Abstract
The ethnicity and violence in Sri Lanka have many root causes and consequences that are closely interconnected. Given the nature and the complexity of root causes and consequences of these highly contested concepts, it should not be treated as a part of linear historical processes where one event led to another. Sri Lanka presents case of how intersecting not only ethnicity and violence but also religion, caste, class, linguistic, and cultural mosaics have been and might be billeted within the borders of a nation-state. However, state building in Sri Lanka has been riddled with paradoxes. The curious notion of numerically dominant ethnic group, Sinhala manifesting a “minority complex” or anxieties about minority groups, Tamil and Muslims, is evident in the rise of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism during the nineteenth and the twentieth century of the country. Since state building has often meant centralization and a single ethnic group dominating the symbolic framework of the nation, there has been the tendency by minority groups such as Tamil and Muslims who have felt marginalized by the process to reinvent new collective ethnic identities. Moreover, cultural-religious minorities have responded to such hegemonic state-building process through mobilization of both non-violence and violent means. A complicated coming together of anti-minority sentiment at the level of the state, permissive politics that made violence a possibility, and the utilizing of this permissive violent politics for working out various class and caste enmities resulted in an extremely difficult political time for Sri Lanka in the 1980s. However, the central narrative through which the prevalence of violence was understood was the ethnic conflict. This paper too shall lay out the important historical moments where disadvantages toward minorities were institutionalized at state level while calling attention to ways in which ethnic politics were utilized for a multiplicity of ends.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abeysekara A (2002) Colors of the robe: religion, identity and difference. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia
Bastin R (2001) Globalisation and conflict. In: A history of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Marga monograph series on ethnic reconciliation, no. 23. MARGA Institute, Colombo
Bastin R, de Silva P (2017) Military Tourism as State-Effect in the Sri Lankan Civil War. In: John Eade and Mario Kati (eds) Military Pilgrimage and the Battelfield Tourism. Routledge, London.
Bastin R, de Silva P (2019) Historical Threads in Buddhist-Muslim Relations in Sri Lanka. In Michael Jerryson and Iselin Frydenlund (eds) Buddhist-Muslim Encounters in South and Southeast Asia, Palgrave Macmillan (in press)
Bond G (1988) The Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka: religious tradition, reinterpretation, and response. Comparation studies in religion series. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia
Brun C (2008) Finding a place. Local integration and protracted displacement in Sri Lanka. Social Scientists’ Association, Colombo
De Silva KM (1981) A history of Sri Lanka. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles
de Silva P (2013) (Re)ordering of Postcolonial Sri Pada in Sri Lanka: Buddhism, State, and Nationalism, History and Sociology of South Asia, 7(2):155–176
Gombrich R, Obeyesekere G (1988) Buddhism transformed: religious change in Sri Lanka. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Gunasinghe N (1986) Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka: perceptions and solutions. Comp Stud South Asia Afr Middle East 6(2):34–37
Haniffa F (2013) Piety as politics amongst Muslim women in contemporary Sri Lanka. In: Osella F, Osella C (eds) Islamic reform in South Asia. Cambridge University Press, New York
Haniffa F (2016) Stories in the aftermath of Aluthgama: religious conflict in contemporary Sri Lanka. In: Buddhist extremists and Muslim minorities. Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp 164–193
Haniffa F, Samuel K (2016) Men women and war talk: the gendered nature of references to war in parliamentary debates. In: Parliament’s representation of women, a selective review of Sri Lanka’s Hansards from 2005–2015. Women and Media Collective, Colombo
Haniffa F, Amarasuriya H, Wijenaike V (2014) Where have all the neighbors gone? Aluthgama riots and the aftermath. Law and Society Trust, Colombo
International Crisis Group (2010) War crimes in Sri Lanka. International Crisis Group. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/war-crimes-sri-lanka
