Social Responsibility in Universities in Unstable Times

Source: http://uteachers.blogspot.in/2012/07/cartoons-on-education-under-attack.html

(Guest lecture delivered at the international conference, ‘Revisiting Social Responsibility in Contexts of Crisis: Challenges and Possibilities in Sri Lanka’ at Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo, 17 November 2014)

Vice Chancellor, the dean and colleagues, let me wish all of you a very good morning.

When the Dean, Faculty of Arts wrote to me some time ago and asked if I am willing to speak at this conference under the theme, ‘Revisiting Social Responsibility in Contexts of Crisis,’ I postponed responding to him. That is because I was quite anxious that this was yet another generic theme couched within a developmentalist and feel-good agenda. But after a reminder from him, and on a closer reading, I realized that the conference offered a certain obvious space for critical self-reflection on what social responsibility might mean, if one wanted to do so. This space is my point of departure.

Despite the conference’s focus on Sri Lanka, much of my reading comes from sources beyond Sri Lanka. My interest is to explore what social responsibility means within universities in difficult times rather than more generally. Of course, many countries have gone through socio-political upheavals for various reasons within which the notion of social responsibility has undergone significant transformations. In this context, I will present some of these situations to you with an invitation: what do these experiences mean when translated into local contexts?

If we accept that the university is a space for the generation of knowledge as well as innovation in thinking, what would happen when the fundamental intellectual space needed for the production of knowledge becomes ruptured under unstable socio-political conditions? What happens to larger issues of citizenship and social responsibility? Does the practice of such responsibilities become life-threatening?

I will attempt to answer these questions by taking the following route: 

1) initially, I will briefly suggest what I consider to be academics’ responsibility to society. This will be followed by an outline of my own understanding of what a university ought to be;

2) Second, I will explore briefly through the thoughts of a few thinkers how the idea of the university has transformed globally, particularly with reference to human sciences; 3) thirdly I will outline how universities are officially situated locally; and 4) finally, I will see how social responsibility might seem like in these circumstances.

Who is an academic and what is a university?

For me, “being an academic is not simply holding a job. It is a vocation; it is a way of life; it should be a passion; and above all, it is a responsibility. To be this, one needs a specific frame of mind in addition to training.”[1] To do all this, one also has to go beyond the classroom into the domains of broader social practice. To do this, one also has to go beyond the syllabus in the classroom itself. Even within the syllabus, one has move beyond the text and the disciplines to the discursive practices of the philosophy of knowledge, citizenship, justice and common-sense. This is not simply the responsibility of individual academics. 

It is also the institutional responsibility of universities to ensure the feasibility of this vocation.  It may be obvious, what I have in mind as an academic with a responsibility to his society is not simply someone who is working within the ivory tower and is imprisoned by it. Instead, it must be someone who can travel with ease between society and academy without compromising the integrity of his vocation. In other words, an academic necessarily also has to be a public intellectual. This is particularly so in regions like South Asia where societies are burdened with multiple crises in which a rational discourse unshackled by religion, ethnicity and other sectarian tendencies is a necessity.  Being the author of such a discourse is the responsibility of an academic. Admittedly, what I have suggested is a very subjective position. But then, responsibilities cannot be clinical positions understood in black and white. They are by definition subjective and inscribed with emotion, ideology and passion. My exploration of what social responsibility means will begin its journey from this subjective position.

The other side of this equation is what a university should be.  S. Radhakrishnan has noted that “the ideal of the university is the promotion of liberty of mind or freedom of thought” and has nothing to do with promoting “conformity”.[2]  With reference to Sri Lanka, Panduka Karunanayake suggests quite correctly that “the university is society’s intellectual compass – not it’s computing machine.”[3] It is also in such a context but much earlier in time that Rabindranath Tagore noted that “universities should never be made into mechanical organizations for collecting and distributing knowledge.”[4]

How has the idea of the university transformed, globally?

The consensus among many thinking people is that university education is experiencing numerous crises today. This is more acutely felt in the human sciences. It is by visiting these specific situations that we can assess what social responsibility of individuals in these systems might be, and how they might have changed. Terry Eagleton, in a recent essay titled Death of Universities focused on higher education in the United Kingdom observes that “what we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique.”[5] In this sense, the university is expected to be the space where the conscience of the society would reside openly and not in hiding. For me, this specific understanding of a university is the most crucial element in any structure of social responsibility as it impacts the academy.

However, as Eagleton explains, in the case of the United Kingdom, “since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future.”[6] But as we know quite well, the UK is simply one of the many countries where this situation currently prevails.Many such thinkers are talking about the transformation of universities from a space for critical reflection and production of knowledge into simple technical institutions. It is precisely this situation that Tagore lamented about so long ago in his essay, ‘An Asian University.’ He noted, “we are provided with buildings and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress our mind. --- All this has cost us money, and also our finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has been crammed with what is described in official reports as Education.”[7] He was talking about colonial education in India. But he might as well be talking of the present situation in higher education in many Indian institutes as well as ours.

How are universities officially situated in Sri Lanka?

If the ideal of the university and its current transformed self globally can be summarised as above, let me now briefly describe how universities in Sri Lanka have been understood by the guardian of the system, namely the Ministry of Higher Education. It is within this official reality you have to teach and would also have to define what social responsibility might mean. On its website, the Ministry of Higher Education presents the following sentiment as its ‘vision’: “Sri Lanka to be an international hub of excellence for higher education by 2020.”[8] Surely, such a hub of excellence in any sense should be an oasis for free thinking where social responsibility would be a natural and essential partner. In itself, this vision does not contradict the ideal of a university as I have described earlier. The ministry’s ‘mission’ explains how this hub would be achieved in the following words: “To Delight Students, The Industry, Staff And Other Stakeholders Of The Higher Education System Of Sri Lanka By Formulating And Implementing Results Oriented Policies & Strategies And  To Deliver Results In An Effective And Efficient Manner Through A Participatory Process  To Produce  The Best Intellectuals, Professionals, Researchers, Entrepreneurs To Deliver Innovative Solutions To Make Sri Lanka “The Wonder Of Asia."[9] 

Clearly, the Ministry has carved out as its mission to create a large and throbbing comfort zone filled with happy people. The manner, in which I described social responsibility within higher education earlier, would necessarily fit into this scheme of things. Universities cannot produce “the best intellectuals, professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs” and make Sri Lanka “The Wonder Of Asia,” without seriously engaging with social responsibility.

Seen in this sense, this official position seems to indicate that the country’s higher education sector is keen to create a vibrant knowledge production system within which there ought to be ample space for the production of knowledge within a discourse of social responsibility. Nevertheless, despite this seeming availability of space for innovation and free thinking in Sri Lankan universities, what is more clearly manifest is the promotion of a very different set of institutions which vary considerably from the original idea of what a university was supposed to be.

Much of these pronouncements also have to do with the state’s understating of ‘research.’ There is considerable consensus among the guardians of the university system, captains of industry and many university academics that the responsibility for meeting the national research requirements should be borne by the state universities and their academics. Research understood in this manner is supposed to fuel “industrial development and economic growth,”[10] and nothing more. This sense of research squarely locates it within the ambit of ‘profit.’ Similarly, some streams of human sciences have also become vibrant service providers for industry and international and local civil society. That is, research is no longer about seeking knowledge and understanding the human condition. Instead, it is about ‘delighting’ the ‘industry’ and other stake-holders as the Ministry of Higher Education’s mission very clearly proclaims.

What we are seeing is the enforced disappearance of the university and the emergence of technical colleges in its place. This is merely the local manifestation of a trend that is already evident in other parts of South Asia as well as beyond the region.

How can social responsibility be understood in these circumstances?

