Political Conflict in South Asia by G. H. Peiris

Professor G. H. Peiris has grappled with several difficult themes and in working the essence of these, he has produced an outstanding monograph, making an important contribution to an understanding of the political upheavals witnessed in South Asia since the termination of European colonial dominance over the region. Commencing with an identification of the different types of violent conflict that has been almost endemic to this region, he has traced the evolution of the processes of modern state formation under British rule from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century when the transfer of power from the British to indigenous hands took place in the territories that formed what was called the Raj, other British ‘colonies’ such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Maldives and a few coastal remnants of that had survived as parts of Portuguese and French imperial rule until the mid-20th century. There were other kingdoms and principalities such as Nepal, Kashmir, Sikkim, Bhutan and Afghanistan that had remained largely independent of colonial rule which are included in this study.   

The last time a Sri Lankan, indeed a South Asian, scholar attempted a survey of a range of territories in South Asia as varied as those in Professor Peiris’s monograph was that by the late Stanley J. Thambiah with his Levelling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, published by the University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles in 1996.   

Professor Peiris’ volume, reviewed here, provides us with a fresh look at these ethnonationalist conflicts and collective anti-state insurrections in South Asia in the context of the processes of state-building in the post-colonial era; and state construction under diverse pressures as in India and Pakistan, and in Bangladesh. He has studied several collections of data on these states that only a few other scholars, South Asian, European or American have handled on this scale and with the comparable competence. In the course of dealing with this data and making them understandable to readers he provides sets of useful and illuminating tables; and in dealing with political conflicts that have been part of the history of South Asia, under colonial rule and independent of post-colonial rule he has also provided the reader with maps and other illustrations not normally provided by scholars dealing with such a wide collection of states. Indeed these by themselves make his monograph invaluable to readers—whether they be undergraduates, post-graduates or general readers.   

In the chapters that are devoted to the main national units of South Asia and to several selected conflict situations, one finds in Professor Peiris’ analyses a level of clarity and scholarly objectivity which are seldom found in other writings. Certainly one rarely comes across a study of controversial issues such as the Kashmiri problem, the anti-state revolts in Sri Lanka and Nepal, or the inter-group confrontations that are based on linguistic, religious caste and tribal identities, handled with the same skill and understanding that he has provided. For instance, a striking point about his analysis of the Kashmir issue is that, barring a few exceptions such as Alistare Lamb’s Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990, Karachi, 1996 and the response to Lamb by Prem Chandra Jha (Kashmir 1947: Rival Versions of History),we do not come across writings of comparable quality. Briefly, Professor Peiris’ chapters, and pages on the Kashmir Dispute, are among the most illuminating available to students of the subject. Indeed his monograph reviewed here is worth the money just for his critical commentaries on the Kashmir dispute alone.   

There is much more. For example his commentaries on Sri Lanka’s problems go beyond the conventional reviews of the conflict between the Sri Lankan State and the ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’ (LTTE) which have been attempted by a large number of scholars -- Sri Lankan, Indian and Western. Professor Peiris provides a study of the problems that the Sri Lankan state has had with the Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna (JVP) which was not the prolonged conflict as it was between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state. We need to remember that the first direct attack on the Sri Lankan state by youthful insurgents was by the JVP and not the LTTE. There were two episodes of conflict between the State and the JVP -- in the 1970s and the late 1980s -- both have been analysed in fair detail by many writers. Indeed we have had only a few analyses of the struggle between the Sri Lankan State and the JVP as perceptive as Professor Pieris’. He has provided insights into the struggle between the Sri Lankan state and the JVP that have not been provided by other scholars.   
Professor Peiris focuses on aspects of the island’s demography as a crucially important factor in the emergence of these youthful conflicts with the State, both the LTTE and the JVP and yet there is hardly any study that has devoted attention to this demographic factor in studies of the conflict with the LTTE. Most studies of those violent responses have concentrated on ideological factors. In drawing attention to the demographic factor, Professor Peiris provides fresh insights to the study and understanding of the violence of the response that some states confront in dealing with youthful groups. What he seems to tell us is that Sri Lanka faced its version of the ‘Arab Spring’ some thirty years ago -- if not earlier.   

It took sixteen years or so before Professor Peiris came on to look at much the same problem as Professor S. J. Thambiah did in 1996. I am hoping that it will not be as long as sixteen years before someone would provide a successor to Professor Peiris’s monograph, unless, of course, he himself writes a revised edition.