Ambivalence, Contingency and the Failure of Exclusion: the Ontological Schema of the 1972 Constitution of the Republic of Sri Lanka
| Date | 01 September 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399600500305 |
| Author | Roshan De Silva Wijeyeratne |
| Published date | 01 September 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
AMBIVALENCE, CONTINGENCY
AND
THE FAILURE OF
EXCLUSION: THE
ONTOLOGICAL SCHEMA OF
THE 1972 CONSTITUTION OF
THE REPUBLIC OF SRI LANKA
ROSHAN DE
SILVA WIJEYERATNE
University of Kent
[F]or some of us the principle of indeterminism is what makes the conscious
freedom of man fathomable... (Derrida, 1984: 8)
... contingency as the signifying time of counter-hegemonic strategies is not a
celebration of ’lack’ or ’excess’ or a self-perpetuating series of negative ontolo-
gies. Such ’indeterminism’ is the mark of the conflictual yet productive space in
which the arbitrariness of the sign of cultural signification emerges within the
regulated boundaries of social discourse. (Bhabha, 1994: 171-2)
RI
LANKA
(or Ceylon until 1972) gained independence from Britain in
1948 under a Whitehall drafted constitution. Prior to the British arriving
in Ceylon in 1796, the island had been subject to Portuguese (1505 -1656)
and Dutch (1656-1796) colonial rule. Each left their distinctive mark, be it
Christianity, Roman-Dutch Law or settler European communities. As far as
the current ’ethnic’ composition of the island is concerned, the Sinhalese
(mainly Buddhist) comprise 74 percent of the population, the Tamils (mainly
365-
366
Hindu) comprise 18 percent, the Muslims who are descendants of both Arab
traders and Hindu and possibly Buddhist converts to Islam comprise 7.1
percent, the Burghers (descendants of Portuguese and Dutch settler com-
munities) and Eurasians comprise 0.3 percent, the Malays (descendants of
Malay soldiers from the Dutch East Indies) comprise 0.3 percent, while the
Veddhas (the indigenous people of the island) and other ’ethnic’ groups com-
prise about 0.3 percent (de Silva,1986: 417). In 1972 a new internally produced
constitution came into operation and in 1978 this was replaced by a highly
centralized executive-presidency constitution. Since the late 1970s the Liber-
ation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been pursuing the establishment of
a separate ’ethnic’ Tamil state in the North and East of Sri Lanka.
The foundations of the postcolonial conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils
and other minority groups in Sri Lanka were established in the period of
British colonial rule between 1796 and 1948 (Kapferer, 1988: 90-3). With
colonialism came the claimed rationalism of the West which intellectually
made its presence felt in the form of an Orientalist colonial historiography. It
was a historiography that not only appropriated Sri Lanka for the purposes
of a western narrative of progress but also projected two dominant assump-
tions : that there had been a great Sinhala civilization which had gone into
decline due to ’invasions’ from a predominantly Tamil South India and that
antagonistic ’racial’ groups had long existed (Rogers, 1990: 90-2).
Far from questioning the classificatory categories of colonial historiogra-
phy, an emerging Sinhalese historiography from the middle of the nineteenth
century assumed the past social and political centrality of ’race’ and Buddhism
(pp. 93-4). Sinhalese nationalists drew upon the social and political capital that
associated the Indo-Aryan origins of the Sinhala language, with membership
of the mythical ’Aryan race’ (Kemper, 1991: 199-200; Tambiah, 1992: 131).
Such exlusivist claims became the foundation for the Sinhalese Buddhist
revivalist movement at the end of the nineteenth century (Gombrich, 1988:
185-8), and through the proliferation of print technology the revivalist move-
ment was able to extend its influence among an emerging Sinhalese bour-
geoisie (Gombrich, 1988: 174).
The result of such exclusivist claims was to project the predominantly
Hindu Tamil as an ’invader’ from South India. In doing so, the Sinhalese, like
the amnesiac who suffers a loss of memory, forgot their own past as ’invaders’
from North India. In the period after colonial rule, and particularly after 1956
when the forces of Sinhalese nationalism came to power, an increasingly
Sinhalese Buddhist-dominated state began the process of ’restoring’ the
Sinhalese and Buddhism to the ’idealized’ status they had both enjoyed prior
to European colonial rule. In attempting to construct a coherent Sinhalese
Buddhist identity both Buddhism and Sinhalese mythology began to serve
increasingly as fetish objects, the sacred markers of special ’ethnic’ entitlement
(Tambiah, 1992: 59-60; Kapferer, 1988: 93-9). These markers were then acti-
vated in the project of postcolonial nation-building.
