The arch above the school gate sitslike a crown over the pillars thatsupport it on either side. It bears

the name ‘Sri Shanmuga Hindu Ladies’College’, painted in a turquoise bluethat must have been vibrant once butlooks faded now. Beyond the arch, acouple of two-storied pink buildingsface each other. Their proximity ampli-fi��es the commotion that erupts whenthe bell rings. It is break time.

This school, many in Sri Lanka’s east-ern port-city of Trincomalee will tellyou, is for girls who study well. It wasfounded in 1923 by Thangamma Shan-mugampillai, a local advocate of wo-men’s education. Shanmuga ‘College’,as many secondary schools in Sri Lankaare called, steadily built its reputationand has preserved it for nearly a centu-ry.

However, when the school made hea-dlines in late April, it was not for an aca-demic feat. It drew national attentionwhen controversy erupted over a few ofits teachers wearing the abaya, a full-length, gown-like dress of Arab originthat many Sri Lankan Muslim womenhave begun to wear in recent decades.Seeing this as an aberration from earlierpractice, where Muslim teachers worethe saree in Tamil style accompanied bya headscarf, a group of parents andteachers from the Hindu communityprotested, demanding that the teachersabide by an unwritten but apparentlyentrenched school ‘dress code’.

At fi��rst, this seemed like a case of Ta-mils objecting to the Muslim teachers’change of attire in a ‘Hindu school’. Butbeneath the surface are cracks that ma-nifest in small and big ways, at times ex-ploding into visceral hate speech. Withits almost equally proportioned ethnicmix of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims,Sri Lanka’s Eastern province could bean ideal site to demonstrate reconcilia-tion and coexistence among the diff��e-rent communities. For the same reason,it is the most challenging too.

In two of the Eastern province’s threedistricts, Ampara and Trincomalee,Muslims are the majority, whereas inBatticaloa district there are more Hin-dus, and the Muslim minority, compris-ing around 26% of the population, isconcentrated in pockets along the coastand inland. The districts skirting SriLanka’s east coast are among the mostscenic parts of the country, where la-goons, lakes and lush fi��elds paint thelandscape in shades of blue and green.

Deriding diff��erence The protesters who gathered outsidethe school in the last week of April heldplacards in English and Tamil with mes-sages such as, “Hindu schools are forHindus, let us not entertain racismhere”, and “Even if you don’t speak inpure Tamil, do not speak in crass Ta-mil”, indicating that the issues at stakewere larger than what teachers shouldwear to school.

The Tamils unleashed a commentaryon the Muslims’ culture and language inunmistakably derogatory terms, pro-voking hard-line Muslim groups to re-turn the favour in a counter-protest. So-cial media was rife with charges reekingof prejudice and suspicion – of “spread-ing Wahhabism” by one side and of“continuing the separatist Eelam strug-gle” by the other.

Though mostly Tamil-speaking, SriLankan Muslims, who comprise about10% of the island’s population, have his-torically identifi��ed themselves as a sepa-rate ethnicity. A majority of the Tamilsin the island’s north and east are Hin-dus, accounting for most of Sri Lanka’snearly 13% Hindu population. The is-land’s Tamils see themselves as an eth-nicity distinct from the Muslims, des-pite a common language. They oftenspeak of Muslims, many of whom areengaged in agriculture, fi��sheries andtrade, as a “prosperous” community,well networked and upwardly mobile.

As recent incidents stirred up latenttensions between the Tamils and Mus-lims, some within both communitiesare visibly troubled. “We thought thesituation was going to escalate. Eve-ryone was forwarding hate messagesand rumours via social media. It wasgetting dangerous,” recalls a Tamilyouth, who manages a small businessminutes away from the school. “But thefact is Shanmuga has traditionally beena Hindu school. That must be respected,don’t you think?” he says, requestinganonymity.

