City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2017 The Failure of Post-War Reconstruction in Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Indebtedness, Caste Exclusion and the Search for Alternatives Ahilan Kadirgamar The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1901 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE FAILURE OF POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION IN JAFFNA, SRI LANKA: INDEBTEDNESS, CASTE EXCLUSION AND THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES by AHILAN KADIRGAMAR A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 © 2017 AHILAN KADIRGAMAR All Rights Reserved ii The Failure of Post-war Reconstruction in Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Indebtedness, Caste Exclusion and the Search for Alternatives by Ahilan Kadirgamar This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Michael Blim Chair of Examining Committee Date Gerald Creed Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Marc Edelman Gary Wilder Maarten Bavinck THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Failure of Post-war Reconstruction in Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Indebtedness, Caste Exclusion and the Search for Alternatives by Ahilan Kadirgamar Advisor: Michael Blim Reconstruction of contemporary war-torn societies can lead to further dispossession and social exclusion, particularly through neoliberal development policies and financialized indebtedness. This dissertation analyses post-war reconstruction of the Jaffna District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka after the end of a brutal three decade long civil war in May 2009, through a survey and ethnographic study of one village, Pathemany and its oppressed caste quarter, Bharathy Veethy. Drawing on a study of Pathemany village on agrarian change before the war, this study addresses contemporary questions about land, rural incomes, rural debt and caste structure. The study evaluates reconstruction policies through analysis of national and regional data and reports, and scrutinizes indebtedness and new forms of dispossession. It situates the failure of reconstruction in Jaffna within a broader frame of historical changes starting in the late colonial period and the current influences of global economic forces including the impact of the Great Recession of 2008. This work argues that reconstruction policies were an extension of a second wave of neoliberalism in Sri Lanka soon after the war in 2009, which accelerated the liberalization trajectory set by the open economy reforms starting in 1977. An extensive process of financialization with integration of Sri Lanka’s state and private finance with the global iv capital markets, expansion of credit by national banks and new financial products at the rural level have led to predatory lending and tremendous indebtedness in the countryside. Social institutions and the rural economy in agriculture and fisheries are undermined as development emphasizes infrastructure build-out, credit expansion and self-employment schemes. Reconstruction-led dispossession is leading to outmigration for remittances and contributing to further social exclusion. Caste structure weakened by war-time displacement is strengthening by stealth as public silence on caste relations prevails. The vibrant history of producer co-operatives, including of caste-based occupations in Jaffna, is explored to provide an alternative vision for reconstruction. A critique of the post-conflict discourse of transition reframes reconstruction as a political question, with the war-torn society likely to be shaped by future struggles. v PREFACE On what intellectual ground does one stand to ask questions about a war-torn society such as in the North and East of Sri Lanka? How do disciplinary and other frames shift the questions we ask about societies? And what does it mean to write about a war-torn society and for whom? Critical social research and the process of writing should begin with such questions of self-reflection. A war-torn society in particular cannot be studied through its current empirical reality alone, rather a longer historical perspective of the continuities and shifts from the pre-war, war-time and post-war periods is necessary. Furthermore, the questions about such a society and the character of those changes are shaped by powerful local and international discourses. My own intellectual engagement with Jaffna, the North and Sri Lanka more broadly started with activism and an effort to address the condition of exile. My activist interests and my research finally brought me back to live and write in Jaffna, and to engage in research on the social and economic lives of rural people. For almost ten years prior to departing on field research I had been writing extensively on the political issues in the public domain, influenced by frequent visits to the country and engagement with various actors. While my dissertation research and related engagement was qualitatively different, my scholarly concerns were shaped by my activism during the previous decade and linked to my own personal and familial history. From Activism to Research I left Jaffna in July 1983, soon after completing my primary schooling as I was about to turn twelve. My father’s political involvement and human rights work in Jaffna, and our vi fortuitous travel to Japan for my father’s sabbatical from Jaffna University, changed my life permanently. Within days after we left the island, Colombo was burning with the pogrom of July 1983 and the civil war had started. My father was in self-imposed exile and many of his colleagues were fleeing the country as a crackdown by the state ensued. Leaving Sri Lanka at that tragic moment and hearing stories of the war, of deaths, of displacement and of assassinations, my family’s story was like many others in the Tamil community. Those fortunate enough to leave the country, nevertheless, struggled to find employment and meaningful social life in distant lands, and were haunted by the news of a place which day by day became distant even as it descended into the anarchy of war. My father’s political involvement, my two years of boarding school in India and travels to India during my formative years kept me engaged on developments in Sri Lanka. The assassination in 1985 of C. E. Anandarajan, my uncle and principal of St. Johns College where I had studied, then the assassination of Rajani Thiranagama in 1989, my cousin and neighbor, and Marxist feminist activist and co-founder of University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR(J)), shook our family and made me question the politics of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In subsequent years, during my late teens, I read two books, the Broken Palmyrah by UTHR(J) and Pudhiyathor Ulagam by Kovinthan which provided me a critique of Tamil nationalism and a more systematic understanding of the dreadful political turn taken by the armed struggle. Both works were written hurriedly amidst the heat of brutal conflict to alert Tamil society of the disastrous direction of Tamil nationalism and the armed struggle. I visited Colombo after a span of ten years in 1993; and I was a twenty-one-year-old who found it hard to connect to a city I did not know much about. However, it was during that visit that thanks to Ben Bavinck, a retired Dutch missionary and former teacher at the Jaffna College involved in humanitarian work during the war, that I was introduced to vii UTHR(J), particularly Rajan Hoole and K. Sritharan. I travelled with all three of them to war devastated Trincomalee. That three-day trip and the discussions with them on their critique of Tamil politics initiated a collaboration that became crucial for my future activism on Sri Lanka. From 1993 to 2000, I made yearly visits to Colombo and struggled with ways of connecting politically with developments in Sri Lanka from the distance of Tokyo and then New York. My parents had moved back to Colombo in 2000, and the familial connection to Sri Lanka became stronger. Finally, in August 2002, during the internationalised ceasefire, I visited Jaffna with my mother, followed by another visit with my brother in August 2004. By the early 2000s, I became more and more engaged with activism from New York, through the co-editing of lines magazine, a quarterly social justice magazine that lasted five years and then co-founding the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, an international network of voluntary activists involved in solidarity work for eight years These years of activism from 2002 to the end of the war in May 2009 were intense and shaped me profoundly. I was essentially involved in full-time activism, even as I managed to maintain my engineering job in New York. In January 2006, I had to leave my job, and until I started my PhD in 2008, I travelled continuously to various capitals of the world for advocacy. That intense period of voluntary international advocacy on behalf of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, gave me an understanding of the international actors and the international media and how they shape the discourse on conflict, human rights, security and reconstruction. After the war came to an end in 2009, I began visiting Jaffna regularly during most summer and winter breaks, writing on emerging political and economic developments. My dissertation research and writing were linked to my return to Jaffna, living in the very same house in which I had grown up as a school boy. viii Place and Time of Research The location of research, Jaffna, was important for me, as it was inaccessible for decades for many intellectuals and activists who cared deeply about the social life of the people in the war-torn districts.