Feminised Migration: The Empowerment Paradox

In 2011, The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of international migrants in 2008 rested at 214 million, having increased from 150 million people in the year 2000, amounting to 3.1% of the world’s population. The immense economic consequence of these labour flows are made evident in the fact that in 2009, approximately $414 billion were sent as remittances, $307 billion of which were sent to developing countries, double the official aid and nearly two-thirds of foreign direct investment. As made evident from the sheer volume of not only migrants but significant remittances, particularly to the developing world, through the employment relationship of migrant labourers, the incentives for migration are visibly economic.

Despite the growth of permissive economies where human capital flows have become a significant feature, issues of citizenship and national sovereignty directly affront the optimism of international treatises, particularly within the informal sector. International organisations have become the stern-faced puppets of geopolitical powerhouses, owing to rising differences in wealth, power and security hand in hand with economic liberalisation.

Within an inclined geopolitical playing field, both wealthy and lowly nations were able to benefit from the need for labour, however, what must be interrogated is, at what cost to the labourers themselves and whose responsibility is their safety?

Global Care Economies: An Empowerment Paradox?

Care as a socially-reproductive form of labour, has been identified to sustains human beings as distinct from commodities and products, involving biological reproduction and/or socialisation processes such as childcare or housework. Care, much like other service sectors, has become assimilated into the globalisation project, as a low-cost service sector as what has been dubbed as the ‘hidden labour market’. Women’s labour, particularly in those sectors that are regarded as inherent to their biology, are rendered invisible and thus valueless. These also manifest as unregulated, economic spaces particularly in the realm of the domestic, where national laws or international promises for equality cannot be honoured.

Within a globalised world, where wealthier women needed the support of carers to look after matters of house and children while they engaged in their own employment, or simply out of unwillingness and the ability to afford domestic labour, a new trend of feminised migration was instigated. This need for care-giving as both a formal and informal service within the developed world, saw a rapid incline in the number of unskilled female migrants, who were incorporated as domestic labour into the most intimate microcosm of the global production chain; the household. The category of unskilled was thus inherently tied to womanhood, which engenders domestic labour, by which women continue to be compelled to commoditise their patriarchally-reinforced social role as mothers or wives.

The inequalities of wealth play a crucial role in this flow of labour, for unskilled women who are unable to gain employment within national labour markets, through the thinning boundaries of globalisation and an attractive wage differential, are able to leave their home countries for employment opportunities overseas. Although economic independence is an attractive incentive for women, they are compelled into an employment relationship that preys on their gender as a skills-qualification. Through globalisation and the care economy of domestic labour, women are confined into roles that underline their subordination and highlight patriarchal social biases bolstering a gendered separation of the labour market which disallows mobility or the gaining of other productive skills. Moreover, the informal nature of the domestic sphere marked by grave racialised prejudices also creates a uniquely liminal space where national or international labour  conventions and laws cannot be monitored or enforced, making female migrant labourers exceptionally vulnerable to abuse and discrimination that victimise their most intimate forms of self-identification such as gender, ethnicity and nationality.

Cheap Labour in the Middle-East

Working conditions of labourers in the Middle-East have been consistently marked by a lack of protection, clearly defined rights, ineffective local legal systems, a complete dependence on the good will of their employers and the ever-present possibility of deportation. Furthermore, an ethnic and national stratification was in place informally, whereby European expatriates were paid the most, other Arabs and Asians occupying a middle-rung and Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans getting paid the least. What began as a tide of male migration, soon led to a demand for domestic labour in the prosperous Arab households, owing to the very low participation of Arab women in the labour market as a consequence of social and ad religious customs that restricted females working outside the home.

Thereby, cheap domestic labour from South Asia and beyond was funneled into the Arab states, where the even more vulnerable category the female servant was laid over the plethora of existing biases and constraints that marginalised the male workers. These women often remained isolated in private households where they had no access to any form of external protection or any legal recourse in the event of employer abuse. Moreover, existing national labour laws specifically excluded domestic work from its sphere of influence that made reporting harassment or maltreatment virtually impossible.