He was echoing what veteran Trinco-malee parliamentarian and leader ofthe Tamil National Alliance (TNA, a pol-itical alliance of Tamil nationalist par-ties) R. Sampanthan highlighted in res-ponse to Rishad Bathiudeen, theMinister of Industry and Commerce,who had taken up the cause of the Mus-lim teachers. Appreciating the changesin the culture of attire among all com-munities, and noting it was each com-munity’s right to make its choices, Sam-panthan urged education authorities toresolve the matter in a way that “res-pects the traditional dress code fol-lowed in the [said] school” and ensure“no community introduces new ways of

dressing.” His seemingly conciliatory tone, ho-

wever, hardly concealed an uncompro-mising message: Muslim teachers teach-ing in a traditionally ‘Hindu school’must abide by the ‘traditional Tamil at-tire’ for female teachers — the saree. Ho-wever, Shanmuga College, though de-nominated as Hindu, is a state-fundedschool under the education depart-ment. Students from all communitiesare admitted — 120 Muslims are enrolledamong the 2,000-odd students — andteachers from any community may beappointed.

Among Sri Lanka’s 353 such ‘nationalschools’, there appears to be an implicitrecognition of the role played by reli-gious movements in establishing them,as seen in their offi��cial self-identifi��cationas ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ schools. Despitesome diversity within, most nationalschools are ethnically marked, includ-ing in the mixed Eastern province. Sincethe controversy, all the four Muslimteachers at Shanmuga College, accord-ing to an authoritative source, havesought a transfer to a Muslim school inthe same district, so they can wear theabaya to work.

Symbolic clothing For the men from both communities,who voice strong views on the abaya,the attire worn by Muslim women issymbolic, signifying either adherence toreligious convention or defi��ance of ‘Ta-mil culture’, depending on their reli-gion. On the other hand, women, in-cluding those who use it, off��er a morecomplex reading in which history is notincidental.

Mainstream narratives around SriLanka’s almost three-decade-long inter-nal war focus on the north, where Tamilmilitant organisations were based, butthe east has seen its share of action andsuff��ering. Several thousand people losttheir lives in indiscriminate shelling by

government forces and bloody mas-sacres by all sides. From the violenceunleashed by the Liberation Tigers ofTamil Eelam (LTTE) on Muslims in the1990s, to the 2004 split within the LTTEwhen its eastern commander KarunaAmman broke away, the Indian Oceantsunami the same year, and the armedforces’ capture of LTTE-controlled terri-tory in 2007, the Eastern province hasendured profound losses and devasta-tion. The impact of that is still seen inthe large number of women-headed-households, the wide prevalence of po-verty in the province — Batticaloa isamong the island’s poorest districts —and the high rates of out-migration, inthe form of low-skilled labour, to WestAsia. Resilient locals are labouring hardto rebuild their lives, but recent bouts ofcommunal tension foreshadow a diffi��-cult future.

“I grew up in Kattankudy and have al-ways lived here,” says Fahmiya Shareef,an activist in this Muslim-dominated lo-cality of Batticaloa district. A narrow al-leyway leads from the main road to herhouse right at the end. She can recallthe August 1990 mosque massacre,when over 100 Muslims, kneeling inprayer, were mowed down in gunfi��re bythe LTTE.

Now 41, Shareef remembers a timewhen Tamils and Muslims lived in amityin the 1980s. “Many of our boys joinedthe Tamil militant movement. Muslimswere very sympathetic to their struggle,and at the same time tried being abridge to the state.” Once, when thestate security forces were hunting Tamilyouth suspected to be linked to theLTTE, her father, who was a school vice-principal, disguised some of his Tamilstudents as Muslims and smuggledthem to distant border villages.

In the years of heightening confl��ict,the relationship soured. Mutual distrustreplaced respect, and hostility over-whelmed cordiality. Tamils increasinglyviewed Muslims as accomplices of thestate, and Muslims in turn saw Tamils asan oppressive local majority trying tocarve out a separate state in which Mus-lims were either discriminated againstor displaced. Ties spiralled downwardfrom the early 1990s, when the LTTE at-

tacked eastern Muslims and forcefullyevicted northern Muslims overnight.