While it would be possible to analyse the debates surrounding the 1972
Constitution, in terms of the dynamics of conflict established in the late
367
colonial and more recent postcolonial period, the approach I pursue here is
different. I stress a phenomenological approach that lays much greater empha-
sis on the experiential world of the Sinhalese Buddhist cosmos. I go on to
suggest that the 1972 Constitution reflects, as a contingent historical moment,
the experiential world of the cosmology of Sinhalese Buddhism. In doing so,
the central point I make is that the cosmology of Sinhalese Buddhism, which
constitutes the ontological frame of a Sinhalese Buddhist experience
(Kapferer, 1988: 19-20), is embedded or present in the discursive structure of
the 1972 Constitution.
The story I expand upon here is one of a failed exclusion, and one that para-
doxically marks its success. I shall trace this failed exclusion of the Tamil
’Other’ in a reading of the opening three chapters of the 1972 Constitution of
Sri Lanka, which enunciate the structure of the state, the status of Buddhism
and the status of the Sinhala and Tamil languages. The failure of exclusion
manifests itself in the principle of what I characterize as ’hierarchical encom-
passment’.’ Through ’hierarchical encompassment’ the irresolvable and
ambivalent relation between Sinhalese and Tamil is played out. The Consti-
tution, in acknowledging the presence of the Tamil ’Other’, neither fully
excludes nor fully includes the ’Other’. Instead it encompasses the ’Other’ in
a hierarchical relation that locates the ’Other’ on the margins of the text. The
marginalized presence of the Tamil ’Other’ within the Constitution operates
as an ’excess’ which prevents the Constitution from achieving a coherent self-
identity. ’Excess’ here alludes to something that is always more or surplus to
that which can actually be identified.2
2
I shall elaborate upon this principle of ’hierarchical encompassment’ in a
reading of the Sinhalese Buddhist cosmos which Kapferer (1988) persuasively
contends operates as a hierarchical ontological scheme that orientates
Sinhalese Buddhists towards their world of experience. The irresolvable
ambivalence present in the Constitution is I believe reflected in the Sinhalese
Buddhist cosmos in which the demonic as the ’Other’ of the Buddha is never
fully excluded but never included either. These cosmological relations of flux
which utilize the central metaphors of unity, fragmentation and reordering
are, as Kapferer (1988: 50-65) suggests, present in the mythology of Sinhalese
Buddhism. I argue that the failure of exclusion in the Constitution is evi-
denced in the cosmology of Sinhalese Buddhism, and the world of Sinhalese
mythology.
More importantly, the marginalized presence of the ’Other’ within the
Constitution reflects the ontological scheme of the Sinhalese Buddhist
cosmos in which the demonic stands in a marginalized relation of encom-
passment to the Buddha. My
argument here extends Kapferer’s (1988) thesis
that the ontological scheme of the Sinhalese Buddhist cosmos is present in
both the practices of Sinhalese exorcism rituals in which the demons of indi-
vidual possession stand encompassed by the forces of the Buddha (Kapferer,
1983), and in the practices of Sinhalese nationalism (Kapferer, 1988: 99-103)
which seek to incorporate the Tamil ’Other’ in a marginalized relation. The
failure of the Constitution to achieve an identity in-it-self is, I shall maintain,
368
not unique to the foundational text of the Republic of Sri Lanka (Ceylon
between 1948 and 1972 was a constitutional monarchy with the Governor-
General as the British monarch’s representative, its head of state). The irreso-
lution of identity within the Constitution is reflected in the dynamics of flux
that structure the cosmology of Sinhalese Buddhism. The undecidable move-
ment of exclusion and inclusion present in the Constitution is further exem-
plified in the stories of Sinhalese Buddhist mythology in which the demonic
stands encompassed in a hierarchical relation. That which is outside is simul-
taneously inside as well.
What I want to stress briefly at this point is that the cosmology of Sinhalese
Buddhism, far from being a transcendental signifier, only manifests its orien-
tational potency in the flesh-and-blood world of the social. In a sense there-
fore the meaning of ontology awaits its moment of arrival in the social world
of lived experience. The 1972 Constitution is one such lived experience.
THE 1972 CONSTITUTION AND THE COSMOS
The three provisions of the Constitution I have chosen for consideration best
reveal the ontological scheme of the Buddhist cosmos with its central
metaphors of unity, fragmentation and reordering (Kapferer, 1988: 11-12).3
The articles on the structure of the state, the place of Buddhism and the status
of the Sinhala and Tamil languages encompass the ’Other’ in a hierarchical
relation of marginalization.
The 1972 Constitution was drafted by a Constituent Assembly that sat
between July 1970 and May 1972, made up...
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