I thank the International Center for Ethnic Studies for giving me an opportunity to participate in this event to mark the launching of the book, Sri Lankan Muslims: Ethnic Identity within Cultural Diversity by Prof M A Nuhuman. The last ten years witnessed a proliferation of writings in variety of forms on Muslims in Sri Lanka. This signifies the changes that have been happening in Muslim politics in Sri Lanka since mid 1980s. Prof Nuhuman’s book is timely and would be a significant contribution in understanding Muslim as he focuses on some of the neglected dimension of Muslim politics. He produces enormous amount of details to substantiate his argument and to show the flaws of some arguments advanced in identitarian discourse. I am not sure if I can do justice to this book as my knowledge on many aspects, especially the historical details, discussed in the book is very limited. I don’t possess any professional training in history although I followed a course in history in my first at the University of Colombo. But that was the time my identity was formed, as a Marxist. That was the time I began to read Marxist text. In the process of becoming a Marxist, I suspected the importence of history. So when I selected a subject to specialize in, I opted for economics. In one of the text I read at that time, Frederick Engels categorically rejected any personification of history promoted to the rank of power in its own right. He wrote:

History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth. It wages no battles. It is man, real living man, who does all that, who possesses and fights; history is not, as it were, a person apart, using men as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.

Of course this is not meant to reject history, but the historicist view of history reducing the importance of social agency and viewing social agency as something dependent of history.

Let me begin my comments with Qadri Ismail’s article, “Unmooring Identity: The Antinomies of Elite Muslim Self-Representation in Modern Sri Lanka” in Unmaking the Nation edited by Pradeep (Jeganathan) and Qadri (Ismail). Instead of using popular terms, like ethnic group and community, Qadri opted to use the term Muslim social formation, the term re-introduced by Etienne Balibar in the 1960s. Of course one may have a problem with the use of the term social formation. Qadri deploys this term to stress and problematize the inner coherence and homogeneity of Muslim social formation. However, Balibar originally used the term linking it with another concept, mode of production thus to describe the formation of society by dialectally combining and intermingling different modes of production.

I believe that Qadri used the term social formation here in somewhat loose manner for two reasons. First he draws attention to the socially constructed character of identities. Secondly, he wants to problematize the notion of unity in identity and to emphasize the inner divisions. The use of a new term instead of popular terms such as ethnic group and community is understandable. Prof. Nuhuman is also suspicious of the term ethnicity and ethnic group. I think “ethnic” is quite a new addition to identitarian discourse in Sri Lanka, one that began in the late 1970s. May be it was introduced by the ICES because the term was gaining currency then among the US scholars. With that came the view that Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic society. Well when questioning the Sinhala Buddhist majoritarian position, the concept of ethnicity and multi-ethnic society might have played a positive role at that time. When it referred to different identity groups, we Marxists always use the term “nations” and we call the related problem not “an ethnic question” but a national question. I still prefer that term so that I call Sri Lanka not a multi-ethnic society but a pluri-national society. By using the term social formation and highlighting the inner heterogeneity of identity, Qadri might have expected to link it within their main theme of undoing or unmaking the nation.

Ironically, what happened was quite different. I found that since Qadri wrote this piece, rather while he was writing this piece, Muslim identity formation has reached a more advanced stage, or as Prof Nuhuman told us, it has reached “the third phase of the development of Muslim identity in Sri Lanka” (p. 150). The emergence of identity politics grounded on difference with new vigor may be seen in many countries in the world. Why? “The nation, race and even class serve as refuges for the oppressed in this capitalist world economy which explains why they remain such popular ideas.” (Balibar in Etienne Balibar and Emmanuel Wallerstein, Race Nation and Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso. 1991:p. 230).

In my presentation I will focus on this phase of Muslim identity formation. Prof Nuhuman as well as other Muslim writers has referred to some pertinent questions. “Why the Muslims who speak Tamil as their mother tongue do not want to identify themselves as Tamils? Early Muslim nationalists tried to resolve this puzzle by trying to establish the fact or myth or imagination that the Sri Lankan moors belong to a different ethnic group as they came originally from Arabic countries. Then the question: why did they unmoor their identity and develop, at a later stage, what is called Muslim identity, reducing the inner differences and also as Prof Nuhuman shows eliding Borahas and Memons and to a certain extent Malays? Identity formation includes process of inclusion and exclusion. Why did religion not language become the principal ethnic marker in defining Muslim nation (pp. 12- 13)? The third question reads like this: How was a separate “Muslim nation” formed in the process in spite of the presence of multiple cultural, linguistic, provincial and other diversities and inner divisions?