Unveiling prejudiceThat trust defi��cit remains intact todayand dominates all debates, rangingfrom a proposed re-merger of the northand east (from 1988 to 2006, the North-ern and Eastern provinces were tempo-rarily merged to form the North Easternprovince) to allocation of local, provin-cial and national resources. Unlike theNorthern Tamil parties, Muslim politi-cal parties are coalition partners of thegovernment, holding key portfolios.This leads Tamils to accuse them of fa-vouring their ethnoreligious electoralbase while distributing government jobsor public funds.

“There is certainly truth in that alle-gation, but the Tamil community can-not get too far by resorting to hatredand divisive politics in return, can it?”asks K. Thurairajasingam, general secre-tary of the TNA’s main constituent, theIlankai Tamil Arasu Katchi, and a form-er minister in the Eastern ProvincialCouncil. “As far as the east is con-cerned, it is home to Tamils and Mus-lims. We have to work together in a waythat is fair to all the people here.”

Protesters outside the Trincomaleeschool derided the Tamil spoken byMuslims as “impure” and “crass”, for-getting that some of their northern Ta-mil brethren do not consider their east-ern dialect “pure” enough. Objectionsto Muslims span other spheres of cul-ture too, including dietary habits. InMay, a hardline Tamil Hindu organisa-tion protested against the sale of beef,mainly by Muslims, in parts of Jaff��na,claiming Sri Lanka to be a land of Hin-dus and Buddhists where the cow is re-vered and therefore cannot be slaught-ered. Muslim women’s changing attirealso appears to be contentious to Ta-mils. “Why must they suddenly wearthese new outfi��ts imported from SaudiArabia?” asks a senior academic inBatticaloa.

His barb brought to mind what Sha-reef had said earlier: “The abaya issuewas not really a problem of our udai(clothing). It was about our urimai(right).” Young Batticaloa lawyer Jaw-

shana Musammil, herself dressed in anabaya, concurs with Shareef. In herview, to tell someone that their attire isinappropriate is a violation of their fun-damental right.

To many Muslim women, the abaya isabout following a convention. Forsome, it is about convenience too.Working women fi��nd it quicker to wearthe abaya during their morning rush, ascompared to the pleated saree. Some ofthem have received abayas as presentsfrom a relative returning from WestAsia, others buy the dresses in the localmarket. Some of them wear it in black,others like experimenting with brightercolours. “Even many Tamil women to-day prefer wearing the salwar kameezto the saree. Can we say that it is wrong?Culture keeps changing with time for allof us,” Shareef notes.

In the 20 years that she has spentworking with women of all communi-ties in the East, Tamil activist Lakshmi(name changed on request) has seenmany changes to women’s clothing andattitudes about them. “So many Tamilwomen tell me that their husbandsforce them to wear the sari or the thali.Similarly, there are Muslim women whoare not particularly fond of the abaya. Ifyou ask these women, they will tell youit is an issue of patriarchy more than re-ligion,” she says, adding that the battleagainst male dominance is common toall religions.

However, in Sri Lanka’s east, everyth-ing is seen through a communal lensfi��rst. Further, in recent times, sectionswithin all communities are showingsigns of becoming more conservativeand insular, many living here observe.

“You must remember that religionhas its own power base,” says Jesuitpriest Fr. Veeresan Yogeswaran, at thesea-facing offi��ce of the Centre for thePromotion and Protection of HumanRights in Trincomalee, which he heads.In a setting as complex as in the Easternprovince, where religion is not merely amatter of personal belief but also ameans to accessing resources from pu-blic and private actors, people of allfaiths appear to be asserting their iden-tities and cultures.

Pointing to the growing number ofevangelical groups among Christiansand Muslims as a cause of concern forHindus, Fr. Yogeswaran says, “Puttingup churches in predominantly Tamil vil-lages will be seen as an attempt to dis-rupt coherence.”

