Sasikumar Balasundaram: Operation or Oppression: Historical, Socioeconomic, and Political Marginalization of the Up-country Tamils and Its Impact on Women’s Reproductive Choice
This paper analyses sterilization narratives of the female Up-country Tamil plantation workers in Sri Lanka. This paper specifically discusses how socioecomic and political factors influence the reproductive choices of the Up-country Tamil women in the estate sector.
The Tamil population in general — and the Up-country Tamils in particular — in Sri Lanka has always been a political target for systematic violence and discrimination by the Sinhalese nationalist state. The History of the Up-country Tamils is a history of marginalization. Women in the plantations are doubly marginalized due to their multiple social identities in Sri Lanka. Maternal and Child Health (MCH) has been challenging for the Up-country Tamil plantation workers due to their exclusion from the national health care system of the country. Family planning has been vigorously implemented in the estate sector since the mid 1970s. Based on my long-term ethnographic research, I explore why women in the estate sector have the highest rate of participation in the family planning program as compared to women in the rest of the country. The highest rate of sterilization in South Asia has been recorded among the Up-country Tamil community. This is a cross-cultural analysis of how women’s wombs have been the target for political suppression and elimination of cultures. I address how the agency of the Up-country Tamil women, with regard to reproductive choice, is restrained by structural factors.
Biographical Statement:
Sasikumar Balasundarm is PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at University of South Carolina. He worked as a lecturer for two years in the Department of Sociology at University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. His research interests include identity, migration, health, and contemporary issues of the Up-country Tamils of Sri Lanka.
