Importance of Language for Social Cohesion
Photo courtesy of Just Travel
During the recent cyclone Ditwah disaster, we saw in real time how language discrimination against the Tamil speaking population was taking place. This was not only on social media but even official government websites failed to communicate critical weather and evacuation alerts in the Tamil language. While the discrimination against the Tamil people in state institutions is established time and again, its failure to reach a significant proportion of the population during an unprecedented disaster that affected the whole country is inexcusable. It is more disappointing at a time when the country expects more from the NPP government, which promised vital system changes and a trilingual language policy.
This brings us back to the importance of language parity and multilingual communication, particularly in a postwar context where language policy is key to reconciliation and addressing past wrongs. At the state level, the issue is not with the constitution or with provisions for language rights but with their practical implementation. All communities should be able to access services and support in their local languages. They should also have the opportunity to learn and use these languages to foster positive social relationships. The state needs to implement the national language policy effectively in order to transition from a language-based nationalist governance to a genuinely multicultural nation. This includes creating space for the use of multiple languages such as those of the indigenous people, Sri Lankan Malay, Creole, sign language and so on. While emphasising the need for the state level and top down implementation of a national language policy, I turn to the local community to show how bilingualism is practised in everyday life and how it is critical to foster close relationships.
Bilingual communication in grassroots communities
During my PhD field work in the so-called border villages in the North and East, I met communities for whom bilingual communication is a very mundane practice in their life. These grassroots communities can speak both Sinhala and Tamil. In doing so, they also foster a sense of belonging that is beyond mere interethnic interaction. They do not see it as speaking the language of the other. Being fluent in both languages or at least being able to manage everyday conversations is an organic and ordinary practice that is borne out of everyday interactions and fulfilling daily necessities.
Some of these communities are from villages where both Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims have historically lived together for generations, going back to those times when ethnicity was not a political weapon or local preoccupation. Some villages are postwar establishments where people have created their own spaces. They are also heavily war affected areas where displacement and violence were major issues during the three decades of war. Despite the colonial history, war and nationalist governance in these villages, I observed how people create a sense of belongingness and community even today. Among many other practices and historical experiences, bilingual communication plays a key role in sustaining deep relationships among grassroots communities.
Most striking was the level of both bilingualism and intermarriage in Thekkawatta village in Vavuniya district. Thekkawatta is a relatively recently established village with many of the villagers having settled since the 1980s. The village has an almost equal number of Tamil and Sinhala families, all of whom have resettled from elsewhere; the Tamil families from the far North due to the war and the Sinhala families for various personal reasons. Resettlement in this village was done by the families themselves, picking land plots where available. Today, it is a densely populated village with houses built one after the other along the byroads inside the village providing space for bilingual communication.
Thekkawatta village is an example of what Nihal Perera calls a people’s space where it is the people themselves who have chosen where to reside, what to do and how relationships are formed with little state intervention. Despite the experience of the war, the Sinhala and Tamil villagers seemed to share close relationships at the village level. When I asked Mallika from Thekkawatta to tell me about their village, one of the first things she said included both intermarriage and bilingual skills of the community.
She said, “In some families, the husband is Tamil and the wife is Sinhalese. In other families, the wife is Tamil and the husband is Sinhalese. Some Tamils are also married to Muslims. And there are a lot of families like that… Everyone here speaks the Tamil language. Although there are Sinhalese people, it is only a very few who speak Sinhala… We mostly use the Tamil language but if you take the number of families, it is equal.”
When I first met Mallika, I could not discern whether she was Sinhalese or Tamil, because she was speaking in both languages, in Sinhala to me and in Tamil to my field coordinator. This was a common experience during my fieldwork when meeting many men and women who are bilingual. On many occasions, I could not guess the ethnic identity of the villagers based on the language they spoke. In fact, in Kokeliya village (also in Vavuniya district), I did an interview with four villagers whose ethnic identity was vague. During this interview, they effortlessly switched between languages, sometimes talking with each other in both Sinhala and Tamil and at other times explaining certain points to me in Sinhala. While it made the interview both fascinating and challenging to me, as I am not fluent in Tamil unfortunately, it seemed completely natural to them. It goes to show how misguided and careless it is to use language to fix one’s ethnicity as something exclusive and primordial. And it also shows how language can facilitate relationships and friendships among those who speak Sinhala and Tamil languages and not necessarily between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups.
Kokeliya is a purana gama where villagers were bilingual. The families who have been in the village since the early 1900s still have intergenerational connections with other families in the village and these connections are not ethnically exclusive. Many older women, who are bilingual, spoke about how ethnicity was not a preoccupation for them. It is their shared past and connections to land and village that sustain their relationships while language is merely a facilitator. Sumana, an older woman whose family has been in the village since 1917, said, “Even today we do not have any divisions like Sinhalese and Tamil. It is only the language that is different. There is no other difference among us.”
