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Examines the relationship between the ethnic conflict and economic development in modern Sri Lanka.
Concerns the treatment of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.
Patrick Grant explores the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka using the concept of "regressive inversion." Regressive inversion occurs when universal teaching, such as that of the Buddha, is redeployed to supercharge passions associated with the kinds of group loyalty that the universal teaching itself intends to transcend. The book begins with an account of the main teachings of Theravada Buddhism and looks at how these inform, or fail to inform, modern interpreters. Grant considers the writings of three key figures—Anagarika Dharmapala, Walpola Rahula, and J. R. Jayewardene—who addressed Buddhism and politics in the years leading up to Sri Lanka's political independence from Britain, and subsequently, in postcolonial Sri Lanka. This book makes the Sri Lankan conflict accessible to readers interested in the modern global phenomenon of ethnic violence involving religion and also illuminates similar conflicts around the world.
The book provides a detailed historically-based analysis of the origin, evolution and potential resolution of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka over the struggle to establish a separate state in its Northern and Eastern provinces. This conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is one of the world’s most intractable contemporary armed struggles. The internationally banned LTTE is considered the prototype of modern terrorism. It is known to have introduced suicide bombing to the world, and recently became the first terrorist organization ever to acquire an air force. The ‘iron law of ethnicity’ – the assumption that cultural difference inevitably leads to conflict – has been reinforced by the 9/11 attacks and conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka. However, the connections among ethnic difference, conflict, and terrorism are not automatic. This book broadens the discourse on the separatist conflict in Sri Lanka by moving beyond the familiar bipolar Sinhala versus Tamil ethnic antagonism to show how the form and content of ethnicity are shaped by historical social forces. It develops a multipolar analysis which takes into account diverse ethnic groups, intra-ethnic, social class, caste and other variables at the local, regional and international levels. Overall, this book presents a conceptual framework useful for comparative global conflict analysis and resolution, shedding light on a host of complex issues such as terrorism, civil society, diasporas, international intervention and secessionism.
In the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese politicians began outbidding one another on who could provide the greatest advantages for their community, using the Sinhala language as their instrument. The appeal to Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the country’s official language with Sinhala and Tamil (the language of Sri Lanka’s principal minority) was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language in 1956. The Tamils’ subsequent protests led to anti-Tamil riots and institutional decay, which meant that supposedly representative agencies of government catered to Sinhalese preferences and blatantly disregarded minority interests. This in turn led to the Tamils’ mobilizing, first politically then militarily, and by the mid-1970s Tamil youth were bent on creating a separate state.
The present book uses Sri Lanka’s failed attempt at negotiating peace with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to examine the politics of state and market reforms towards liberal peace. Sri Lanka is seen as a critical case that demonstrates key characteristics and shortcomings of liberal peace, vividly demonstrated by internationally facilitated elite negotiations and donor-funded neoliberal development.
In the past decade, Sri Lanka has been engulfed by political tragedy as successive governments have failed to settle the grievances of the Tamil minority in a way acceptable to the majority Sinhala population. The new Premadasa presidency faces huge economic and political problems with large sections of the island under the control of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) and militant separatist Tamil groups operating in the north and south. This book is not a conventional political history of Sri Lanka. Instead, it attempts to shed fresh light on the historical roots of the ethnic crisis and uses a combination of historical and anthropologial evidence to challenge the widely-held belief that the conflict in Sri Lanka is simply the continuation of centuries of animosity between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The authors show how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period with the war between Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place-name etymologies, and the political use of the national past. The book is also one of the first attempts to focus on local perceptions of the crisis and draws on a broad range of sources, from village fieldwork to newspaper controversies. Its interest extends beyond contemporary politics to history, anthropology and development studies.