posted June 07, 2002 01:00 AM         

The impending peace negotiations and the demand for self-determination by the LTTE and most (?) Tamils residing in Sri Lanka raise the issue of Sri Lankan identity in critical ways. Is there space for “internal self-determination” within both the territory and the idea called “Sri Lanka”? What does the concept of “self-determination” mean and does it allow for a “Tamil nation” to exist within the Sri Lankan nation in ways that will allow for “the dignity and self-respect” of those Tamils who wish to be part of this Tamil entity?

These are momentous questions. The vocabulary seems imposing. One might want to erase such weighty words and the even heavier issues they raise. You cannot do so. Most people in Sri Lanka would surely have taken note of the words of the LTTE leaders.

"Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe is the prime minister elected by the people of Sri Lanka. He is the prime minister of those people. Here in Thamil Eelam, Mr. Prabhakaran is both the president and the prime minister,” declared Dr. Anton Balasingham, the LTTE ideologue at the famous Kilinochchi Press Conference (as reported in the Sunday Island, 13 April 2002, with the emphasis above being my addition). This statement says explicitly that the Tamils consider themselves to be outside the category “Sri Lankan.”

One could therefore say that the peace negotiations – in the context of international pressures that deny the LTTE the possibility of a separate state of Thamil Eelam – are concerned with the task of bringing these Eelamists within the fold of Sri Lanka in ways that will be workable across both sides of the fence.

As such, the present situation brings to mind the previous debates encouraged by the Lanka Monthly Digest. I refer specifically to an editorial in June 2000 that, in effect, called for a Sri Lankan identity as opposed to divisive collective identities associated with Sinhala nationalism, Tamil nationalism and Islamic communitarianness (since the latter do not seem to use the vocabulary of “nation”).

This suggestion, albeit well-intentioned, seems quite far-fetched in the present circumstances. It is a fabulous wish. It is a fable because it wishes away the searing memories of war among significant elements of the population, memories that identify an ethnic “Other,” whether correctly or not, as the cause of specific sufferings. No political settlement will last if people are not ready to recognise that a profound bitterness runs through the thinking of many Tamils in particular.

Such memories apart, the collective sentiments associated with being Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil are deep-seated and cannot be waved away with a magic wand. This type of fabulous wand is constructed sometimes by entrepreneurs interested in pushing materialist consumerism. A similar wand is waved by rationalists of humanitarian disposition. Such currents have a role to play in the current processes, but those attached to such interests are in cuckoo-land if they think that the communitarian sentiments within Sri Lanka will wither away or can be pushed aside by pious statements.

What I’m saying is that the LMD’s clarion-call for Sri Lankan-ness must work within such hard realities. In other words, the issue is whether we can develop a Sri Lankan identity that is overarching and encompassing. Can the Sri Lankan nation embrace a Tamil nation, a Sinhalese nation, a Muslim community/nation and the collective identities of the Burghers, Malays, Colombo Chetties et cetera? Can we construct a workable plural society/state?

*****

I shall address this issue in a roundabout manner through two essays dealing respectively with (1) mixture or “hybridity” and (2) the idea of “hyphenated identity.” Indeed, the LMD editorial of June 2000 was explicitly inspired by an interesting idea raised by Anoma Pieris in the same number, namely the emergence of “hyphenated identities” in some countries and the prospect of similar forms in Sri Lanka. “Hyphenated identities” refer to such terms as Chinese American, Afro-American, American Jew in USA; and to Italian-Australian, Greek Australian et cetera in Australia.

Following Anoma the question that I present is this: why is it that pertinent hyphenated categories have not developed in English-speak within the Sri Lankan context in like manner? To this issue I will add another overlapping question arising from Anoma’s celebration of those who criss-cross ethnic boundaries. Let me call them “hybrids.” Thus I move to the second question: why have’nt the many hybrids in Sri Lanka emerged as a “community”?

