{"id":98797,"date":"2020-02-07T17:36:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T00:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=98797"},"modified":"2020-02-07T17:36:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T00:36:42","slug":"nationalism-disambiguated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/02\/07\/nationalism-disambiguated\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nationalism\u2019 disambiguated"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Like \u2018secularism\u2019, \u2018nationalism\u2019 is a much abused term in the\nvocabulary of the opponents of the unitary status of the Sri Lankan state. A\nprevious article of mine (\u2018Why secularism is good for Sri\nLanka\u2019\/Lankaweb\/posted January 23, 2020) explained my opinion that the\nprinciple of secularism in governance is a good thing for Sri Lanka and that it\nis not against religion, although it is often attacked as anti-religion, and\nhence immoral. In the West, USA, UK, and Norway, for example, are accepted as\nsecular democracies while being avowedly \u2018Christian\u2019 nations. There is no\ncontradiction here; it only means that a secular democratic government needs to\nrespect the dominant religious culture of the people (nation), but need not\naccommodate totalitarian dogmatic tenets, if any, like death for apostasy, that\ngo against modern scientific knowledge and secular ethics. The same applies to\npredominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka with relevant adjustments. Considering the\ncurrent besieged state of the Buddha Sasanaya, despite the age-old Buddhist\ncivilizational  foundation of the Sri Lankan state being its cultural\nlynchpin, the constitutional recognition of the need to protect it is in the\ninterest of all Sri Lankans. It does not harm the secular credentials of the\nunitary state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we adopt the term nationalism to the Sri Lankan context, it\nshould be similarly disambiguated. While secularism is viewed as a positive\nprinciple in Western political discourse, nationalism is treated as being\nalmost identical with racism. That is the meaning that the enemies of the\nunitary character of the Sri Lankan state – such as the mercenary foreign NGOs\nbattening on the misery of millions in weaker nations, separatists among Tamil\nexpatriates in the West , and communal political survivalists at home who have\nno plausible reason to justify their existence – attribute to the term.\nHowever, nationalism is implicitly accepted as a key element of a country\u2019s\ndevelopment and security by the Western countries on whose deliberately\nequivocal definitions and double standards they rely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wikipedia provides a short unclear \u2018definition\u2019: \u2018Nationalism\nis an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation<\/a> (as in a\ngroup of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the\nnation’s sovereignty<\/a> (self-governance<\/a>) over its homeland<\/a>.\u2019 This\nnebulous definition seems to equate a nation to a race, or an ethnic group,\nwhich is seeking to gain sovereignty over its \u2018homeland\u2019. The homeland of a\nnation is the distinct native country or area where that nation developed its\nunique civilization with its own language,and culture (way of living, values,\narts, moral and spiritual traditions,etc) and over which it can legitimately\nclaim and exercise sovereignty. Google.com dictionary offers the following,\nwhich sounds better than the above. It defines \u2018nation\u2019 as \u2018a large body of people\nunited by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a\nparticular country or territory\u2019. In this sense, the Sinhalese are a nation.\nThey have a common descent, a recorded (written and epigraphic) history of over\n2500 years, a language of their own that originated in the Sihela \u2018deepe\u2019\n(island) and nowhere else, a unique culture fashioned by Theravada Buddhism,\nand their only homeland, which is their inalienable native land (the same\n\u2018Sihela deepe\u2019). Sinhalese nationalism is well founded and inclusive. A few\nfast disappearing Tamil racists like Sampanthan and Wigneswaran, a mere handful\namong the sensible minority Tamils who account for about 15% of the island\u2019s\npopulation in terms of the 2011 census (Sri Lankan Tamils 11% + 4% Indian\nTamils), are pushing for a separate state by devious means in the name of a\nTamil nation and an exclusively Tamil homeland in the North and the East\nwithout any scientifically verifiable historical evidence to support them. But\nTamils (15%) and Muslim (9.7%)  are dignified members of the single nation\nthat Sri Lankans are, absolutely on par with the members of the