What I have outlined so far are the conditions that have ruptured university education in general and human sciences more specifically. However, this has not always happened under conditions of political upheaval and violence. Often, these changes have taken place under conditions of general socio-political change and specific economic reforms that have followed the global embrace of the neo-liberal agenda. Situations of war, generalized violence and dismantling of democratic practices invariably exert much more pressures on universities as zones of freedom.  Edward Said, in his essay, ‘Identity, Authority and Freedom’ suggests that in the post-independence Arab world, state universities were seen as extensions of the national security states, which had become a norm in state formation after independence in the Middle East.  In this context, Said makes the following observations about the Arab academy:

Alas, political conformity rather than intellectual excellence was often made to serve as a criterion for promotion and appointment, with the general result that timidity, a studious lack of imagination, and careful conservatism came to rule intellectual practice.[11]

As all of us know quite well, Said’s description of post-independence Arab academy describes equally well the prevailing general situation in Sri Lanka as well as the broader South Asia region. In Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, Vice Chancellors are appointed by the President or the Prime Minister of the country. Appointments to similar positions in regional universities in Pakistan and India are made by provincial governors. In all cases, these are acutely political appointments where academic credentials have little relevance. What is of relevance is an appointee’s proximity to political power. In Sri Lanka, this state of affairs has come about as a result of the state’s relentless intrusion into universities since the late 1960s. This has happened in the backdrop of institutionalization of political violence in the country, out-migration academics to the greener pastures of the West, experimentation with neo-liberal policies of governance, the long-term impact of war and political violence on the practice of democracy and so on.  

When crucial appointments such as these are made on the basis of narrowly defined political ends, what does it mean with regard to social responsibility of both academics and academia?  Doesn’t ‘social responsibility’ of academics appointed to these positions transform into an ‘individual responsibility’ for political survival? Can they be guardians of a system whose original goals were far greater and much loftier than the self-interests of the political dispensations which appoint them? The way to survive in these circumstances is to ensure that the university is no longer a space for self-reflection and responsible critique as it was once thought to be, but merely a training ground with defined techno-political goals delinked from larger issues of citizenship, democracy and justice. 

It is in a similar situation that Prof Romila Thapar made the following crucial observations: “There are more academics in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require them to do so.”[12] Prof Thapar made her observations not only in her capacity as one of the most erudite contemporary scholars of history in South Asia, but also as a person with a pronounced track record in public engagement at the height of her career at great  personal cost. It seems obvious that the relative silence and lack of public engagement academics in our part of the world have imposed on themselves have nothing to do with their interest in pursuing knowledge undisturbed. Rather, it has everything to do with survival and self-preservation in times of crises coupled with the institutionalization of mediocrity in the academy as referred to by Said.  If the broader public engagement of academics is discouraged and stifled, such a situation would transform universities into sterile spaces devoid of the morality of social responsibility. 

Closer to home, it is in view of what universities had become in Sri Lanka that Prof Gananath Obyesekere in a letter to President Rajapaksa in 2012 suggested, “there is another challenge for a wise leader, and that is to bring back the universities to its early glory by supporting them at every level because a world bereft of intellectual life will end up as a dreary world.”[13] It appears that we unfortunately have a serious dearth of wise leaders in public life.

However, the transformation of the academy into a technical space without its moral authority is not something that the state has done on its own. It has considerable support from within academia as well as the public. In the Sri Lankan context, can we think of any significant and sustained public debates on the nature of universities? Most parents who send their children to Sri Lanka’s universities actually seem to want what the state wants to give them: a technical education that might offer their children a placement in the labor market as a docile service provider. 

Who can blame them in circumstances where the creation of a philosopher who might possess the moral conscience of the world might mean nothing if he cannot bring home a pay check at the end of the month to satisfy the hunger of his family.  In this context, is the argument for universities as a space for reflection and responsible critique as a key element of social responsibility be justified any longer? Or, perhaps what is more relevant is what most people seem to want. This is quite simply a basic technical training with the guarantee of a job. Hopefully in the near future, some of the many survey-taking sociologists and economists this system has abundantly produced can conduct a survey and inform all of us what our people actually want. 

If they also want what the state subscribes to, which is entirely possible, then our moral authority to describe universities’ and academics’ social responsibility as I have done so far, will have to be radically re-thought and changed. Our responsibility then should be to create a space of technical knowhow which also imbibes a sense of conformity.  I think to a large extent this post-Orwellian brave new world has already arrived. In this context, let me again refer to the words of Professor Thapar: “it is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But frequently where there should be voices, there is silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming?”[14] 

In this sense, conformity and relative silence in India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia have come about as a necessity for survival. In fact, it seems silence and conformity might well be the new form of social responsibility understood strictly within a discourse of personal survival.  

But this state of affairs poses yet another problem when perceived from the point of view of social responsibility. If the responsibility of the system is to create conformist labourers for the larger marketplace, how equipped are universities to deliver even this limited goal? Medical, computing, engineering and other allied disciplines have been fulfilling precisely this goal of offering a technical education devoid of larger issues of ethics and justice over a long period of time. Compared to this long-term reality, what can the human sciences offer the market? Have the relevant academic departments begun training their students directly for the market as willed by the state with the tacit support of the populace? 

Or by swimming against the tide, have they created within their courses the space for self-reflection by introducing cutting-edge knowledge from each discipline available in different parts of the world, and by creating the necessary space to go beyond the syllabus creatively? Or are they happy with repeatedly transmitting received wisdom? Happily, I am no longer part of the system and am not privy to the answers. Unhappily, you are very much part of the system and are quite aware of what the situation is. So where does this leave us in terms of social responsibly? Either we need to accept that our responsibility lies in training workers for the market and have no civilizational responsibility beyond this simple utilitarian role. Or, we have to accept that our responsibility is to ensure that we offer a broader education within which technical education is also possible. But are we doing either of these things right?

Mind you, I am not hostile to the government’s agenda for a technical education. Given the expectations of our people, we have a responsibility to offer such an education to some degree. And I emphasise the words, ‘to some degree.’ But if I am to define my responsibility to society as an academic, it simply cannot be the mere offering of technical competence to the young people who come to my classes. I believe my responsibility to society also includes the creation of a sensibility among them which might hopefully make them sensible citizens. That would remain my conviction irrespective of the contrary agenda of the state and the wishes of the people.

In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom – freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communications with the human world.”[15] Personally, when I cannot do this, it is time for me to look for another vocation. When I cannot do this, I know I will not be able to carry out my responsibility to society and to myself. On the other hand, what you do is entirely up to you, and when the future arrives, the writing on the walls will tell our younger generations how you dealt with your sense of social responsibility and what you did with your conscience.

I thank you for your time.

(The text of this talk has also been published in Groundviews at: http://groundviews.org/2014/11/22/social-responsibility-in-universities-in-unstable-times/ )

Notes

[1]. http://www.thediplomaticsociety.co.za/index.php/home/16-home/1112-interview-with-an-academic-professor-sasanka-perera--dean-faculty-of-social-sciences-of-south-asian-university (last accessed on 16/10/14). 

[2] Quoted in Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, ‘Promoting Research in Our Universities: A Critical Examination.’ In, The Island, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on 22/10/14). 

[3]. Quoted in Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, ‘Promoting Research in Our Universities: A Critical Examination.’ In, The Island, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on 22/10/14). 

[4]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa Publications. 

[5]. Eagleton, Terry. 2010 (17th December). ‘The Death of Universities.’ In, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees (last accessed on 02 10/14). 

[6]. Eagleton, Terry. 2010 (17th December). ‘The Death of Universities.’ In, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees (last accessed on 02 10/14). 

[7]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa Publications. 

[8]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission (last accessed on 03/04/14). 

[9]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission (last accessed on 03/04/14). 

[10]. Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, ‘Promoting Research in Our Universities: A Critical Examination.’ In, The Island, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on 22/10/14). 

[11]. Edward Said, 2001. ‘Identity, Authority and Freedom.’ In, Reflections on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books. 

[12]. Romila Thapar, 2014. ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question’ (Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, 2nd November 2014). New Delhi (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/academics-must-question-more-romila/article6535612.ece; last accessed on 03 November 2014). 

