How me making a friend in Sri Lanka connects to British colonialism

We travelled the whole country and everywhere we went we were in close proximity to a friend of his. We drank tea with a man who lives in a shelter on a wrecking yard. He owned a tiny tv on which he watched cricket and we talked about the game, and we talked about cars, and I have knowledge of neither topic, but my friend made it look like I have. Our friendship didn’t extend to anyone else. One day, he stopped the car at a parking lot, and I got introduced to an elephant meanwhile, four young men robbed my companionship. Later on, when I asked him about it, he got weirdly embarrassed. It’s a shy laugh that excuses everything. We just finished breakfast at a friend’s house of my friend, and we sat on a base of what might have been a house once, routinely sharing my cigarettes. When he talked to his friends, my friend always made up stories about who I am and what I do. He never asked me who I really am, and in return, I never asked him.

The destabilising effect of the colonial legacy in Sri Lanka

The world my friend showed me is the exact opposite of my driver’s world. Their worlds are decisive for both of them, and somehow, the rules apply to me even though I don’t understand them. Their roles have been assigned to them long before they were born. As part of the British Commonwealth, the Tamils were put into administrative positions by the British, because they were the most literate group. After independence, Sri Lanka became a quite stable democracy. Shivaji Mukherjee, a researcher who is studying the legacy of colonial indirect rule shows, that where the British used indirect rule, the resulting ethnic inequalities are very persistent and moreover, created the structural conditions for later insurgencies. In combination with a weak state apparatus resulting from the colonial system, this can be easily exploited by insurgent groups. Exactly this is what happened in Sri Lanka. The country experienced a civil war between 1983 and 2009, when the biggest minority group, the Tamils, fought the Sinhalese majority. The Sinhalese identified the Tamils with the colonial power and wanted to eliminate their lead in power, up to a point, where they wanted to prohibit the use of the Tamil language. Julian Wucherpfennig and his colleagues at ETH Zürich show, that the exclusion of groups from the government destabilises a country, which again, is exactly what happened in Sri Lanka.

How do we "fix" colonial partitioning?

In my opinion, there is almost nothing a shared cup of tea, a game of cricket or a cigarette cannot fix. But this is the point of view of a frankly naïve person too: in an ideal world, we all become friends and don’t mind the deeply rooted structural differences between us. Indeed, had my driver asked what I am interested in, we might have discovered together, that my interests do not involve gambling. One could say that his perception of the West hindered him to get to know me as an individual person. I do believe though, that prejudices and the consequences of a civil war of 26-years are two different pair of shoes. I do not see my friend and my driver share a cup of tea together, because the civil war has created a situation where no one is left without any losses or remorse. Therefore, in practical terms, sometimes, the best thing to do is not to ask.

Which other factors could create conflict?

I believe that exclusive governmental structures, the colonial legacy of indirect rule, and factors such as ethnic and religious fractionalisation are important elements in accounting for the outbreak of civil war, but before the civil war, back in the 1970s, another striking factor was the high unemployment rate. During my travel, I observed that almost all my friend’s friends are unemployed. This is worrying since a high unemployment rate can be seen as a structural factor that creates the opportunity for insurgent groups to form. In fact, Anke Hoeffler and Paul Collier have argued, that ethnic or religious fractionalization do not per se have a substantial effect on the outbreak of civil war. Remember, Sri Lanka was one of the few countries of the non-alignment movement that immediately had a stable democracy after independence, yet it did not last. Making a prognosis whether civil war breaks out or not in a country is difficult, because the outbreak is determined by a combination of various factors.

How to stabilise a country?

One could deduct, that if the exclusion of minority groups causes conflict, then including minority groups could prevent it. I doubt the practical usefulness of inclusive political institutions to the persons I’ve met, and I think that in this case, inclusive politics might even spur conflict, because poverty gives vent to ethnic hatred. First, we should be promoting wealth by means of conditional aid, which is directed towards setting up institutions. Fiscal institutions could give out cheap loans, economic institutions could be set up by moving international offices to Sri Lanka, and lastly but most importantly, the public education system must be reformed. Only then, it is time to set up inclusive political institutions.