Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka: THE ROOTS OF PLURALISM BREAKDOWN
Neil DeVotta | Wake Forest University

April 2017
I. INTRODUCTION
Sri Lanka represents a classic case of a country operating on the ethnic and political fronts when pluralism is deliberately eschewed. At independence in 1948, Sinhalese elites fully marginalising the Tamil minority was bound to cause this territorialized community
to eventually hit back, but they succumbed to ethnocentrism and majoritarianism anyway.1
What were the factors that motivated them to do so? There is no single explanation for why Sri embracesreversed pluralism: a Buddhist revival in reaction to colonialism that allowed Buddhist nationalists to combine their community’s socioeconomic territorialised grievances with ethnic and religious identities; the absence of minority guarantees in the Constitution, based
on the Soulbury Commission, the British set up before granting the island independence; political
opportunism among especially Sinhalese, but also Tamil elites who manipulated ethnonationalism
when seeking power; and the sectarian violence that congealed and hardened attitudes over time contributed to majoritarianism. Multiple issues including colonialism, a sense of Sinhalese
Buddhist entitlement rooted in mytho-history, economic grievances, politics, nationalism and
communal violence all interacting with and
stemming from each other pushed the island
towards majoritarianism. This, in turn, then led to
ethnic riots, a civil war accompanied by terrorism
that ultimately killed over 100,000 people,
democratic regression, accusations of war crimes
and authoritarianism.
The new government led by President
Maithripala Sirisena, which came to power in
January 2015, has managed to extricate itself
from this authoritarianism and is now trying to
revive democratic institutions promoting good
governance and a degree of pluralism. This will not be easy, given the majoritarian mindset that has become embedded as well as the undermining and weakening of state institutions that nearly
This is paper is part of a new publication series from the Global Centre for Pluralism called Accounting for Change
in Diverse Societies. Focused on six world regions, each “change case” examines a specific moment in time when a country altered its approach to diversity, either expanding or eroding the foundations of inclusive citizenship. The aim of the series – which also features thematic overviews by leading global scholars – is to build a global understanding of the sources of inclusion and exclusion in diverse societies and the pathways to pluralism.
Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka three decades of civil war and post-conflict authoritarianism promoted. But, hopefully, the lessons learned can now enable a more inclusive society that emphasises common citizenship over divisive ethno-religious identities. In covering the long story of post-independence
Sri Lankan politics and the way it hampered pluralism, this case narrative is divided into four sections. The first look at ethno-religious highlights religion in the country’s ethno-religious demographics and how they influenced public policies that undermined what could have been a liberal democracy. It focuses
on the numerous moves away from a strategy to build pluralism, and how and why this happened at each moment. The second section discusses the consequences resulting from the anti-pluralism policies, with a focus on ethnic relations and democracy. The third briefly evaluates ongoing attempts to rectify the mistakes of the past while arguing that majoritarianism that has been institutionalized makes it very
unlikely Sri Lanka will strike a blow for a full-fed pluralism. The final section recaps the preceding narrative in list form so as to link it to the four drivers representing the Governance of Diversity section of this project.
II. DEFENESTRATING PLURALISM
Sri Lanka was colonized for almost 450 years,
f
First by the Portuguese, and then by the Dutch and British. This heritage has shaped the country’s ethno-religious makeup. According to the 2012 census, the island’s ethnic breakdown was as follows: Sinhalese 74.9%, Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%, Indian Tamil 4.1%, Moors (Muslim)
9.3% and others 0.5%. In terms of religion, the island was 70.1% Buddhist, 12.6% Hindu, 7.6% Christian (with 6.2% being Roman Catholic)
and 9.7% Muslim. Muslims were 7.5% in 1981, and that religious community’s high fertility rate has been of concern for some Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists. In this context, it is worth noting, however, that, over the past century, it is the majority community’s numbers that have mainly risen: in the 1911 census, the Sinhalese and Buddhists only accounted for 66% and 60%, respectively as compared to 75% and 70% in 2012.2 Inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic dynamics in multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies are complicated, and Sri Lanka is no different.