Although Sri Lanka has been marked as a developing nation that has fared well in matters of human development, economically it has consistently faltered. In the 1984, with a per capita income of $360, it was among the 30 poorest countries in the world having succumbed to very high inflation and unemployment rates in the 1970s. The demand for labour in the Middle-East proved to be a beneficial solution to the Sri Lankan government, which was able to solve some of its worst economic problems and also enable an income and alleviate unemployment. Sri Lanka, having advertised itself internationally has having the cheapest labour in Asia, proved to be an attractive source for Arab employers owing to higher wage differentials, regional proximity, liberalised economic policies that encouraged labour flow out of the country and its comparative regional advantage for not having imposed restrictions on female labour over issues of culture or religion. Many of the women were unskilled outside the domestic sphere which made them pertinent candidates for housekeeping and child-rearing. Given that there was no possibility of them being paid this amount with similar jobs at home, the wage differential was the single most influential ‘pull factor’ in the feminisation of Sri Lankan migration to the Middle-East.

Since the 1980s, Sri Lanka maintained itself as a rich labour resource for the Middle-East, which has sustained its economy throughout as second largest earner of foreign exchange in the Sri Lankan economy. According to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (2009), there are approximately 1.7 million Sri Lankans working overseas (amounting to nearly 10% of the country’s population) remitting Rs. 382,801 Million (47.03% of total foreign exchange earnings of the country) back to Sri Lanka. During the past decade 70% of labour had been exported in the category of unskilled sector of which nearly 66 % had been female domestic workers who formed 89% of the total female migrant workers. Given the low levels of female employment in Sri Lanka alongside its economic and political instability in the civil war years, migration as domestic labour was motivated almost solely by dire financial necessity among respondent women. Poverty is also tied to the pursuit of social and economic status including ambitions such as building a house, purchasing land, paying off family debts or educating children.

Abuses and Violations

The economic promise of domestic labour in the Middle-East is virtually unequivocally bound to the high probability of abuse.

HRW (2007) reports that not only are women victim to wage exploitation, unpaid or underpaid salaries, heavy workloads, excessive hours of work, food deprivation, inadequate living conditions, confiscation of passports, forced confinement, restricted communication, forced labour, prohibitions on returning home and a series of exploitative practices by recruitment agencies in both Sri Lanka and the Arab States, but also violent physical, psychological and sexual abuses. In Lebanon, the abuses are often centred on racial and ethnic prejudices and ensuing stereotyping that creates a hierarchy of nationality and interlinked wages appropriate for domestic labour, but also categories for recruitment basing nationality as an indication of trust or degradation. Racial slurs and offensive stereotyping are a manifestation of symbolic violence that negate and debase the identities and personhoods of these women. Not only are the human and civil rights of unskilled migrant labourers constantly challenged, and their existence marginalised through these practices, their citizenship becomes a burdening category of identification.

Whose Responsibility?

Universal standards of living are prescribed and marginalised social groups are given legal protection through documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognises ‘the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of ‘hidden labour markets’ not simply in the Middle-East, but beyond.

Inter-governmental understandings and solidarity in policy formulation could possess a positive impact on these relations in the long-run although relevant legislation has been slow in implementation.

HRW (2007) states, ‘International human rights law places positive obligations on states to protect the rights of individuals against acts, including ill-treatment and discrimination, committed by private persons or entities. States must take appropriate measures (in some places referred to as “due diligence”) to prevent punish, investigate, or redress the harm caused to individuals’ rights by private persons or entities. States must also provide effective remedies to those so harmed.’ Given that much of the abuses taking place in the domestic sphere, face very legitimate problems of reporting and monitoring, efforts have been made to account for the process of migration itself.The Sri Lankan government has been increasingly wary of abuses in the system through recruitment agencies and has introduced a stringent system of licensing for regulation (Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, 2009; HRW, 2007). Similarly, the establishment of embassies and consuls in the recipient countries has played a considerable role in providing registration services for labourers and sanctuary for women who manage to escape oppressive domestic relations.

However, the process of creating bi-lateral understandings with the Arab States which have very little to gain besides the cost of implementing mechanisms for monitoring labour within the private homes, has been very slow. The core nations’ dependence on the Arab Gulf for oil and its remarkable financial capital, helps maintain its interests within potential threats from international laws. Although a space for civil society activism has opened up in the form of NGOs within these countries where women are given advice and shelter if needed, the problem of abuse and forced labour within the households remains a persistent problem as news reports of violence against female domestics gather momentum, and the expectation of violence becomes grotesquely normalised.