Local Tamils speak of new mosquesthat have sprung up in the last fewyears, and of the massive BatticaloaCampus of Sri Lanka, a private highereducational institute. It is chaired by aninfl��uential regional Muslim politician.

Further, there is concern over possi-ble a “north Indian infl��uence”, says Fr.Yogeswaran, referring to more aggres-sive Hindu organising in the east. “TheTamil Hindus of Sri Lanka, especially inthe north and east, are essentially Sai-vites. Their kovils are all Siva temples.But increasingly, you notice many Vish-nu temples coming up here.”

Murmurs of a likely RashtriyaSwayamsevak Sangh infl��uence, coupledwith the eff��orts of organisations such asthe Siva Senai, which led the anti-beefcampaign in Jaff��na and has claimedlinks to Hindutva groups such as theShiv Sena, RSS and Vishwa Hindu Par-ishad in India, have fuelled these fears.

In the Sinhala-majority south, wheremany Sri Lankans worry about thegrowing incidence of anti-Muslim at-tacks over the last fi��ve years, hardlineBuddhist organisations have been talk-ing about combating a “growing threatof radical Islam”.

Targeted both ways That is perhaps why Shareef worriesabout Muslims “getting beaten on bothsides.” The Muslims of the Eastern pro-vince, sandwiched by the Tamils at itsnorthern end and Sinhalese in thesouth, are feeling squeezed. More so af-ter Sinhalese mobs carried out a spateof attacks targeting Muslim eateries andshops in Ampara in February, allegingthat a Muslim-run restaurant had mixedsterilisation pills in food served to Sin-halese customers.

Weeks after the anti-Muslim violenceand destruction, which also spilled overto Kandy in the Central province, whereit claimed at least two lives, lab tests ofthe food sample found the complaint tobe false. “We live in constant fear of be-ing attacked again,” says Mohamed Mus-tafa Junaideen, leader of a cooperativesociety in Ampara. Both the Tamil andSinhalese instigators of the two protestshave political reasons, some suspect.

“There are forces who know that ifyou disrupt peace in a [multi-ethnic] ci-ty like Trincomalee, it will aff��ect thewhole country. They use that for theirpolitical gain,” says social worker M.Noorul Ismiya. “Whatever the confl��ictmight be, you will fi��nd women at the re-ceiving end of it. As a feminist I am un-comfortable with the idea of an abaya,but at the same time I believe that noone in the world has the right to tell aperson what she must or must notwear.” The abaya has become a prop fora more virulent prejudice, she adds.

Lawyer Musammil, who has manyTamil clients, says that she keeps hear-ing about a host of issues in Tamil socie-ty ranging from domestic violence andalcoholism to indebtedness caused bymicrofi��nance. “There are so many bigproblems around us and silence aboutthem, but some people harp on a mat-ter like women’s attire which has noconsequence to their lives,” she says.

Those like Shareef fear that in thelong term, if the two minorities can’tstand in solidarity with each other, thenthe future for the individuals in eithercommunity would remain bleak. Shecannot see why identities must compli-cate coexistence. “Like in a fruit salad,we could be in a common dish but stillretain our distinct colour and fl��avour.But when you try to blend us all into ajuice, then the one fruit you add morewill dominate the taste. That will be atthe cost of others.”

”With its almost equally proportioned ethnic mix of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, Sri Lanka’s Eastern province could be an ideal site to demonstrate coexistence among the diff��erent communities. For the same reason,it is the most challenging too.” After Sinhalese mobs carried out a spate of attacks targeting Muslim eateries and shops in Ampara in the Eastern province, in February, Kandy in the Central province saw violence too. Avandalized mosque in Digana,located between Kandy and Teldeniya. (Below) Muslim women’s changing attire appears to be contentious to Tamils. * GETTY IMAGES

Fear of the abayaOld communal tensions return to haunt Sri Lanka’s Eastern province as sections of the Tamil community object to Muslim women embracing the abaya. Meera Srinivasan reports on the widening fault lines in the island nation’s ethnically most diverse region