The island’s Muslims mainly speak Tamil (although many Muslim youth now also speak Sinhala), but they have consciously used their Islamic identity as their primary identity to differentiate themselves from ethnic Tamils.

While approximately 10% of Sinhalese and 7% of Tamils are (mainly Catholic) Christians, one today rarely runs into Sinhalese Hindus and Tamil Buddhists, although Tamil areas in both India and Sri Lanka harboured Buddhist devotees in earlier times.
Sri Lanka (called Ceylon until 1972) is Asia’s oldest democracy, having achieved the universal franchise in 1931, just three years after the colonial power Britain adopted it. The country was granted independence in February 1948 without the instability in neighbouring India, which gained 2 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies Global Centre for Pluralism Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka its freedom following decades of anti-colonial struggle, communal violence and Partition.
Indeed, the transfer of power to independent
Ceylon was so tranquil that many in the interior
failed to grasp the moment’s significance. By
the time power was transferred, civil society
associations (organized both along ethnoreligious
and secular lines) were numerous, and leftist
political parties led by the Lanka Sama Samaja
Party (Lanka Equal Society Party, LSSP) and
Communist Party of Ceylon (CP) had played
a leading role socializing people politically.
The United National Party (UNP) was created
just before independence and its leaders were
influential in negotiating the Constitution that
Britain’s Soulbury Commission designed.3
The period from the late 1930s to mid-1940s had
seen some ethnic tension as Tamils clamoured for
“fifty-fifty” representation between the minorities
(Tamils and others) and the Sinhalese. This
claim meant that the Sinhalese, who were nearly
70% of the population, would only have 50% of
representatives within the legislature. Neither
the Sinhalese nor the British thought much of
the demand. Instead, a weighting formula was
adopted to address Tamils’ concerns, but it still
ensured that the Sinhalese would be a majority
in 75 of 95 constituencies.4 Yet, notwithstanding
differences regarding representation, Sinhalese
and Tamil elites came together to promote a united
front when discussing independence, thanks to the
faith both groups placed in D.S. Senanayake, the
UNP leader who became Sri Lanka’s first prime
minister.
Political elites play a leading role in determining
a country’s political development and the
belief that Senanayake could be trusted to treat
minorities fairly influenced both the Tamils and
British in how they approached independence.
If trust in Senanayake was responsible for the
informal elite pact that led to minority guarantees
being de-emphasized within the Constitution,
the camaraderie he fostered across ethnic lines
caused observers to believe that of those states
gaining independence following the First World
War, Sri Lanka had “the best chance of making
a successful transition to modern statehood.”5
Senanayake died unexpectedly in 1952 and
the ethnocentric policies rooted in linguistic
nationalism that soon thereafter took shape caused
even Britain’s constitutional engineers to realize
that they had made a serious blunder in not
instituting ironclad minority guarantees.6
A constitution is a country’s most important
institution and represents its foremost governing
“hardware.” What gets included and excluded
in a constitution conditions the degree of
institutionalization and the trajectory of ethno
religious narratives and interactions (i.e., the
country’s “software”) that subsequently take
shape. The political structure the post-colonial
Constitution created, in a country with a clear
ethnic majority, lacked a bill of rights or specific
minority guarantees, which made defenestrating
pluralism quite a simple task for those advocating
majoritarianism.