[13]. Gananath Obeyesekere, 2013. In, Tissa Jayailaka ed., Letters to Our Presidents by Sri Lankan and US Alumni of the US-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission 1952-2012. Colombo: US-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission. 

[14]. Romila Thapar, 2014. ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question’ (Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, 2nd November 2014). New Delhi (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/academics-must-question-more-romila/article6535612.ece; last accessed on 03 November 2014).

[15]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa Publications.

The Art of Postwar in Sri Lanka

(Adopted from, ‘Chapter 6: Going Beyond Memories of Violence and Post War Art.’ In, Sasanka Perera, Artists Remember, Artists Narrate: Memory and Representation in Sri Lankan Visual Arts. Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture and Theertha international Artists’ Collective. 2012).

'Civilizing Serendib' by Anoli Perera (private collection) 

On 09 October 2014, an exhibition of contemporary Sri Lankan art tilted, 'Serendipity Revealed' will get underway at the Brunei Gallery, London. Thinking of the title, I wondered how serendipity could be revealed. One way of course is the method adopted by tourism promoters in Sri Lanka: reveal the 'beauty' and 'exoticism' of Serendib (Lanka) without contradictions. The other is to see the numerous complexities beneath the superficial touristy idea of Serendib. One has to see the exhibition itself to figure out how the artists have approached the issue.

But it would help to have an understating of post war art in the country. Hence this reproduction.

Postwar Art

Let me now briefly focus on what might be called post war art. The works I have selected for my reading under this section emerged soon after the end of war in May 2009.  What is important here is not simply the temporality of the works but the issues they deal with and their links to violence and war of the immediate past as well as in imagining the future. The four artists whose works I will focus on here are closely associated with the art of the 1990s; three of them also consistently produced work that dealt with pain, violence and memory in the time of war and their work has been discussed in the preceding chapters. More specifically, I will focus on Bandu Manamperi’s exhibition, Numbed (17 October to 09 November 2009, Red Dot Gallery, Pitakotte), Koralegedara Pushpakumara’s exhibition, Goodwill Harwear (14 November to 09 December 2009, Red Dot Gallery, Pitakotte), Sarath Kumarasiri’s exhibition, Kovil Pansal (12 December 2009 to 04 January 2010, Red Dot Gallery, Pitakotte)  and Chandragupta Thenuwara’s exhibition  (July 24 to 29 2010, Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo).

Though Bandu Manamperi is better known as a performance artist, the works in the exhibition Numbed consisted of a series of sculptures cum installations plus one performance. In all of these works, the artist had taken his own body as the focus of attention and point of departure. Visually, the installations consists of a number of sculptures molded out of his own body in different shades of light colors ranging from white through green to blue eerily suspended from the ceiling of the gallery. All of them have the appearance of being shocked, frozen or numbed.  More specifically, the visual motifs that Manamperi has utilized for his installations are of three types, categorized strictly in terms of their basic appearance. The fist type is a visual-form that shows an expression ‘instantly frozen’ and there were a number of installations of this type in different colors and surface markings. The second type of form is more flexible, akin to a skin without any discernable texture (Ranabahu 2009). According to the artist, this was the basic or primary form that exists before the introduction of more pronounced and different textured surfaces as covers. In different spaces in the gallery, this form was presented as something that was limp and lifeless.  The third visual form Manamperi has used for the exhibition consists of his own performance (Ranabahu 2009). 

Through this exhibition, the artist’s intention was to suggest that individuals in society cover themselves in different cultural, ideological or political coverings as protective layers over one’s own natural self or the biological and psychological skin while constantly seeking and often finding comfort and security within it. More specifically, depending on different circumstances the individuals would dress themselves in different layers if political meaning representing extremist and obsessive positions reflecting different versions of competitive religions, histories and counter-histories, nature, patriotisms, self-absorption, ideas of independence and versions of media representations. This prpcess is undertaken in relation to or in support of various cultural and political environments (Ranabahu 2009).  The artist suggests that these tendencies operating within the complexities of the present political, cultural and religious circumstances have restricted individuals’ personal integrity and their collective capacity to feel pain and injustice. IN other words, the prevailing circumstances have made the body numb. In this case, the body contextualizing this numbness is that of the artist in the sense that all the installations/sculptress have been molded out of his own body while the performance was also centered on himself. But the numbness he feels, Manmperi suggest is the numbness that the society at large is experiencing. Though the artist is commenting on the present state of politics, it is very clear that a linear thematic connection can be drawn from this exhibition to his earlier works. The present works are a more subtle and nuanced articulation of the post war state of feeling in the country.

Though a key artist closely associated with the 90’s Trend, Koralegedara Pushpakuamara’s work so far has shown a preoccupation with issues of sexuality, personal pain, self-frustration as well as wider frustrations of youth. It is in this context that Ranabhu has noted that Pushpakumara early works tended to depict “a single individual frustrated by the constantly present social, cultural and political brutalization as the main motif” (Ranabahu 2009). This was a representation of himself as well as others like him. In this sense, his early works were not only autobiographical but also narcissistic according to at least one recent commentator (Ranabahu 2009).  From a methodological point of view, Pushpakumara’s 2009 exhibition, Goodwill Hardware almost obsessively focused on what may be called ‘materiality,’ particularly compared to Pushpakumara’s earlier work which were mostly paintings. The major works in the exhibition were installations along with two dimensional works hung the walls which also incorporated relief forms. Moreover, due to what he was attempting to narrate through this methodological framework, this exhibition brought his work directly within the focus of this book. 

Ranabahu has noted the overt disconnectedness presented in the combination of the adjective (goodwill as something good) and the noun (hardware a something hard or harsh) which formulates the theme of his exhibition (Ranabahu 2009). The main material and the manner of their use augment this contradiction as well as the artist’s argument.  The work titled Goodwill Hardware 1 incorporated barbed wire safely within transparent plastic tubes. In this context, something intrinsically seen as dangerous, hurtful and marking clear borders which should not be crossed was transformed into something apparently safe. In Goodwill Hardware 2, Pushpakumara similarly encased within transparent plastic tubes regular household matches which were perceived as common and relatively safe items in daily use which nevertheless had potential for danger given their ability initiate fire. But that too, remains safe only as long as they are encased in plastic tubes, thereby removed from conditions of ignition. In Goodwill Hardware 3, he used material that tend to signal danger or mark off areas which should not be trespassed in terms of their color like traffic or police tapes, wrapped them around objects similar to large sausages and transformed them into mere playful or trivial structures in which their sense of danger was seemingly erased.  In all the situations, one type of material was dangerous or had the possibility to become dangerous or signal danger while the other material juxtaposed with them had the potential to neutralize them while the former was incorporated or associated with the latter. 

The artist was inviting viewers to explore the popular meanings embedded in these seeming contradictions and ponder over the liminality of apparent safety in the transformed or new form or environment. In his mind, this was similar to the manner in which the dangers and unresolved issues of immediate post war are not always visible; they were subsumed under various guises of the emergent national security state and its multiple discourses. Ranabahu notes this is also Pushpakuamara’s attempt at suggesting that intensely harsh and bitter situations of human suffering are “dismissed from social memory and forgotten through skilful political maneuvering of subtle as well as blatant political discourses or unrelenting cultural strategies” (Ranabahu 2009).

Sarath Kumarasiri is the best known sculptor associated with the 90s Trend who has been consistently working on issues directly related to violence and memory as evidenced in Chapter 4. In that sense, his intention to comment on the politics of post war in his 2009 exhibition Kovil-Pansal is a logical extension of a well established narrative trajectory. Much of his earlier works took as its point of departure the dynamic of memorialization through the reproduction of common, mundane and everyday items used by victims of violence. In comparison, the two highly visible works in the Kovil-Pansal exhibition were clearly monumental. They were executed in metal sheets out of which the artist had hewed entrance facades of Buddhist and Hindu shrines combining the dominant features representing Buddhist and Hindu religious architecture. In fact, the title of the exhibition which combined the Tamil (kovil) and Sinhala (pansal) words for temples was emblematic of this synthesis. 

