Northern Sri Lanka
Jane Derges
University College London PhD in Social Anthropology
UMI Number: U591568
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Fig. 1. Aathumkkaavadi
DECLARATION
I, Jane Derges, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources I confirm that this has been indicated the thesis.
ABSTRACT
Following twenty-five years of civil war between the Sri Lankan government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a ceasefire was called in February 2002. This truce is now on the point of collapse, due to a break down in talks over the post-war administration of the northern and eastern provinces. These instabilities have lead to conflicts within the insurgent ranks as well as political and religious factions in the south. This thesis centres on how the anguish of war and its unresolved aftermath is being communicated among Tamils living in the northern reaches of Sri Lanka. There is an atmosphere of intense mistrust where notions of loyalty and betrayal are demonstrated through speech. Articulating grief, anger and powerlessness is therefore complex within a milieu where there are high levels of both internalised and externalised despair - none more so than among the ‘war generation’. The underlying brutalisation created by the war is implicitly recognised as the root cause of much current social unrest. It is also feared that exposure to depictions of violence through access to recently imported modem cultural artefacts, such as videos, have exacerbated the problem. Within this mood of silent tension, communication seems to be taking place through existing, but adapted cultural forms. For the younger generation whose experiences included combat, arrest and torture, it has taken shape through a propitiatory ritual involving inscriptions of pain on the body - thuukkukkaavadi, which has increased exponentially in the last ten years. For others, it is through adherence to gang traditions, which have raised considerable anxieties within the local population. Both ‘performances’ can be seen as efforts to communicate and articulate the brutalising effects of war through the utilisation of bodies to convey meaning: “(Rituals)...use objects and substances as well as the bodies of the performers to transmit...metamessages, difficult or even impossible to convey” (Rappaport 1999:252). In this case the message seems to be one of entrapment, anger and disillusionment within a conflict that remains unresolved.
4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
489
ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Chapter One: Introduction
- 12
24 31 34
Adapting methodologies Global interactions and influences Tsunami, 2004
Part I: ‘No war, no peace’
36
Chapter Two: Contextualising war
Local geographies
36 40 42 50 55 60
An island fortress: militarisation and zones of insecurity A community under siege The losses of war Environmental effects
- Chapter Three: Discourses of war
- 64
66 69
Colonialism: creating a context for war Post-colonialism: state politics and the case for war is made
5
Contested space: the rise of national militancy The origins of Tamil grievances
73 75 81 86
Constructions of an indigenised ‘other’ Explorations of the rising violence
Part II: Transformations
90
Chapter Four: Changing social realities
Native soil: transformations of home
90
100 107 113 118 123
Devotional practice amongst the Jaffna Tamils
Caste and class: old categorisations, new social hierarchies Vigilance and protection: living with the times
Chapter Five: “Frogs in a well”: fear and segregation
Tamil youths: provoked and provoking bodies Power, provocation and resistance The humiliations of war
128
132 140 145 149 155 159 162
Internalised violence and ‘cultures of fear’ ‘Thick masks’ and silence Ambiguity and rumour Discarded childhoods
Chapter Six: The (dis)articulation of suffering
The Trauma Discourse: PTSD and social suffering Pathologising suffering
167
172 175 178 183
Socio-cultural implications of PTSD diagnoses Aid organisations and peace building
6
Part III: The articulate body
188
Chapter Seven: Mediating adversity
Ensuring protection from harm
Shanthi - vaakku cholluthal
188 191 193 199 211 216 220 230 235
Thuukkukkaavadi: the transformation of a ritual ‘Lord of the Clouds’: the organiser
Kaavadi devotees A thuukkukkaavadi performance
Chapter Eight: ‘Embodied knowledge’: Endurance and survival
The body as site of contestation The sacrificial body
238 243 248 257 262
Cathartic transformations
Paravasam: trance
Chapter Nine: W ar with impunity
Repercussions
266 270
280 281 282 283
APPENDIX I: Glossary APPENDIX II: Notes on transcription APPENDIX III: Acronyms for Tamil militant organisations BIBLIOGRAPHY
7
