Abstract
May 2009, after over 25 years from its beginning, the civil war between the Sinhalese majority represented by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the “sole spokesmen” of the Tamil minority—the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—has come to an end. Scholars and practitioners generally agree on the fact that the “control system” imposed by the majority on its minorities was responsible for the escalation of the ethnic conflict, the radicalization of Tamils, and the violent outcome. After the war, several trends and policy shifts have become evident. First, the GoSL has become overtly reluctant and resistant toward any exogenous interference or pressure, trying to find home-grown and context-specific innovative solutions in order to finalize the yet to be completed nation- and state-building projects. Second, it has become clear that in order to stabilize and consolidate the political system, politics as usual will not suffice and their continuation may risk, causing the emergence of an LTTE spin-off. Third, both political elites and civil society have adopted a general attitude of “forgive and forget” in terms of coping with the past. Fourth, although the current political trends are contentious by nature, there is consensus between all ethnic groups that policies on public sector employment, language, proportionality and devolution of power are crucial for reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction efforts. In view of profound constitutional reforms that Sri Lanka is undergoing since 2015 (i.e., Nineteenth Amendment or the establishment of a Constitutional Assembly), the paper seeks to explore the role of ethnicity in shaping the constitutional reform process in Sri Lanka and the challenges it poses. In order to analyze the regional variations in institutional engineering and managing diversity, the paper compares Sri Lankan case study to constitutional designs in other plural (deeply divided) societies from South Asia, such as India and Nepal.
Paper presented at the IPSA colloquium RC14, RC28, RC13.
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Notes
- 1.
“There were many more Sinhalese votes to be had by being extreme than there were Tamil votes to be had by being moderate” Remarks Horowitz (1989: 26).
- 2.
Consider the following superb analysis: “Bandaranaike was both a utopian idealist and an avid opportunist, relentlessly pursuing short-term political gains. […] He had hoped to use chauvinism as a means to achieve power, believing that he could disarm it by making modest, long-overdue concessions to Sinhalese-Buddhist interests, and then by concentrating on reform to remove social injustice and soothe the anxieties of would-be communalists. He did not succeed […] very substantially because of the way Bandaranaike himself though and acted” (Manor 1989: 326–327).
- 3.
A term used in ancient Indian epics over Sinhala, a pre-colonial name, which claimed the island as the land of the Sinhala people, in (Bandarage 2009: 64).
- 4.
Some analysts usually point to the fact that from 1956 until 1977 six successive Sri Lankan general elections saw incumbent governments defeated at the polls, evaluating it as a pattern for stable democracy see (Wagner 1999: 912). However, democracy means more than holding elections.
- 5.
It is generally accepted that at the independence Sri Lanka had a rather consociational than a majoritarian constitution, which presupposed “iron-clad guarantees” for minorities; see also pp. 13–14.
- 6.
For example, see Article 9 which gives Buddhism the foremost place. Compare this to India, where “secularism” is one of the major principles of the Constitution, meaning both equal and due respect for all religions and faiths, as well as separation of the state from the church. The preamble of the Constitution of India declared one of the objectives to be to secure to all citizens of India the freedom of faith, belief, and worship. The chapter on fundamental rights provided a constitutional guarantee to minority groups, incorporating a separate group of rights in Articles 25–28 focusing on the right to freedom of religion.
- 7.
State of Democracy in South Asia: A Report. 2008: 20, 228.
- 8.
See Centre for Policy Alternatives, Topline Report—Opinion Poll on Constitutional Reform, available at: https://www.cpalanka.org/opinion-poll-on-constitutional-reform-topline-report/ (accessed on March 1, 2019).
- 9.
Since ethnic minorities in all states of South Asia have close affiliation with their kinfolks in neighboring states, cross-border ethnic identities widely prevail in South Asia. There are majority groups-apart from the Sinhalese-of other small South Asian states that suffer from a minority complex, for example, the Indian Nepalese of the Tarai region together with their co-ethnics in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh outnumber the Nepalese in Nepal; Bhutan’s Nepalese groups together with Indian Nepalese outnumber Bhutan’s majority Drukpas.
- 10.
Source: Census 2001, for Tamil Nadu; Census of Population and Housing 2001 for Sri Lanka.
- 11.
A Case Against A Federal Constitution for Sri Lanka: Report of an Independent and Representative Committee, Colombo: The National Joint Committee, September 2003, p. 12, cited in Bandarage (2009: 19).
- 12.
Stepan (2006: 7).
- 13.
Under this formula, even the Hindu nationalist BJP-led government gave substantial subsidies for Muslims to make pilgrimages to Mecca. Indeed, one of the three terminals at Delhi’s international airport, the “Hajj Terminal”, is devoted exclusively to facilitating such pilgrimages, in Stepan (2006: 8–9).
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Carciumaru, R. (2019). Constitutional Reforms in Sri Lanka: From Majoritarian Control System to Integration and Accommodation?. In: Sekher, M., Carciumaru, R. (eds) Including the Excluded in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9759-3_6
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