On one hand, Kumarsiri situates both words from the two languages in a single, composite and equal setting contradicting the state’s official patronage of Buddhism as the religion of the state through its entrenchment in the Sri Lankan constitution. On the other hand, the artist attempts to implicate the sectarian politics that made such divisions and their resultant fallout possible. In other words, this is an articulation of the omnipresence “of extremist religious nationalism behind many dark episodes in recent Sri Lankan history” (Ranabahu 2009). The viewing of these artworks and stepping into them is a matter of entering these ‘dark episodes’; it is about resurrecting the blue prints of social tragedies that are not openly articulated which are therefore made invisible through that in-articulation. 

For Kumarasiri the politicized versions of both religious traditions and their ideological make-up represents the authors of the tragedies of violence, nationalism and ethno-cultural competition that has affected Sri Lanka for over three decades. His main concern is that these issues remain unresolved despite the end of war. That is the reality of post war: nothing is really resolved except the war. That is why, when one enters the temple facades it would not be possible travel beyond as one’s entry is barred just inside the front doorway. Post war then for Kumarsiri is not a phase of progress but of non-movement or even regression.

The post-war work and the politics of Chandraguptha Thenuwara tend to be much more blunt resistant to over-interpretation than the work of the other three artists disused in this section. This also means that Thenuwara’s work has the ability to communicate his ideas better to a larger audience not necessarily equipped with an informed sense of art appreciation. It does however run the risk of blurring the boundary between art (even political art) and political activism. Ability to communicate is an enduring feature and strength of his work.

His first important postwar exhibition was ‘Black Paintings & Other Works: An Exhibition of Paintings and Installation at the Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo held between 3^rd and 5^th April 2010 (GroundViews 2010). This was followed soon afterwards by ‘Vigil and Other Works: An Exhibition of Installations, Drawings and Paintings’ at the same venue from 24^th to 29^th July 2010 (Kanagasabapathipillai 2010). The two exhibitions together establish the parameters of Thenuwara’s postwar output in art.

‘Black Paintings & Other Works’ consisted of fifteen artworks that included installations, drawings and paintings.  In his own statement formulated to contextualize the exhibition, the artist refers to the postwar period in which it is held as a difficult and unique moment marked by both the end of protracted war   and the divisive politics of parliamentary elections (Thenuwara 2010).  The structure and presentation of the exhibition link some of Thenuwara’s earlier works from the immediate past to the current works, thereby also simultaneously linking in an unlinear manner the prewar and postwar politics of the country. In his conceptualization, the exhibition consists of two parts. The first, which he calls the ‘preface’ presents three previously exhibited works; this section is symbolic of the immediate past in terms of wider politics. The second component addresses the issues of the current moment with nine new paintings and an installation. According to Thenuwara, the preface was needed because the ideas expressed through these earlier works are still valid in the context of postwar realities (Thenuwara 2010).  This marks his self-conscious and direct attempt at linking the past and the present. Among the works included in the preface is triptych (2007) based on three selected verses from Dhammapada. The articulations he has adopted from Dhammapada are the following: 'hatred never ceases by hatred'; ‘to all, life is dear and all fear death’; and ‘one should neither kill nor cause to kill'  (Thenuwara 2010). The association he makes between the words of the Buddha and the unpleasantness of war and destruction is clear enough. The second series of works in the preface consist of the   triptych 'Erasing Camouflage: Peace' (2008) through which he attempted to formulate the literal erasure of camouflage in imaging peace. That is, issues linked to war represented by camouflage designs and colors had to be addressed for them to be erased I order to achieve peace. On one hand, it indicated a moment of hope, but on the other hand, it was also the reiteration of an ideal goal that was difficult to achieve. The war was now over, but whether peace was achieved in the wider sense of the word remains contested. The third component of the preface was a painting initially exhibited in 2009 under the slogan “now there is only black and white” (Thenuwara 2010). Here, the reference was to the lack of contradictions in the postwar mega narrative that was emerging in the background of victory in war.  Thenuwara believes that the politics these earlier works represent need re-exploration because the issues they attempted to address have not been resolved; in his own words, “ we are facing a moment in which we are compelled to be cautious and to go forward with greater care” (Thenuwara 2010). ‘Greater care’ in this context is an euphemism for ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety.’

What he considers ‘The Black Paintings’ were specifically executed for this exhibition, and were meant to address the issues of the current moment (Thenuwara 2010). For him, the transition from prewar to post war is effectively ‘black moment’ where outstanding political issues from the past remain unresolved and the future is unclear.  Nevertheless, he notes, “this moment should not be bleak and terrible.  It should not be a time where thorn-like barbed wire becomes familiar, where masks conceal ill intent.  This is a moment that should be bright with light and hope and openness.  It should not be shrouded in darkness with various kinds of strictures imposed on the print and electronic media; where there is no place or space for expressing what needs to be said.   Instead we are compelled to scribble again and again on a wall that is wiped clean regularly” (Thenuwara 2010). The artist is clearly critiquing the absence of wisdom in the politics of postwar. The following rhetorical question he poses makes this very clear: “If the masses are going to be imprisoned by rulers who came to power promising benevolence and if injustice is going to be masked in the name of the motherland, patriotism, and nationalism, what should we do?”

He answers his own question by placing the overall responsibility for social justice on concerned citizens thereby removing the onus for politics from the clutches of politicians: “Only we can build an era of good governance, a time that is free of hatred, a time in which love can spread and rights can be protected, a time in which we can speak and express our ideas freely and live without the fear of mistrust and the fear of death, it is only then that freedom, equality and peace will prevail” (Thenuwara 2010). 

Thenuwara’s next postwar exhibition ‘Vigil’ (24th to 29th July 2010) consisting of fifteen exhibits is literally what the word implies, particularly with reference to its central installation. It consists of a number of female figures made out of white plaster of paris, lamps in hand waiting in vigil for the dead and the disappeared of their families. Another installation called ‘Columns of our Time’ consists of a number of columns made out of empty camouflage painted barrels, tin roofing sheets and used tires all of which were acutely linked to violence, war and destruction in the local context. ‘Vigil’ is part of a series of commemorative exhibitions he attempts to hold annually in the month of July to commemorate what is known in Sri Lanka as the ‘Black July.’ This refers to the extensive violence in July 1983 unleashed against Tamil civilians in response to the killing of thirteen Sinhala soldiers in Jaffna by the LTTE. The violence consumed hundreds of Tamil civilian lives along with the destruction of their properties and large-scale displacement of Tamils in Southern Sri Lanka. The violence was orchestrated by Sinhala thugs operating under the protection of the ruling United National Party. No one linked to the violence has been charged or brought to justice up to this point. For Thenuwara, the exhibition was to sustain in memory a crucial event from the divisive politics of the recent past that has not been resolved or closed even though overall political circumstances have changed dramatically. The artist observed in a 2010 interview, "with this exhibition I wanted to commemorate those events. A 30-year war is over, but there is still no peace. We must be aware of our actions and we should not forget the past so easily. We must participate in the peace process because there are several obstacles that must still be overcome" (Asia News 2010).

Both exhibitions are symptomatic of Thenuwara’s insistent contention that postwar is not a moment of hope or a process of transformative social justice. For him, it is a time of forceful erasure imposed by the state and other political forces aligned to its ideology which he as an artist is refusing to be consumed by. As he observes, “my shows are always political, social awareness is very important for me. I think it is my responsibility" (Asia News 2010).

The general theme running across the postwar works of all four artists is the cynicism or lack of confidence in the seeming or relative quiet of postwar society and politics. This is not a non appreciation of the absence of war.  After all, all these artists very vigorously opposed the war as well as other forms of political violence because of the destructions it ushered in throughout their careers. It is in essence a critique of what is now considered ‘peace’ in terms of the dominant political discourse, particularly of the state given its lack of clear direction, disinterest in learning from history and what seems to be the institutionalized absence of wisdom in contemporary national politics. Seen in this sense, the postwar art of these artists as well as that of others who continue to comment on politics do not constitute works that narrate uncritical stories of hope; instead, they are extensions of the prewar narratives of memory and despair which now go on to explore the contradictions and hypocrisies embedded in the ideas and experiences of peace and postwar.  

