This book was recommended a few months ago by the e-zine, The Tamil Tribune. I found it in many respects a very exciting book. The analysis of Indian policy and political dynamics and of contemporary nation-building in general is very insightful and based on a strong theoretical discussion of the relationship between power and narratives (‘discourses’) of social reality.

“Ethnicity and nation were now locked in a discourse of danger that is usually enormously productive as far as the exercise of state power is concerned. In each instance, the danger of ethnic chauvinism or separatism was used as the justification for an authoritarian and hard-line response by the center. Yet, it was often the center itself that was responsible for fomenting such ethnic separatism in the first place: either directly, by its intelligence agencies supporting the extremist fringes of such movements, or indirectly, by the concentration of power and an increasingly majoritarian conception of national identity.” (p25)

“Ethnicity is simultaneously opposed to the nation and critical to its ongoing production and reproduction; it is always both threat to and an opportunity for making the nation. The Indian government was never able to calibrate exactly where the desire to appease (or more accurately, to profit from) Tamil sentiments ended and where opposition to the creation of Eelam began. There was a clear tension between these two principles, and where precisely the line was to be drawn never emerged with any clarity within the multiple institutions representing the Indian state.” (p225)

“...ethnonationalism is not an essentialist force so much as it is a response to forced unification on some principle of majoritarianism.” (p87)

Krishna grounds his book in research he did in the summers of 1992 and 1993 in which he interviewed an impressive list of Indian and Sri Lankan actors in, and observers of, the late 1980s Indian intervention in Sri Lanka. He uses this research only as a stepping stone to a wider discussion of the relationship between the third world nation-state and ethnicity, which has wide - and painful - implications for the ongoing conflict in Sri Lanka. He also concludes, as have numerous other observers that

“Buttressing the example of Dravidianism in India through its obverse is the tragedy of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. Sri Lankan Tamils could have been folded into the national family with relative ease in the early 1950s. Yet, the majoritarian impulse of Sinhalese nationalism (and the political opportunities emergent in its wake) precluded a compromise. Sri Lanka is proof yet again that majoritarian over centralization produces both irredentist violence and precisely what it fears most - namely, partition or secession. The desire for Eelam emerges as a direct consequence of the very imagination that animates most nationalists in South Asia. In that sense, the question of Eelam is not one confined to Sri Lanka but one faced by all the nation-states in the region.” (p242)

Krishna’s main policy conclusion is that South Asian nations must be reimagined as pluralist, egalitarian, democratic spaces, not spaces inhabited by one language, ethnic or racial group. Unfortunately, especially for the Sri Lankan situation, he makes absolutely no recommendations about how to get there from here.

The second major problem with the book is the shocking lack of sympathy for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause in the specific, particularly surprising from one with such a thorough understanding of the dynamics of its generation. One reason for this lack of sympathy is Krishna’s allegiance to pluralism.

“...in contemporary South Asia, the fiction of homogeneity reigns hegemonic over both managers of the nation-state and the many insurgent movements fighting against them. The various Eelams of South Asia share the mono-logical imagination that forever seeks to align territory with identity in a singular and final fashion. They are essentially partition redux, and for that reason they constitute the farcical sequels to the initial tragedy. Hence, most insurgent movements in the region do not constitute an alternative to the existing spatial imaginaires of the nation, nor are they worthy of support by those committed to a pluralist and democratic ethos.” (p242)

I wish he had listed one insurgent movement which does provide an alternative anywhere in the world. Where is this alternative being incubated? I also wish he had given more than vague pledges of allegiance to pluralism and democracy, but concrete examples of how this new world could be created, especially in a situation of pressure from the state. If one does not have territory, how can one experiment in government? If insurgencies are simply reactions to majoritarian impulses, how are they supposed to be more than mirrors of what they oppose? If the state uses any possible class, caste, geographical or religious difference to weaken its opposition how can pluralism develop?

Also surprising is that Krishna, like most observers, interviewed for his research project those who fight the LTTE, rather than those who sympathize with them. Considering the time and place of the interviews, right after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the few Indian sympathizers of the LTTE were probably constrained to keep their mouths shut. Not one Sri Lankan LTTE sympathizer that I can identify was interviewed. It is astonishing to me that someone as sensitive as Krishna to the manner in which discourse follows the faultlines of power would have made such a basic mistake in trying to understand the IPKF incident. It does revel, however, to what extent Krishna’s focus is India rather than Sri Lanka.

The end result of having such unbalanced interviews is a failure of interpretation of the specifics of the IPKF incident on Krishna’s part. Most egregious is his accusation that the LTTE leadership wanted Thileepan to die to de-legitimize the IPKF. Krishna has not gotten a handle on either the popularity of Thileepan’s project in Jaffna, the urgency of the grievances Thileepan was highlighting or Thileepan’s own agency in his self-sacrifice. He calls the whole thing a ‘macabre spectacle,’ but forgets to mention that J.N. Dixit, the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo, did not believe Thileepan would actually go through with his own death. He also does not deal with the failure of the Indians to recognize or honor a non-violent, quintessentially Indian, form of protest.

Krishna’s interpretation - as it is a common one - has important consequences for future attempts to solve the Sri Lankan war, because even he believes the Tamil leadership will settle for nothing less than separation under any circumstances. This interpretation will lead to less of an emphasis on coming up with acceptable provisions of an accord and more on the need to destroy an uncompromising set of demons.

We must accept that it is very difficult for outsiders to develop a balanced view of the conflict because of a severe lack of credible, accessible sources. Those most intimately involved in the struggle are too busy to write their memoirs or interpretations of events, and security concerns constrain their accessibility. No powerful outside force is available to mentor sympathetic explanations of the Tamil side in the war. The past 5 years have seen a growth in the number of websites and newspapers addressing the issues, but, commonly, these resources seem to primarily communicate with the Tamil community rather than the outside world. (Mind you, communication within the community is exceptional.) At the same time the forces working to stigmatize the Tamil resistance as ‘terrorists’ have made it unlikely that outsiders - even academics - will go to the effort of reading and absorbing the vast number of words available through the Internet. In any case such information is no substitute for the personal relationships which breed sympathetic understanding.