This episode revisits Sri Lanka’s dramatic 2022 Aragalaya uprising to understand how decades of post independence “ethnocratic elite democracy” set the stage for mass mobilization against the Rajapaksa regime. Why did a society long marked by political apathy suddenly generate a broad, cross class civil society coalition capable of forcing a peaceful transfer of power? Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda traces the deeper history of de democratization, explains the democratic imaginaries that shaped the protests, and reflects on how Sri Lanka’s experience speaks to youth led movements across South and Southeast Asia. Tune in to explore what lessons these struggles offer for those seeking to revitalize democracy under increasingly repressive conditions.
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S11E06 Jayadeva Uyangoda: Promises and Pitfalls of Re-democratization in Sri Lanka
Shalini: [00:00:00] Welcome to a new episode of Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I am Shalini Randeria at the Central European University in Vienna, and senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the sixth episode of season 11 of Democracy in Question. I am very pleased to welcome today, Jayadeva Uyangoda, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he was senior Professor of Political Science. In 2016-17, he held the Distinguished Chair of Democracy at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.
A leftist student leader and a member of the JVP movement[1] in his youth, he was sentenced to prison for his political activities in the 1970s. After his release, he did his doctoral research at the University of Hawaii on nationalism and state formation in Bangladesh. [00:01:00] He remains one of Sri Lanka's foremost commentators on democracy, ethnic conflict, peace processes, human rights, and minority rights.
Among his key publications are “Political Parties in Sri Lanka” (2017);”Local Government and Local Democracy in Sri Lanka: Institutional and Social Dimensions“; „State Reform in Sri Lanka”; “Reframing Democracy: Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Contemporary Sri Lanka”, which is a volume he has co-edited, as is the volume “Liberal Peace in Question. Politics of State and Market Reform in Sri Lanka”.
Professor Uyangoda was from 2018 to 2019 a member of the Council of the University of Jaffna, member of the Governing Board of the National Institute of Education and Chairman of Academic Affairs Board of the National Institute of Education.
Today, we are going to revisit the political [00:02:00] changes in Sri Lanka - a topic I discussed with Neloufer de Mel three and a half years ago[2] when the Rajapaksa regime[3] was ousted by a massive wave of popular protests. I asked Professor Uyangoda to situate these momentous events in the longer-term historical context of post-independence de-democratization in Sri Lanka. Could those decades of what he calls “ethnocratic elite democracy” be viewed as a prototype of soft authoritarianism?
Today, we will focus once again on the 2022 uprising or the Aragalaya[4], as it is known in Sri Lanka. I will ask him to explain how a civil society coalition was built, overcoming decades of apathy and how a relatively peaceful and non-violent transition to a democratic government was possible relatively soon. What kinds of democratic imaginaries shaped these [00:03:00] protests?
In the last part of our conversation, we expand the geographical scope of the discussion to reflect on recent youth protests that have swept across the region. I look forward to hearing his thoughts on the lessons Sri Lanka can offer to disaffected youth who aspire to deepen democracy in so many societies across South Asia and Southeast Asia, despite the often-brutal repression that they face.
A warm welcome to you, Professor Uyangoda. It is a great pleasure to have you as my guest today on the podcast.
Jayadeva: Thank you very much. I am very happy to be your guest today.
Shalini: I discussed in this podcast some three years ago with Neloufer de Mel the political crisis that Sri Lanka was plunged into in 2022 when there were massive protests that led to the fall of the Rajapaksa regime, which had promised “prosperity and splendour”, but delivered neither.
You have argued [00:04:00] however, that we need to think about de-democratization in Sri Lanka in a much longer context. In your view, there has been a continuous dismantling of democracy from the period of independence in 1948 up to 2002 when spontaneous and sustained citizen protests toppled the authoritarian and corrupt government.
Your argument is that there has been a slow undoing of democracy in the country by its elites. This has constrained the democratic and progressive imagination of the people who were reduced to a mere source of electoral legitimation. You have called the Sri Lankan democracy, therefore, an instrumental elite democracy built on extensive networks of patronage and a strong ethnonationalist ideology combined with universal social welfare.