Future of Political Art in Sri Lanka

As a process of catharsis or as a process to reclaim and narrate painful personal and collective memories and to memorialize them, the art of the 1990s made a visible impact upon recent Sri Lankan art history. This becomes even more important when one considers the fact that, except for a handful of academic tracts, the violence and pain of the past as well as appeals for and expectations of justice in this context remain largely un-addressed, and certainly not publicly acknowledged. Moreover, postwar politics remains dominated by nostalgia of victory in war to the extent of undermining essential postwar political considerations such as reconciliation. In that sense, these works not only constitute a component of personal histories of individuals and segments of recent art history in general but also a larger corpus of narratives of the social and political history of the recent violent past and the contested present. It is in this context that the observations on the role of contemporary art by of Miguel Angel Corzo and Roy Perry that I referred to at the outset of this book becomes important. When Angel Corzo wondered “if we accept the notion that arts reflects history, then contemporary art is, in some way, a monument to contemporary civilization. It is the cultural heritage of our time…(1999: XV) and when Perry observed that “if we do not preserve the art of today for tomorrow’s audience, their knowledge and experience of our culture will be, sadly, impoverished” (Perry 1999: 44), they were clearly hinting at the communicative and historiographic dynamics of contemporary art. However, this perceived, anticipated and possible role of art runs into a set of crucial problems in the Sri Lankan context. 

One is the absence of a dynamic and formal art historic narrative process that could have recorded the contributions to memory and history the art works reviewed in this book have made. In fact, in the relative not existence of such a tradition, this book itself becomes one of the very few preliminary efforts in attempting to institutionalize such a process. Second, the absence of a formal, publicly accessible and continuous system of art acquisition, preservation and presentation in state or private sectors means that these artworks could disappear from both the memory of individuals and the public as well as from the unprotected collections of artists themselves where they at present mostly remain. Unlike in many other countries, Sri Lanka does not have a public or private system of galleries and art museums with clearly defined agendas or facilities where such practices could have been institutionalized. The state has since the 1950s maintained a Department and Ministry of Culture, within which the National Art Gallery is also institutionally located. However, since Independence, national governments have shown no serious interest in selective preservation of contemporary and particularly alternative art. Clearly, this becomes an even more sensitive issue, when it comes to the kind of work I have referred to in this book. As pointed out by Webb, the attention any national government would pay to art “is predicated on the fact that what is turned into art signifies what is perceived as worthy of attention” (Webb 2005: 3). In many countries where such things as national art collections have been institutionalized, the emphasis has been to select and preserve art that perceivably indicate a sense of national cultural identity, a sense of authenticity. This is because in such national contexts, art is seen as ‘vehicles of social meaning’ in the sense articulated by Cesar Grana (quoted in Webb 2005), which “both represent and realize ‘the world’; and as a corollary can confirm (or deny) the stories of nationhood (Webb 2005: 30). This general observation has partial relevance to what has happened in the Sri Lankan context. That is, in addition to the almost complete absence of a system of galleries and museums, the state’s understanding of art is based upon a very restrictive notion of culture and heritage, which since the time of independence has privileged traditional forms of art and craft associated with the domain of Sinhala culture. In that same context, contemporary art has almost no sense of value, particularly within state and national systems of cultural reckoning. If some contemporary artworks were selected to the un-curated national collection at the National Art Gallery or for other ad hoc collections in various government institutions as decorative arrangements, such works were likely to be very representational works linked to perceived glorious pasts, idealized village scenes and idealized religious sensibilities mostly informed by middle class conceptions of Buddhism. All these selections are supposed to represent the nation, and in this case they refer specifically to the Sinhala nation while at the same time such works are expected to symbolize the county without any contradictions. 

It is in the context of such a highly selective system of privileging art that Webb’s following comment makes sense: “not just any art could become metonymic of nation, of course. The art selected to inscribe national identity, tended to be works that relied on orthodox images” (Webb 2005: 30). As this book has illustrated, the art of the 1990s did not rely on orthodox images. In addition to this restriction based on conventional wisdom, the art of the 1990s is not considered worthy of attention given their rather gloomy subject matter to which the state also has a significant degree of culpability. In the same manner, the few private collections have also preferred a similar mode of selection, and in the event they did opt for contemporary art, they often tended to be works that more clearly represented the modernist credo of art-making, and clearly excluded works that claimed to be ‘political.’

In the long run then, these significant systemic, policy and perceptive absences could mean that the contribution of works such as the art of the 1990s would over time not be part of history or memory. They would have gone beyond history and memory into oblivion thereby making the future’s understanding of our times, our culture, our fears and our collective being impoverished, marked by serious absences.

Terror, Performance and Anxieties of Our Times: Reading Rustom Bharucha and Reliving Terror

Terror and Performance by Rustom Bharucha (2014). Tulika Books, New Delhi; ISBN 978-93-82381-37-2; pp. xvi; 250. INR 695.00

Approaching terror

When I started reading Rustom Bharucha’s latest book, Terror and Performance, it immediately became an intensely personal and gripping engagement.  It was difficult to read in a single attempt as the mind kept wandering from one unpleasant moment in our recent annals of terror to another in some of which I had also become an unwitting part – mostly as a spectator. From the beginning, my reading was a conversation with Bharucha’s text through detours of my own experiences and an interrogation to a lesser extent.  In 1986, as a young man when I went to the Colombo International Airport to pick up my father who was returning from the Middle East, I was shaken by a tremendously loud sound for which I had no immediate references. I had not heard such a sound before.  People started running towards the sound. It was a bomb that had blown up an Air Lanka flight which had come from Gatwick. The Central Telegraph Office in Colombo was bombed in the same year.  Again, we learnt that everyone was running towards the sound and not away from it. Dry local political humor very soon informed us that people were trying to get inside the bombed out telegraph office hoping that they could get free phone calls to their relatives in the Middle East as they had heard telephones were dangling from the walls with no operators in sight. That was long before mobile phones and call boxes. We were still young in terms of our experiences with terror. However, we soon had very viable references to what all this meant as the political narrative of Lanka unfolded with devastating consequences. But in 1986, when the kind of terror that was to follow in all its fury was still relatively new and quite unknown – at least in southern parts of the country, we were acutely unaware of the dynamics of the actual act of terror and the structure of feeling it could unleash. This is why many of us in these initial years were naively attracted towards the epicenter of the act rather than being mindful to run away from it. But as the society grew in experience, people soon learned their lessons. Though an academic text in every conceivable way, I was reminded one could always find a few rare books of this kind which might personally and emotionally touch a reader in addition to whatever intellectual stimulation it might also usher in. Terror and Performance is clearly one such book. From the perspective of the writer, Bharucha himself recognizes this personal emotional engagement and investment early in the book.  For him, “this writing demands stamina as it faces an onslaught of uncertainties and cruelties at the global level that challenges the basic assumptions of what it means to be human” (xi). It is the same kind of stamina that one also needs to read it as most of us in South Asia would be reading it squarely sitting in the midst of our own worlds of unfolding terror or memories of it. This is why all those thoughts came gushing into my mind throughout the reading. I was not only reading Bharucha; I was also reading my own past.

At the very outset, Bharaucha has identified quite accurately two predicaments that writers of terror have to face. One is the seeming non-existence of an exit from the act of writing in the sense of not “being able to free one’s self from the closure of violence” (xi). Particularly in the uncertain political circumstances of countries in South Asia and other regions of the world with similar political experiences, there is no seeming end to violence. As such, how would one end his narrative? This is not a simple matter of cataloguing acts of terror, but dealing with the interpretation of what happens. The second predicament he refers to is the need to “accept a state of suspension” with no other choices (xii). In other words, “once one enters the narrative of terror, one has no other choice but to keep wading through the blood even as the possibility of reaching the other side cannot be readily assumed” (xii). The issue of ‘personal’ is crucial throughout the book not only to the writer but also to the reader. For Bharucha, this amalgamation of concerns focused on the ‘personal’ is also an essential part of the book’s methodological approach. As he notes, despite the many books he could rely on to find some of the answers to his questions, “these questions demanded a more personal interrogation and verification, some of which fuel critical junctures of thought in the book” (xv).  In this sense, writing about terror as well as reading about it in many ways is an immersion in the violence itself, particularly when this has to be done from our kind of politico-social circumstances where the distance between the constant unfolding of terror and the relentless and seemingly fruitless search for collective sanity is not so great.

