This article is an extended version of a short address that I made at the recent launch of the Sailan Muslim website (www.sailanmuslim.com), in which my focus was on the politics of identity. As this article has the same focus I will not be going into the rationale and objectives of the new Muslim website except to the extent that they have a relevance to the politics of identity.

When I and a group of my Muslim friends hit on the idea several months ago of starting a new Muslim website, we were troubled – I must say that we were deeply troubled – by the fact that in doing so we would be engaging in the politics of identity. By that is meant a politics intended to serve group interests. There is nothing inherently wrong about that in pluralist multicultural countries such as Sri Lanka. However, it has been found in practice that there is an almost irresistible drive in identity politics to make group interests predominate over every other interest, including the national interest, and that of course can be expected to lead to misunderstanding, tension, rivalry, and also conflict, as is attested by the tragic history of Sri Lanka in recent decades. I and my Muslim friends were acutely aware of those facts. But we continued also to be acutely aware of the major rationale for our wanting to establish a new Muslim website – namely, the continuing failure of the Muslim politicians to properly represent the Muslims. That may not have mattered at one time when all that was needed to satisfy the Muslims was to meet their religious needs and business interests. But with the spread of mass education, younger generations of Muslims are increasingly involved in the struggle for scarce resources. In this situation, a continuing failure to properly represent the Muslims will almost inevitably lead to a radicalization of Muslim politics, the incipient signs of which in the Eastern Province have troubled many of us for some years.

But there is also a broader reason for our engaging in identity politics by establishing this website. Our minorities do not unequivocally accept that our two major parties are authentic national parties, after the manner for instance of the Indian National Congress. They are seen, rightly or wrongly, as serving primarily the interests of the majority ethnic group – which is a reason why the Muslim members of those parties play a marginalized role in them and cannot adequately represent the Muslims. The Sri Lankan failure to come up with an authentic national party should really be seen in an international perspective, which suggests that identity politics are in the process of becoming predominant practically all over the world.

In the last century the great black American ideologue W. E. B. Dubois wrote that the greatest problem of the twentieth century would be the colour line. Most historians would probably disagree, but a plausible case can be made out for that notion if we recognize that Hitler waged the Second World War to establish a white Aryan domination over the globe, and thereafter the coloured peoples of the world engaged in a successful struggle to assert their independence. Some months ago President Obama was reported to have said that the greatest problem of this century would be that of the Other, evidently having in mind ethnic problems that cut across the colour line. Some time ago the Marxist economic historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that the only kind of politics we are coming to have are identity politics in which group interests predominate over everything else. I cannot go into much detail in this article to substantiate that view. I will mention only that in Britain which seemed to be a solidly integrated society the drive for Scottish and Welsh autonomy has proved to be irresistible, and India where secularism in politics seemed so well entrenched has witnessed the Hindutva upsurge.

I cannot of course explore in this article the reasons why identity politics have come to acquire such salience in the contemporary world. The point I want to emphasize is that that salience makes it understandable that a group of SL Muslims decided to establish a Muslim website while at the same time being deeply troubled about its implications. In the course of our discussions we came to realize that the way to evade the possible negative consequences of identity politics is to recognize as the legitimate interests of the group, namely the Sri Lankan Muslim ethnic group, only those interests that are compatible with the interests of the Sri Lankan nation. This would mean, for instance, that the SL Muslims refrain from kicking up a row over the Kashmir problem because the interests of the Sri Lankan nation require that we maintain the friendliest possible relations with India.

The argument that I have been developing above implies certain facts about identity. People in the contemporary world tend to have multiple identities. Every SL Muslim, for instance, has at least two identities, as he is conscious of being a Muslim and at the same time of being a Sri Lankan. It is only on the basis of recognition of this dual identity that the legitimate interests of the SL Muslims can be secured and promoted, as obviously that will not be possible in opposition to the interests of the SL nation. We have accordingly called the new website Sailan Muslim – Sailan being the ancient Muslim name for Sri Lanka – to remind ourselves of our inescapable dual identity. Also we have adopted the motto Diversity and Inclusiveness to give value to the existence of diverse ethnic groups and at the same time to their reaching out to a sense of unity with other ethnic groups. A politics of identity developed on this basis can lead to a notable contribution to the nation-building process in Sri Lanka – a desperate necessity as shown by our ethnic civil war.