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe considerable gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Roland Littlewood for his invaluable advice, support and warm generosity during this entire endeavour. The Anthropology Department at University College London has provided me with the opportunity to listen, learn and benefit from discussions during and outside seminars, and provided considerable inspiration from tutors and fellow students alike. The study was financed by a studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), for which I am endebted as it has allowed me the space and freedom to pursue this project to the fullest. I would also like to thank my Tamil teacher; Mr Swaminathan at the School of Oriental and African Studies, who showed enormous tolerance and good humour over my efforts to grapple with the language, but who also provided me with the essential groundings that enabled my survival in the early days in Jaffna. In Sri Lanka, I express my deepest gratitude and regard to Professor Daya Somasundaram for providing access, critical and unbiased support. ‘Shanthiam’ and the Wholistic Health Centre in Jaffna provided me not only with encouragement, but also with many enjoyable and memorable experiences. There are many more individuals who should be mentioned as pivotal to this work, but who cannot be openly recognised despite their hospitality and willingness to share their time and energy with such abundant thoughtfulness and warmth. The current instabilities and ongoing security concerns unfortunately make this impossible. They are the individuals and families who welcomed me into their homes, bravely bestowed their trust and thereby showed me the open-heartedness of the Tamil people. This was a priviledge and went beyond all my expectations. Many thanks also to the Institute for Cultural and Ethnic Studies in Colombo; to Michael Roberts, Patricia Lawrence, Margaret Trawick, Kate Melhopt and Rachel Tribe for interesting and helpful discussions.
8
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Photographs
- Page
1. Aathumkkaavadi
2
2. Thuukkukkaavadi
3. Catholic shrine 4. LTTE Cemetery
15 109 115 195 202 203 213 218 226 235 237 265 267
5. A village (Naga) shrine 6. 108 velkal (spears)
7. Thullakkaavadi 8. Arm velkal 9. Aathumkaavadi 10. Paravaikkaavadi - Father and son 11. Paravaikkaavadi 12. Pirathattai
13. Trance dancers
14. Thondamanaaru temple: theetham ceremony
Maps
- 1. Sri Lanka
- 9
- 2. Research area: the Jaffna peninsula
- 10
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10
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Map 2. Research area: the Jaffna peninsula
11
Chapter 1 Introduction
This is a study of the consequences of intercommunal violence and its impact on microcommunities. It is located within a small Tamil1 community in the northern Jaffna11 peninsula of Sri Lanka; an area geographically isolated since the onset of war some twenty years previously and which, along with the eastern region has borne the brunt of much of the fighting. Most anthropological investigations have taken place in and around Batticaloa in the east, as well as the south; less was known about the experiences of the Tamils living in this relatively homogenised northern region of the country. My initial intention was to explore the narrative structures of post-war reconstruction and recovery, from the particular orientation of ‘traditional healing’ practices. I soon realised that focussing exclusively on identifying ‘healing rituals’ and their role in post-war111recovery would be an exercise in limitation rather than explication, as well as ignore the fact that talking of recovery was premature to say the least. Instead, what I found was a region under full-scale occupation both from within and outside: the government’s army made up of fellow Sri Lankans but ethnically divided in terms of language, religion and a separate set of grievances, and covert observation and surveillance from within the community itself. It appeared as though many conversations were rendered an exercise in subtext and interpretation, where efforts were constantly being made to establish identity and levels of trustworthiness between conversants. I had to abandon concepts of delineated time in which present and past are separated in a holistic and generally more optimistic framework of peace building and restitution, following on from universal suffering: instead fragmentation and shadows were more in evidence. I discarded pre-conceived concepts of how ‘coming to terms with’ and ‘reflecting on’ a traumatising past would be revealed through local discourses of suffering. Information garnered from ‘traditional’ participant-observation techniques; including a series of in depth interviews to determine how the ‘community’ (whatever that was) was repairing itself were largely inapplicable and had to be adapted. I had not