Ismail Q (2005) Abiding by Sri Lanka: on peace, place, and postcoloniality. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Jayawardene VK (1984) Ethnic consciousness in Sri Lanka: continuity and change. In: Committee for Rational Development (ed) Sri Lanka, the ethnic conflict: myths, realities, and perspectives. Navrang, New Delhi, pp 115–173
Jeganathan P (1997) All the Lord’s Men: recollecting a riot in an urban Sri Lankan community. In: Roberts M (ed) Collective identities revisited. Marga Institute, Colombo
Jeganathan P (2000) On the anticipation of violence. In: Anthropology, development, and modernities: exploring discourses, counter-tendencies, and violence. Routledge, London
Kapferer B (1988) Legends of people, myths of state: violence, intolerance and political culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC
Mahadev N (2018) Economies of conversion and ontologies of religious difference: Buddhism, Christianity, and adversarial political perception in Sri Lanka. Curr Anthropol 59:665. in press
McGilvray, Dennis B. (2008) Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka. Duke University Press, Durham and London
Nagaraj VK, Haniffa F (2018) Towards recovering histories of anti-Muslim violence in the context of Sinhala–Muslim tensions in Sri Lanka. International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo
Obeyesekere G (1984) The origins and institutionalization of political violence. In: Manor J (ed) Sri Lanka in change and crisis. Croom Helm, London, pp 153–174
Pfaffenberger B (1990) The political construction of defensive nationalism: the 1968 temple-entry crisis in Northern Sri Lanka. J Asian Stud 49(1):78–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/2058434
Robert RI (2010) Creating peace in Sri Lanka: civil war and reconciliation. Brookings Institution Press/World Peace Foundation
Roberts M (1994) Exploring confrontation, Sri Lanka: politics culture and history. Harwood Academic Publisher, Switzerland
Rogers DJ (1987) Social mobility, popular ideology, and collective violence in modern Sri Lanka. J Asian Stud 16(03):583–607
Scott D (1999) Refashioning Future: Criticism after Postcoloniality. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Scott D (2000) Toleration and Historical Traditions of Difference. In: Chatterjee P. & Jeganathan P. (eds) Community, Gender and Violence. Subaltern Studies XI Delhi: Permanent Black
Scott GM Jr (1989) The economic bases of Sinhala Muslim ethnic conflict in 20th century Sri Lanka. International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo
Scott GM Jr (n.d.) Violence in Puttalam: the basis for the 1976 incidents of Sinhalese- Moor ethnic conflict and its means of resolution. Unpublished manuscript
Sivathamby K (1987) The Sri Lanka Ethnic Crisis and Muslim Tamil Relationships: A Socio-Political Review. In: Charles Abeysekera and Newton Gunasinghe (ed) Facets of Ethnicity in Sri Lanka, 192–225. Social Scientists’ Association, Colombo
Spencer J (ed) (1990) Sri Lanka: history and the roots of conflict. Routledge, London
Spencer J et al (2015) Checkpoint, temple, church and mosque: a collaborative ethnography of war and peace. Pluto Press, London
Sumathy S (2016) Territorial Claims, Home, Land and Movement: Women’s History of Violence and Resistance. In: Jayawardena, Kumari, Pinto-Jayawardena, Kishali, (eds) The search for justice: The Sri Lanka papers. Zubaan series on sexual violence and impunity in South Asia. Zuban, New Delhi
Tambiah SJ (1986) Sri Lanka: ethnic fratricide and the dismantling of democracy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Tambiah SJ (1992) Buddhism betrayed: religion, politics and violence in Sri Lanka. University of Chicago Press, Chicago/London
Tambiah SJ (1996) Leveling crowds: ethnonationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia. Berkeley University Press, California, pp 36–100
Thiranagama S (2011) In my mother’s house: civil war in Sri Lanka. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Udalagama T, de Silva P (2014) Formation of group-violence against state: the hindsight story of the thirty-year war in Sri Lanka. In: Hawdon J, Ryan J, Lucht M (eds) Bullies to terrorists: the courses and consequence of groups violence. Lexington Book, New York, pp 91–107
Venugopal R (2018) Nationalism, development and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Vittachchi T (1958) Emergency ’58: the story of the Ceylon race riots. Andre Deutsch, London
Wilson AJ (1975) Electoral politics in an emergent state. The general elections of 1970. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
de Silva, P., Haniffa, F., Bastin, R. (2019). Ethnicity and Violence in Sri Lanka: An Ethnohistorical Narrative. In: Ratuva, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_47
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2897-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2898-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences