Interview:
Prof Sasanka Perera
Thinking Like a South
Asian[i]
Prof
Sasanka Perera heads the Sociology Department of the South Asia University in
Delhi. In this wide ranging interview, he discusses every-day possible meanings
of South Asia, reasons for remarkably high human development indicators in Sri
Lanka, and the status of educational institutions, caste, class organizations,
right-wing politics and misogyny in the country.
Critique: The idea of South Asia emerged first
in US regional studies during the Cold War. Later, there have been state-led
efforts like SAARC, which are about economic and state institutional level
engagement. What does South Asia mean to an ordinary person living in this part
of the world? In that context, what would be the meaning of ‘Seeing like A
South Asian’, which is the title of a chapter in your recent book?
Prof Sasanka Perera: It depends on what ordinary person
you talk to. I am not willing to throw away this technical idea of South Asia
that came from the US state in the 1960s. We were not creative enough, and
those guys did it for their own reasons, but there is some kind of a political
identity called ‘South Asia’.
However, it is not necessarily on that
basis that a lot of people look at South Asia. I’m right now working on
Buddhist pilgrimage from Sri Lanka to India. They have a kind of pre-partition
ancient idea of South Asia. The word the Sinhalese use for coming to the
Buddhist sites is ‘going to jambudwipaa’. That is an old word for
undivided India. For them, it is places in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and Lumbini
in Nepal, which they think Buddha had trekked. So, for them, when they come to
India for pilgrimages to these two states and Nepal, they are not coming to
India. They are coming to a very ancient place. Our otherwise very restrictive
visa regimes become flexible here. Particularly, Indians are very fussy about
these things. But not when it comes to pilgrimage. For example, none of these people
go to the Embassy to get their visa. Some agents would go and get it. And when
they come, they would bring food, coconuts, rice and everything. And you are
not supposed to let uncooked food come into the country, because these are
quarantined. But they all come in, and everybody sees it. Nothing happens. So,
they don’t effectively cross international borders as we understand it. To me,
that is a particular idea of South Asia. The older version which still lingers
on in particular kinds of discourses – including discourses that states
actually control. So, if you ask these people, they will not be able to explain
it. But if you listen to them long enough, you’ll get a sense of South Asia
that used to exist, and in a way still exists.
Another example; India through
Bollywood is not a very strange place in Sri Lanka. There was a political
leader, who had gone to protest outside the Indian Embassy some years ago. When
I was trying to interview him, he said “Fine. But I have to go in the evening
to watch this film.” And it happened to be a Hindi film. So he makes a very
clear distinction between the regime and culture. So now, for these people,
that is also a kind of an idea of South Asia where the state is dismissed, the
regimes are dismissed, culture is the key, and it is not an accident that Hindi
movies are very popular in a country where nobody speaks Hindi. But when it
comes to politics, an average Sri Lankan is very hostile to India.
However, this doesn’t extend all the
way to Pakistan. It doesn’t extend certainly to Afghanistan because it doesn’t
have any historical memory. All these pilgrims are also very anti-Muslim, which
I recently learnt after travelling with one group of them. They come all the
way to Agra. They don’t get down at Taj Mahal. They stay in the bus. They say
“This is Taj Mahal. This was built by the people who burnt down Nalanda.” Every
guide tells them “30% of the funds collected go to Muslim organizations all
over the world.” This is bullshit! I don’t know where this has come from. The
only way you can explain it is that at one level you go on this pilgrimage
tracing an older sense of South Asia or an older cartography of South Asia, but
when you come to Agra, you are right at the present. And that present is also
the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric that you see in India, or in Sri Lanka.
I don’t want to get stuck in the formal
idea of South Asia. I am looking at how it manifests in different kinds of
moments in different places. Look at contemporary artists – contemporary
artists working in the Delhi-based organization, Khoj. There is a very similar
one in Pakistan called Vasl in Karachi; in Sri Lanka, there is one called Theertha;
in Dhaka, there is something called the Britto Arts Trust. All these four
organizations emerged in the 1980s responding to contemporary situations in
terms of visual arts. So these guys were very active politically. They also
have a sense of South Asia. They try to bring people from different countries –
the countries that are formally understood as South Asia but mostly these four
countries. They deal with South Asia, by doing artworks that the state systems
and international borders cannot stop. For example, there was an art initiative
between Mumbai and Karachi called Aar Paar soon after the Kargil war, and then
again after the Gujarat violence. They were trying to use digital imagery to
kind of create artworks that were done on this part of the border and exhibited
on the other side, and vice-versa. So that also created a certain sense of
crossing borders without really crossing. Ideas were crossing. And in this kind
of time, that sort of thing is fairly important too. So, it depends on whom you
talk to.
