Politicising Grief and Memory in Post-disaster Gujarat and Sri Lanka
Edward Simpson & Malathi de Alwis
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The aftermath of natural disasters, even more so than events and processes of political violence, has been known to engender a vast and varied array of non-governmental public actions, by global as well as local practitioners. However, it is often the case that public action, and especially local public action, is poorly understood by and often invisible to governments and multi-lateral agencies leading to uneven distribution of resources and inefficient and inappropriate humanitarian interventions which can create new fissures within affected communities. This invisibility and blinkering is particularly apparent when governments and agencies seek to intervene in and place their stamp on 'affectual domains' through various public practices memorialising death and grief. In both Gujarat and Sri Lanka, it is evident that a whole range of different kinds and scales of public collective action came to the fore in the processes of relief and longer-term reconstruction. There is of course a substantial literature demonstrating how collective protest in the aftermath of natural disasters commonly congeals around perceived inequalities in the distribution of resources. It appears to us however, that collective public action also takes many other forms and shapes in catastrophic landscapes, and a primary focus on the material aspects of life in a post-disaster environment obscures many of these important social forms.
This working paper explores some of the memorial practices that emerged after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat and along the eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. In both locations, acts of memorialization were inseparable from reconstruction initiatives and politics of all kinds, and at all levels, have influenced the design, location, and inauguration ceremonies of memorials. In Gujarat, memorials are tied to the politics of religious communalism, regionalism, and mainstream Hindu nationalism. In Sri Lanka, memorials are local manifestations of ethno-nationalisms and state hegemony. There is also a clear distinction between memorials created by the people and by the state, in both Gujarat and Sri Lanka.