Download or read book Sinhala ness and Sinhala Nationalism written by Michael Roberts and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Language Religion and Ethnic Assertiveness written by Kē. En. Ō Dharmadāsa and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly four decades, Sri Lanka has been the scene of an escalating ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamils, who form the largest minority. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness traces the development of Sinhalese nationalism by paying particular attention to the Sinhala language and how it relates to Sinhalese national identity. After Sri Lanka became independent from Great Britain in 1948, an official national language had to be chosen - either "Sinhala only" or "parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil". The victory of the "Sinhala only" proposition that won in the general election of 1956 started the antagonism between the Sinhalese and the Tamils that persists to this day. Using hitherto untapped primary sources, K. N. O. Dharmadasa delineates some of the peculiar features of the linkage between state, religion, and ethnicity in traditional Sinhalese society, providing insight into a tragic conflict that has a long and turbulent history. The book has much to offer historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists of language and religion, as well as students and scholars of South Asia, postcolonialism, ethnicity, cultural identity, and conflict.
Download or read book Blowback written by Neil DeVotta and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity written by Harshana Rambukwella and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed mythology used for political manipulation. The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity places authenticity at the heart of Sinhala nationalism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Sri Lanka. It argues that the passion for the ‘real’ or the ‘authentic’ has played a significant role in shaping nationalist thinking and argues for an empathetic yet critical engagement with the idea of authenticity. Through a series of fine-grained and historically grounded analyses of the writings of individual figures central to the making of Sinhala nationalist ideology the book demonstrates authenticity’s rich and varied presence in Sri Lankan public life and its key role in understanding postcolonial nationalism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia and the world. It also explores how notions of authenticity shape certain strands of postcolonial criticism and offers a way of questioning the taken-for-granted nature of the nation as a unit of analysis but at the same time critically explore the deep imprint of nations and nationalisms on people's lives.
Download or read book Nationalism Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka written by Rajesh Venugopal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relationship between ethnic conflict and economic development in modern Sri Lanka. Drawing on a historically informed political sociology, it explores how the economic and the ethnic have encountered one another, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of Sinhala nationalism. In doing so, the book engages with some of the central issues in contemporary Sri Lanka: why has the ethnic conflict been so protracted, and so resistant to solution? What explains the enduring political significance of Sinhala nationalism? What is the relationship between market reform and conflict? Why did the Norwegian-sponsored peace process collapse? How is the Rajapaksa phenomenon to be understood? The topical spread of the book is broad, covering the evolution of peasant agriculture, land scarcity, state welfarism, nationalist ideology, party systems, political morality, military employment, business elites, market reforms, and development aid.
Download or read book Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism written by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a succession of key stages since Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) became independent in 1948, its Tamil minority, historically concentrated in the north and east but with an important segment in Colombo, became alienated from the Sinhalese majority and, after peaceful opposition failed to secure its rights, resorted to an armed struggle. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) today appear to hold the key to their people’s future. While they have suffered setbacks, including the loss of the Tamil capital, Jaffna, they remain a potent guerrilla force, able to strike with impunity at both military and civilian targets. The Tigers’ grip on the Tamil population seems secure, as does their overseas support and funding from Tamil exiles in Britain, Canada, and Australia. This book offers a concise history of the Sri Lankan Tamil nation, its culture, social make-up, and political evolution. In a final chapter, A. J. V. Chandrakanthan gives a first-hand account of life and attitudes inside the embattled Tamil areas today. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of The Break-Up of Sri Lanka and S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism. A. J. V. Chandrakanthan teaches in the Department of Theology at Concordia University, Montreal.
Download or read book Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology written by Neil DeVotta and published by East-West Center. This book was released on 2007 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study argues that political Buddhism and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism have contributed to a nationalist ideology that has been used to expand and perpetuate Sinhalese Buddhist supremacy within a unitary Sri Lankan state; create laws, rules, and structures that institutionalize such supremacy; and attack those who disagree with this agenda as enemies of the state. The nationalist ideology is influenced by Sinhalese Buddhist mytho-history that was deployed by monks and politics in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to assert that Sri Lanka is the designated sanctuary for Theravada Buddhism, belongs to Sinhalese Buddhists, and Tamils and others live there only due to Sinhalese Buddhist sufferance. This ideology has enabled majority superordination, minority subordination, and a separatist war waged by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The study suggests both LTTE terrorism and the ethnocentric nature of the Sri Lankan state, which resorts to its own forms of terrorism when fighting the civil war, need to be overcome if the island is to become a liberal democracy.The present government of President Mahinda Rajapakse is the first to fully embrace the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology, suggesting that a political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict is unlikely. Meaningful devolution of power, whereby Tamils could coalesce with their ethnic counterparts amidst equality and self-respect, is not in the offing. A solution along federal lines is especially unlikely. Instead, continued war and even attacks on Christians and Muslims seem to be in store for Sri Lanka as the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology is further consolidated. The study recommends that the international community adopt a more proactive stance in promoting a plural state and society in Sri Lanka. In addition to countering the terrorist methods employed by the LTTE, the international community should initiate and support measures to protect fundamental civil liberties and human rights of Sri Lanka's ethnic and religious minority communities.
Download or read book The Presence of the Past written by Steven Kemper and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nation Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka written by Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that ‘Sinhalese Buddhism’ in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ ideas and people. In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism – a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present. Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.
Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity written by Harshana Rambukwella and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unmaking the Nation written by Pradeep Jeganathan and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributed articles focusing mainly on the post-independence political scene in Sri Lanka within the broad framework of nationalism existing among the various ethnic groups during the period.
Download or read book SRI LANKA SINHALA NATIONALISM AND THE ELUSIVE SOUTHERN CONSENSUS written by International Crisis Group and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Abiding by Sri Lanka written by Qadri Ismail and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ismail demonstrates that the problems in Sri Lanka raise fundamental concerns regarding the relationship between democracies and minorities. He redefines the concept of minority, not as numerical insignificance, but as conceptual space where distinction without domination can be achieved.
Download or read book Primordialist Strands in Contemporary Sinhala Nationalism in Sri Lanka written by Michael Roberts and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka Primordialist strands in contemporary Sinhala nationalism in Sri Lanka written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka written by Asoka Bandarage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble written by Jonathan Spencer and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illuminating study of a village in southern, central Sri Lanka, Spencer examines how the interrelationship of political, religious, and economic life shapes the community by tracing the village through an election campaign year. He reveals how the village redefined itself in "traditional" terms, while using "modern" politics as an extension of their personal disputes. Undertaken in the years immediately prior to the great escalation of political and religious tensions, this study is of great importance to the understanding of modern Sri Lanka.