C: Going back in history to the colonial
period. Were things slightly different in terms of, let’s say, elite
interrelationships?
SP: Absolutely. Travel was much easier.
Even in the 1970s, when I was in grade 5, you could buy a train ticket from
Colombo to Delhi. In the colonial period, you didn’t even need a visa. I would
say, up to the 1960s, the cultural elite – both the Sinhalese and the Tamils – did
come to schools in India at Mussoorie and Shimla. I have met people who have
studied here. Then, if you look at older Marxist political formations in Sri
Lanka like the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) established in 1935, this was a
Trotskyist outfit. They played an important role in the independence struggle.
They were exiled during the colonial period and then they came to India and
amalgamated themselves with the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India which then
became Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma. Those Marxist leaders as well as people like
the Bhandaranayakas had a very close relationship with all these political
elites in the region.
C: A very interesting fact about Sri
Lanka is that it is doing so well on Human Development Indicators. When it
comes to HDI in South Asia, most of the countries are ranked in 130s, 140s
rank, but Sri Lanka is somewhere in the 70s, a big difference! What was the
politics of it? What was the state’s role there?
SP: Around the thirties, the Sinhalese
government made this decision that education for people must be free. That
time, we had dominion status under British and had a Sinhalese Cabinet. I think
all your questions have to be answered from that perspective. Free education
meant from grade zero to the university. So I haven’t paid anything right up to
the end of [my] undergraduate education. Once that decision was made, they also
brought people from the rural areas to the schools, because major schools were
only in the cities. Whoever did well were brought into these schools. They were
taught in English and made ready for universities and professions. And this was
all free. As a result, people could go to universities and enter various
professions. Our education system is state-run. Because of this high literacy,
both the government as well as other entities have been able to train people in
a range of things from sanitation to professions. Also, it has been easy to
diminish the gender-gap compared to other countries in South Asia.
C: What was the politics of that group?
Normally, it would be left-oriented politics which would talk about spreading
literacy and empowerment.
SP: In Sri Lanka, in the 1930s, this
government was not a left-leaning party. In the seventies it was. The left
parties got into the government since about the 1970s. In addition to literacy,
land reform and other things were a part of their agenda which they managed to
push through the government itself by the seventies. And that was a major achievement,
I’d say. Some of these policies did not start as a left kind of thing. They
would start as some kind of common sense, some kind of a liberal
sentiment. I’d say it’s also a kind of
Buddhist sensibility, “This is their karma but we have to try and help them.”
Land reforms were talked about before the 1970s, but it was the left party that
actually pushed it when with Mrs Bhandaranayake, they formed the government.
Even though that government collapsed very soon, the policies still remain. The
other thing people often miss is the scale of things. Sri Lanka is a very small
country. So, if a decision is made and if people are serious about it, it is
actually much easier to implement than much more complicated and bigger
countries like India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. So, I think the scale and
literacy explains quite a lot.
Now, in the last 20 years, there has
been this crude liberalisation where some of these things have been dropped. So
land reforms is no longer an issue. People can own whatever land they want. So,
in a way, it’s a reversal.
C: In India, Congress didn’t implement
that kind of policy at all. You mentioned Buddhism might have played a role.
Or, was it because caste is much stronger in India? Could it be the case that
in Sri Lanka they could understand Sri Lankan society as a whole?
SP: When it comes to national level
thinking, caste was never an issue. So, you think in terms of either you’re a
Sinhala or a Tamil, or whatever. Caste will only be an issue – and, certainly,
now – at very private things like marriage. Our former President Premdasa came
from the lowest caste. It was a direct vote, so all sorts of people voted for
him. Now, his son is contesting. So, again, caste is not an issue. I don’t know
whether your present President can contest for the Prime Ministerial position
with his caste baggage and win.
We do have a caste system, and Buddhism
actually embraces it. I don’t see any caste violence you see in India on a
day-to-day basis in any part of Sri Lanka. It doesn’t mean that when it comes
to marriage, they would not look at it. They would. But not in most other
cases.
C: In India we are seeing many instances
of attacks on universities as spaces for discussion, debate and dialogue, be it
JNU, Ramjas College, Jadavpur University or Hyderabad University. What is the condition
of academic space in Sri Lanka?
SP: The short answer to your question is
that we are far less free than your present system, but the difference is that
our downfall probably started much earlier than yours. Partly, it is because of
the same system of appointing the leaders of universities as is in India – they
are appointed by the President. Universities are compromised in the appointment
of Vice-Chancellors. That is similar to what you’re going through. The difference
is because you people recruit people with PhDs or at least Master’s Degree, we
recruit with a Bachelor’s Degree. So, as I said, scale can be good for many
things, it can also be bad for many things. When it comes to this, it’s very
easy to control people. The kind of protests you see in JNU, you are not likely
to see in Sri Lanka.