majority\nSinhalese community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tamils\u2019\nhistorical homeland is Tamilnadu or Tamil Land in South India, where they\noriginated and where their unique Tamil Hindu culture evolved. Tamils, like the\nMuslims, live in every part of the island, mingled with other races, though\nless than half of all ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka are concentrated in the north\nand the east provinces. Wherever they live, it is the South Indian Hindu\nculture that characterises them. There were over 80 million Tamils in Tamilnadu\nlast year (2019). There must be over 20 million more in countries around the\nworld outside Tamilnadu. Ethnic Sinhalese in Sri\nLanka and outside number just over 15 million, perhaps, and Sinhalese language\nspeakers come only from Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese have never ever asked the\nminorities to depart from Sri Lanka because it is their (the Sinhalese\u2019)\noriginal native land, and not theirs, the way Wigneswaran is demanding that the\nSinhalese leave the North. They have always treated the Tamil minority with\nkindness, humanity, and equality except when the latter became aggressive\ninstigated by the racist few among the sensible majority of Tamil\npoliticians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationalists comprise all Sri Lankans irrespective of ethnicity or\nreligious affiliation, though unsurprisingly, the majority of them are from\namong the Sinhalese. What they say or have been saying to dissenting Tamils is:\nWhy talk about separate homelands? Sri Lanka is the common homeland of all of\nus. Let\u2019s us remain as the one nation we are, in spite of our ethnic and other\ndifferences, occupying the same piece of land and breathing the same air above\nit and keeping abreast of the positive developments in the fast changing world\noutside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Sinhalese there is no difference between nationalism and\npatriotism. Generally, in the West, both terms are defined rather negatively.\nThe Google.com definition of patriotism runs as follows: (patriotism is) \u2018the\nquality of being patriotic; devotion to and vigorous support for one’s\ncountry\u2019.  Among synonyms given are chauvinism and jingoism suggesting\nthat patriotism could degenerate into such evil traits. The Wikipedia offers a\nmore comprehensive and  a bit more positive explanation of the term: \u2018Patriotism\nor national pride is the feeling of love, devotion and sense of attachment to a\nhomeland<\/a> and\nalliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment. This attachment can\nbe a combination of many different feelings relating to one’s own homeland,\nincluding ethnic, cultural, political or historical aspects. It encompasses a\nset of concepts closely related to nationalism<\/a>\u2019. For the Sinhalese, from\ntheir hoary beginnings, nationalism has been identical with patriotism. They\nhave always fought for the motherland, that is, for preserving or regaining\nlost sovereignty over its territory. The modern nationalist slogan consists of\nthe evocative triad \u2018rata, jaatiya, aagama\u2019 (country, nation, religion). The\npatriotic Sinhala scholar Kumaratunga Munidasa (1887-1944), the founder of the\nstill operative Sinhala language study circle known as \u2018Hela Havula\u2019,\nintroduced  the secular \u2018triple gem\u2019 of \u2018desa, basa, raesa\u2019 (country,\nlanguage, nation). Not that he neglected the Buddha Sasana; he took that for\ngranted in his personal dedication to the study of the Sinhala language and its\nliterature in those dark days of foreign domination. Actually, at the\nbeginning, he studied Pali and Sanskrit in order to become a Buddhist monk; but\nhe had to give up the idea because of lack of parental assent. The \u2018country\u2019 came\nfirst in his case, too. Even today, while a handful of racists among Tamil and\nMuslim politicians talk exclusively about the interests of their own Tamil and\nMuslim people respectively, without any friendly reference to the majority\ncommunty among whom they live without suffering discrimination, the non-racist\nnationalists among the Sinhalese and minority politicians speak up for the\ncountry in the name of all, irrespective of ethnic and other differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fervent nationalist sentiments – rising with growing awareness\namong the youth connected through the You Tube about  their inestimable\nhistorical heritage – found graphic expression in the form of wall paintings\nacross the country soon after the inauguration of president Gotabhaya Rajapaksa\nin November 2019. Meanwhile, a young man named Nalaka Senadheera from Dedigama\nhas initiated a voluntary movement for re-cultivating thousands of acres of\nprevious paddy lands left fallow over the years in various parts of the\ncountry.  