Despite such a history of connectedness, they spoke about how the village was broken down into four administrative sections after the war, indicating nationalist governance that is ethnically and linguistically divisive. A woman leader of the village explained that a large area used to be known to them as Kokeliya village. However, now the Tamil people are allocated the Tamil Pradeshiya Sabha and the Sinhala people are allocated the Sinhala Pradeshiya Sabha to ensure that services are received in people’s local language. This seems counterintuitive to a state addressing past wrongs and seeking reconciliation. It is an example of the state dividing people instead of adopting an inclusive national language policy. Such actions do not take into account people’s histories, relationships and lived experiences. The villagers are now forced to go into ethnically designated Grama Nilhadari and district offices, which help reiterate their ethnic and linguistic differences over shared histories and connections. Kokeliya villagers shared how this is a disruption to their idea of the traditional village including village level relationships.
I also visited a state resettlement village in the Pavatkulam area in Vavuniya where people are allocated ethnically specified villages. This was part of a resettlement scheme carried out in 1956. People from different parts of Sri Lanka were assigned specific paddy tracts and villages/units based on their ethnic background, physically segregating ethnic and language groups. It was only in this village that I found people to be less bilingual compared to other villages and also less connected between villages. Here also the state’s involvement in segregating communities does not seem to bode well in developing relationships among the grassroots. Separating communities according to language or ethnicity might help the state provide services in one or the other local language but it does not help build social cohesion.
In Trincomalee district, I visited two heavily war affected villages where all the people were displaced multiple times for many years. Kappalthurai and Sardhapura used to be one village where all three communities lived. But as a result of the war, the Sinhalese in Kappalthurai had asked to be settled separately in what is now called Sardhapura. In the present, these communities face common issues, irrespective of ethnicity, like lack of state support in rebuilding after the war, land issues, a lack of infrastructure and a lack of employment opportunities.
Despite the war impacting community relations, many years have passed and people are now trying to rebuild both their individual and communal lives. In these attempts, language plays a key role in enabling communal livelihood and development activities. People’s bilingual skills are both developed and utilised when engaging in livelihood practices like cultivation, daily wage labour and buying and selling home produce and also community development activities like shramadhana, fighting for civic rights and building infrastructure.
Sunila from Sardhapura told me how she learnt to speak Tamil. “I meet Tamil and Muslim people when they come to my grocery shop. I can also speak Tamil. I learnt by looking at the mouths of those who speak Tamil.” Saroja from Kappalthurai talked about how they collectively fight for land rights. She said, “If this is state land, they should come and remove us or else they should sue us. We have been paying the land tax for a long time. The three communities get together and we work on these land issues.”
Language skills for the young generation
It was not only among the older generations or those who are engaged in livelihoods that bilingualism was practised. Many women, even those who are not bilingual, told me how their children can speak both languages very well. Thilini from Thekkawatta said that children in their village are bilingual, “Tamil children go to a different school. But our children know the Tamil language very well. Tamil children also catch up on the Sinhala language very fast.” Similarly, Karuna from Sardhapura echoed similar patterns and also the idea that language cannot be used to fix one’s ethnic identity. She said, “I know Tamil a little bit. But my two sons know very well. When they speak, you can’t tell whether they are Sinhalese or Tamil people.”
The bilingual skills of the young generation in these villages particularly show that they are more likely to be fluent and use both languages when the environment is conducive to language learning and usage. Unfortunately, with the free education system in 1959, schools were divided along ethnic/linguistic lines. This further polarised ethnic communities even from a very young age by limiting interactions and linguistic capabilities. Education plays a critical role in facilitating transitional justice and linguistic justice. An inclusive education in local languages can not only help people connect and understand each other from a younger age but also benefit social healing and cohesion.
Lessons to learn from the grassroots
The dynamics of bilingual communication of the grassroots are important to highlight and heed when talking about language reconciliation and social cohesion in Sri Lanka. Despite the state’s lack of commitment towards implementing the national language policy or the state’s active involvement in segregating linguistic groups, we have many lessons to learn from grassroots communities. Their everyday practices, including language use, show that people are agents in creating their own forms of community and relationships despite a very influential nationalist state. The relationships these people create are more organic and go beyond mere interethnic connections. Niru Perera also talks about small grassroots actions like a Tamil language course that can enable linguistic reconciliation and deeper understanding and relationships among communities in Sri Lanka.
The role of language in developing social relations and sustaining an organic sense of belonging among people cannot be overstated. In traditional nationalist rhetoric and conceptualisation of community, language is often used to define and categoriseone’s identity and to determine affiliation with a specific ethnic community. Despite such popular narratives, the lived experience of the grassroots that I discussed shows what people actually think and do on the ground. For these grassroots, language is a tool for communication and interaction with people who speak different languages. Language is not merely a means to facilitate inter-ethnic interactions. The language one speaks should not and cannot be used to infer or label one’s ethnic identity as correctly pointed out by villagers through their practices and my own fieldwork experience. These best practices can inform many state and non-state policies that still treat people as ethnically exclusive groups to see beyond ethnic/linguistic limitations. Regardless of top-down reconciliation or multilingual commitments, the lived experience of the grassroots shows that their understanding of a multicultural community is already in practice.