C: What is the medium of undergraduate
instruction? Is it a local language or English?
SP: Sinhala and Tamil.
C: In India, English language puts you
in a different level of cultural capital. How is it in Sri Lanka undergraduate
education is in local languages?
SP: It is. It’s probably more pronounced.
Because, unlike in India, the number of people who are competent in English is
probably less. If you’re a Sinhala, you’ll be taught in Sinhalese by law. So,
in the school, it will be Sinhala or Tamil. In undergraduate, it will be
Sinhala or Tamil, except the Sciences, medicine, or engineering. In Masters and
also PhD, in some universities, it is all in Tamil or Sinhala. And the access
to the world for these people is unfortunately very limited.
C What about the bureaucratic work in
the Sri Lankan government? Is it mainly in Sinhalese?
SP: It is. Officially, it’s a state
language. The government gazette is first published in Sinhala, and then in
English and Tamil. The judiciary is supposed to work in Sinhala in the Sinhala
speaking areas and in Tamil in the Tamil speaking areas.
C What about the engagement between
Sinhalese and Tamils? Do they engage with each other?
SP: No, they can’t. Why do you think we
had a war? I think we are more knowledgeable as a country through the
translations of the literature of the world than the literature of our own
neighbours – like the Tamil speaking people. In the sixties, there were people on
the left, particularly of the Communist Party of Ceylon, who translated epics
of Sinhala literature, short stories and so on, into Tamil. So, in the sixties,
there was some knowledge about it. Then, all of this stopped when these people
died. And, it’s only now that it is starting again. There’s a Tamil poet –
Jaipal, who is very well known in South India too. His poetry has been
translated into Sinhala with an introduction to his life and politics. One of
my former students has now written a book on the major metaphors of Tamil
cinema in Sri Lanka, in Sinhala. So that kind of cultural knowledge about the
other is only coming out very recently.
See, it’s like this. If you come to the
labour force, most Tamil labourers will probably be able to speak Sinhala too.
It doesn’t work the other way round. So, the average Sinhala worker will not be
able to speak Tamil. All my colleagues who are Tamil speak Sinhala, but I don’t
speak Tamil. I think it comes with a certain kind of arrogance. Also, there’s
no real necessity for you to learn Tamil.
C: One of the things we are seeing is the
rise of the right wing. It is a worldwide phenomenon but with distinct local
features.
SP: Precisely, I think it’s both global
and regional. So, people probably see Narendra Modi as a kind of a Hindu
version of what they want to create. A Buddhist monk very recently said – you
have to be like Hitler. I got so irritated, that I wrote a one-page thing in a
national daily saying these people neither know Buddhism nor world history. For
a few months I was attacked, like what happens here. Hitler was always a hero in SL. Even in the
1930s, the Sinhala nationalist groups found him a hero, because of these
misunderstood Aryan connections. Sinhalese think they are Aryans. But now it is
all about order, beautification of cities, good roads, etc. which you hear here
as well.
Much of that authoritarianism is also
couched in Buddhist rhetoric – to protect Buddhism you need this kind of
person, to protect the country you need this kind of person, and there is a lot
of violence, very overtly campaigned for and justified for this Buddhist cause.
C: Coming to class politics, how strong
are trade unions in SL? We remember even President Premadasa was shot dead
during a May Day rally.
SP: That happens every year. It’s a
public holiday. But that doesn’t necessarily say much about the organizational
ability of trade unions. Every political party has their own trade union. There
are trade unions in factories and offices, plus in universities, the student
unions and the teachers unions. Now the kind of mobilizational power trade
unions had in the 1950s and even in the eighties, that they do not have.
Certainly not with the students’ union. Teachers union in Colombo University
for example had become defunct by the 1990s. Well there were no issues, that’s
the problem. Then, I was asked to revive it, which I did. And that union is the
one that took the pervious Rajapaksa government head on and struck for months. It
actually worked.
So I would say teachers unions do have
power if they want to exert themselves, but they usually don’t. But it is also
dangerous because two vice chancellors have been sacked by the President over
the last three months, one in University of Jaffna, one in University of Performing
Arts in Colombo. And without any explanation, no charge sheet, nothing, just
overnight. Rustom Barucha has written about it, he’s from here. I have written
about it, I am no longer in that system. No teachers union from any of our 13
universities have taken it up at all. This answers your question again – that
people are just not interested. Because this could happen to anybody.
C: What about the bourgeois class? In
India you do find now a very self-conscious bourgeoisie, not only economic
policy wise they are well organized, but they have their think tanks and
influence the government directly. Is it same in SL?
