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| Sunday, 21 July 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Media and the North-East polity Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Benedict Anderson provided a deep insight into the makings of nationalism with his concept of print capitalism and the role the so-called 'national' press (not just the news media, but also book publishing) played in imposing a homogenised community identity on the overall society existing within the boundaries of a 'nation-state'. Anderson's conception, however, was inevitably guided by the specificities of his social subject of study: the recent political evolution of European society.
The national press in this country originally performed its Andersonian function a little too precisely according to the specific cultural contours of our society: it has helped along with a European-imposed political system based on voting majorities-produce not one homogenised 'nation' but at least two linguistic nationhoods. Meanwhile, the elite that controlled the press industry failed to impose its own class-based, seemingly non-'cultural' conception of a unified Sri Lankan nationhood; a conception that, as one local political scientist once so wishfully (and naively) hoped, would 'subsume' ethnicity in some (vague) secularised, sanitized larger national identity. That identity is itself merely the cultural identity of the Westernised, urban elite. All that, today, is a lot of water (and bodies) that has flowed under the bridge. The national media has come a long way since those late colonial and early post-colonial decades. Mass media today No longer simply a 'print' media, the national mass media today shows some fascinating possibilities of plurality as well as an ideologically coercive communicational hegemony.
On the one hand, the mass media today has all the potential to enable a plurality of social communications, of community expressions, while on the other it is already nurturing a rich inter-action and fusing of cultures and community identities. When 'Swarna Oli' radio or 'Sooriyan FM' disc jockeys play Sinhala baila (still only very occasionally) at popular request, while 'Sha FM' or 'Hiru' jockeys play (also very occasionally) requests for A. R. Rahman hits, and as TV channels almost daily telecast Tamil movies with Sinhala subtitles, one imagines (a la Anderson) a vast combined Sinhala-Tamil (Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim-Christian) audience swaying to the music and collectively thrilling to the drama. Less influential but equally interesting has been the recent advertising propaganda by a section of big business which belatedly supported the peace process last year with their creative 'Sri Lanka First' slogan printed in a composite of Sinhala, Tamil and English words. Long before that, however, we had some women's glossies as well as the brave little 'Kandy News' hillcountry tabloid carrying a mix of Sinhala and English language articles. But the mass media has a third, most significant dimension of hegemony, both in terms of its ownership and control as well in terms of its basic communicational structure. In ownership terms, the media, especially under capitalism, is almost entirely controlled by the capitalist class and Sri Lanka is no exception whether it is the private media or the state-owned segment. Meanwhile, in terms of the indirect inflow of audience response, the mass of people that comprise an audience and market of a given media organisation (such as a radio channel or newspaper) moulds the content of that organisation's product in a way that is representative of the socio-cultural identity of that mass. That is why, in the century or so of print-based media domination, the Sri Lankan media was involved in a process that helped create at least two broad community identities based on linguistic communities. And the hegemonic tendencies of the Sri Lankan media, then added its weight to the imbalance in power between these two communities, thereby contributing to, if not exacerbating, the ethnic conflict. Since ownership of the media is the elite whose interests are closely tied with the State, and since the bulk of the media ownership was concentrated in the hands of either Sinhala elements of the elite or was controlled by the Sinhala dominated State, the media has been biased in favour of the majority community and the continued hegemony of the majority community from the inception of the Sri Lankan nation-state. The few major studies of the Sri Lankan mass media extant today tend to agree on this in various ways, or at least point to this conclusion. Nevertheless, there has always been that dissenting element in the North and, in a very small form, in the East. Jaffna has had a tradition of regularly published newspapers and magazines for more than a century. Today there are three already publishing and more are expected in the context of the current political developments. The Tamil mass media, even the Colombo-centred one, has helped build up a distinct 'Tamil' community identity and, facilitated the growth of Tamil nationalism and even secessionism. Since substantial sections of the mainstream Tamil news media were either part of Sinhala-owned business groups or belonged to elite Tamil groups that were part of the ruling capitalist class with its State-centric orientation, even if these Tamil media organs contributed to the formation of a Tamil national identity, there were, and are, constraints on their ability to project an explicit Tamil nationalism or secessionism. That role was performed by either Jaffna-based journals, underground journals or