Describe the case of civil war & majoritarianism in Sri Lanbey
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Answer:
In the Sri Lankan case, a narrow focus on the role of political parties fails to capture the dynamics of polarization. Rather, a broader analysis that takes into consideration ideological dynamics, social movements, and global political and economic forces provides a far more comprehensive picture of the country’s polarized domestic political scene.
In the 1970s, Sri Lanka’s polarized politics escalated into mass armed struggle. In 1971, a Sinhala rural youth insurrection emerged in the south led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a movement based on a homegrown mix of Marxism and Sinhala nationalism. Though the government crushed the insurrection, at the cost of thousands of young lives, the movement called attention to the gulf between urban and rural communities and the problem of rural youth unemployment.11
In addition to suppressing the JVP insurrection, the United Front government (1970–1977), a coalition containing the SLFP and the major left-leaning parties, adopted policies that exacerbated ethnic polarization. Once in the governing coalition, the left colluded with the SLFP and its brand of majoritarian politics to advance its economic agenda. In drafting the country’s republican constitution of 1972, the United Front government enshrined the unitary structure of the state, gave Buddhism a newly privileged position, did away with the provision in the 1948 constitution protecting minorities, and entrenched the Sinhala-only language policy constitutionally. In essence, leftist and class politics failed to act as a check on majoritarianism. Such majoritarian national developments greatly alienated Tamil nationalist groups as well as dissenting, left-leaning Tamil constituencies.
From the 1970s into the early 1980s, ethnic tensions rose. After regaining power in 1977 with a sweeping electoral victory, the UNP concentrated power in an executive presidency that was created under another new constitution passed in 1978. In addition, the UNP government shifted Sri Lanka’s external relations toward the West, liberalized the economy, and crushed organized labor in the country. A pogrom targeting Tamils living in the south soon after the 1977 elections, state repression against the Tamil community, and an armed response by Tamil youth in the north escalated the patterns of violence in the country. The government declared a state of emergency and passed the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1979, which undermined human rights and strangled democratic freedoms, particularly in the north.
Following another pogrom in July 1983, in which mobs with state complicity killed thousands of Tamils, Sri Lanka descended into a twenty-six-year civil war (1983–2009).12 India—resentful of Sri Lanka’s alignment with the United States under the UNP government—actively supported Tamil armed groups and eventually intervened militarily following the Indo–Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. The accord provided for the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (1987–1990), and it paved the way for the Thirteenth Amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution, which recognized Tamil as an official language and devolved certain powers to provincial councils.