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III. ETHNO-RELIGIOUS
DIVERSITY
The first major instance of exclusion was
perpetrated against Indian Tamils, also called Hill
Country Tamils, Up-Country Tamils or Estate
Tamils, since most continued to work on tea
plantations, as did their ancestors who came to
the country as indentured labourers beginning in
the 1830s. The community was denied citizenship
within a year of independence. In an island replete
with crosscutting cleavages, caste-conscious Sri
Lankan Tamils supported this disenfranchisement,
as did local and British businessmen (including
tea estate owners) who feared these Tamil
labourers, who had voted overwhelmingly against
the pro-West and pro-trad UNP in the 1947
general election, would be easily manipulated
by the country’s leftist parties. Yet, the UNP
representatives’ demands when negotiating with
the Indian government regarding the plight of
Estate Tamils made clear the extent to which
Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocentrism was motivating
the island’s position towards minorities, in this
instance against longstanding residents who
had contributed much to the economy.7 It was
not until the 1990s that all Indian Tamils were
granted citizenship, but thanks mainly to forced
repatriation to India in the 1960s and 1970s, the
Indian Tamil population that comprised 12% of
the population in 1946 was down to 4% in 2012.8
This was a first pivot point away from pluralism,
the first instance when post-independence Sri
Lanka deliberately excluded a minority group,
with ethnicity, economics and political ideology
all playing a role in the decision. The episode
also created a precedent that emboldened
Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who have since
repeatedly resorted to sectarianism to exclude and
disempower the island’s minorities.
Buddhism has played a major role in Sri Lanka
and contributed to the island’s unique character.
Its influence is noted in a history book called the
Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle), which documents
a chronology of Sinhalese kings beginning in
543 BCE, although scholars believe the text was
f
irst put together by Buddhist monks around
the sixth century CE. According to the mytho
historical Mahavamsa, the Sinhalese are the
progeny of a union between a princess and a
lion, they originate from around West Bengal in
India, and they were chosen by Lord Buddha to
preserve and propagate his teachings to the world
(dhamma) via Sri Lanka. The latter belief is the
basis for Sri Lanka being considered sinhadipa
(island of the Sinhalese) and dhammadipa
(island containing Buddha’s teachings), and the
Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology justifying
majority domination and minority subordination.
It is also the basis for Buddhism being provided
special status in the 1972 Constitution, Buddhist
clergy commanding significant influence in the
island’s political affairs, and Sinhalese Buddhist
nationalists insisting on the island being a unitary
state, as opposed to accepting power being
devolved along federal or other lines.9 Buddhist
tenets and the Buddhist ethos are compatible
with pluralism, but Sinhalese Buddhist political
entrepreneurs and Buddhist leaders have instead
chosen to eagerly project themselves as defenders
of sinhadipa and dhammadipa, which in turn
has ensured politics that devalues pluralism. As
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the eminent scholar and monk Walpola Rahula
argued:
Get this straight and quote me. Sri Lanka is a
Buddhist Sinhala country. Let no one make a
mistake. Seventy percent of the country consists
of Buddhists and Sinhala people. Also make this
clear that Sri Lanka is the only Buddhist Sinhala
country in the world. If we don’t live here, are
the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] and
some of the Tamil parties asking us to jump in to
the sea?
I got angry with [former Sri Lankan President]
Premadasa because he chose to call Sri Lanka a
multi-national and multi-religious state. No. It is
a Buddhist Sinhala state…10
Aspects of Sinhalese Buddhist history are clearly
mythic, fantastic and substantially embellished,
but one must appreciate how deeply notions of
sinhadipa and dhammadipa are entrenched in
order to understand the stridency of the likes of
Walpola Rahula, and why this belief system has
thus far negated a culture of pluralism taking root.
Sri Lanka comprised three distinct kingdoms
when the Portuguese landed in 1505. The
British were the first to unify the island in 1815
and they made it a single administrative unit
in 1833. Thus, it was British colonialism that
cemented the island’s unitary structure. Late
19th century Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists
added mytho-history to this arrangement and
laid the groundwork for the ethnocentrism and
majoritarianism that followed, although failed
British promises played a role in influencing their
actions.
For instance, Britain had promised to provide
subventions to Buddhist institutions when it took
command of the whole island, but failed to do
so sufficiently. Instead, it tolerated and promoted
Christian evangelicals who mocked and trivialized
Buddhism, which over time only inspired
Buddhist elites to become more protective of
their identity and culture.11 British divide-and
rule policies also favoured Burghers—the mixed
European and native population—and Tamils,
partly because these groups were more conversant
in English and were eager for government
employment. While the surfeit of minorities
employed within the bureaucracy and Tamil
demands especially for greater representation
within legislative councils contributed to
Sinhalese-Tamil tensions in the decades prior
to independence, the smooth transfer of power
justified the optimism many felt regarding Sri
Lanka’s prospects. The Sinhala-only movement,
however, sundered this promise. This was a
second pivot point away from pluralism.