As stated by HRW (2007) the Arab governments remain notably inactive in this sphere, and the critical importance of remittances to Sri Lanka’s economic strategy for poverty alleviation implies that, it too is reluctant to enforce any major restrictions on labour migration. Thereby, what must be questioned is even though globalisation in its neoliberal economic manifestation has become a successful flow for securing employment overseas and interlinked financial independence and gains in socio-economic status owing to high wage differentials, at what disjunctive cost to human dignity and life must these financial incentives be pursued?

Rights and Sovereignty in the Household

Saskia Sassen posits, highlighting the declining sovereignty of states over their economies, posits that global markets created a space for legal regimes that mediated between national autonomy and the transnational practices of economic players.For example, Human rights are not dependent on nationality, overriding political, social and civil rights which elude those categorised as aliens.  However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of domestic labour not simply in the Middle-East. These debates on legality and citizenship in relation to migration must be re-examined in relation to enforcement in the liminal, hidden space of the domestic sphere where the employment of domestic labour, the international and national have begun to intersect with the private.

In these spaces and beyond, human rights violations, exist in reality much like the thought experiment of a falling tree in a forest, crimes that did not take place unless it is reported and acted upon.

Relevant Reads:

Abu-Habib, L. (1998). The Use and Abuse of Female Domestic Workers from Sri Lanka in Lebanon. Gender and Development , 6 (1), 52-56.

Anthias, F. (2000). ‘Metaphors of Home. Gendering New Migrations to Southern Europe’. In F. Anthias, & G. Lazaradis, Gender and Migration in Southern Europe. Women on the Move. (pp. 15-47). Oxford: Berg.

Athias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1992). Racialised Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge.

Bannerjee, D., & Goldfield, M. (2007). Labour, Globalisation and the State: Workers, Women and Migrants Confront Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Routledge.

Brochmann, G. (1990). Middle East Avenue: Female Migration from Sri Lanka, Causes and Consequences. Oslo: Institute for Social Research.

Human Rights Watch (HRW). (2007). Exported and Exposed: Abuses against Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia,Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Human Rights Watch.

Moukarbel, N. (2009). Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon: A Case of ‘Symbolic Violence’ and ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Sassen, S. (1998). Globalisation and its Discontents. New York: The New Press.

Sassen, S. (1996). Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. (2009). Annual Statistical Report. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.

Yeates, N. (2009). Globalising Care Economies and Migrant Workers: Explorations in Global Care Chains. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

“I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay”

Having covered a dozen picks on my A Year in Books post earlier this week, a #13, my favourite book of the year, was promised.

Narcopolis, Jeet Thayil’s debut novel was magical, moving and provocative. and I can’t rave enough about how much I loved this novel.

“Then there are the addicts, the hunger addicts and rage addicts and poverty addicts and power addicts, and the pure addicts who are addicted not to substances but to the oblivion and tenderness that substances engender. An addict, if you don’t mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut himself off, voluntarily, voluntarily, from the world’s traffic and currency? The saint talks to flowers, a daffodil, say, and he sees the yellow of it. He receives its scent through his eyes. Yes, he thinks, you are my muse, I take heart from your stubbornness, a drop of water, a dab of sunshine, and there you are with your gorgeous blooms. He enjoys flowers but he worships trees. He wants to be the banyan’s slave. He wants to think of time the way a tree does, a decade as nothing more than some slight addition to his girth. He connives with birds, and gets his daily news from the sound the wind makes in the leaves. When he’s hungry he stands in the forest waiting for the fall of a mango. His ambition is the opposite of ambition. Most of all, like all addicts, he wants to obliterate time. He wants to die, or, at the very least, to not live”

The story opens in the 1970s, in Rashid’s Opium House on Shuklaji Street Mumbai. It reads like a gritty yet languorous hallucination that charts a darkly exotic world suspended in a series of enthralling vignettes. Thayil delves into the existence of his cast of antagonists contemplating life in a grey underground of smokey opium dens and makeshift brothels in a transitioning Mumbai, as heroin and a serial killer begin to entice and haunt the city’s depraved.

The narrator Dom,  a returnee from New York traces his opium-addled poet’s fingers along Mumbai’s free fall into chaos and  his own, into a drug habit. Dimple, a beautiful and inquiring hijra, who readies the pipes. Grappling with her past, her addiction, the virtue and vice of her sex, life as a prostitute and her relationships to those who inhabit these worlds, Dimple is a graceful and contemplative presence. Rashid, the owner of the khana- a husband, father, and friend to his hijrasi mistress. Francis Xavier the devilish painter. Mr. Ching (whose interlude in the novel takes the reader on an intriguing adventure to Communist China), the owner of the magic pipes.

