Performance, Globalization and Conflict Promotion/Resolution: Experiences from Sri Lanka

Introduction

This analysis of theatre or performance initiatives in Sri Lanka accepts the definitions of culture and globalization offered in the Introduction to this volume, while seeking to extend the perspective that culture is constitutive of both collective and individual identity. Cultural action is performative in that it seeks to create a certain form of identity as much as it represents or constitutes it. Cultural performance in this context becomes as much aspirational as representational – seeking to bring about as much as announce certain inter-group or inter-communal relations. The performance projects discussed here are concerned with developing change in the conflict and are not only constitutive or the products of it.

History of a Conflict

Sri Lanka has experienced nearly 20 years of highly destructive civil unrest and violence.1 The country's previous history is one of conquest, colonial rule and the influence of competing global powers that have sought to exploit the wealth of its natural resources and its strategic position in the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Portuguese, Dutch and finally British rule can be broadly divided into equal 150-year blocks ending with independence from Britain in 1948. More recently, the country's post-independence non-alignment policies have been revoked as Sri Lanka positions itself within a global economy, heavily reliant on the garment industries, tourism and the labour of large numbers of emigrants in the Middle East2.

Sri Lanka is a country of approximately 20 million people, divided between Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims (also called Moors), Malays and Vedas. The Sinhalese are the largest national group (74 per cent) while the Tamils are the largest minority group, representing 18 per cent of the population. All the world's major religions are represented on the island, but Buddhism is the dominant religion and is linked particularly with the identity of the Sinhalese. The Tamils are predominantly Hindu, but the influence of Portuguese missionaries led to a substantial Tamil Catholic community, particularly in the coastal areas. In 1956 controversial legislation introduced Sinhala as the ‘only’ language of government partly as a response to the post-colonial dominance of English. This, however, started a process of marginalization and discrimination against the Tamil minority, which developed into armed militancy from the late 1970s after the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was banned from parliament after the 1977 election. After an attack on the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) in Jaffna in 1983, an anti-Tamil pogrom swept the capital, Colombo, killing and displacing many thousands of Tamil civilians. This led to the flight of many Tamils overseas (Canada, the UK and France were the major destinations) and proved a major stimulus to an underlying ‘armed struggle’. Many now mark 1983 as the start of the civil conflict that has continued to this day. Since then 70,000 people have lost their lives and many more have been displaced both within the country and internationally. Although at the beginning of the conflict the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) was fighting a number of armed [Page 297]Tamil militant groups, since the late 1980s the war has been dominated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The GOSL and the LTTE have now been locked in a 20-year battle, characterized as a struggle between those that want to maintain a unitary state and those proposing an island divided between a Sinhala Lanka and a Tamil Eelam (see Figure 24.1). Recent political negotiations have suggested a compromise might be found in a form of regional autonomy between the Tamil dominated north and East and the Sinhala dominated south, but a final settlement is far from close.

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