overseas journals (and more recently, radio and TV) that were set up by sections of the Tamil diaspora. That media is now effusively celebrating the current Cease-fire arrangement as a harbinger for a future Tamil nationhood. It would be interesting to study the content of this media output in terms of its precise definition of 'nationhood'. This writer suspects that 'nationhood' as Thamileelam no longer bears or, is not allowed to bear, the same connotations of an explicit secession and totally separate statehood that were to be seen in the original Sri Lankan Eelamist discourse. But that is another debate. Right now, some form of polity is in the making in the North-East. The details of its form remain vague unfortunately due to the inability of one party to the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, the Sri Lankan State, to build the required internal political consensus to engage in the defining of that polity. Even the 'interim council' that has been bandied about remains a mere suggestion. Meanwhile the other party, the LTTE holds sway over a part of the North-East and is busy exploiting the political hiatus in the peace process to expand its power over as much territory and population as it can legitimately do so within the parameters of the Agreement. The LTTE's project in the North-East has been the establishment of its power on the basis of self-rule for what it calls the 'Tamil-speaking people" in this region. It includes the Muslims in this definition. In recent months, however, the LTTE seems to be coming round towards recognising the reality that virtually all Muslim organisations throughout the country and especially in the North-East reject this inclusive categorisation and have insisted that they are distinct from the Tamil community. The LTTE has, to date, never formally included the Sinhala population in the North-East as part of its conception of a political community in the North-East. Today, however, given its desire to regain respectability and legitimacy, the LTTE seems to be moving towards a new approach to the non-Tamil communities in the North-East. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan State's inability to proceed with a political settlement had prompted the LTTE to begin to deal directly with the leaderships of various communities and interest groups in the country. The LTTE negotiations with the Muslim leaderships have already gone a considerable distance. The plurality of Muslim political groups and the inability of either the SLMC or the other national parties to command the loyalty of Eastern Muslims leaves the way open for the LTTE to deal directly with new leaderships emerging in the Muslim East. While some of its units in the East currently seem to toy with new ethnic cleansing tactics, Mallavi will do well to curb this adventurism and evolve a constructive strategy to deal with and absorb the Muslims into the broad conception of its North-East project. Prabhakaran and his associates face the same challenge with the Sinhalas in the region as well. While a re-demarcation of boundaries, especially in the East is certainly on the cards and the LTTE must realise that it cannot toy with fantasies of a 'Greater Eelam', there is every possibility that, given the right persuasion and equitable structures, even some Sinhala settlements may be incorporated into the emerging North-East polity. That the LTTE is thinking out its long term strategy with such persuasion in mind is clear from reports that it plans its own Sinhala language radio and print organs. This new step by the LTTE is causing a small spurt in the Sri Lankan media firmament. The challenge The dominant, Southern-based Sri Lankan mass media faces the challenge of evolving a new attitude toward developments on the ethnic front a more sophisticated, realistic approach to the emerging North-East polity. Till then, however, the LTTE and other Tamil groups seem set to take the initiative in 'persuasion'. This new element in the Sri Lankan media may seem positive in that it would add slightly to diversify the centres of social communicational power. But the diversification is only slight. It is true that a new English language journal, the 'Northeastern Herald' is about to be launched which will be independent of the LTTE at least in its ownership and administration. This may be an effort to redefine the contours of Tamil self-rule aspiration to inject a more pluralistic and democratic flavour to something which today is soured by the authoritarianism of the LTTE. Many other Northern and Eastern media initiatives ranging from the Sudaroli to the Tamilnet.com internet website also began as 'independent' media initiatives. But before long, the practicalities of the LTTE's hegemonistic politics simply compelled these organs to gradually bring their communicational content and strategy within certain parameters laid down by the Tigers. The twists and turns of Sri Lankan politics may have inspired a voluntary element in this policy shift as well. The Tamil media organs that are independent of the mainstream Sri Lankan media seem set to forge ahead in the projection of Tamil nationhood and self-rule, if not outright secession. That they are keenly aware of their ethnic neighbours on this island and want to reach out to them can be seen by the new media initiatives. The challenge for this new media front is to avoid the same errors perpetrated by the old Sri Lankan mass media in its ethnic exclusivism and statist bias. Otherwise, history could easily repeat itself. The media business, of course, will thrive as it 'covers' that repetition. |
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