Could you talk about the illiberal ethnocracy, as you call it, which was built in Sri [00:05:00] Lanka and how it was so suddenly torn down in 2022?
Jayadeva: As you very correctly pointed out, Sri Lanka has had a long period of de-democratization. Elite capture of democracy and parliamentary processes has been one of the dimensions of that de-democratization process. But de-democratization has always been combined with governance. Over several decades it is an evolution of an ethnocratic state, and parallel to ethnocratization of democracy was a slow process, particularly since late 1970s of authoritarianism. What happened is that Sri Lankan people have been able to decouple democracy from the elite. There was popular discontent with the Rajapaksa [00:06:00] regime's economic policy and also increasing authoritarian tendency.
One of the defining features of the people's struggle in 2022 was the sudden awakening of the democratic impulses of the people. And also, the sudden expression of deep realization that democracy belongs to the people. And it was time that people reclaim democracy and democratic processes. That is, I think, one of the dimensions that constituted a turning point in Sri Lankan politics. After the de-democratization process was stopped by the people, Sri Lanka needed a new face of re-democratization, so the notion of re-democratization means that [00:07:00] Sri Lanka's democracy requires not only going back to liberal parliamentary democracy, but reforming that democracy, deepening that democracy and radicalizing democracy. I think that is one of the fundamental lessons.
And in that sense, Sri Lanka has a kind of exceptional dimension, as I call it. The exceptionalism in the democratic revolution in the global South. Peoples struggles, protests that started with Tunisia about 10 years ago and until recently, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mauritius, Tanzania, and this democratic revolution is unfolding in the global South. In all these protests there are the demands by the people that democracy everywhere needs deepening. [00:08:00] Radicalizing. That is why the phrase that we are using in Sri Lanka re-democratization assumes significance. It is not merely to return to liberal parliamentary democracy or invent practices of only liberal parliamentary democracy. I think there is a huge challenge for us to reimagine democracy, to make the new democracy much more meaningful from the point of view of ordinary people of the subordinated social classes, working classes, women, excluded social communities, ethnic minorities. We all require reimagining democracy in a way that the idea of democracy is not abandoned but deepened.
Shalini: You have made several important points, and I am going to take up each of these in turn. [00:09:00] You are making a larger argument putting Sri Lanka into the context of the global South, and I will turn to that towards the end of our conversation. But you have also pointed out now to some unique features of the Sri Lankan uprising, which I return to in a moment.
Let me first ask you, however, about the protests themselves because they were rather sudden spontaneous and yet extremely effective. Much to the surprise of many of us who were outside observers, the protests dealt a total blow to the Rajapaksa Clan that had captured democratic politics. One unique feature of the Aragalaya, as the uprising was called in Sinhalese, was the broad coalition of students, workers, peasants, middle class citizens across rural and urban areas of the country. How was this broader alliance without leaders built so effectively, and how did it manage to overcome [00:10:00] decades of passivity on the part of an electorate, which had not only tolerated authoritarian rule, but had recently voted the Rajapaksa back into power?
Jayadeva: There are a number of unique dimensions. One of the unique features is that it was not an organized protest. All protests are unorganized. They come unannounced, you have no prior warning. All of a sudden, very minor incidents can trigger huge public protest. I think that tells us that there has been accumulated huge social discontent and anger among particularly the middle classes and the working class, women, and all the subordinated social classes.
Secondly, what happens is that when the sleeping giant wakes up, that marks a decisive break from the past. And [00:11:00] opening up a space for a new beginning. That is extremely important. And the third dimension is also relevant to other protest movements: the participation of the youth and middle classes, and a broad social coalition for democracy.
This was a broad class coalition, that is very significant. That is precisely why the regime could not sustain itself politically because these foundations were eroded. Even people who had voted for the Rajapaksa in the previous 2019 election, they actually abandoned the Rajapaksa regime. So, it is almost like a paradigm shift in Sri Lankan politics in terms of people's political loyalties. So, the Aragalaya also gave rise to a number of very [00:12:00] interesting homegrown political concepts and also practices. That's why I think Sri Lanka's Aragalaya as well as other popular uprisings pose serious challenges to us who study democracy, who study democratization.