The first essay focuses on this question. This is a matter close to my heart since I am a quintessential hybrid in terms of known genetic origins as well as cultural inputs associated with Westernisation. As such, I would describe myself, deliberately and happily, as a “Tuppahi.” The more formal translation of this term in Sinhala-speak would be “mixed” -- for the word is synonymous with samkara. However, Tuppahi also carries the meaning “low and mean” and as a word with multiple meanings also carries the senses “alien” and “outcaste.”

For those unfamiliar with Sri Lankan history let me note that this Sinhala word did not exist in the medieval and ancient periods. It is a foreign loan-word developing from the syncretic exchanges and liaisons associated with the Portuguese empire. Specifically, it seems to have been derived from the word Tupass or Topaz that was so widely used in the Indian Ocean world affected by the Portuguese. Thus, in Hobson Jobson it is noted that the word was employed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries “for dark-skinned or half-caste claimants of Portuguese descent, and Christian profession” (1994, pp. 933-34). This term appears to have taken root in Dutch Ceylon as an appellation for mixed bloods (Mesticos) of supposed Portuguese descent.

Antiquarian interest in the etymological origins of the word Topaz/Tupass has inspired several theories, among them the suggestion that it emanates from the Sanskrit word “dvibhasâ,” a speaker of two languages and thus an intermediary. What matters for our purposes, however, is its rapid incorporation into Sinhala speech to describe people of mixed descent.

The use of Tuppasi or Tuppahi as a collective noun seems to have been associated with two parallel developments that expanded the range and the multiplicity of meanings attached to this word. By the nineteenth century, if not earlier, it could be used to refer to translators and thus be adopted as a lineage name, Tuppahigç, for those who had taken up this occupation (see Clough’s Dictionary 1999, p. 217). But what the polite nineteenth century dictionaries do not indicate is the process by which it had been adopted as a term for outcastes.

The latter usage was quite consistent with its deployment as an ethnic label for the ‘creole’ peoples of the European imperial outposts. Since the word jâtiya was grounded in conceptions of birth and origin, and therefore referred to “birth,” “kind,” “caste” and “race,” it was logical enough for this new word to embrace both people of mixed blood as well as those considered outcastes. Those castes that mixed their blood in the past, one suspects, were considered beyond the pale. That is, they were like the Rodi, the lowest of the low in the Sinhala caste order. Likewise, the progeny of mixed liaisons with foreigners were of the same low (nîca) order. They were, so to speak, as mixed as outcaste.

Thus, a modern Sinhala dictionary indicates that tuppahi refers (i) an interpreter; (ii) Hollanders and Portuguese; (iii) those who do not fit into Sinhala culture, namely, the sankara (samkara) or mixed; and (iv) those who are low or inferior (Prayogika Shabdha Koshaya, vol II, p. 4829).These readings are in keeping with my twentieth century findings on popular street-level usage (see People Inbetween, 1989, p. 18). This does not seem to have been a new development because the antipathy to the mixing of blood was expressed in severe terms by both Rajasinha II and Andara during Kandyan times while also entering the leaves of the Râjâvaliya. Thus, the hatan kavi (war poems) of the seventeenth century disparage those who are Tuppâsi (Tuppahi).

Thus, the best English translation of Tuppahi in my view is “mongrel” (in my view the best pedigree of dogs on earth, but that is an aside). To clarify these meanings of the term Tuppahi is to provide the answer to my second question. Its very demeaning association would not have encouraged those so disparaged to develop a Tuppahi Association. It will be interesting to survey global history to ascertain whether many mixed communities have emerged as ‘stable’ social formations. The Muhajirs in Karachi and Pakistan and the Mashpee Indians in North East USA are among the examples I would cite. But I suspect that such instances are few and far between.

Hybrid bodies of people can be found in most societies as interstitial segments in the class, spatial and categorical order. Such interstitial locations mean that hybridity is a dependent category and cannot emerge without two other dominant categories in a relational field that sets up the in-betweenness of the hybrid personnel. Thus, hybrid qua hybrid cannot exist alone. Hybridity requires other categories so that it can lie in-between, mix and mediate these other forms.