Populism, nationalism and Marxism in Sri Lanka: from anti-colonial struggle to authoritarian neoliberalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is a revised version of a presentation to the Vega Symposium on Resurgent Nationalisms and Populist Politics in the Neoliberal Age, held at the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, in April 2018. It is part of a Special Issue of Geografiska Annaler, Series B, which also includes an Introduction by Gillian Hart, articles by Gillian Hart and Tova Höjdestrand based on their contributions to the Symposium, and an edited transcript of a presentation by Manu Goswami. This paper offers a contribution to the critique of ‘left populism’ – advocated by some influential left intellectuals and politicians as a response to the rise of right-wing populisms around the world – by way of an analysis of the historical evolution of the relationship between Marxist left political forces and majoritarian ethno-nationalist ideology in Sri Lanka. With a historical perspective spanning from anti-colonial struggle in the late-colonial era to the contemporary conjuncture of neoliberalism and populism, it demonstrates how the radical left in Sri Lanka, a credible contender for state power in the decades immediately before and after the independence from the British Empire in 1948, was eclipsed as a viable political force by nationalist forces after the consolidation of an authoritarian-populist form of neoliberalism in 1977. With hindsight, it is argued that this steady downward trajectory of the Sri Lankan Marxist left in the last four decades, in spite of impressive socialist accomplishments from the mid-1930s until the mid-1970s, owes much to its strategic and tactical flirtations with – especially in the face of neoliberalism and nationalism – ‘left populism’.