Sri Lanka

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.

Chapter 1 Chapter oneIntroduction: the power of the past, JonathanSpencer; Part I Colonialism, history and racism; Chapter 2 The generation of communal identities, Elizabeth Nissan, R.L. Stirrat; Chapter 3 Chapter threeThe people of the lion: the Sinhala midentity and ideology in history and historiography, R.A.L.H. Gunawardana; Chapter 4 Chapter fourHistorical images in the British period, John D.Rogers; Chapter 5 Chapter five The politics of the Tamil past, DagmarHellmann-Rajanayagam; Part 2 Part II History at a moment of crisis; Chapter 6 Chapter six Nationalist rhetoric and local practice: the fate of the village community in Kukulewa, James Brow; Chapter 7 Chapter sevenA compound of many histories: themany pasts of an east coast Tamilcommunity, Mark P.Whitaker; Chapter 8 Chapter eight Rural awakenings: grassroots development and the cultivation of a national past in rural Sri Lanka, Michael D. Woost; Part 3 Part IIIThe politics of the past; Chapter 9 Chapter nineJ.R.Jayewardene, righteousnessand realpolitik, Steven Kemper; Chapter 10 Chapter tenNewspaper nationalism: Sinhala identity as historical discourse, SerenaTennekoon; Chapter 11 Chapter elevenAfterword: scared places, violent spaces, DanielE.Valentine;