IV. LINGUISTIC NATIONALISM

English continued to be the island’s official
language following independence, despite
only around 10% being conversant in it. Thus
permits, licenses, petitions, telegrams, police
complaints and court proceedings were handled
in a language,Minister 90% did not fully comprehend.
This initially led to a swabasha (self-language)
movement that called for both Sinhala and Tamil
to replace English, and adoption of such a policy
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of linguistic parity would have precluded much
of the ethnic animus that eventually took root.
The swabasha movement was rooted in principles
of ethno-linguistic inclusion, but a counter
movement to make Sinhala the only official
language, led by what came to be called the
Pancha Maha Balawegaya (Five Great Forces—
comprising Buddhist monks, workers, teachers,
farmers and physicians practising Ayurveda),
gained prominence. The consequences this
counter-movement engendered led over time to
Tamil separatism and civil war.
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by
Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike was
the first to jump on the Sinhala-only bandwagon.
Solomon Bandaranaike was a leading UNP
politician who broke away and formed the SLFP
after realizing he was not going to succeed the
party’s leader, and first prime minister, D.S.
Senanayake.12 He and the SLFP campaigned on a
a platform promoting linguistic parity in the 1952
election, but Bandaranaike opportunistically
switched to Sinhala-only during the 1956 election
campaign.13 He thereafter resorted to divisive
rhetoric and claimed he would make Sinhala the
only official language in 24 hours (and sometimes
said he would do it in just 24 minutes) if prime
minister.14 When the UNP belatedly realized that
linguistic parity would cost the party the election,
it too switched to Sinhala-only. The two parties
thereafter tried to outdo each other on who best
could promote the majority community’s interests
at the expense of the Tamil minority, leading
to a process of ethnic outbidding that began
empowering Sinhalese and marginalizing the
hitherto relatively socio-economically “advanced”
Tamils.15
This ethnic-outbidding process was, of course,
exclusionary, but it is important to recognize
that most SLFP and UNP elites who perpetrated
it was hardly racist: they engaged in it mainly
(if not solely) because they wanted to further
their political aspirations. In the context of the
“hardware-software” metaphor, the Sri Lankan
case is a good example of how the absence of
minority constitutional and legal guarantees (i.e.,
weak “hardware”) allowed opportunistic elites
to easily manipulate ethnoreligious and cultural
issues (i.e., “Software”) so as to jettison any
tendencies towards pluralism.
For instance, the year 1956 was also when
Buddhists commemorated the 2,500th anniversary
of Buddha’s death (Buddha Jayanthi). It was
Buddhist monks who recorded, preserved and
propagated Buddhist scriptures in the Pali
language, and it was the transformation of Pali
over the centuries that gave rise to modern
Sinhala. The Sinhala language is thus inextricably
linked to Buddhism, and Sinhalese Buddhist
nationalists and politicians easily, and effectively,
combined language and religion to reiterate
notions of Sinhadipa and Dhammadipa when
clamouring for a Sinhala-only language policy.
Bandaranaike’s SLFP-led Mahajana Eksath
Peramuna (People’s United Front) coalition
handily won the April 1956 election and the new
government passed the Official Language Act of
1956 in June, making Sinhala the only official
language. Sinhalese mobs assaulted Tamils who
were peacefully protesting the legislation outside
Parliament, thus provoking the island’s first ever
anti-Tamil riots. Colvin R. de Silva, a leader in
the LSSP, opposed the legislation by warning
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that “two torn little bleeding states may yet arise
out of one little state” if the Tamil language was
not accommodated;16 and the Communist Party’s
Pieter Keuneman proved equally prescient by
saying, “Ten years from now it will be several
times worse. This Bill is heading straight for
the division of the country… Every order and
regulation under it will be a cause for further
strife.”17
The 1956 election was centred on Sinhala
only mobilization, and passage of the Official
Language Act was a specific and very
consequential pivot when pluralism was rejected
and ethnocentrism rooted in linguistic nationalism
institutionalized. What is obvious is that political
elites knew full well this monumental act of
exclusion was bound to subvert democratic
institutions and also likely to lead to “terror,
anomie, and the violent call [by Tamils] for a
separate state.”18 Yet, they went ahead anyway.