Our vocabulary, which we have got from either Europe or America, through conventional political science, that vocabulary is not adequate for us to respond to the new democratic agenda, even to understand that. So that is a discussion going on in Sri Lanka at the moment among some of us. You took part in some of the discussion in Colombo. Either we have to deepen the existing vocabulary of democracy or invent a new vocabulary. That is very necessary. I think that is a task [00:13:00] before us.
Shalini: I agree with you that we need to rethink what democracy outside of the West looks like. Though it has, of course, certain elements of western style, liberal representative democracy, and we must understand the imaginations of democracy that have been brought forth in the many recent protest movements across South Asia and Southeast Asia.
But before we come to that, I want to ask you about one other feature of the Sri Lankan uprising. There has been a long history of armed resistance and even of several years of a brutal, long drawn-out civil war in the country. And yet, surprisingly, neither the police nor the military intervened to protect the authoritarian regime and to repress the protests - something that we have seen in many neighbouring countries.
So why did the police and the military keep out of this confrontation? Of course, citizens in Sri Lanka were completely peaceful and it was a very disciplined protest. There was hardly any [00:14:00] violence on their part, but also very little violence on the part of the government, which has a long history of close collaboration with the military.
Jayadeva: Yes. That is also part of this exceptionalism. The military refused to shoot at the people, and the police were not allowed to use their capacity for violence the way they did in the past. One of the reasons is, I think the sheer magnitude of the popular mobilization. They were stunned. They didn't know how to react. And if they reacted the way they did in the past, that reaction could have ended in scores of deaths.
The rulers also realized that their political basis had been totally eroded by the sudden popular uprising. They were not confident enough to use violence, the state machinery, military and the police. [00:15:00] So the regime had not only lost legitimacy, but also, they had lost their confidence as a ruling class.
They thought that they were irreplaceable and you cannot really touch them. They thought that they had political as well as legal impunity. I think the Sri Lankan army particularly did not want to be used by the elite who had lost their popular legitimacy. There were stories that even the military top brass had refused to accept any orders to shoot at the people. So it was a rare case of peaceful removal of a regime and political transition. But actually, the transition process took about two years until 2024.
Sri Lanka's democratic institutions have been [00:16:00] so strong that the new right-wing government was forced to hold presidential and parliamentary elections. In most of these popular uprising, like in Nepal, Bangladesh, or some of the Mediterranean countries, existing authoritarian regimes were removed by the people, but there was no democratic replacement. The political vacuum was filled by either the military or authoritarian forces. In Sri Lanka now we have a situation where political power has been transferred to a political movement that consists of non-elite social class interests. The elite rule has come to an end in Sri Lanka. Of course, there is resistance to the new government. Now [00:17:00] it is a process of sharpening of contradictions between the new government and the political forces of the regime, the old order. The process of transformation is becoming now a little more complex than it appeared earlier.
Shalini: I want to go back to the question that you raised about the deepening of democracy and ideas of social justice and a truly radical vision of democratization. These go beyond any kind of peaceful reform or transition as a result of the 2022 movement. Could you say something about what kind of new political practices, a new democratic imagination came out of the Aragalaya? What are the ideas which the social movement that brought about the democratic transition is still able to feed into the political [00:18:00] process?
Jayadeva: I think the agenda for re-imagining, for radicalizing or deepening democracy in Sri Lanka has two dimensions in terms of political ideas and political theory. At one level, it is important to retain basic elements of liberal democracy because people have made use of elements of liberal democracy for their own emancipatory goals. The basic, fundamental rights and also electoral process, the right to elect the rulers free and independent judiciary, checks and balances. All these things are part of Sri Lanka's democracy. Actually, Sri Lankan people have indigenized liberal democracy. The liberal parliamentary democracy is no longer the monopoly of either the elite or those who invented liberal democracy. This happened in other [00:19:00] societies as well.
