Religiöse Dimensionen interner gewalttätiger Konflikte. Ein Vergleich zwischen Sri Lanka, Burma und Thailand
Final Report Abstract
The project ‘Religious Dimensions of Internal Conflict in Three Theravada Countries: Sri Lanka, Burma and Southern Thailand’ looked into the role of religion for the origin, development, progress, escalation and de-escalation of violent conflicts. Religion was considered the dependent variable. We proceeded from the assumption that religion could and would be instrumentalised for political purposes. Our assumptions turned out only partly correct. While it could be shown that religion is often instrumentalised for political purposes, the process turned out to be more complex. Frequently, politics were religionised instead the other way round. This meant that politics and policy were instrumentalised for religious aims and purposes and sometimes even to maintain religious precepts. Often both processes reinforced each other. Religionisation of politics was not only a top-down process, but equally frequently a bottom-up one, from the majority group or the minorities and most often driven by the middle classes. Religionisation of politics could happen in three ways: 1. By defining religion as policy, i.e. religious precepts were made politically binding. Besides, private religion was expected to be guaranteed by state action. 2. By defining religion as ethnicity or ethnicity as religion. This meant that adherents of other religions by definition were excluded from the privileged ethnic group or that members of other ethnicities were not considered as even potential members of the religion. Moreover, the expression of religion became ethnically coloured and defined. 3. By defining religion as life-style and its ideas as consumables. Two ideas underlie religionisation of politics: 1. The combination of the transcendent expectation of a better life and the attempt to achieve this better life in immanence. Religious belonging thus conferred material and political privilege. It sanctioned attacks on the religious Other and sometimes made venal characteristics and mortal sins into virtues. 2. Religionisation of politics aims at unity, a concept continuously invoked, but always lacking content. Religious unity was expected to bring about political and national unity. This unity was mainly the public, symbolic and ritualistic submission to political power and the denial of difference. Difference was treason and had to be fought with all means at the state’s disposal including religiously sanctioned violence.
Publications
- 2007: Ausgewählt für Selbstmordkommandos: Die Schwarzen Tiger, in: Wissenschaft und Frieden 1/2007, pp. 18-21
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2007: Von Jaffna nach Kilinocchi - Ursprünge und Entwicklung ethnischer Konflikte in Sri Lanka seit dem 19. Jh. - Wechselwirkungen religiösnationaler Erneuerungsbewegungen und britischer Verwaltungs- und Verfassungspolitik. Würzburg
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2008: Female Warriors, Martyrs and Suicide Attackers. Women in the LTTE, in: International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 34, no. 1 (Spring), pp. 1- 25
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2008: Review Article: Buddhism and the Legitimacy of Violence, in: Internationales Asienforum, Vol. 39, No.1–2, pp. 163-173
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2008: The Living Sacrifice. . . ? Heroes, Victims, Martyrs, in: Goddesses, Heroes, Sacrifices (ed. With Andrea Fleschenberg), Berlin, LIT-Verlag, SS. 206-231
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2009, Kolonialismus als widersprüchliche Modernisierung Südostasiens, in: Tobler (Hrsg.), Globalgeschichte. 1900 bis 1950, Wien: Edition Weltregionen
Korff, R.
- 2009: Drawing in Treacle: Mediation Efforts in Sri Lanka, 1983 to 2007, in: Internationales Asienforum, Vol. 40, No. 1-2, pp. 59-96
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2010, Spannungen post-kolonialer Modernisierung, in: Helmut Konrad/Monika Stromberger (eds.), Die Welt im 20. Jahrhundert nach 1945, Globalgeschichte. Die Welt 1000-2000, Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag
Korff, R.
- 2010: Anatomy of Southern Thailand’s insurgency: some preliminary insights’. New Mandala: New perspectives on mainland Southeast Asia
Helbardt, Sascha
- 2010: Verfeindete Geschwister und ein vergiftetes Erbe, in: Helmut Konrad/Monika Stromberger (eds.), Die Welt im 20. Jahrhundert nach 1945, Globalgeschichte. Die Welt 1000-2000, Mandelbaum Verlag Wien, pp. 91-116
Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar
- 2010: War’s dark glamour: ethics of research in war and conflict zones, in: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol 23, 2, June 2010, pp. 349-369
Helbardt, S., Hellmann-Rajanayagam, D., Korff, R.
- 2011: From jungle to village: changing nature of Malay Muslim insurgencies in Southern Thailand, PhD-thesis, Universität Passau
Helbardt, Sascha
