Blurred Memories War and Disaster in a Buddhist Sinhala Village
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Blurred memories War and disaster in a Buddhist Sinhala village Mara Benadusi Abstract: Th is article analyzes the regimes of truth and eff orts at falsifi cation that emerged aft er the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, where the experience of fear, the blurring of memory, and the fabrication of identity became normalized during the course of a long civil war. By shedding light on the memorialization processes in a Buddhist Sinhala village on the border of the northeastern Tamil zones, the article shows how the tsunami has reinforced governmental devices for controlling peoples and territories, insinuating itself into the core of the enduring process of securitization of fear in Sri Lanka. Yet, however much the politics of memory tends to cloud matters, the article also demonstrates that it never goes uncontested, as long as subjects can channel their capacity for action in unexpected directions. Keywords: memory, civil war, disaster, falsifi cation, nationalism, regimes of truth, Sri Lanka Th e 2004 tsunami caused by a 9.3-magnitude high number of families evacuated as a result of earthquake off the northwestern coast of Suma- the war (Muggah 2008). tra struck the coastal areas of multiple countries Th is article is based on repeated instances of ringing the Bay of Bengal only a few hours later. ethnographic fi eldwork carried out in Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka, initial reports estimated 37,000 between 2005 and 2013,1 a stretch of time in to 39,000 deaths, while offi cial governmental which a two-faced emergency regime took hold sources later fi xed the number at 31,000. Th is is in the country: on one hand, the controversial re- nearly a third of the number of causalities pro- construction phase following the tsunami, and, duced by the almost 26 years of the Sri Lankan on the other, the intensifi cation of civil confl ict Civil War, using the offi cially reported number that in 2007 led to the reemergence of armed of 85,000 deaths between 1983 and 2009. Th ere clashes between governmental forces and the were also a huge number of evacuees: accord- Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a ing to Sri Lankan governmental calculations, militarized organization, fi nally ending in May 110,000 homes were destroyed by the tidal 2009 with the Tamil rebels’ surrender.2 During wave, and 500,000 people were forced to fl ee the this period of national history, the tsunami and places they had been living, joining the already confl ict ended up being intertwined in political Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 88 (2020): 89–102 © The Author doi:10.3167/fcl.2019.032101 90 | Mara Benadusi propaganda, academic debates, and the prevail- support thanks to a crushing victory over the ing rhetoric of the humanitarian entourage in- fi erce “enemy within.” volved in reconstruction. While there was hope I conducted my fi eldwork in a Buddhist Sin- at fi rst that the tidal wave might dampen the hala village3 in Southern Province, Sri Lanka, ongoing interethnic tensions once and for all, that hosts 218 houses, with a benefi ciary pop- it soon became clear that the partisan manip- ulation of approximately 918, many of whom ulation of international aid had fueled friction are chena farmers. In June, they clear out the between the two groups, opening the doors to forest and shrubs, and in August they burn the the fi ercest outbreak of fi ghting in the country’s remains of the harvested crops. Th ey then wait history (Uyangoda 2005). for the monsoons to arrive sometime in Sep- Th e tidal wave aff ected a wide swath of Sri tember and October. Only then do they seed Lankan coastline stretching from the north- the ground. Th e harvest period, from January eastern territories to the city of Negombo, just to March, is the only time when chena farmers north of the capital; it struck both the areas are able to bring in a decent income. At other claimed by Tamil separatists and the southwest- times, they work as seasonal laborers or fi sh in ern provinces that have comprised the political the village reservoir. Navigating the hazy ter- and economic bastion of the country’s Buddhist rains that regulate relations between truth and majority since independence. Th e Sri Lankan falsehood in this frontier, post-tsunami village state’s policy of unconditional openness to in- at the edge of Yala National Park, I have real- ternational aid gave rise to a sort of “competitive ized that the tidal wave and confl ict both em- humanitarianism” (Stirrat 2006) that in turn ploy similar mechanisms to unveil or obscure made the process of allocating resources chaotic specifi c categories of objects and subjectivities. and confl ict ridden. Less than a year aft er the Dialoguing with the anthropology of