Bharucha had begun to produce Jean Genet’s play, The Maids three weeks after September 11^th 2001 in a Manila theatrical venue known as the Republic of Malate, which was burned down in November (1-2). If the burning of the theater was the immediate ‘provocation’ for the book (2), its actual creative impulse emanates from the following crucial question: “How can one free terror from the hegemonic discourse of terrorism?” (2-3). For Bharucha, the “only way of breathing life into the vocabulary of terror is to insist that it should not be conflated with what has come to be hegemonized as ‘terrorism’” (3). In many ways, this book is epitomized by this ideological position in a general context where much is talked and written about terror without the contextual nuances required to make sense of terror within the difficult to access terrains of human nature.  From this point of departure, the book interrogates the twin ideas of terror and performance via four significant motifs: September ‘11, Islamophobia, truth and reconciliation and non-violence.  Given Bharucha’s expertise and passionate involvement in theatre and the ideas of performance, throughout the book, he makes detailed and nuanced detours into the literature on these disciplinary domains in an attempt to make sense out of specific events of terror.  Bharucha makes it very clear that he is writing on the basis of his “affinities to humanities” and more clearly from his experience with “immersion in the field of theater and performance studies” (xii). In chapter one, juxtaposed against his experience and thoughts of producing Maids in Manila, Bharucha invites us to think through the global or at least seemingly global discourse on 9’11 in an attempt to “exhume the terrifying effects of ‘September 11’ from its overstated, yet unresolved discourse” (33).  He does not attempt to do this through the almost impossible task of a critical retrospective of the way in which 9’11 has been seen and perceived globally. Instead, he begins his journey via a critical interrogation of a series of responses to the event that were published in the Theatre Journal (47). This journey progresses through an analytical domain which looks at the ideas of tragedy, cruelty, repetition of terror, trauma, autoimmunity, politics of empathy and so on through an informed understanding of how theater and performance work and how that understanding might be useful in interpreting  terror.     

Though the hegemonic media coverage that has engulfed the world has insistently informed us that  9’11 is a ‘world changing event’ or a ‘major event’ (47), I tend to agree more with Derrida’s argument, which Bharucha refers to as an “impression of a major event” (45). Notwithstanding the calamity and the resultant sense of sorrow the event enveloped New York and the United States for a considerable period of time and taking into account the global imagination and sense of shock it captured, one has to wonder whether the event’s ‘world changing’ persona was a product of its location and the global consequences of this location rather than the nature of terror unleashed. This is a question that Bharucha’s analysis opens up. It is also not a simple matter of the number of civilian casualties. The Mumbai attack of 26^th September 2008, which is now known in India as 26’11 glibly following the nomenclature concocted to describe the New York attack, the Westgate Shopping Mall attack in Nairobi on 21^st September 2013 (all of which intriguingly happened in September of different years) and the relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2014 changed the ‘worlds’ of the people who were intimately and devastatingly touched by these events; their worlds were scarred and shattered.  But these incidents have never become ‘world changing’ events partly due to their location(s), partly due to the kind of media coverage they received which did not confer that almost hallowed position on them and also because of the structure of repercussions. After all, the US launched the ‘war on terror’ after 9’11 which among other things became a death call to hundreds of Afghan and  Pakistani civilians through drone attacks while India and Nigeria could not muster adequate cash or military and political muscle for such a global outreach.  And as abundantly clear, the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza are merely collateral damage. As Bharucha correctly points out, ‘September 11’ acquired its discursive position primarily through an ‘American mediascape’ and its global influence rather than from any ‘unitary perspective’ that makes sense globally (49).

Narrating Islamophobia

Chapter two titled ‘Muslims in a Time of Terror’ deals with Islamophobia and is a chilling account of the difficulty in being Muslim in today’s political contexts in most ‘non-Muslim places.’  ‘Aliens’ or ‘minorities ‘ in this context often happen to be Muslims as the situations in varying degrees of intensity in contemporary Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India as well as Western Europe and North America very clearly indicate. Keeping apart North America and Europe where Muslim settlement in any significant numbers is a relatively recent phenomenon, in non-Muslim majority countries in South Asia such as Sri Lanka and India as well as in Burma, Thailand and the Philippines this imagination essentially means delegitimization of Muslim history in these places and a subsequent erasure of that history as well as the often expressed wish for the erasure of their physical presence. But since the Palestinian liberation struggle from the 1960s onwards when the violence of that struggle entered the world stage and more specifically since ‘September ‘11’, “the spectre of ‘Muslims’ has haunted and infiltrated the language of terrorism in our times” (75). In many ways, it is this ‘language of terror’ where the main culprit is seen as the Muslim and the way in which media world over has recreated the Muslim as terrorist as described by Edward Said in his book, Covering Islam.[1] This state of affairs has ensured that being Muslim in our times and very tellingly in our part of the world has become anxiety-ridden and constantly surveilled state of being.

Beginning with an anecdotal account of a personal experience where Bharucha himself came close to ‘passing’ for a Muslim (76), he takes us through a fascinating terrain of knowledge exploring the construction of the Muslim, particularly in sub-continental India through a number of tropes which includes ‘passing’ and ‘covering’ (76-85). He later explores in detail how these tropes or frameworks of reference actually work in real life as well as in performance.  As he notes, “’passing’ which can be most easily read within the narrative of mistaken identity” which he identifies as “one of the most ancient tropes of world theatre” (85). Bharucha’s anecdotal entry into the discussion as well as his latter nuanced exploration of Islamophobia in our times allowed for the re-narrativation in my own mind an incident that happened in 2012. I had gone for a haircut in a small barber’s kiosk in Chanakyapuri. The barber asked me before he began his work if I was a Muslim. I said no and was not intersected in further explanations. Though he did start his inelegant chopping of my hair, he asked on three different times the same question which made me very nervous and he was not too pleasant. But when one of my colleagues came into the place, the barber asked him also if I was a Muslim. Unlike me, without any hesitation, my colleague confirmed I was not a Muslim and also established my ‘foreignness.’  The atmosphere immediately metamorphosed into something more palatable. The barber’s glumness disappeared; he became talkative and even gave me a free head massage. And since that day, he always acknowledges me in the market with a large, if somewhat, crooked smile. All this is simply because the spectre of Muslim had been exorcised from my persona to his satisfaction.  Reading Bharucha’s exploration, I was reminded of the discomforting feeling I felt that day, which constantly come to my mind every time I visit that market.  

The latter part of the chapter focuses on discourses of communalism in contemporary India through which Bharaucha explores how Muslims have been targeted, ‘othered’ and killed in specific moments of history.  With a focus on dynamics of ‘othering Indian Muslims’ and the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, Bharucha proceeds to ascertain the discursivity of what he terms genocide and the extent to which the killing of the other can be understood as a performative act (75).  Borrowing Arjun Appadurai’s terminology, ‘dead certainty’ Bharucha notes that the “’dead certainty’ of the Gujarat genocide cannot be separated from the terrifyingly banal truth that the perpetrators of this genocide were fully aware that they would get away with their crimes” (108). What is even more terrifying is the fact that this certainty can be extended way beyond Gujarat to other parts of our region and to communities beyond Muslims in times of terror: anti-Tamil violence in Sri Lanka in 1983, anti-Sikh violence in India in 1984, continuing sporadic violence against Ahmadiyas in Pakistan and continuing violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka at the present time. In the latter case, a large corpus of  visual evidence percolates all over the internet in general and YouTube in particular,  thanks to the emergence of CCTV and mobile camera footage as a viable audio-pictorial discourse which presents the  spectre of freely roaming perpetrators as long as they are acting at the behest of the state or its numerous agencies.