In answering these questions, I suggest to advance two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is based on Mamdani’s writing on colonial identity formation. The Formation of national identities in colonial and post-colonial context is oftentimes seen as derivative of either market-based or cultural identities. Political identities are usually depicted as the political expression of cultural identities. But as Mamdani has pointed out, they are primarily political identities and exist in their own right. These identities, he told us, “are a direct consequence of the history of state formation not of market or cultural formation” (p. 22). In the last five decades or so, we have witnessed an emergence of four nation formations, Sinhalas, Tamils, Muslims and Malayahi Tamils. I like the word formation and use it in the sense Stuart Hall used it. Formation refers to a process where the final outcome of it cannot be known a priori. When, how and why did these nations emerge? Why did they assume the forms and structures that they did? What were the key processes that shaped their development and future trajectories? Prof Nuhuman’s book tries to answer all these questions with regard to the formation Muslim nation. Identity formation in the colonial period is according to Mamdani conditioned by the way in which the colonial state was governed. I think here his distinction between direct rule and indirect rule is relevant. Colonial rule introduced bifurcation on racial ground, colonial rulers (white) and (local urban) civil society. At this time, nation, and nationalism occurred in this limited sphere of civil society. This is why, in my understanding, Qadri talked about English speaking, male, Southern merchant capitalist classes as the dominant force in Muslim social formation. This is also true in the case of other nation groups, Sinhalas and Tamils. In the post-colonial period, although the state was deracialized, the same hierarchical structure was maintained and preserved by the numerically large national group substituting themselves in place of colonial rulers. Numerically small nations responded by engaging in variety of ways with the numerically large nation. Prof Nuhuman in Chapters 4 and 5, has illustrated how hegemonic Southern, merchant capitalist Muslims negotiated with the Sinhala ruling elite as well as the Tamil nationalist elites. This process unfolds in the political sphere, although cultural markers, icons and artifacts are deployed in the process. It is interesting to note as Prof Nuhuman has discussed in detail in Chapter 3 how Muslim political elites play with the issue of language. They wanted Muslims to distant themselves from the language they use in their day to day life. This reflected the southern merchant dominance in Muslim politics and their vested interest in developing close links with Sinhala population as well as Sinhala elites.

At this phase, Muslim politics, like the Tamil politics in the 1930s to 1960s, reflecting its southern merchant capitalist dominance focused primarily on reforms of the central government. They focused more on education and trade policies, representation in the legislature and the executive rather than raising the issue of self rule. This began to change in the 1980s.

How did Muslims in the Eastern and Northern Provinces negotiate with the Tamil elites. At the initial phase they shared the view with the federal party that the policies of the post-colonial governments adversely affected the Muslim interests in the two provinces. Two main issues raised by the Tamil nationalist were two-fold. First is the issue of language and the second is the issue of state-led colonization. Both nations, Tamils and Muslims, viewed the government policies on these issues threatened their interest and well-being. But in this phase, determining factor in Muslim politics was southern merchant interests. So as Prof Nuhuman has shown, Kariyappar’s first attempt to form a separate Muslim party in the east failed. He writes: “the party did not succeed because there was no strong social base as such at that time. But in the 1980s the situation was entirely different” (p. 151).

Muslim politics entered its “third phase” with the formation of the SLMC. And the base of Muslim politics has gradually been shifted to the east. As Dr Ameerdeen has shown in great detail in his book, Ethnic Politics of Muslims in Sri Lanka (2006), SLMC leader, M H M Ashraff’s main objective is to “politicize the community [instead of] offering an attractive welfare package”. His initial mass base was “uneducated persons and farmers”. Ameerdeen also tells us: “The conventional leadership did not seek to unify the mass of Muslims into a movement, being ignorant of their collective powers as voters” (p. 130). One may say, Muslim imagining of a nation shifted from the “inner” sphere to “outer” sphere with the emergence of Ashraff factor. In order to explain this new trend, I take the risk of advancing a new hypothesis that is my second hypothesis. In the development nationalism, I suggest, the transformation of leadership from a social classes based on moveable property (merchants, professionals, even proletariat) to immovable property (primarily land, irrigated water and factories) is of great importence. Eastward movement of Muslim identitarian politics signifies this transformation. The demand for separate regional council, and self rule not just right of sharing power have become key political demands. Of course, the growth of Tamil militant nationalism, the GoSL’s marginalization of Muslims in finding a solution to the national question contributed immensely to the growth of Muslim nation and nationalism.

Let me finish by posing another question. Does Muslim politics now show the sign of its entering into a new phase? I am posing this question for two related reasons. After Ashraff’s sad and untimely demise the leadership structure of the SLMC as well as NUA has changed to a certain extent. Although the SLMC is still structurally based in the East, its decision making hierarchy in Colombo in majority are people outside the Eastern province. Secondly, we witness radicalization of Muslim youth questioning the adequacy of conventional leadership. The South Eastern University plays the politico-ideological center of this radicalization. We tried to discuss this development briefly in our article in LINES (“Recent Trend sin Muslim Politics in Sri Lanka by Sumanasiri Liyanage and Nimanthi Rajasingham-Perera). I think this is an issue that we all should be concerned with and our studies should focus on.

Thank you!

The text of the speech at the ICES, June 6, 2007.
E mail: sumane_l [at] yahoo.com

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