Nationality, Complex Identities and Multiple Belongings

As we celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Pravada/Polity, it is a pleasure to have been associated with it, as a regular contributor, over this period. One reason I did so was because it was extremely satisfying to be linked to a good quality, left-wing but non-dogmatic publication, which was discussing issues vital to the present and future of Sri Lanka and the rest of the world. But I had a more personal reason too: this was an activity that helped to anchor the Sri Lankan part of my identity, which had become somewhat fraught for reasons I will now explain.

Democracy as the Solution to Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis

The political Right and Left seem to concur in linking democracy to bourgeois rule; the two concepts have even been hyphenated in the adjective ‘bourgeois-democratic’. Yet history gives us no reason to believe that there is a necessary connection between the two. It is true that when the bourgeoisie is fighting against feudal power to establish its rule, it seeks the support of the plebeian masses, and in the process allows them to fight for their own demands: hence the famous slogan of the French Revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. Yet once their rule is established, they are quite capable of turning on their erstwhile allies, repressing or even slaughtering them. This is not to say that capitalism is incompatible with democratic rights and freedoms either, but to emphasise that the latter will prevail only if working people fight to establish and defend them. Even in advanced capitalist countries, long-established rights can quickly be demolished. Social-Democracy in Germany was followed by fascism, and even today, democratic rights are under attack in the heartlands of capitalism.

In the former colonies, there was likewise a popular movement for liberation from imperialism, often followed by a sense of disappointment when independence was won but the working masses remained in much the same condition as before. Again, the illusion that democracy is the free gift of the bourgeoise, or a necessary condition of their rule, is responsible for this disappointment. Alternatively, there has been a tendency, shared by both Maoists and Trotskyists, to deny that a bourgeois revolution has taken place or that capitalism is developing. A more realistic view would be to recognise that for the working class, independence from colonialism is only the first of many battles for democracy.