Buddhist nationalists, including the Buddhist
clergy, partly clamoured for a Sinhala-only
policy for cultural reasons, but average Sinhalese
realized rightly that the policy would benefit them
economically (through jobs within the government
bureaucracy) just as politicians realized that
they could use the language issue to attain and
maintain power. Solomon Bandaranaike, a
liberal, made clear that he was manipulating the
language issue for political purposes when he told
an interviewer: “I have never found anything to
excite the people in quite the way this language
issue does.”19 Consequently, nationalism aside,
economics and politics played important roles in
the Sinhala-only movement.
Seeking to tamp down simmering Tamil
resentment, Bandaranaike and the Tamil
Federal Party (FP) leader S.J.V. Chelvanayakam
negotiated the so-called Bandaranaike
Chelvanayakam Pact (B-C Pact) in July 1957,
through which the Tamils agreed to jettison the
demand for linguistic parity in exchange for
Tamil being recognized as a minority language
and the government agreed to set up a regional
councils to deal with education, agriculture
and Sinhalese colonization of Tamil areas in
the northeast. This was clearly an attempt at
inclusion; even while ensuring the Sinhalese
stood to gain from the Official Language Act that
had already passed. The B-C Pact could have reversed the burgeoning ethnic tensions, but the UNP, which had staunchly supported linguistic
parity almost until the end of the 1956 election
campaign, now sought to make political mileage
by joining the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists
and vociferously opposing the pact. During
this period especially, party politics oscillated
between including, by promoting pluralism,
and excluding Tamil linguistic aspirations, by
promoting majoritarianism, but the process of
ethnic outbidding ensured that majoritarianism
triumphed.
Tamil politicians not belonging to the Federal
Party did not help matters. Tamil leaders have
rarely mounted a united front and their bickering
was on full display when those who did not
belong to the FP vilified the agreement. G.G.
Ponnambalam, leader of the All Ceylon Tamil
Congress, claimed that the FP was seeking to
relegate Tamils to an “inferior position” that
was akin to a “local version of apartheid.”20
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Chellappah Suntharalingam, among the first
Tamils in Parliament to call for a separate
Tamil state, likewise branded the FP and Tamils
favouring the agreement “cowards.”21 Tamils,
given their overrepresentation in the military,
bureaucracy and education sectors, had become
used to thinking of themselves as a dominant
community even though they were a minority.22
And given that they had joined with Sinhalese
elites to ensure a smooth transfer of power
in 1948, they rightly felt betrayed. Yet, their
opposition to the B-C Pact was unrealistic
given the island’s demographics and Solomon
Bandaranaike’s election victory. Their vitriol
merely provided support for Sinhalese extremists
who were determined to fully exclude Tamils
from helping to govern the island.
When another bout of anti-Tamil riots broke out
in March and April 1958—after Tamils began
protesting against state-owned buses using Sinhala
lettering on number plates—Prime Minister
Solomon Bandaranaike acceded to his opponents
and abandoned the B-C Pact, tearing up a copy
of the agreement in front of cheering Buddhist
monks.23 A Tamil parliamentarian captured the
prevalent zeitgeist of ethnic outbidding when
he asserted that “People who have never been
communalists have become communalists and
those who have been moderates have become
extremists while extremists have become
incorrigible fanatics.”24 Otherwise put, the B-C
Pact would have helped alter the country’s weak
“hardware,” as represented by the post-colonial
Constitution, and thereby promoted pluralism. But
elite manipulation of the country’s “software,” in
the form of ethno-religious passions, prevented
this from happening. It was a scenario that kept
repeating itself.
