Summary
Sri Lanka and Tibet are both involved in separatist movements. The Sri Lankan Hindu Tamils are violently fighting for Tamil edam's independence form Sinhalese Buddhist dominance. Tibetans are engaged in nonviolent protest against the Chinese occupation. Sri Lankans and Tibetans are both at the receiving end of economic development policies that have increased their impoverished situations. Other factors such as language and religious policies have also contributed to the political unrest.
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Extract
Economic Liberalization and Separatist Nationalism: The Cases of Sri Lanka and Tibet.
Overview
At the poles of South Asia, the Sri Lankan state and the Chinese state in occupied Tibet are enmeshed in separatist movements.(1) The character and setting of those movements, however, are significantly different. Hindu Tamils violently fight for Tamil edam (independence) from Sinhalese Buddhist dominance and oppression in the island country; Buddhist Tibetans nonviolently (primarily) protest Chinese occupation of the landlocked, Himalayan-bound country with a goal of regained Po (Tibet) rangzen (independence). Sri Lanka, a former imperial British colony; and Tibet, now colonized by China, exhibit the broad contextual variance in which separatist nationalism arises. Such nationalism, perhaps, has as many causes as there are cases. The cases studied here, however, exhibit some important common causal features. In particular, the Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils have been on the receiving end of economic development policies that exacerbate their impoverished situations and ignore their demands. In a comparative look at the violent conflicts in Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia, Sumantra Bose argues that in contravention to the notion that ethnic differences have led to civil war, responsibility lies generally in state policies that magnify and exacerbate those ethnic differences. Responsibility, therefore, lies in the hands of political elites.(2) Supporting this thesis, this article looks at the extent to which economic development policies of the state--particularly the policy of economic liberalization--are determinants of separatist nationalism. In both Sri Lanka and Tibet, the state has promoted economic development schemes that aim to achieve a unified nation-state that presupposes the acquiescence of minority populations. By comparing Sri Lanka and Tibet, this article also intends to draw lessons from the former case that may be applicable to the latter. In particular, it attempts to lay out a rationale for why China may wish to reconsider its economic policies and devise a political solution for the Tibetan situation. This article does not propose that economic development policies are the sole or even the main state policies that have fueled ethnic divides. Indeed, numerous scholars of Sri Lanka have pointed to a series of Sinhala-biased education, government employment, language and religious policies as multiple sources of the ethnic unrest. As for Tibet, its pre-1951 status of de facto independence offers a straight forward reason for the existence of Tibetan separatist nationalism. Bluntly, Tibetans want their country back. Yet an understanding of separatism and broader state-society relations would be incomplete without a critical look at economic policies. Development policies have had daily positive and negative impacts on the lives of all members of society, and such impacts have shaped the Tamil and Tibetan societies' views of the state. In Sri Lanka, civil war has erupted and persisted. In Tibet, signs of a return to violent resistance are appearing.(3) A broader understanding of the state's economic development policy is also critical because in Tibet the state has recently proposed accelerated economic liberalization policies as the solution to separatist nationalism. This plan may be seriously misleading, since in reality liberalization may tend to propel separatism into a more violent movement. Ethnic Differences in Sri Lanka and Tibet Despite significant reason...See the full content of this document
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