issues

Muslim converts are living with several problems after the conversion, and they are disowned and separated by their original relatives. Muslims by birth call Muslim converts as &#39;Moula-Islam&#39; which is keeping off them as a different segment. The aim of this research is, therefore, to identify the problems faced by Muslim converts in Anuradhapura district, Sri Lanka. This is an empirical study with the applications of qualitative and quantitative data. The study adopted the questionnaire survey and in-depth interview techniques to collect primary data and randomly selected sixty-five samples out of three hundred sixty-five Muslim coverts living in Anuradhapura district. The significant finding of the study reveals that Muslim converts are facing several socioeconomic problems including the separation from family and relatives, the language problem, financial issues, the disparity in the aspect of marriage and the occurrence of divorces among married couples. The study further highlights difficulties faced by Muslim converts in terms of Islamic knowledge, learning Al-Quran, adopting Muslim cultural identity. Muslim converts are the most vulnerable people in the Muslim community, and they do not receive financial help, including Zakat from traditional Muslims. Hence, this study argues that current problems faced by Muslim converts should be addressed meaningfully and the Muslim community and voluntary organizations should take corrective measures to improve the life of Muslim converts in the Sri Lankan context.

The New ‘Other’: Islamic Radicalisation and De-radicalisation in Sri Lanka

2021 ◽  
pp. 097492842110477
Author(s):  
N. Manoharan ◽  
Drorima Chatterjee ◽  
Dhruv Ashok
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Small State ◽  
The Core ◽  
Incipient Stage ◽  
Island State ◽  
Key Terms

One of the key terms to understand the nature of violence and conflicts world over is ‘radicalisation’. Sri Lankan case is instructive in understanding various dimensions of Islamic radicalisation and de-radicalisation, especially in South Asia. Though a small state, Sri Lanka has witnessed three radical movements, the latest being Islamic that got manifested in deadly Easter attacks of April 2019. Eco-space for Islamic radicalisation existed in the island for decades, but the rise of ultra-Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism post the end of Eelam War IV acted as a breaking point. The underlying context is perceived insecurity feeling projected by hardline Sinhala-Buddhist elements. In due course, the primary ‘other’ shifted from Tamils to Sri Lankan Muslims. Apart from inter-communal dissonance, international jihadist network also fostered radicalisation process in the island’s Muslim community. Political instability due to co-habitation issues between the then president and the prime minister was a perfect distraction from the core security and development issues. In response to the violent manifestation of radicalisation, de-radicalisation measures by the successive Sri Lankan governments were mostly military in nature. Socio-economic and political components of Islamic de-radicalisation are at the incipient stage, if not totally missing. The article suggests wide-ranging measures to address the issue of radicalisation in the island state.

scholarly journals Sri Lanka: An Ethnocratic State Endangering Positive Peace in the Island

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
Nirmanusan Balasundaram
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The State ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Religious Attitude ◽  
The North ◽  
State Apparatus

Although proclaimed as a democratic republic, the Sri Lankan state is strongly controlled and ruled by Sinhala Buddhist influence due to a deep engrained belief that the island belongs to the Sinhala Buddhists. The modus operandi of the Sri Lankan state apparatus outlines the ethnocratic characteristics of the state. This mono-ethnic and mono-religious attitude has led to the widening and deepening of the discrimination against a particular ethnic group known as the Tamils who traditionally inhabit the North and East of the island. Ethnocracy continues to be defended and justified by the state in the name of sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security and has led to further polarization of the already divided ethnic groups. As a consequence and outcome of the ethnocratic nature of the Sri Lankan state, a bloody war erupted between successive governments of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). After nearly 38 years the prolonged war came to a brutal end in May 2009 amidst blatant violations of international law. However, the root causes of this conflict, which occurred due to ethnocratic nature of the state, have not yet been addressed resulting in the continuation of the ethnic conflict despite the end of the war. 

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