The political suspension of ethics: proposals for a historical study of reversal of values in a situation of martial conflict in Lanka

Authors

• Peter Schalk

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67321

Keywords:

Violence, Sri Lanka -- History, Politics and religion, Ideology, Radicalism, Political violence, Social conflict, Ethnic conflict

Abstract

The overall aim of this project is to focus on the general socio-economic and political conditions leading to martial conflict in relation to religious and secular values, value systems and ideologies in Īlam/Lankā, with special regard to their transformation. It deals with the extent of reversal and re-reversal in the course of the conflict and reconciliation respectively. These values are reversed through political decisions in a martial situation. It is true that martial conflicts arise over the distribution of resources and territory and not over theological issues. When, however, religion is placed in a martial context and related to the interests of one group, then even a sophisticated theology can take the form of an identity-bestowing ideology and adopt martial doctrines such as the concept of just war. Territorial and social definitions of citizenship are replaced by definitions relating to sacred boundaries. Christianity may turn into German Christianity or Serbian Christianity, Hinduism into Hindūtva and Buddhism into Sinhalatva. The overall martial context is finally symbolised in religion as an identity marker alongside sacralisation of language, history, and territory, etc. This martial context generates a religious surplus even within secular ideologies and leads both to a suspension and a reversal of values in established religions. The proponents are ideologues, including monks and priests, and politicians in the widest sense. They become warmongers in a martial situation, where they become ‘authentic’ and authoritative. In a non-war situation they are marginalised as extremists. During war, they suspend fundamental human values, but they ‘suspend’ in the specifically German (Hegelian) sense of aufheben, meaning to elevate, to save and to call off. They do not annihilate these values, only to recall and retrieve them during truces and cease-fires, in situations of non-war, and diplomatic or ecumenical encounters, or during academic conferences. In times of martial conflict, ideologues, as advocates of war, actualize ways of integrating violence into non-violent traditions. In this article five ways of rationalizing violence, which have global parallels in martial societies, are referred to. The first way is the well-known and popular reasoning about the holy ‘end’ that justifies the less holy ‘means’; the second line of reasoning points to an alleged connection between present and past ideal persons or events; the third way of rationalizing violence introduces a de-eschatologizing distinction between preliminary and final ‘ends’; a ourth way is to make a distinction between an elite and the common people; the latter are allegedly not capable of following the noble principles of the elite; a fifth a