For instance, in August 1958, Prime Minister
Bandaranaike managed to get the Tamil Language
(Special Provision) Act No. 28 passed, which
was geared towards enabling the reasonable use
of Tamil for correspondence with government
departments, administration of the predominantly
Northern and Eastern Provinces, and in civil
service examinations and educational programs.
Here then was another attempt at inclusion, and
had the Act been seriously implemented, it is
possible the burgeoning ethnic animus could have
been halted. But a Buddhist monk assassinated
the Prime Minister in September 1959, and the
SLFP government (1960–65), headed by Solomon
Bandaranaike’s widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
refused to pass necessary regulations to
implement the Act. The requisite regulations
were only approved in January 1966 under a
UNP government headed by Dudley Senanayake,
the son of D.S. Senanayake. This time it was
the SLFP that opposed the regulations, and the
LSSP and CP, both of which had stoutly defended
linguistic parity until the early 1960s joined them.
This UNP government under Dudley Senanayake
(1965–70) did try to accommodate Tamils’
other language demands through the so-called
Dudley Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Pact (or
D-C Pact) of 1965, which would have recognized
the Northern and Eastern Provinces as Tamil
speaking and givingthe giving the Tamils first preference when
colonizing lands in the east. Here, then, was yet
another attempt at inclusion and it, like the B-C
Pact, could have belatedly clamped down on
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Tamil discrimination that by then was spreading
across government establishments. Virulent
opposition, however, mounted by the SLFP, LSSP,
CP and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists scuttled
the attempt. This blockage was another example
of the culture of ethnic outbiddingsignalledBuddhist-dominated that had been
institutionalized, and it signaled that a Sinhalese
Buddhist dominated government (often termed an
ethnocracy) was in store.
Throughout these years, Tamils protested and
resorted to satyagraha (passive resistance). They
f
lew black flags when the Sinhala Only Act was
passed, and made stirring speeches in Parliament.
But they had little to show for it. Indeed, moderate
Tamils were not only humiliated when agreement
with Sinhalese leaders (like the B-C and D-C
Pacts) was jettisoned, but less compromising
Tamils within and outside Parliament also
ridiculed them.
Language, to a great degree, defines culture. In a
polyethnic setting, it also shapes socio-economic
opportunity. Consequently, making Sinhala the
sole official language not only challenged Tamils’
right to celebrate and thrive within their culture,
it also stood to negatively affect their economic
and social success, especially in education and
employment. And this is precisely what ensued
after Sirimavo Bandaranaike took over the
SLFP in 1960. In going well beyond trying to
fully implement the Sinhala-only policy (which
took effect on 1 January 1961), the blatantly
ethnocentric policies of Prime Minister Sirimavo
Bandaranaike’s two governments (1960–65 and
1970–77) further undermined pluralism and
goaded Tamils towards separatist mobilization.
V. OTHER ETHNOCENTRIC
POLICIES
With the Sinhalese and Buddhists being a clear
majority, it was imperative for politicians to pay
heed to the majority community’s preferences.
For Sinhalese Buddhists—at a time when the
government was the largest employer and a
government pension was the only protection
against penury in old age—the fact that the Tamil
minority was disproportionately represented in the
armed forces, bureaucracy and university system
was jarring. The British and Sri Lankan elites
might have been more cognizant of the manner
in which the one-person, one-vote democratic
principle could lead to majoritarianism, and
they could have designed institutional checks
and balances to protect against this outcome.
This was not done, partly because the lack of an
independence movement had caused most people
to consider the island a model colony and partly
because, as noted above, many placed great trust
in UNP elites such as D.S. Senanayake.