Universal franchise was introduced to Sri Lanka in 1931. So nearly 100 years of experience of liberal parliamentary democracy has changed Sri Lakan society. And Sri Lankan society has also changed democracy. So what we have is popular appropriation of democracy and as a result of that, people making democracy their own democracy. That's a process of indigenization. We need to retain those dimensions of the legacy of liberal parliamentary democracy.
Then of course, the Aragalaya in the face of nearly seven, eight decades of politics also unveiled the structural fundamental inadequacies of liberal parliamentary democracy. And that is what we have to learn from [00:20:00] parliamentary democracy: representative democracy was totally abused by the elites. The political corruption, patronage politics, and also the abuse from the electoral process. Those things have to be decoupled from the democratic process.
So that's one dimension of it. This republican idea of direct democracy has been one of the strongest notions that emerged in 2022. The people were saying that electoral democracy needs to be purified by empowering citizens to recall their representative if they violate terms of the social contract. Actually, the notion of social contract was very popular among participants of the Aragalaya. The point I would make is, that support for these key democratic ideas is part of general common [00:21:00] sense in Sri Lanka.
We didn't have hard authoritarianism. We had a form of soft authoritarianism in Sri Lanka. At the point when the soft authoritarianism was in the process of being transformed into a local form of hard authoritarian. So that is the magic of the citizens struggle uprising. It took place at a very crucial moment when this soft authoritarian regime was planning to make a transition towards a new form of hard authoritarianism.
In Sri Lankan society, women, minorities, marginalized ethnic communities, they have been demanding political reforms, structural reforms that have not been accommodated in traditional liberal democratic imagination. These communities, the excluded communities, were not content with [00:22:00] the limits of liberal individual rights or procedural democracy in governments, right? The uprisings highlighted those inadequacies. So how to address this has been proposed by the range of social groups who wanted more democracy, not less democracy. They want group rights actually, self-determination rights, justice, equality. Sri Lankan constitution enables them to rights as individuals, but that is not enough for those communities.
They have representation, voting rights as individuals, but for structural inequalities liberal democracy is not adequate. Sri Lankan history shows that they are not adequate at all to address hidden injustices, inequalities built into the social economic structures. So that's [00:23:00] why social democracy at another level is extremely important to bring social democratic imagination, an agenda for deepening Sri Lanka's democracy to address those inequalities.
The neoliberal democratic process has actually deepened these inequalities. All these uprising have been taking place in this era of neoliberal transformations. To address those inequalities, I think it's very important for us to understand these fundamental inadequacies of liberal democracy and to discover what new democratic imagination that has come out for the people themselves.
So, for example, elected minorities have been demanding in Sri Lanka for almost seven decades rights to self-determination as a community. And other [00:24:00] minorities also, their group rights need to be accommodated within the state structure. Sri Lankan´s state reform process requires a vision and a framework broader than what the liberal conservatism has offered. The continuity of ethnic grievances demonstrates that liberal constitutionalists approach is inadequate. It's a very long list of issues that needs to be addressed in order to formulate an agenda for re-democratization.
Shalini: These are some really important points that have a relevance beyond the Sri Lankan case. Professor Pantham[5] in an article many years ago characterized Indian democracy as “a communitarian democracy”. He was pointing to the importance of collective rights in the Indian context, collective [00:25:00] rights for marginalized groups and lower classes, community rights for indigenous groups, but also for religious minorities.
In addition to individual rights, which a liberal constitution guarantees, it was important that the Indian Constitution right from the beginning guaranteed different kinds of collective rights, including quotas, electoral quotas for parliament, employment and educational quotas for marginalized and disadvantaged groups. So, there is an Indian model, which we could talk about.
I also noted your use of my idea of soft authoritarianism to characterize the Sri Lankan regime. It was a strong man regime that had little respect for democratic norms, but it relied on a legislative majority and very strong executive authority, which allowed it to subvert the rule of law. Like soft authoritarian rulers everywhere, it was systematically [00:26:00] hollowing out democratic institutions from the inside using the law combined with resort to violence whenever needed. I found interesting that in your view, the timing of the uprising was therefore crucial. The massive protest that took place at a tipping point when the regime could have turned fully authoritarian. But instead, the Aragalaya managed to engender a democratic transition.
So, we should see the uprising both as a successful protest movement, but also as a project of political reconstruction to deepen democracy. However, these two have different temporalities. The project needs to be carried out over time and would require some fundamental political changes. Changes, which would be institutional, but would also require a different political culture. Could you talk about the temporality of that larger project? People can get impatient and be [00:27:00] disappointed after a successful transition if change doesn't happen fast enough. And changes in Sri Lanka are, of course, difficult because of the strength of the older political forces, but also, due to the huge debt to the IMF. That may hamper especially economic changes, structural changes, which the people are expecting. When you said there are contradictions that you are seeing, are these, for example, the rise of religious nationalism as one of the ways to mobilize opposition to the current government?
Jayadeva: Your question has two components. The first one is about this communitarian democracy, the Indian constitution. Since 1935, Congress[6] has been advocating this, what we call positive discrimination. So, Sri Lanka has not been able to guarantee minority rights. Even the quota system: No way! We have been trying to, [00:28:00] since the 1990s to introduce to constitutional thinking positive discrimination, not negative, positive discrimination policies like in India. Positive discrimination policies to ensure for the people rights of justice and equality who have suffered structural injustices historically. In Sri Lanka, it is very difficult because constitutional thinking has been dominated by majoritarian jurisprudence. This has to be abandoned. About communitarian democracy, I have reservations because the one lesson we have to learn from India is that communitarian democracy can be very reactionary right-wing as well. I am for progressive communitarian democracy. That's the response to your first question.
Second question: In Sri Lanka now we have a new government, that came into power, the [00:29:00] National People's Party. When the NPP[7] is in power, there's a very sharp polarization of social forces in Sri Lankan politics. Actually, there's a fundamental contradiction in Sri Lankan politics today. Those elites who were pushed out of power last year through elections and a non-elite government. Unfortunately, the non-elite government with a social democratic agenda has been forced to accept and implement the IMF-inspired economic recovery program after the economic crisis, which brought down the Rajapaksa regime in 2022.
So that is a huge paradox: Can a government, which represents the interests of the poor, the ordinary people, middle class who are [00:30:00] victims of the economic crisis, can that government implement the IMF recovery program? And at the same time ensure the rights of the people who are victims of that crisis?
We are going through that process of this sharpening of contradictions between the elites and the government. And sometimes, as you correctly suggested, there can be social unrest once again if the economic crisis and economic deprivation goes on without a fundamental transformation. So that uncertainty is there very much. Because ultimately, in our societies, it is economics that determines politics. Citizen protests are a combination of both economics and politics, not economics alone. Opposition political parties in Sri Lanka who represent the elites [00:31:00] and are led by the elites cannot organize the masses. The people who voted the NPP into power come from the social groups, social constituencies that were in the Aragalaya in 2022. So, their political consciousness and political education is much higher than the opposition political parties. Political protest that erupted in 2022 was totally independent of political parties and party leaderships. Also, I think in future it will be very difficult for discredited de-legitimized old political elites to organize and mobilize masses against this current government in Sri Lanka.
That's my reading of the situation, but I would not underestimate the [00:32:00] determination and political will of the elite who have been ousted by peaceful means. As Gramsci said, those social classes will be around like demons waiting for the dark moment to come to reappear.
Shalini: Yes. That's what I'd like to talk to you about and return to what you rightly pointed out at the beginning of our conversation. There have been successful youth movements of protests that have led to regime change in Nepal and in Bangladesh where fresh elections will soon be held. But in Bangladesh, for example, it is quite likely that Islamists will come into power. So, the democratic change may be in support of a reactionary politics.
We have also witnessed sizable youth movements in Indonesia, in Philippines, and of course, most recently in Iran, which has been most brutally suppressed. Are there any theoretical or empirical lessons [00:33:00] that we can learn from the Sri Lankan experience, which would help us to understand these movements for democratization led by the younger generation, but would also caution us to the pitfalls and the risks that these movements face as they turn to representational democracy and parliamentary elections once again, though the youth has lost faith in political parties.