Thayil dexterously weaves together Mumbai, the lives, insights and addictions of this cast of miscreants. 

The artfully disjointed, lyrical narrative is truly literary juju.

Read this.

A Year in Books

I’ve been good about reading this year. Kicking off with perhaps a little too much ambition and a little bit of failing (not sure why I thought 100 books was a possibility alongside full-time employment), I settled on a little task of reading 60 books.

Rambles aside, I’ve picked 12 of the best- in no particular order (blurbs on Goodreads) which are well worth a read, no matter what your interests are.

1) The Lost Flamingos of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

2) Home Boy by H.M. Naqvi

3) Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

4) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

5) Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

6) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

7) The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed

8) The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

9) The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

10) I Am An Executioner by Rajesh Parameshwaran

11) The Fall by Albert Camus

12) The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Happy reading.

Since I don’t like even numbers, await a post dedicated to lucky #13, my favourite book of the year.

Thuppaki (The Gun) : Why You Shouldn’t Mess with India

In an effort to be less predictable and acquire a bit of street cred, the name of social anthropology, I found myself in Cinecity, Maradana (call me a newbie and make what you will of this, but a cinema atmosphere unlike anything I’ve previously encountered. We’re talking whoops, whistles, claps and cheers after every and I mean every scene of arguable significance- including a close-up of the hero’s biceps- i.e. every few minutes).

I am a relative stranger to Tamil cinema, its gloriously-kitsch-frolicking-on-Swiss-mountainsides-dishoom-dishoom-aesthetic occupying an entirely ignored periphery of my cinematic interests.

Thuppaki (The Gun) is essentially an action flick centered on a terror plot to destroy Mumbai, with a sub-plot of modern Indian romance and marriage (aptly summarised in the most inventive lyrics I have encountered: ‘(Girl) are you an Apple product?’ and the sage advice: looks fade, so marry a guy who makes 200,000 a month, even if he looks like a toad).

A young Tamil, Indian army officer named Jagdish (emphasis on Indian Army in all it’s multi-coloured, multi-ethnic, multi-religious badass, song and dance glory) returns to his family in Mumbai on vacation, where his parents and sisters take him straight from the train station to the home of a potential bride, Nisha. Jagdish discards Nisha assuming that she is an old-fashioned girl (meaning demure, sari-clad and neck tattoo concealed by chaste braid). He later finds out that she’s a father-slapping, short skirt wearing, red-wine drinking experimental smoker who plays every sport imaginable aside from being a pro boxer, which inevitably ends up in an irrational and comedic arranged marriage  triangle (cue song: ‘Why does my heart slide on Antarctic ice? Are you a penguin? Are you a dolphin?’) and ultimately undying love, as is usually the case. Easy peasy.

The main storyline revolves around a terrorist plot, by an Islamist terrorist group (trendy) with vague (completely unexplained) motivations to blow things up and create chaos in Mumbai.

Fabulously outlandish plot. Gloriously-kitsch-frolicking-on-Swiss-mountainsides (More progressive song lyrics: ‘I ran a search on google and found no one crazier than him’)-dishoom-dishoom-with Matrix-style slow-mo fight scenes, expert assassinations and explosions at sea. A ‘cold-blooded murderer’ of a hero who ‘extensively tortures’ the baddies (chopped off fingers, forced suicides- the works) and can single-handedly take out an entire armed terrorist cell and rescue five girls (one of them on the knife’s edge of a Youtube execution) with the help of a retired police dog and one gun.

What’s not to like, right? Right.

Contrived Portrayal of Diversity:

Representing ethnic, racial, linguistic, cultural diversity hand in hand with sexuality, stereotyping, typecasting are hot topics within the entertainment industry, where films and largely (American) television shows are being actively analysed and critiqued for their mono-everything casts.

I’m all for diversity, but Thuppaki is so consciously (and consequently unnaturally) diverse.

The Indian army, a central symbol of strongman virtue (including apparently a no-strings-attached license to torture and kill at the whimsy of individual operatives) is composed of all varieties of Indians imaginable, to the point of laboured. The last scene of the film, where the hero’s army train departs to Kashmir, the Muslims (identifiable by skullcaps, beards, covered heads- all typical expectations fulfilled) stand out on the platform (token, human white flags to all the Muslims they offended in the first 2 hours and 20 minutes of the film by saying, HEY the Indian Army adores Muslims, they are our loyal cold-blooded, torturing highly-trained assassins, and they are fighting for our consciously-portrayed-as-diverse-and-united-India against extremist Muslims with Jihadist tendencies. Yes.)  A major plot point in the film also revolves around a wardrobe revelation, the coat and tie attire typical to the Christian wedding (diversity for the win?) that helps the terrorists identify the Indian army assassins, who cannot be identified but the fact that they were in suits is common knowledge and where do people wear suits to? Naturally, Christian weddings- get me a list of all the Christian weddings in Mumbai (population a gazillion) so that I can identify and avenge with speedy success.

Extensive Torture? No big deal:

I may have been appalled by the casual and sometimes comedic tone the representation of torture was dealt with in Thuppaki. Jagdish apprehends Terrorist #1, beats him up, chops off his fingers, locks him up in his closet (yes, right behind those dress shirts) and shoots him?  Apparently this is completely unacceptable behaviour from a highly-trained Indian Army intelligence type, who will have to answer to no one about his public killing spree. This and the assassination of people in malls, cinemas, boats etc., more torture, using one’s sister as bait to annihilate terrorist cell, etc. You know, the usual.

It is true that films sometimes cast things in black and white, the existential questions and metaphysics puzzles of the grey an irksome inconvenience to the whooping-clapping-whistling masses. But how okay is such light-hearted portrayal of torture? Are we saying we will die and kill for our countries, the greater good of an artificial filmic celebration of diversity?

Perhaps it is a warning of geopolitical significance, You Shouldn’t Mess with New India. Especially not the Indian Army- they will shoot you right between the eyes, if they’re not locking you up in a closet and torturing you first.

Have you seen Thuppaaki? Thoughts?

Faithless

I was raised in a veritable pickle of a household. We speak three languages. We believe in different gods, some of us uphold a curious syncretism that defies logic and some of us, we don’t believe at all. We fear the wrath of a pantheon of gods, while some of us respectfully stand in the sidelines, amused but compliant to the arcane rituals that map our faith. Despite the contradictions and occasional absurdity, we co-exist and we keep celebrating each other’s holidays because festivities are always welcome.

Over the years, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of religion. Mostly when it encroaches into my thought space in the form of the question, what religion are you?

As a child, I, like many of my peers were compelled to put a religion down on paper. At the start of every school year, they sent home a form that required the specifics: race, religion, denomination. There was no room for ambiguity; a binding pen on paper commitment was required. It was a matter of priority for annual timetables afterall.

Accordingly, our Christian institution grouped us twice a week to provide us with a religious education as set forth in the state curriculum.

There were two of us in that class for whom, the topic of religion did not matter because our parents did not give us much of a religious education at home. Mine were a non-committal pickle, hers were uninterested and amidst a group of girls whose Sunday School education had begun at kindergarten, we struggled to learn Buddhism in a Christian School. I recall the torturous experience of having to learn and recite unfamiliar sūttas that rolled of the others’ tongues. How we couldn’t recite on demand the most sacred words of the Buddha mystified the teacher. How I dreaded those afternoons where spot recitations were called upon and I’d struggle, owing to little more than a complete lack of interest in memorizing verses in a language I didn’t understand.

Our text books were populated not with the everyday choices that might require some form of spiritual guidance, but yarns of mytho-history that defined Sri Lankan, Sinhalese Buddhism. From historical buildings, facile meditation techniques and long-winded stories on virtue and other blessed things this text book was supposed to be instilling in us, we ultimately studied for an exam.

Remember, regurgitate. Remember, regurgitate.

So I studied Buddhism, unapologetically, to keep my grades up.  I even won a prize once. No wiser, no more interested, but compelled, for there was no option for marking down uncertainties on that austere typeset form.

Today, I am grateful for this education because I can tell you many little facts about Sri Lanka’s Buddhist history and significant archaeological sites, not because of the personal spiritual enlightenment it brought about.

I remain blissfully unconcerned about religion, pressing matters like death, heaven, hell, afterlife and reincarnation rarely occurring to me or intruding into my every day only when someone throws the unabashed question,

What religion are you?

Much like those school forms from many years ago, Sri Lanka allows very little room for ambiguity.

I falter. Buddhist I suppose, I say if they are looking for a short answer or if I’m looking for a quick way out.

Buddhism, separated from cultural pollution, provides a meaningful roadmap for living, to good and a balance of cause, consequence and karma. I respect that simplicity and freedom of being able to choose my path. Yet, I cannot recall the last time I went to a temple to worship or to gain some form of spiritual guidance or solace.

I try to believe in good and do the right thing, to give to the less fortunate and not harm the living. That to me is surely in the words of every religion, label and pen on paper commitment-free.

I often wonder what faith in Buddhism means to a purported 70% of Sri Lanka. The temples, the flowers, the verses of pali few undersand,  and the saffron-robed monks that preside over it all.

Last week, a 2000 strong Sinhalese mob rallied under the puritanical war cries of Buddhist monks who called for a local mosque which had stood for half a century to be demolished.  Petrol bombs flared, stones were thrown and the revered Friday prayer was canceled. Over the weekend, it was agreed on a political table that the mosque would be demolished and relocated to what I can only understand as a less-offending place.

An isolated incident, say the optimists anchored in the belief of a greater good and surely one that does not reflect Sri Lanka’s Buddhist virtue and humility.

For a nation so saturated with such Buddhist righteousness and integrity, we have seen a three decade long war, the full-blown armed hostilities which were triggered by an ‘isolated incident’ not unlike this in 1983. We pretend that thousands of civilians were not killed under the flags of victory. We do not think of the thousands more who remain displaced as a consequence. We pretend that our country is not rife with lawlessness, corruption,  grave insecurity and violence, while we hide behind the white cloth of Buddhist morality. Such ugliness cannot happen in a land where the Buddha himself set foot thrice, we tell ourselves.

This too shall pass, we avert our eyes away from the reality of ugliness that Sri Lanka has tumbled into.

Today, where Sinhalese Buddhist monks rallied the hatred of 2000 Sinhalese Buddhists against the faith of another, I find myself unable to falter.

I am faithless.

Of Protests and Introspection

Tuesday.

Protests. I am hesitant to weave through the crowds at Town Hall after work, but I am curious. Patriotic music echoes. Head aches. Black and white corporates assembled. Signage in English, a language that a fraction of the population speaks. Who are these signs intended for?

No War Crimes in Sri Lanka, Look Elsewhere

Don’t Be Mislead by Terrorists, Listen to the People

All Sri Lankans Hate Violence.

Help Sri Lankans Live As One Nation

They are mostly young. Women in sunglasses fan themselves, shading their faces from the evening sun. Men in ties tote corporate banners photographing. They link arms and grin for photo after photo. Amateur photographers armed with camera phones click. Pose. Click. Pose. Click. New profile pictures are buzzed off into cyberspace. Such amusement, it could have been a cricket match.  A confusion of slogans and Sri Lankan flags wrapped on their heads or shoulders as a sign of respect, perhaps?

A mockery of the three decades of life that was lost to the island unfolds. Its suffering reduced down to an ideological pissing contest between geopolitical overlords and Third World underlings. These puppets revel, they cry ‘NO to war crimes and NO to Western Conspiracies’. I wish I could ask them to define both.

Estimates of the war’s casualties range from 80,000-100,000. The numbers from its later phase remain hotly contested. Ranging from 40,000 as suggested by international observers to the government’s ever-fluctuating numbers between 0 – 1,400 – 3,500 – 5000. Perhaps, we will never know save for those of us who knew real loss then, of family or friends. Real people with names and faces, who were loved and mourned for.

In May 2009, when the government confirmed its military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) following months of intense fighting, it also left an estimated 300,000 civilians displaced. Housed in welfare camps, Sri Lanka‟s internally displaced population faced a devastating humanitarian crisis riddled with critical predicaments of nutrition and sanitation. According to the United Nations’ Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update as late as September 2011 (well over 2 years after the end of the armed conflict), 7534 internally displaced persons remained in camps waiting to return to their areas of origin, while 384, 401 people returned to the Northern Province (UNOCHA, 2011). A few thousand still remain suspended in the limbo of internal displacement. A bloodied past, a purgatorial present and an uncertain future.

They protest in vehement denial, so unabashed about their heritage, their pride, their arrogant patriotism. Sri Lankans, they roar! Yet I wonder what they have done to earn this glory besides hold up a placard, wrapping a flag around their heads and choosing sides in a game they have not even bothered to understand.

By denying the realities of the war they deny the existence, the humanity of those victims whose lives will forever be shaken in ways they cannot ever comprehend. They forget or ignore the uphill battle left in revising policy and discriminatory practices so deeply engrained in Sri Lanka’s social fabric. They deny thousands of fellow Sri Lankans equality of citizenship by decrying their tenuous present and horrific experiences are fictions concocted by the international humanitarian apparatus.

I wonder why such public gusto, such concern has not been channelled towards pressuring an internal mechanism for fostering reconciliation, to push through necessary policy documents that still stutter between ministries and attitudes towards inclusion, integration and the sustainable peace we as a nation owe to those civilians who fought and survived three decades of war.Not just those of us who were touched by a history of bleak news reports and the lurking fear of a bomb blast in the city, but those who have lost far too much for words or tears.

The LLRC even with its apologist contradictory wording and repetitive lip-service calls for changes that need speedy implementation. In the very words of the polemic resolution there exists,

‘.. The need to credibly investigate widespread allegations of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, demilitarize the north of Sri Lanka, implement impartial land dispute resolution mechanisms, re-evaluate detention policies, strengthen formerly independent civil institutions, reach a political settlement on the devolution of power to the provinces, promote and protect the right of freedom of expression for all and enact rule of law reforms..’

Are these protestors denying the existence of these realities and the interlinked need for changes? How many of them even bothered read the LLRC, or even this resolution they are so opposed to?

—

Thursday

The resolution passes and the sentiments pendulum between unapologetic apathy and ignorant rage. I am disgusted, as hate is spewed towards the United States and India. A cricketing rivalry with the latter turned vitriolic against its supportive stance on the resolution. India raised the LTTE, someone announces to cyberspace. Or perhaps it was such anger and ignorance directed at a section of our own people.

Implementation with technical assistance, the resolution calls. Sri Lanka is indignant, bitter, even. Its pissing contest against the galactic empire lost, even with the support of China’s rebel force.

The rage, the ignorance the horrific claims that clutter my virtual world sadden and disgust me as I see more protesters still uncertainly lurking at Town Hall.The conflation of anti-US sentiment with the purpose of the resolution thickens.

G.L Peiris states,

‘The most distressing feature of this experience is the obvious reality that voting at the Human Rights Council is now determined not by the merits of a particular issue but by strategic alliances and domestic political issues in other countries which have nothing to do with the subject matter of a Resolution or the best interests of the country to which the Resolution relates.  This is a cynical negation of the purposes for which the Human Rights Council was established.

Many countries which voted with Sri Lanka were acutely conscious of the danger of setting a precedent which enables ad hoc intervention by powerful countries in the internal affairs of other nations.  This is a highly selective and arbitrary process not governed by objective norms or criteria of any kind.  The implications of this were not lost on many countries.

As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, our policy in respect of all matters will continue to be guided by the vital interests and wellbeing of the people of our country.  It hardly requires emphasis that this cannot yield place to any other consideration.’

—

Perhaps what we as a Nation, should be concerned with instead is our grave need for introspection and realising what passive crimes occur each day through our own choice of ignorance, apathy and prejudice in the name of a misguided patriotism.

Knowing that I am not alone in my sentiments however, comforts me.

Perhaps there is hope? Perhaps.

Mind Your Language?

Remember that old British show from the 70s aired in Sri Lanka decades later, successfully sending adults and children of the 4-TV-channels-only-1990s-island into fits of laughter?

Marked by hilarity and all kind of politically incorrectness, the show thrived on the comedy of caricatured national and language stereotypes. For those unfamiliar with the show’s premise, it focused on the miscommunications and ensuing amusement in straight-laced Mr. Jeremy Brown’s English as a foreign language class. There were the kerfuffles that followed the quarrelsome Indian and Pakistani, the teasing coquette Francaise and a series of other parodied characters from Spain to China.

Funnily enough like most shows that egg laughs out of ethnic or national stereotypes (Outsourced,  The Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me), the show was probably funnier to the very people that were made fun of. Much like how desi jokes that make fun of brown people are so much funnier to other brown people (Outsourced,  The Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me, Russell Peters: I’m looking at all of you). This probably goes to show that we are indeed puppets of a devious colonial puppet-master ideology subscribing to complex theories of racial stereotypes, the colonisation of the mind and asymptotic mimicry as suggested by Homi Bhaba. That or optimistically, we possess the necessary ability to laugh at ourselves. You decide.

However, the truth is that while ex-coloniser audiences shift uncomfortably in their seats at race, nationality or accent related jokes in this post-politically-correct world (one assumes), the rest of us poor sods  giggle and hoot in agreement about Indian Standard Time, lecherous desi men (Rasmalaaaaiii) or many a mangled idioms coupled with brilliant comedic timing that the writers of Outsourced were particularly skilled in (cold chicken anyone?).

‘What’s to be did when the happen comes?’*

Even a rambling blog post could not possibly succeed in analyzing Sri Lanka’s language debate: highlighting the need for bilingualism, trilingualism, changes in state policy, society and beyond. Which is why, this is not ultimately a discussion on those particular politics, but rather a whole other social circus.

Having been raised in Colombo, I come from a fluidly trilingual house where English dominated and Tamil and Sinhala followed, a feature more common as a bilingual variant to many other people I know here. The grandchildren of a colonial hangover, we were taught the intricacies of Shakespeare, Eliot and Austen assisted by a turn of the century Longman’s English Grammar Book. Our language education was subject to particular thoroughness coupled with an overwhelming sentiment of shame attached to any mistakes or linguistic faux-pas- pronunciation in particular. Somehow, it was ingrained that mistakes were comparable to indelicate and ultimately unacceptable social blunders. So we grew up with vernacular English language skills, another generation of unwitting neo-colonised with elocuted enunciation and privy to quippy little Sri Lankanisms; like a series of private jokes about how we are so cleverly able to subvert the language of our colonisers. The blackguards!

Among friends and family, burgeoning in our tight little school girl cliques, our discussions flowed almost exclusively in English forging harmless, unmalicious boundaries in those years. The only point I am making with that statement is that it is just the way things were and I suppose, still are. Maybe it was different in other schools, or even for boys, but for us, I reiterate it was just the way things were.

So what does this mean in the grander scheme of things?

When I left Colombo to Britain 5 years ago, there was constant surprise. ‘HOW do you speak English so fluently ‘without an accent’ no less?’

The question, one that I find rather insulting, dogs me around at most introductions. ‘Your English is wonderful.’

Yes, it is. Because it is what I’ve always known, no different from you.

Upon returning to Colombo a few months ago, I begin to notice an even odder phenomenon. The assumption at most introductions that I cannot speak either local language, hand in hand with labels I don’t care to examine here.

The mushrooming of international schools and the popularity of English language education in Colombo (especially) has produced a generation of kids (and salespeople- I’m sorry but this is true) with dizzying accents. These young people have had little exposure to their mother tongues thanks to parents who are desperate to give their offspring a fighting chance in this doggy-dog world. Because English matters in the Sri Lankan job market. It really, really matters.

‘You can follow Sinhala right?’ I am often asked. Tamil is not even a question. I find this irksome, especially where assumptions are simply made with no questions or consultation. You can’t speak Sinhala, or worse, you think you are too good to speak Sinhala.

In these instances, I do not even bother to correct the typos on the labels that have already been pasted.

Much of my own serious education was in English, the language I am thus most comfortable in expressing my thoughts academically and otherwise; something, I do not feel the need to apologise for, particularly given the illogical disdain and labels I frequently encounter. Lately, I have been preoccupied with whether I am unintentionally disparaging people by either making them feel compelled to speak in a language they are uncomfortable with or worse not communicate at all? But truth is, despite my ability throw around an easy colloquialism in either local language, I am able to respond in whichever local language I am addressed in, and surely this is no inadvertent sin?

Language has been a hotly contested issue in Sri Lanka, encompassing decades of political debate and social discussion laying the foundations for inequality and prejudice within the ethnic conflict.

From education, employment and social relationships, language informs stereotypes, forging connections and sometimes-illogical prejudice.

However, when shades of the same language inspire such irrational divides, what hope do we have for achieving any form of cohesion beyond the ethnic issue?

Can we thus aspire to a cohesive bilingual or trilingual Sri Lanka?

* A line from an old Sri Lankan English snobbery joke. And yes, there are many.