Thursday, March 8, 2012

What is Sri-Lanka's point of view about Muslims being treated unfairly in India?

It is difficult to gauge Sri Lanka's position on the
Hindu-Muslim challenges in India is because Sri Lanka itself is so politically
unstable.  In order for one nation to make an effective statement about another, there
has to be some level of domestic stability and footing that can allow such a statement
to be taken seriously.  Sri Lanka's battles between the Sinhalese majority and the
Tamilian minority makes it really unable to articulate a statement about any other
nations' internal challenges.  The feverish pitch of nationalism is one that makes
comment about other nations' predicaments nearly
impossible:


Perhaps the politics of ethnic hatred
and exclusion and extermination in modern times carries a potent hierarchical force. But
in Sri Lanka this potential gathered much energy through the mythologies of nationalist
rhetoric as this found a degree of acceptance in everyday religious and ritual
practices. In other words, a nationalist argument of hierarchy—that the Tamil others
should exist in a generally subordinate relation to Sinhala—was more evident given the
nature of the mythological sources of Sinhala nationalism. The ethnic violence during
the rioting in 1983, as well as the violence of the ensuing war involving attacks on
Tamil civilian populations, often took a marked hierarchical form. Incidents were
recorded of victims being forced to submit their bodies after the manner of Tamil
victims before Sinhala heroes of the past. Some of the fury of the destruction, the
radical disordering, often dismemberment of victims and fragmentation of their
possessions, carried the disordering passion of a ritual process restructuring of person
and world. In many respects the direction of the ethnic war as it developed in terms of
strategy and in the control and occupation of territory assumed symbolic values
appropriate to the nationalist mythologies that gave it
impetus.

While India does have its challenges with
the Muslim population, I don't think it approaches the level seen in the past in Sri
lanka.  Even the conflict with the Jammu-Kashmir territory, it is not to the level where
terms like "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" can be applied as it can be in Sri Lanka. 
This makes the Lankan position of comment on Indian affairs fairly difficult to
substantiate.

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