Jayadeva: I have one point to make in response to your very important question, Shalini. As all the experiences demonstrate, including Sri Lanka, that youth are the most important catalyst for change, regime change, but they are not the agency for transformation.
After the change, political power has to shift from one class to another. That means from the elite to other social [00:34:00] classes. What happened in Sri Lanka is fortunately, there was no protracted political vacuum. After the Rajapaksa regime was overthrown by the people peacefully, the NPP was there as an organized political party to emerge as the agency for transformation. But in Bangladesh, we don't have that agency. The youth movement was the main factor that enabled the regime to fall. But after that, the youth movement was so disorganized, so fractured. The political power will go back to the other of the two hostile factions. It is very similar to what happened in Egypt, actually. And then of course, what came into power was Islamic Brotherhood, which was not a democratic movement. And then of course the military. And [00:35:00] Nepal elections are being planned now. There is no alternative political movement. So, I think that is the fundamental lesson we have to learn is not to romanticize the Generation Z. It has a limited historical role.
Shalini: An interesting thing about the Sri Lankan experience is that we have new democratic consciousness and new political literacy, if you like, without organic intellectuals. What would be new sources for democratic imaginaries and practices in post-colonial societies, and where will a new vocabulary and a new theoretical understanding come from? How could a social democratic agenda be furthered to deepen democracy, such that some of the discontent and anger due to the failure of democracies to deliver the promise of economic rights and equality could be mitigated.
Jayadeva: Now, assuming that the [00:36:00] current NPP regime fails to fulfill promises and expectations from the people for more democratization. Sri Lanka needs entirely new political movement, political party as an agency to carry forward Sri Lanka's democratic revolution. The revolution has just begun. As you said, the Aragalaya is a project. It requires actually a decade or two. In Bangladesh. the protracted process of hard authoritarianism has also killed democratic impulses of its political society. Fortunately, in Sri Lanka, the democratic impulses have not been killed. They're there, they were sleeping. Sri Lanka in 2022 is a final outcome of a long period of subterranean [00:37:00] process of change underneath in the social, political, economic structure.
In politics, there are processes that work for a long period of time, and then suddenly transformative movements erupt, almost like an earthquake. But in countries like Tanzania or Bangladesh, Indonesia, the problem is, there have been long processes of authoritarianism, particularly hard authoritarianism. For any society to rediscover its democratic soul, it requires democratic organic intellectuals. That is, I think what is missing in many of these societies because of the long processes of de-democratization plus hard authoritarianism.
We have to realize that these democratic revolutions, although they are taking [00:38:00] part in one country, there's a global culture, particularly the global South. I think ultimately, it is the global South that brings democracy back to life.
About democratic revolution, it is like what Trotsky said about socialism when he opposed the idea of socialism in one country. Then, democracy in the global South should not be, and cannot be, democracy in one country. That is why I think this democratization process, or what we call reimagined and democracy has to be a collective process that brings together organic democratic intelligentsia and democratic activists, democratic civil society together for a new kind of New Democratic International. So that is why I think this kind of a global conversation is necessary. We need to have a dialogue with [00:39:00] our colleagues in Bangladesh, in Nepal, in Madagascar, in Tanzania and Indonesia.
In the past, either Europe or America told that they were the people who exported democracy to other societies. No, it is people in our own societies, through their struggles against injustice, through their struggles against tyranny, women in their struggles against strong patriarchal institutions have a body of fresh, democratic imagination with a new political vocabulary. We can actually enter into a new historical phase of democratic consciousness.
Shalini: Thank you very much for this insightful conversation into the Sri Lankan citizen protests involving a re-democratization project and also for addressing the larger context of democratization in and from the global South.
Thanks also for sharing your thoughts about [00:40:00] re-democratization and the cultivation of a new democratic imagination as an international project that would both need, and further, such a dialogue across the global South.
Jayadeva: Thank you very much for enabling me to articulate these ideas that have been in my mind for some time. Thank you.