Dramas of truth and reconciliation

The third Chapter of the book titled ‘Countering Terror?’ focuses on the notion of seeking justice in the aftermath of terror through truth and reconciliation processes. This is undertaken by way of a close exploration of these processes in Rwanda and South Africa. As we know, it is in these two countries where ‘truth and reconciliation,’ initially experimented by post-apartheid South Africa, have been tried out as formal socio-legal mechanisms to deal with the consequences of terror. At the very outset, Bharucha consciously addresses the serious issues that are embedded in the often casual use of the prefix ‘post’ as in post-genocide Rwanda and post-apartheid South Africa. As he correctly notes, ‘post’ when juxtaposed with experiences of large-scale tragedies tends to be “deceptive in so far as it implies a clean break with the past, which, in actuality, continues to haunt the present through lingering legacies of violence, humiliation and injustice” (111).  In a comparable context, there is a rather vocal discourse on ‘postwar reconciliation’ in Sri Lanka sponsored by the state and readily embraced by many people, in the southern parts of the country, thankful at seeing an official end to a war that lasted for thirty years and enamored by the new buildings, roads, expressways, parks and walking paths and other assets of ‘development’ that have emerged across the landscape both in the south and the once war-scarred northeast. However, what this discourse hides within its rhetoric demarcated by a very liminal sense of ‘post’ and its physical manifestations of decontextualized contemporary artifacts of ‘development’ are the lingering pain and traumatized memories of thousands of people and dismantled processes of justice which remain largely invisible. It is with regard to such contexts that Bharucha warns us that at best ‘post’  only marks ‘official’ endings of “national crises and states of emergency as determined by the agencies of the state” while at ground level, a very different reality exists in the hearts and minds of the people (111). With this important qualification Bharucha proceeds to explore the performative aspects of the processes of transitional justice in Rwanda and South Africa.

In the case of Rwanda, Bharucha’s main effort is to explore how the Gacca process worked mostly through the vivid ethnographic details provided by the work of Ananda Breed (124-130). With this information, he not only provides a wider canvas to the reading that follows but also the structure of dramaturgy with reference to Gacca. Gacca is a pre-colonial local model for dispute resolution that was prevalent in Rwanda which essentially meant “opposing families sitting on the grass opening themselves to the medication of community elders” (118). However, the transformation of this simple but affective and highly respected system of dispute-resolution based in local wisdom to the new gacca which was meant to offer judgments on ‘serious crimes’ was burdened with significant internal contradictions with disastrous consequences. This has lead some critics to describe the reinvented gacca simply as a hoax (119).  But as Bharucha’s description amply demonstrates, it is this system with its own dysfunctions and contradictions that was available for the performance of justice in Rwanda.

Comparatively, Bharucha’s journey into the discursive spaces of truth and reconciliation in South Africa takes place via a number of motifs which includes how silence is performed and challenged, how ideas of forgiveness needs to be worked through when juxtaposed against the reality of living with evil and the spatial dimensions of reconciliation (144-156). Besides, Bharucha ponders over the theatricality of the hearings themselves and the nature of ‘truth’ in the practice of storytelling sanctioned by the TRC process in South Africa (131-144). On the other hand, following Judith Butler’s notion of performitivity as the “power to produce what it names,’ the conceptual focus of his approach, is based on a close reading of the legal mechanisms and institutions set up by states to enact “new modes of ‘forgiveness’ and ‘reconciliation’” (111).  Indeed the ‘newness’ of these modes of forgiveness and reconciliation is precisely their problem as well as means of ‘success’ as ‘procedures’ or to borrow Bharucha’s key word in the text, ‘performances.’ Truth and reconciliation processes – weather in Rwanda and South Africa or elsewhere -- have ‘worked’ to the extent they have, because they have offered much leeway to perform the ‘truth’ in a way culprits would agree to and legal systems would tolerate despite the massive misgivings of many victims. This leeway however, is also the focus of much criticism by victims as the literature on the South African and Rwandan cases clearly document.  For them, truth is really not narrated. Instead, a legally binding and state-sanctioned  version of truth is presented and performed in public that allows society in general and the state in particular to move on without having to drastically deal with its collective violent past. It is the complexity of this situation which Bharucha affectively brings out within which the seeming finality of transitional justice mechanisms of ‘post’-genocide Rwanda and ‘post’-apartheid South Africa becomes unhinged. In fact, at the end of the chapter, Bharucha himself poses the question whether “justice materialize through the process of truth and reconciliation” and whether “justice however flawed and incomplete in its execution, be regarded as a means of countering terror?” (157). Interestingly, it is in this liminal state where such processes can be seen as ‘excuses’ for justice that the present Sri Lankan regime has requested South African help in setting up a local truth and reconciliation mechanism in the backdrop of international demands for war a crimes tribunal and an accountable investigation into the last phases of Sri Lanka’s devastating civil war. As in the cases of Rwanda and South Africa, Sri Lankan regime is also looking for a way out rather than a means to deliver justice or finding a legitimate source of closure.  In any event, as a restless academic not interested in providing clinical bullet points of ‘solutions’ for think-tanks, Bharucha lets his question hang after providing the ethnographic context and the conceptual framework for us to think through what it means.

Non-violence amidst terror?

The final Chapter of the book is titled, ‘Performing Non-Violence in the Age of Terror.’ At its very beginning, the sudden entry of Gandhi into a discourse on terror   comes as a shock until one is reminded that Gandhi unleashed his nonviolence in a world of terror, violence and cruelty.    Beyond this, Bharucha’s deployment of Gandhi at this stage of his book also has to do with his attempt of interrogating the truth and reconciliation mechanisms he had just described in the previous chapter.  He correctly describes Gandhi as “the world’s most obstinate and visionary of radicals” (159).  Bharucha deploys Gandhi to pose crucial questions and provocations on how to deal with terror in the “immediacies of here and now” (159). That is, for Bharucha, Gandhi is not a source of solutions, but a catalyst and initiator of questions that “stretch the limits of this book beyond its discursive framework into the domain of possible action” (159). Indeed, what better way to undertake this task than with the spectre of a man who acted as did Gandhi?

Entering into an interesting domain of informed conjecture, Bharucha wonders how Gandhi would have perceived the truth and reconciliation processes in countries like Rwanda and South Africa. He suggests that the South African TRC would have “moved Gandhi deeply” even though he would have disagreed with both Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela (160). In Bharucha’s mind, “the spectral presence of Gandhi in this epilogue offers critical dissent not only in relation to the outcome of the TRC process in South Africa, but also its very premises” (160). Describing Gandhi as a “one-man truth commission” based on the way he worked in the context of riots and atrocities in the Indian sub-continent, Bharucha suggests quite convincingly that Gandhi would have been seriously concerned about the TRC’s symbolic and healing significations as well as the way in which the legalities and their implications actually worked in practice (160). In the context of Gandhi’s well-documented positions on the value of truth, social justice and the necessity to take responsibility for one’s own actions, Bharucha suggests that Gandhi would not have accepted a system which did not offer “evidence of repentance on the part of the perpetrators” in exchange for amnesty and forgiveness (160). Unfortunately, this is precisely the main problem with truth and reconciliation systems that have been experimented with so far. Citing examples from the Rwandan case, Bharucha suggests that Gandhi’s preference would have been for one of the community service options that was available which was centered “within the neighborhood or district where the crime took place, thereby compelling perpetrators and victims to recognize each other’s existence” (161). Such a system is far more palatable than a system of institutionalized and disassociated apologies with no semblance of repentance or a situation where victims would have to work and live amongst free roaming perpetrators where they might meet and pass each other in the most mundane and quotidian of circumstances, not unlike the situation painted in Ariel Dormman’s play, the Death and the Maiden.[2]

Would Gandhian solutions to truth and reconciliation make sense in a world where Gandhi himself is absent? With this important question in mind,  Bharucha explores some specific examples of Gandhi in action to see how he responded to extremities of different kinds of violence (163-173). I think Bharucha is correct when he claims without confusion that “only non-violence could suggest a way out of the impasse of warring factions through its own paradoxical logic: ready to die, but not prepared to kill” (173). This position brings to my mind the often quoted, but as often unpracticed, Buddhist position articulated by the Buddha in the ‘Kalayakkhini Vatthu’ in Dhamma Pada which posits, “hatred is, indeed, never appeased by hatred in this world; it is appeased only by loving-kindness; this is an ancient law.”[3] However, as the work of terror and the lack of ethics in predominantly Buddhist societies in contemporary contexts such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar on one hand and Thailand to a different extent would indicate, both Gandhian and Buddhist positions on non-violence in most cases do not make much headway beyond decontextualized rhetoric.  