12 anticipated the degree of distrust and ambivalence concerning past, present and future, in which expressing almost all thoughts and opinions would hold such fear and risk. Consequently, these suspicions dominated discursive modes of positioning and the construction of social and political identity, making the negotiation of relationships and subjectivity fraught with the potential for further ostracism. The consequences of a state of social and political marginalisation and threat seemed to bestow a sense of isolation on the inhabitants of the northern peninsula, and contributed to a reluctance in speaking about the personal, by all but a few brave individuals who chose to share some of their ideas and thoughts. Conceptions of post-war stability and safety did not exist: far from it. This was a community still under siege, where a shadow war was taking place in the absence of a state of open combat, where fears of possible repercussions and reprisals informed all aspects of life in an ever-changing political climate of possible betrayal and notions of disloyalty. Otherwise, a reluctance to cogitate on current issues reflected very real and understandable threats, as well as raising questions about the enormity of suffering not only from the recent conflict but also the effects of four hundred years of colonial occupation. Ideals of ‘reflexivity’ and open articulation held considerable risk, making the collection of recorded narratives impossible - whatever the media employed; even asking questions about seemingly ‘safe’ subjects were fraught with complexity when loyalty and trust were privately and sometimes openly questioned. Glimpses of opposing attitudes to the predominant rhetoric were occasionally concealed within innocuous conversations, to be caught and extricated from amongst the usual mundanities of everyday life; eventually requiring a shift in both methodological strategy and theoretical perspective. Opportunities for private conversations were almost non-existent as all life is lived in the presence and under the scrutiny of others, so that this wariness would have made attempts at narrative construction or linguistic analyses too complex. It could be argued that public discourses: analyses of gossip, rumour, subtext could also offer useful information. Gossip was rife in the north and directed mostly towards individuals perceived as ‘distinct’in some way - Tamil returnees for example, often complained of finding themselves recipients of salacious gossip and supposition, as though they had somehow been altered or tainted by their experiences of living abroad. The ‘internationals’,
13 comprising INGO workers, researchers and other foreigners were held in suspicion and rumours abounded of the likelihood of spying as well as improprieties of behaviour, and was to be wholly expected in such a context of questioned loyalties, and a protracted history of incursionary influence. Previously anticipated suppositions of exploring and analysing narrative structure were replaced in the face of the silence and fear with other paradigms, and my attention naturally shifted to absence: what was not being said and where alternative socio-cultural modes of expressiveness might be located. Significantly, memories from the conflict period were seldom spontaneously evoked; they were given terse recognition and questions were usually answered perfunctorily on request, but rarely with any anticipated depth. I learnt that this was not because they held little significance or impact, but rather because they gave rise to such familiarity with fear and horror of both past experiences and the ever present possibility of a return to war - something never far away from people’s daily consciousness, most notably during periods of heightened tension. In terms of a more focussed analysis, I became aware of certain localised performative acts of more recent, notable origin that had increased exponentially. Accordingly, these seemed to provide a more effective way of gaining some measure of understanding in the face of this silent tension - no doubt also influenced by my previous work as an Occupational Therapist, which focuses on the use of non-verbal techniques for managing illness and distress. Accepting the silence partly as an important mechanism of safety, I began to examine the intersection of these collective performative acts: how the body came to inhabit external, public space and how the pain and rage left by the violence of the war was being further replicated as a way of articulating and expressing the unspeakable. Explicit rituals involving bodily pain, and the frequent instances of street violence which propelled itself with some force onto public attention and consciousness, appeared linked: first through specific, organised cultural productions of ritual distress and the second, in seemingly random acts of gang violence, brought about by conditions of rage and despair. These alternative, mimetic forms of expression seemed to relate to previous afflictions, which were then re-enacted through a nexus of self-mortification rituals and secular violence.lv Although I gained sufficient trust from a few
