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.
General
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