Theoretical understanding of the death of truce

"Why?" That was the question raised by many Sri Lankan watchers - and others -- when they were stunned by the decision of the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration to terminate the February 2002 ceasefire agreement signed with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the major politico-military movement fighting to establish an ethnic Tamil state in the North and East of Sri Lanka.

The simple but yet question is what triggered the government to abrogate the ceasefire pact? One can offer a plethora of answers and explanations based on regular political incidents and formulas. This article, however, will attempt to give some theoretical explanations based on symbolic political agendas to understand the causes that led to the abrogation of the ceasefire agreement, which formally ended on January 16.

A basic argument of the symbolic theory is that when people choose to act, they often think emotionally rather than rationally. This is particularly true in the tense political situation where leaders directly appeal to the masses' emotions. The central argument of symbolic politics is that emotional symbols such as pro-war or anti-peace slogans, the flag, the national anthem, group history, the myth of motherland and fatherland can become tools in politics to sway the masses for the elite to win and hold power.

In politics, as anthropologist Zdzislaw Mach observed, symbols are important. They are used to influence the people, to appeal to values; to refer to ideas; to stir emotions and to stimulate action. When politicians or leaders of political movements mobilize people by means of emotions and symbols, the masses would likely react overwhelmingly and positively.

The logic behind mass support for the symbols is that masses develop their identity primarily on powerful symbols such as myth, heroic history, heroes, culture, religion and tradition. When elites, politicians or nationalist leaders, appeal to the masses with symbols - praising history, declaring war on their ethnic/religious enemies, blaming foreign countries for their domestic crisis, claiming to revive ancient leaders' rule, referring to heroes, waving flags, making policies to offer state protection and official status to the language and religion of a particular group, kissing babies - masses' reaction is likely positive. The logic of success is the employment of powerful symbols that directly appeal to identity.

The one major consequence of symbolic politics is that it can trigger vicious civil war against ethnic or religious groups if they predominate in a particular corner of the country's territory. According to S.J. Kaufman, myths justify the hostility if groups dominate in a particular geographic area claiming it as homeland.

In Sri Lanka, for example, minority Tamils who claim they are discriminated against by the state and majority Sinhala politicians, predominantly living in the island's North and East and have launched a violent campaign to establish a Tamil state called Tamil Eelam. Sinhala politicians, who exercise the mythical Sinhala history to arouse the majority Sinhalese's ethnic feelings for electoral gains, even deny to Tamils any political autonomy based on a federal framework. The Sinhala political class' emotionally burdened anti-Tamil mythical appeals provoke the Sinhala people's anger against the Tamils and coax them to oppose any political solution that aims to go beyond the (British introduced) unitary state.

The elite mobilization of ethnic emotions and symbols has been the major trend in the electoral politics in Sri Lanka since independence. Emotional linguistic nationalism and anti-minority rhetoric that generated fears in minority ethnic political groups become handy instruments of the main Sinhala political parties in the island to win the sympathy of the Sinhalese.

Mr. Rajapaksa, who hails from the Sinhala-dominated southern region, energetically and forcefully employed pro-Sinhala policies and rhetoric to manipulate the Sinhalese to win power on November 17, 2005. During the election campaign, Mr. Rajapaksa, with his charismatic style, vigorously attempted to show a picture to the rural Sinhalese, that he is a member of the oppressed Sinhala masses. To win southern Sinhalese sympathy, he appealed to the Sinhala masses with the symbols - praising history, declaring tough policies on the LTTE, promising to abrogate President Kumaratunga's tsunami pact with the LTTE, and radically amend the Norwegian brokered ceasefire agreement, blaming the West, particularly Norway, for the country's current peace crisis, waving flags, and kissing babies and school children. Most importantly, Rajapaksa struck deals with the Sinhala nationalist JVP and the JHU, both of which are strongly opposed to the LTTE and had demanded that Mr. Rajapaksa abolish the ceasefire agreement when he came to power.

When politicians capture power through the channels of symbolic agendas, it is highly unlikely they can retract those emotional promises. Furthermore, any possible divorce from the symbolic agenda launched, could endanger the life of the relevant politician. For example, in Sri Lanka, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, a man who introduced institutionalized Sinhala chauvinism into Sri Lankan politics, found himself unable to control the emotions he had unleashed. In 1959, Bandaranaike was brutally assassinated by an extremist monk who thought Bandaranaike's concessions to the Tamils deliberately debilitated the interests of the Sinhalese. Mr. Rajapaksa, who won on the "anti-federal" or anti-peace platform, carefully designed policies and made moves in order to win the support and confidence of Sinhalese constituencies and his Sinhala extremist political allies, particularly the JVP which holds 39 seats in parliament.

It is widely believed that pressure from the JVP played a significant role in persuading the Rajapaksa regime to terminate the ceasefire agreement. Mr. Rajapaksa, who came to power on pro-Sinhala agendas in 2005, has been facing considerable challenges to give out economic emancipation to the poor people who stomached his symbolic emotional election rhetoric.

Mr. Rajapaksa's regime only has two choices: (A) seek a political solution to arrest the ethnic civil war, and (B) continuously play the symbolic ethnic card. It seems the regime has chosen the second option to manage popular Sinhala discontent and thus conceded to the JVP's anti-peace agendas.

In fact, Mr. Rajapaksa's decision to terminate the ceasefire agreement would likely justify LTTE propaganda. Ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka believe that the state and its institutions in Sri Lanka are pro-Sinhalese. Also, Tamils believe that they would not get any just solution to their problem from the Sinhala polity, because the Sinhala political establishment would never demonstrate any guts to seek a political solution beyond the century-old unitary state structure, which became the symbol of Sinhala identity in the island.

What the Rajapaksa regime's behavior proves is that the more the political actors employ symbolic policies and slogans against the minorities to win political power, the harder it is for them to retract their symbolic promises. But Sri Lanka's situation also portends devastating consequences: When symbolic policies target ethnic minorities because of their identity and culture, mobilization by the marginalized minorities against the state is very likely. Marginalized groups' mobilization would be on the cards when they lose trust in both the state and its institutions.

It is also true that unremitting hostile symbolic policies and actions of the ruling and opposition political elites are more likely to push the marginalized groups to support the separate state demands of their politico-military movement. The LTTE's struggle to establish an independent sovereign state in the Tamil dominated North and East exemplifies this scenario.

Symbolic agendas in Sri Lanka from the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim polity make the country vulnerable to the challenges posed by modernization and impede development. If Sri Lanka needs to embrace progress and development, politicians and leaders of the island need strictly to re-think their harmful and intransigent strategies to win their electoral ambitions.

If the hostile emotions and polices continue to dominate the politics of Sri Lanka, the time will not be too distant for scholars studying the consequences of hostile symbolic politics take Sri Lanka as a case study for their research.

(The author is a Sri Lankan political scientist who is currently affiliated as a visiting scholar to the Department of Political Science, Temple University, USA.)