Shalini: My guest began by describing Sri Lanka's long process of de-democratization into an elite captured ethnocracy, built on patronage, networks, and a strong nationalist ideology. The country's illiberal authoritarian governments only saw the people as a source of regular electoral legitimacy. The sudden spontaneous citizens uprising in 2022 against the economic crises led to the overthrow of the corrupt, soft authoritarian regime that was on the verge of mutating into a full-blown authoritarian one.
Professor Uyangoda [00:41:00] pointed out to some of the unique features of this unexpected, peaceful transition. For example, the broad, urban, rural leaderless coalition of various classes, groups, and ethnic communities, a totally discredited political elite, non-intervention by the army and the police and an independent judiciary.
There ensued also no political vacuum due to the electoral victory of a broad, non-elite coalition of opposition forces. However, the new regime must fulfill people's expectations while burdened by a huge external debt. IMF credit conditionalities also constrain its possibility to affect the necessary economic and political changes that could deepen democracy and fulfill the social contract that was part of the protesting citizens' social democratic vision of radical transformation.
He situated Sri Lanka's experience in the broader context of youth-led movements for [00:42:00] re-democratization elsewhere in the global South. Massive student protests have overthrown authoritarian regimes in Nepal and Bangladesh recently, where elections will now be held despite widespread distrust of conventional representative democracy and political parties. My guest made two interesting arguments in this regard.
Democratic politics is getting a new lease of life. It is being invested with new meanings and a new political vocabulary is being forged in these widespread protests across the global South. Political theory and any theorization of democracy can only ignore these developments outside the West at its own peril. And these movements contesting soft authoritarian rule in the aftermath of neoliberal policy prescriptions point to the necessity of retaining some aspects of representative democracy, but also to its [00:43:00] inadequacies. Thus, there is an urgent need to reimagine democratic politics differently in various contexts in the global South. In his view, this can only be a collective process that calls for a dialogue within what he terms a “New Democratic International”.
This was the sixth episode of Season 11. Thank you very much for listening. Please join me next month when my guest will be Aishwary Kumar. We will discuss his idea of “neo democracy”. When democratic institutions are not weakened, but are divested of any obligation to the vulnerable. We will address the current mix of cruelty and constitutionalism, where law without ethical foundations is disassociated from justice and becomes an instrument of willful neglect.
Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And of course, let your [00:44:00] friends know about this podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy .
[1] The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP -People's Liberation Front) was formerly a revolutionary movement and was involved in two armed uprisings against the government of Sri Lanka: once in 1971, and another in 1987–1989, For details and political changes of the JVP cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janatha_Vimukthi_Peramuna
[2] Cf. Democracy in Question, Season 5, Episode 1 (14th September 2022). For a short biography consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neloufer_de_Mel
[3]The Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka (mainly 2005–2015, 2019–2022) was characterized by the rule of the brothers Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, strong Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, nepotism, and repression. It ended the civil war in 2009 but was internationally criticized for human rights violations, corruption, and a severe economic crisis that led to the regime’s overthrow.
[4] The Aragalaya ('The Struggle') was a series of mass protests that began in March 2022 against the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka. The government was heavily criticized for mismanaging the Sri Lankan economy. The protesters' main demand was the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and key officials from the Rajapaksa family. Despite the involvement of several opposition parties, most protesters considered themselves to be apolitical, with many expressing discontent with the parliamentary opposition, cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragalaya
[5] Pantham, Thomas/ Deutsch, Kenneth L. (eds.): Political Thought in Modern India, New Delhi/ Beverly Hills (Sage) 1986. Free download at: https://archive.org/details/politicalthought0000unse_t1c5
[6] The Indian National Congress (INC), founded in 1885, is a major, center-left political party in India that played a pivotal role in the freedom struggle and dominated post-independence politics for decades.
[7] The National People's Power (NPP) is a left-wing political coalition in Sri Lanka led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Following a landslide victory in the November 2024 parliamentary election, where they won 159 of 225 seats, the party aims to implement an anti-corruption agenda, economic reforms, and a new constitution.