A. Sivanandan, Romesh Gunesekera, and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Histories

Abstract

SPANNING SEVERAL DECADES, claiming tens of thousands of lives, displacing hundreds of thousands of individuals in its aftermath, and sparking a massive human rights crisis, Sri Lanka’s civil war—which Neil de Votta has called “one of the deadliest and most protracted ethnic conflicts of our time” (2)—has proven peculiar and paradigmatic, notable for its specific circumstances while reflecting nationalist rhetorics elsewhere in the postcolonial era. For this has also been a war of competing histories, as Sinhalese and Tamil nationalists advanced claims on the past to justify and fortify political claims on the present. In itself, this should not seem terribly unusual; nationalist movements worldwide have carefully amended “histories” to suit shifting political needs. “Any nationalism seeking to spread its influence,” A. Jeyaratnam Wilson notes, “needs to root itself in its own contemporary history, myths, symbols, heroes, legends and other collective experiences with bloodstained memories. The Tamil nationalist reservoir … overflows with these and other streams of gory events perpetuated by the Sinhala state” (158-9).