SP: No I wouldn’t say so. Certainly there
are no think tanks. But I do see proponents of bourgeois policies, neoliberal
policies coming on English television and talking about it. You know the Surjit
Bhalla kind of people, we have quite a lot of them. There is a public discourse
that is anti-labour, anti-regulation. Those kinds of things you do see being
discussed in English. I’m not sure whether they have the guts to discuss this
in Sinhala. What you hear in Sinhala is the more leftist, social welfareist
rhetoric; both from the left and the right. You need to. It’s about elections
also. This is a literate electorate, even though they vote for the wrong people
most of the time. But they do understand these statements.
C: So there’s nobody like the parallel
of Ambanis, Adanis, the kind of household names which you hear in India.
SP: We have a miniscule industrial base, but
that kind of richness you can’t imagine in SL.
C: What is the status of the reconciliation
of Tamils after the civil war?
SP: You had a war in which there was a
very disastrous end. Now, if you go on celebrating that every year in a very
obnoxious kind of fashion, then how do you have reconciliation? The VC of the Univ.
of Jaffna, which is in the north was sacked among other things for national
security concerns. The moment you hear national security concerns, one has to
be very suspicious. Only thing he has done is attend Tamil nationalist kind of
events organized by students, and one of these Tamil cultural pride monuments the
university has set up.
Reconciliation will happen if you
merely allow for Tamil people to think of their culture fairly independently,
rather than as a shadow under Sinhala cultural hegemony.
Also what the government should do is
encourage something that cuts across the divide, but that is not happening. Lot
of cultural programs were done by the government, very popular, brought
musicians from India, etc. But then it was called Utturu Vasantha, Northern
Spring in Sinhalese. How do you do a reconciliation with a cultural program in
northern SL where 99% people speak Tamil and you call it by a Sinhalese name?
C: We also wanted to know a little about
the levels of misogyny. You’ve lived in Delhi for a while where misogyny is
quite obvious in everyday life. How do you find it in Colombo?
SP: Personally, I really haven’t seen it
in the way I have seen it here. But whenever I speak to my colleagues, female
friends and so on, their experience is exactly the opposite. Like, sexual
harassment in workplaces, in public transport and so on. So I take their word
for what it is. The difference is that the kind of justifications you see from
mainstream politicians here, that I don’t see. So misogyny, or even gender
based violence is not something that you will legitimize.
C: So, in Colombo, for instance, can young
working women travel late at nights?
SP: No. You might have problems. But I
haven’t heard of rape as something that you hear in Delhi.
C: We want to bring it back to the more positive
sort of South Asian collaborations that are possible. What are the kind of
institutions, in the very broad sense of the term, that you think can actually
encourage collaborations?
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Image Courtesy: South Asia University
Gallery |
The other area that we haven’t really
tapped is the academia. It has not really been made use of because there is no
consciousness of South Asia in the academia. We don’t really organise these
cross-cutting conferences even though we have many common themes; ethnicity, violence,
gender-based violence, etc. All these things matter to all of us. But we look
at it from a very parochial national point of view.
Because of the nature of South Asia
University, it has become slightly better in our Sociology department. We
organised this conference in Colombo on humour and politics. Most participants
came from Delhi and Mumbai and parts of Assam, and then from Sri Lanka. It was
possible also because we tapped certain kind of state sources like the India
Sri Lanka Foundation, in Delhi and Colombo. But we did not do it with a
university because of all this nonsensical red-tape.
Like what you’re trying to do with your
magazine. It’s not because of the university; it’s personal investment of time
and money.
C: Do you also think that at a space like
the South Asia University, students actually interact. You go to the US, you
suddenly realise there are Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and Nepalese, and that
can be thought of as South Asian. Whereas in India, we don’t get that sense.
SP: That’s true. My students had not met
somebody from any other country until they came here. And for them, 50% of
students from other countries is quite a challenge. The policy is to have
roommates from three different countries in each room. That has not always
worked. Because they have disagreements, we have to shift around. Problems also
arise because of non-vegetarian food in the kitchen.
And some right-wing students have
brought ex-military people to speak. I was under a lot of pressure from my
Marxist students to stop it. So I said, “I’m not going to stop them. But it’s up
to you to organize a counter-programme”. I also told them, “You go and ask them
uncomfortable questions.” And they did. Most of the student protestors here come
from sociology department than from anywhere else. So that is another complaint
that the administration has. The University President once asked me, “What is
this? Your failure?” I told him, “It’s not my failure. It’s my success.”
[1] Against the Nation, Thinking Like South
Asians,
Sasanka Perera, Dev Nath Pathak, Ravi Kumar, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.