Sinhala nationalism, Left politics, and liberal civil society

By Uditha Devapriya

It’s not just that Sinhala nationalism tends to be exclusivist, communalist, and chauvinist. It’s also that it tends to be inchoate, incoherent, and inadequate. Insofar as this reading goes, I think my critique of Sinhala nationalism aligns with Devaka Gunawardena’s, who in a recent thoughtful piece (“Next steps in confronting Sinhala Buddhist nationalism”, DailyFT, June 10, 2023) has responded to my response to his critique. What I would like to do in this essay is to add to his comments on the specificity of Sinhala nationalism, its many manifestations, and its relationship with anti-imperialism. Because he brings it up in his essay, I would like to briefly dwell on the limits of Sri Lankan liberal civil society as well.

I think the fundamental problem with Sinhala nationalism has to do with the character of the Sinhala people, Buddhist or even non-Buddhist. Dayan Jayatilleka said it best: Sinhala nationalists, and their fellow travellers, view themselves as a national majority and a global minority, and view minorities, even the most miniscule ones, as global majorities. From this Sinhala nationalists extrapolate and “reach” two conclusions: that they have no other place to call home, and that every other community must fit into their framework. Their view of anti-imperialism is also, to a considerable extent, mediated by this worldview: they oppose globalisation, for instance, because the latter intrude on their way of life, but have no issue with the activities of “national” businesses owned by their own.

There is, of course, nothing anti-imperialist about the latter perspective. Such perspectives lead their most fervent purveyors to all sorts of contradictions. Sinhala nationalists would, for instance, favour nationalisation, but would view the nationalisation of bus services – a sector dominated, then as now, by a Sinhala petty bourgeoisie – as against their interests. Indeed, the Sinhala nationalist critique of the United Front administration’s policies is that it “killed” the Sinhala businessman, including the Sinhala bus owner. This nationalist framing – or re-framing – of socialist economics is, in effect, a sham: it accepts State intervention, but only if it sustains the dominance of the Sinhala (Buddhist) middle-classes.

That is not to say all nationalists share the same opinions or worldviews. This is where my critique of Sinhala nationalism turns into a critique of their critics: specifically, the inability of the latter to distinguish between different strands of the ideology they oppose. For instance, while many Sinhala nationalists would view the policies of the United Front negatively, as having harmed their interests, others would view them positively, advocating their adoption with minor adjustments. This line of thinking is represented best by Gunadasa Amarasekara and his concept of the National Economy, mirrored in Newton Gunasinghe’s critique of the United Front policies as having enthroned a Sinhala petty bourgeoisie – a critique which puts the lie to the nationalist claim that they destroyed the Sinhala businessman.

My question here is, how are we to account for these different manifestations of the same dominant, supposedly hegemonic ideology? Do we distinguish between imperialist and anti-imperialist Sinhala nationalism? I think not. My understanding of Sinhala nationalism is that there is nothing fundamentally anti-imperialist about the way it operates today. It focuses all its energies on the cultural factor, overlooking the economic. In doing so it overlooks the class factor, an unforgivable omission given that class remains, despite what one may say of it, the single most important indicator of relative (dis)advantage. Not surprisingly, there is a perceptible class bias in Sinhala nationalist discourse. Why else would nationalist ideologues equate the downfall of bus owners with the downfall of their ethnicity?

To that end, I share Gunawardena’s concern that there has not (yet) been a “stronger class critique of ideas produced by nationalists.” It is the absence of this critique which I find somewhat worrying, especially given the recent upsurge in nationalist sentiment in the country. We are seeing a repeat of the pre-crisis situation, whereby economic issues are constantly being undermined by nationalist confrontation.

The debate over the Kurundi Viharaya is just one manifestation of this trend. Recent social media posts portraying the Aragalaya as having been funded by external sources is another. The latter claim in itself is not problematic: of course there were sections of the Aragalaya which were funded. The issue is that this narrative becomes a cover for distractive discourses of the worst sort – as witness the provocative use of “biriyani” in these posts.

The Aragalaya itself, in fact, suffered from these limitations. More specifically, as Kanishka Goonewardena has argued in a recent presentation, the most strident class critique of the movement made thus far, the domination of the petty bourgeoisie, Colombo’s perpetually dissatisfied consumerist classes, subverted any real progressive potential in the Aragalaya. Despite certain sections of liberal civil society – whose framing of the Aragalaya is to me as problematic as the nationalist one – viewing the movement as a pushback against the then government’s authoritarian excesses; the Aragalaya was more correctly a pushback against material deprivation, as represented by shortages and empty shelves: an issue which has the potential of rallying around it the most insidiously chauvinist elements.

The defection of these elements to the Opposition must concern any progressive political analyst. And yet, I do not see any critique being made of such a development. Perhaps more problematically, I do not see any proper and coherent critique being made of liberal civil society’s complicity in the economic programme of the present government. Gunawardena, to his credit, does concede the latter. His solution is to go beyond the poststructuralist turn of the 1980s, and “adopt a rigorous historical materialist approach.”

Without letting go of the fact that Marxism is never so crudely economistic as it is often made out to be, I agree with his point, precisely because it is that poststructuralist turn – or, in Aijaz Ahmad’s view, the mass defection of Third World intellectuals to a post-Marxist formation – which has deprived the Sri Lankan Left of a proper critique, not only of their nationalist opponents, but also their supposedly liberal allies. A return to its economic and materialist roots, in fact, may restore to Marxist discourse in Sri Lanka the moral strength it requires to achieve this task – a task needed now more than ever, given the resurgence in nationalist rhetoric of the most distractive sort. Colombo’s liberals will not help the Left in that task: their idols and ideologues once considered the current President as the greatest president Sri Lanka never had. This critique, rather, should come from within.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.