humani- tsunami, the peace mechanism set up to guar- tarian aid and catastrophes—in particular, the antee reconciliation between the government line of inquiry into the “capitalism of disasters” and the LTTE collapsed under the weight of (Gunewardena and Schuller 2008)—this article mutual accusations, claims, and counterclaims. seeks to delve into the delicate issue of truth by From that point on, violent clashes in the north- bringing together two classical concepts in so- east escalated into civil war. Th e post-tsunami cial sciences: Michel Foucault’s (2014) “regime period also saw increasing state power pass into of truth” and Erving Goff man’s (1974) notion of the hands of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the United “falsifi cation.” People’s Freedom Alliance leader who held the Foucault’s notion as defi ned in his Collège de offi ce of president from 2005 to 2015. As head France course held on 6 February 1980 refers of both the post-tsunami reconstruction cam- to a regime that constrains individuals to truth paign and military off ensives against the LTTE, acts, that “determines the form of these acts and Rajapaksa intensifi ed the Buddhist Sinhala na- establishes their conditions of eff ectuation and tionalism embedded in his familial tradition. specifi c eff ects” (2014: 331). Indeed, Foucault His father, a prominent political fi gure in Ham- designates the “type of obligations an individ- bantota District, had been nicknamed the King ual submits to in the act by which he becomes of Ruhuna by his supporters in honor of the the agent of a manifestation of truth” (341; see legendary ruler who had enlarged this king- also Foucault 1995). He essentially posits that, dom in precolonial times by reconquering the in order to study the exercise of power, we must central-northern areas that had fallen under consider how truth manifests in the form of sub- the control of the Tamil “invaders.” Rajapaksa jectivity, and “what eff ects of obligation, con- followed in his father’s footsteps: leading the na- striction, incitement, limitation are generated tional army against the armed wing of the sep- by the connection between certain practices aratist movement, he accumulated widespread and a true/false game,” which is always specifi c. Blurred memories | 91 If a truth regime provides the framework within but also a friction zone hosting strategic inter- which the subject is recognized, the notion of ests associated with the opposing military forces “falsifi cation” can help us shed light on specifi c at play in Sri Lanka: the majority Sinhalese and situations in which the subjects participating in the minority Tamils. I therefore reconstruct the defi ning truth are encouraged to set in motion origins of the village where I did research in a machination aimed at fabricating false frames order to unpack the tangle of lies and cautious, that others will perceive as “real.” I use falsifi ca- partial acts of disclosure that hover over it. Th e tion to refer to Goff man’s idea of “fabrication” ambiguity surrounding the village’s name re- (1974: 83), meaning any intentional eff ort car- volves around a thematic axis: the regimes of ried out by one or more individuals to manage truth and falsifi cation generated by the tsunami an event in such a way that others are led to de- are so stubborn because they take root in an velop false beliefs about it. environment deeply scarred by experiences of In this article, I will explore the possible insecurity and control. I then develop this ar- forms of these manifestations in a setting char- gument more fully, presenting the cases of a acterized by the overlapping of “natural” disas- memorial for tsunami victims and three men ter and armed confl ict, as other scholars have who disappeared in the jungle to show how done in diff erent frictional zones (e.g., Davis emergency devices can be evidence of the inex- 1999; Hedlund 2014; Simpson 2014). As will tricable connection between truth and power. become clear, the processes of truth making at Viewed from this perspective, both the disaster work in my fi eld site are inextricably caught up and the civil war cease to be a one-time occur- with identity-building practices aimed at re- rence with the power to overturn the structure defi ning the nation’s poietic and value-leaden of a society and instead become the most tan- logics, displaying dynamics similar to those ob- gible outcomes of the societal structure itself. served by Liisa Malki (1995) in the case of Hutu Indeed, the 2004 tsunami strengthened preex- refugees in Burundi. Working with the narra- isting mechanisms of power, insinuating itself tives of refugees of the early 1970s massacres, like a silent enemy into the core of the enduring Malki has shown how the continual process of process of “securitization of fear” (Hyndman exploring, reifying, and asserting the boundar- 2007) in Sri Lanka.