The island of Sri Lanka in the 1980s had two civil wars raging simultaneously: one was the long-running Tamil separatist conflict in the north and east of the country and the other a Marxist insurgency. The northeastern war ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2008, and the communist JVP rebels were defeated in 1992. Together, the wars ravaged Sri Lanka and left 150,000 dead in three decades.
Nepal’s Maoist war was inspired by the JVP and other revolutionaries, and lasted from 1996 to 2006 when it ended with a ceasefire. More than 17,000 people were killed, 1,300 disappeared and many more wounded and displaced. Twenty years after it started and ten years after it ended, families of the victims are still trying to come to terms with truth and justice.
India’s first Maoist rebellion ignited in West Bengal state in 1971 and was brutally crushed. But it flared up again in the eastern states of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. This conflict started out as a struggle by indigenous peoples of the region against the exploitation of mineral resources from their forests. The low-intensity conflict has been simmering for decades, but doesn’t get much media attention, despite intermittent clashes with security forces.
In Sri Lanka, the state won both wars and there is a triumphalism of the victors over the vanquished. This means the underlying causes of both conflicts persist and remain unaddressed.
In Nepal, the war was a draw. Neither side won, and neither side lost – both went on to form the state, and no one now wants to address wartime excesses.
India’s Maoist war benefits from the lack of media attention, and human rights violations by both sides go largely unnoticed in India by the outside world.
Images of combatants and ordinary people caught up in wars have a universal quality to them. Whether they are images from Sri Lanka, Nepal or India, the faces of bereaved family members, the terrified faces of children caught in the crossfire, of women trying to protect families portray the suffering as well as the inner strength of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances. As this year marks the 20-year anniversary of the Maoist rebellion in Nepal and 10 years since the peace accord, this exhibition looks at the context, consequences and memory of conflict in South Asia. The three conflicts may be internal to each country, however, the portrait of the ordinary villager caught in the fighting between the rebels and the security forces, transcends borders and nationalistic identity. The suffering and loss associated with war does not have a regional language, and the pain of losing a loved one is as excruciating whether from Nepal, India or Sri Lanka.
This exhibition is a culmination of four bodies of work looking at conflict in these three countries –
Kunda Dixit – A People War (Nepal)
Jonas Bendiksen – Nepal’s Maoist Revolution (Nepal)
Ishan Tankha – A Peal of Spring Thunder (India)
Stephen Champion – Sri Lanka : War Stories (Sri Lanka)