Sri Lanka: Are We Heading Towards A Militarized Society

By Upul Kumarapperuma -August 9, 2014

Upul Kumarapperuma

The definitions given to the word militarization in dictionaries state it is an “act of assembling and putting readiness for war or other emergency”.

When the word militarization is defined in the context of politics it gives a more complicated and terrified meaning as much as a tool capable of dismantling political, administrative and social structures of a society.

Apart from the annual budgetary allocations to the military in comparison with budgets of other important sectors of the country, there are several other indicators to identify a militarized society, such as;

a)    The subservient role of the military is converted to a stake holder of the State;

b)    The effort to glorify the military and its personnel;

The subservient role of the military is converted to a stake holder of the State;

The conventional role of the military is a limited role which is strictly limited to the issues related to national security. If the military is placed in a position, which is more than the matters related to national security, the character of the military is then changed from its conventional role to a more powerful stake holder of the country.

The Sri Lankan military had throughout performed a subservient role and its mandate was very clearly restricted to matters relating to national security.   However, there was huge propaganda machinery launched to boost the image of the military and to attract the public for the employment in military sector after 2005. Programmes like “Api Venuven Api” were introduced directly under the Supervision the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence to achieve the afore mentioned publicity campaign.

In addition to the glorification of the military through media campaigns, retired military personnel were placed in key positions in the State during the period of war and huge publicity was given to those appointments.

The image of the military has been inflated and simultaneously the mindset of the public have been nourished with nationalist ideas and interests during the period of the war and afterwards. A belief was created as a result in the society that the military was far superior than other sectors of the country.Read More