By working through the political events and dynamics of minority representation observed during research, I want to first interrogate former historical and anthropological conceptions of Malaiyaha Tamil community and suggest more attuned ways of viewing this minority worker group within their actualized realities of membership and mobility. I will then present a working understanding of community, which foregrounds the uncertainty of Sri Lankan minority politics and life as observed in the aftermath of war in 2009 among Malaiyaha Tamils in the plantation areas. This understanding not only lays down a foundation for the ethnographic narratives in the chapters to follow but also contributes to our understanding of Sri Lanka’s civil war and its effect on the subjectivities of minority groups.
As evident in Patrick Peebles’ account of Plantation Tamil history (2001), Malaiyaha Tamils residing on the plantations never fully accepted the purchase of labor security afforded by the managements. Nevertheless, given their histories as sites of colonial and postcolonial capitalist production, the plantations have been likened by scholars to Erving Goffman’s “total institution;” and it was in these contained spaces of contiguous labor and residence, they contended, that Malaiyaha Tamils made life choices in Sri Lanka (1961). For instance, Oddvar Hollup even went so far as to claim that Malaiyaha Tamils on the plantation lived in isolation from other ethnic groups and were geographically bounded by the fields on which they toiled:
The Tamil plantation workers have largely been confined—first economically and subsequently emotionally—to the estates. Plantation Tamils, of whom most are low-status plantation workers, to some extent have been geographically and
! &)!
socially isolated compared to Sinhalas and Sri Lanka Tamils. Plantation Tamils have lacked integration into the wider society and have remained within the territorial boundaries of the plantations, constituting a relatively “captive” and immobile labor force (1998:78)
Hollup and others scholars such as George Gnanamuttu (1979), Angela Little (1999), and Valli Kanapathipillai (2008) contend that even the more intimate spaces of family life are, to some extent, institutionalized. Tamil workers live where they labor, and amidst the land they toil to produce profits, which their own community does not primarily receive. Furthermore, the plantation is a space that is continuously reinforced by daily cultural habits and standardized labor practices. Workers live in “line rooms” which they do not own but rather inhabit only if a family member is working regularly on the plantation (Little 1999: 50-1). Lastly, in this traditionalist portrait, the estates provide their own schools (from crèche facilities to grade school level) within the plantation compound such that a worker’s child is accustomed to go to school in proximity of his mother plucking tealeaves and working in the fields (Little 1999:49). This blending of work and leisure within an institutionalized space nicely fits the category of what Goffman terms, the “encompassing tendency,” which defines the “total institution” as such (1961: 4).
But as confirmed by more recent Malaiyaha Tamil scholars (Balasundaram 2009, Bass 2012), activists and community members, it is neither practical nor realistic to fully extend Goffman’s concept to Sri Lanka’s tea plantations given the forms of migration, global communication, and media that Malaiyaha Tamil plantation residents engage on a daily basis. While it is worth exploring the idea of how living in a space with no barriers and sustained institutional rule might influence the choices and movements of all who
! &*!
live on the plantations, I want to urge us to go beyond Goffman’s structuralist enclave and explore how more politically engaging concepts of community could be more fruitful to our endeavors.
Given the high productivity and success of the tea industry, Ceylonese (and later Sri Lankan) nationals made concerted efforts to sustain the plantation as a capitalist and institutionalized space after independence. These efforts included nationalizing the plantations through land reform in 1972 and 1975 and later privatizing these same spaces in 1992. Some activists and development workers argue that nationalization was the moment that determined the inapplicability of Goffman’s term to the plantation system. For instance, Muthulingam, a seasoned Malaiyaha Tamil activist and director of the Institute for Social Development (ISD) in Kandy wrote to me in an email in May 2012 on the issue of the plantation as “total institution”:
In 1972-75 . . . a number of plantations were distributed among to the villagers and . . . the state owned plantation companies allowed the workers to go out in search of employments. The children were given opportunity continue beyond primary education. This diversion led to another a leaf forward in 1980s. The educated youngsters of the plantations moved out in search of employment in the cities due to non-availability of employment in the plantation. The migrant labour towards increased in the later part of 1990s. The migration accelerated following the de-nationalisation of state owned plantations in 1992. The private companies promoted premature retirement soon after the take over and stop recruitment of permanent labour. At the same time, youngsters look at employments outside of plantation due social stigma or dignity and low wage. Currently 75% of youths work outside of plantation sector. Therefore the total institution is no longer valid in relation to Sri Lankan plantation labour. Above all, currently the state is responsible to look after the social welfare of the community. Except primary health care, all other needs are to be provided by the government (Email Correspondence, May 7, 2012)
Muthulingam’s comments are striking on three levels. First, while dispelling the plantation as total institution myth with historical and political evidence, he reminds us
! '+!
that economic and political shifts in capitalist production and the nation matter to Malaiyaha Tamils and minorities in Sri Lanka more broadly when constructing an idea of community. This was the case for Muslims being evicted from and losing land and their homes in Jaffna in 1990 and for Sri Lankan Tamils who were displaced during the anti- Tamil riots in 1983. For Malaiyaha Tamils, shifts from nationalization to privatization had direct impacts on their social practices, livelihoods, and economic choices.
Second, his comment about state responsibility calls out the fact Malaiyaha Tamils are now and have been citizens of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri lanka, and therefore, are entitled to be taken care of by the welfare state and receive benefits relating to language rights, free education, and government-run health services. To ignore this fact and even place it in the background of an understanding of Malaiyaha Tamil community—as the total institution conceptualization tends to do—would detract from the possibilities that their community have reached out to and strategized about for their future in Sri Lanka.
Third, he reminds us to look at the broader historical and social insecurities that the plantations, Malaiyaha Tamils, and broader nation of Sri Lanka were facing during this particular time period—namely the escalation of civil war and the ensuing violence of ethnic conflict from 1983 until 2009. The combination of these terms allows us to explore a far-reaching idea of community that hinges upon these insecurities and risks to minorities against the backdrop of the plantation labor regime and its excesses.