During the disastrous, nation-denying Yahapalanaya, its\nimmoderate neoliberalist economic policies such as selling off invaluable\nnational assets met with the passionate anger and disapproval of the\nnationalists. For Sri Lanka, this surge of nationalism is a very welcome development.\nIt is independent and non-aggressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not\nso with the Americans. Wherever they go, American leaders boast that their aim\nis promoting the American interest. This means they are nationalists, though\nthey never explicitly admit they are. Instead they pretend nationalism in\nothers to be a negative tendency. Our common experience is that their policy is\nexactly what the Google online dictionary definition says nationalism is, and\nwhat critics falsely accuse Sri Lankan nationalists of: \u2018identification with\none’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or\ndetriment of the interests of other nations.\u2019 The Sri Lanka traducers subtly\nimply that the Tamil minority is another \u2018nation\u2019 within island, thereby\nundermining the country\u2019s communal unity. This demonstrates Americans\u2019 double\nstandards in respect of weaker nations like Sri Lanka that are expected to\nbetray the interests of their own people to accommodate \u2018American interests\u2019!.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linguist,\nphilosopher, social critic, and political activist Noam Chomsky (\u2018Who Rules the\nWorld?\u2019\/Penguin Books, 2017) traces the source of the Americans\u2019 current\nnational security policy to the administration of president George H.W. Bush in\nthe early 1990s. It was a new national security strategy formulated in reaction\nto the fall of America\u2019s global enemy the Soviet Union. Though the threat from\nRussia was fast becoming a thing of the past at the time, they  wanted to\nmaintain \u2018a military establishment almost as great as the rest of the world\ncombined and far more advanced in technical sophistication\u2026\u2019, as Chomsky says,\nto defend against the growing technological sophistication of Third World\npowers! Chomsky adds in an aside: \u2018Disciplined intellectuals understood that it\nwould have been improper to collapse in ridicule, so they maintained a proper\nsilence\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nnew policy, the writer further explains, insisted on the US maintaining its\ndefense industrial base\u201d. The phrase is a euphemism, according to Chomsky, for\nhigh-tech industry which heavily relies on large scale state intervention for\nresearch and development, often under Pentagon cover, in what continues to be\ncalled U.S. free-market economy\u201d. The new plans had an interesting provision\nthat had to do with the Middle East. It stated that Washington had to maintain\nintervention forces focused on a region of pivotal importance where the major\ncrises could not have been laid at the Kremlin\u2019s door\u201d (as quoted by Chomsky\nin the book named above from National Security Strategy of the United States\u201d,\nWhite House, March 1990). On this ridiculously vulgar fumbling about for an\nexcuse for something base, Chomsky makes this comment: \u2018Contrary to fifty years\nof deceit, it was quietly conceded that the main concern in this region was not\nthe Russians, but rather what is called radical nationalism\u201d, meaning\nindependent nationalism not under U.S. control\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Sri\nLanka is not in the Middle East, but in what the Americans have recently chosen\nto call the Indo-Pacific region. Have America\u2019s security strategies or its\nattitudes towards weaker nations changed for the better over the past thirty\nyears? Most probably not. A leopard does not change its spots, as the local\nsaying goes, though it may change its hunting grounds. Currently emerging\nrevelations in international media show how the narrow self interest of\nfiercely nationalistic  America is plaguing the whole world. The moral of\nChomsky\u2019s narrative may be applied, with necessary alterations, to Sri Lanka\u2019s\ncurrent predicament vis-a-vis the global superpower in her desperate\nnationalist struggle to preserve her independence and sovereignty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Like \u2018secularism\u2019, \u2018nationalism\u2019 is a much abused term in the vocabulary of the opponents of the unitary status of the Sri Lankan state. A previous article of mine (\u2018Why secularism is good for Sri Lanka\u2019\/Lankaweb\/posted January 23, 2020) explained my opinion that the principle of secularism in governance is a good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}