Semantics of terror and performance

I would like to conclude my engagement with Bharucha’s book with a minor note of dissonance. This has to do with the meaning Bharucha has given to ‘performance’ within the specificity of his book. He reminds us early in the book that it is titled ‘terror and performance’ and not ‘terror as performance’ (29).  The reason for this is very clearly spelt out by him: “the performative understanding of terror begins only when one responds to an act of violence, however vulnerably and in a state of acute fear, either through spectatorship or witnessing” (29). He also notes that terror can be performed when an individual who has experienced terror relives the moment (29). He emphasizes however, that the performance of terror is “built through the accretion of these responses and not through the act of terror itself” (29). And true to this early assertion, it is through this lens that Bharucha continues to look at and interrogate the notion of terror throughout the book. As he makes clear, “to regard the involuntary deaths of victims as performance in their own right raises troubling issues around the agency, if not the privilege to name ‘performance’ in the first place (29). It is also in the same context that Bharucha questions Ann Pellegrini’s description of ‘September 2011’ as ‘performance unto death’ (65-66). He is not convinced if the deaths and disappearances that occurred as a result of ‘September 2011’ should or could be seen as performances in the first place (66). As he questions, “in whose authorial framework, and from which disciplinary set of protocols and expertise, can death be proclaimed as performative? Who determines performance for others, including the dead in whose name we speak?” (66). I understand Bharucha’s intellectual and ethical discomfort in this specific framework of seeing acts of terror and the resultant deaths in a performative idiom. However, it seems to me that this understanding of the performative attributes of terror does not allow for a more complete understanding of what terror might mean.  This is mostly because this position has removed the perspective of the perpetrators from the wider understandings of terror. Even Pelligrni, who is taken to task by Bharucha seems to be talking of ‘performance unto death’ rather flippantly, which is the main reason for the angst that Bharucha feels. Such a flippant reaction might come from “interpreting death as performance through the spectacular effects of its visuality for a particular audience” (66).  For me, the act of terror itself can and must necessarily be seen as a performance of a certain kind when seen from the perspective of its authors, the perpetrators whose agency is generally absent in many academic reckonings of the meanings of their acts though they are ever present in the act itself. One wonders why the Twin Towers were not simply exploded with bombs affixed to its foundations or underground parking areas as was once unsuccessfully attempted or demolished with a missile attack in a context where useable missiles are readily available in the international black-market of weapons, facilitated and supplied by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its satellite states and the expanse of active global warzones.  Either of these acts seems to me would have been far more clinical while it would have also saved the perpetrators. Why then, adopt the obviously risky task of high-jacking airplanes and flying them into the Twin Towers when the possibility of them being shot down or the project going wrong for numerous other reasons were ever present. As Bharucha himself describes the event, “audacious, deadly, suicidal perpetrators who carefully timed the bombings of the Twin Towers for maximum media coverage, and possibly George Bush and his cronies in the FBI and CIA ---“ (45). In other words, they were enacting a performance for the world to see for which they had written a very careful script, engaged in practice with choreographic precision, and all of us have seen the final production. When I saw the attack of the second airplane live on CNN, slow-motion repeat telecasts of the earlier attack was already been shown. I kept watching it and flipping through television channels to see the event from other angles because it was not just an attack, but also a performance albeit with very deadly consequences.

This issue of performitvity of the act also brought other memories back to me. In the late 1980s when the reign of terror in southern Sri Lanka was at its peak, one morning people in the vicinity of the central town of Kandy near the local university saw eighteen body-less heads neatly arranged on the bank of a small body of water silently gazing upon the water. Their bodies were nowhere to be seen. At this time, it was normal for people to encounter smoldering bodies along the roads, people strapped to lamp posts and shot and so on.  After all, it was a time of terror.  Even so, the kind of scene described above was not common. It was meant to be a special event, a performance of terror. Ten years later, when I had undertaken research into this phase of local politics of terror, I remember having a very surreal interview with a policeman who was stationed in the western province at the time of terror. While sipping chilled lime juice from a slender tall glass and eating egg sandwiches sitting in the air-conditioned comfort zone of a local club, he casually narrated to me his involvement with some of the worst cases of terror and violence in the area in the late 1980s. As he noted more than once, the scale of violence and its presentation always mattered in constructing the message the perpetrators wanted to communicate. In other words, he was referring to the structure of a performance with a very clear idea of the intended audience just as much as the members of Al Qaeda knew they were performing ‘September 2011’ to the US and the world.

True, in these kinds of performances, the agency of victims becomes a nonentity by virtue of death. And I have never been sure if we as scholars have the right to assume and appropriate their pain and agency and talk for them. But the authorial framework and the set of disciplinary protocols which allows these to be proclaimed  ‘performative’ do not come from any contemporary academic discipline.  In this sense, Bharucha’s questioning of Pallegrini as well as his discomfort is quite understandable. Formal academic disciplines however, are not the only sources to offer an authorial framework or legitimizing protocols for different kinds of performances.  As we know quite well, the discourses on medieval European public executions through beheading, hanging and quartering were designed to be public events or performances with their own ritualized practices which the executioners as well as the de-agencied victims were obliged to follow. Similarly, the entire spectrum of ‘thirty two forms of torture’ (detis vadha) practiced within the system of pre-colonial judicial system in Sri Lanka were also designed to be public performances. According to local folklore, victims were garlanded in red hibiscus flowers (known as vadha mal or torture flowers) and paraded through the streets accompanied by the sound of a specific drum beat known as the ‘death drum’ (mala bera). The drumming brought people out to see the spectacle of public torture which ended in death. People readily gathered to see these events and often cheered on the executions.  In other words, they were an interactive group of spectators in a public performance. My point is when perpetrators undertake extreme acts of terror, they can be seen as performances not on the basis of legitimacy drawn from the protocols of contemporary academic practice, but by the authorial frameworks and protocols of established practice offered by these ancient practices which still linger in the historical consciousness of many.

What I have attempted is to capture albeit perhaps in a minimally coherent manner the crux of Bharucha’s masterful text, admittedly however without doing much justice to his overall narrative.  As I read his book, Bharucha’s narrative took me to emotional places which my mind had barricaded  long ago; it unlocked memories that were long forgotten; it made me revisit experiences of terror and violence that I had ‘walked’ through which I would have preferred not to have done. In other words, I have read this book not as an autonomous text that could be flipped through with an emotional distance that a clinical disassociation would allow.  Instead, I have read and attempted to understand it as something that makes more nuanced contextual sense to me when read through the trajectories of my own life and my own history. But that also means it will be understood from the strengths of my own background as well as through the obvious hindrances of its lapses.

(This reading was initially published in Groundviews: http://groundviews.org/2014/09/21/terror-performance-and-anxieties-of-our-times-reading-rustom-bharucha-and-reliving-terror/)

Endnotes

[1]. Edward Said, 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books.
[2]. Ariel Dorfman, 1991. Death and the Maiden. New York: Penguin Books.
[3]. http://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=005 (last accessed on 09 August 2014).