In any case, policies geared to improve the lot of
the Sinhalese while gradually reducing the Tamil
the component in these institutions would have been
judicious. The policies and practices that Sirimavo
Bandaranaike’s governments effectuated were
anything but gradual and judicious. Indeed, they
were so divisive and destabilizing that “It could be
said with no exaggeration that it was the widow
[Sirimavo Bandaranaike] who was the mother of
Tamil militancy.”25 Or as Nigel Harris aptly noted,
“If the gods had wished to destroy, the madness of
Sri Lanka’s rulers gave them every opportunity;”26
for “if the Tamils had not existed, Colombo would
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have had to invent them. And, in an important
sense, it did. It was [Sinhalese elites in] Colombo
that forced the inhabitants of the north to become
different, to cease to be Sri Lankan and become
exclusively Tamil.”27
Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s two terms saw a
catalogue of exclusionary ethnic policies
instituted: Sinhala-only was applied to the
judicial system even in the Northeast t, where the
vast majority of Tamils spoke and understood
no Sinhala; Tamil civil servants were forced to
learn Sinhala in order to be promoted; few Tamils
were hired into government service after 1960;
Sinhalese civil servants who spoke no Tamil were
stationed in Tamil areas as a way of ensuring
linguistic hegemony; quotas were introduced
to increase the number of rural Sinhalese
students in the university system (which also
negatively impacted urban Sinhalese, although
the main target was Tamils); Tamil students were
required to score higher in order to enter the
universities (with some in government making
the dubious claim that Tamils scored high on
exams only because Tamil examiners inflated
grades); the government avoided developing
Tamil areas (especially irrigation) even when
foreign aid was earmarked for these areas,
and in some instances used the aid to develop
In Sinhalese areas; the government aggressively
pursued ethnic flooding of Eastern Province by
sponsoring Sinhalese colonization; and Tamil
literature and entertainment entering the island
from neighbouring Tamil Nadu were banned or
controlled. In 1961, the military was stationed in
Northern Province in response to peaceful Tamil
protests and the army soon came to be seen as an
occupation force.28
The next pivot away from pluralism came in 1972
when the government instituted, without any
input whatsoever from Tamils, what was widely
considered the country’s first autochthonous
constitution, which established Sinhala as the
official language, declared the island a unitary
state and also gave Buddhism foremost status.
This was another act of exclusion in that the
government not only utterly disregarded minority
opinions, but it superimposed a majoritarian
constitution on minorities. If Sri Lanka’s
prospects of becoming a liberal democracy had
once been good, the policies that especially
Sirimavo Bandaranaike instituted during her two
terms made it a full-fledged ethnocracy. This was
why even some mainstream Tamil leaders joined
with many youth, and called for a separate Tamil
state (eelam) in the mid-1970s.29
The LSSP and CP had taken principled positions
against Sinhala-only and spoken out forcefully
against marginalizing Tamils, but many policies
of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s
second government had their support. As one
scholar observed, these parties’ leaders “had
reconciled themselves in the sunset of their lives
to abandoning the vision of world revolution and
settling cosily for the three [cabinet] portfolios
that Mrs. Bandaranaike had given them.”30
In 1971, a Sinhalese Maoist group called the
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation
Front, JVP), which espoused an ideology
combining nationalism (which emphasized anti
India rhetoric) with socialism, unleashed an
insurrection seeking to topple the government.
The attempt was violently put down and the group
banned. The insurrection partly influenced some
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of the government’s policies designed to promote
Sinhalese interests and they also coincided with
increased disgruntlement among Tamil youth
who found their socio-economic upward mobility
blocked by the government’s discriminatory
ethnocentric policies. The extent of Tamils’
relative deprivation is clear when one compares
their decline in government service: in 1956,
60% of engineers and doctors, 50% of the clerical
service, 40% of the armed forces and 30% of the
Ceylon Civil Service were Tamil. By 1970, the
numbers had dropped to10%, 5%, 1% and 5%,
respectively.31 By the time the civil war ended
in 2009, over 95% of all government employees
were Sinhalese, including the military at nearly
98%.
This radical overhaul was partly achieved by
replacing the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) in
1963 with the Ceylon Administrative Service,
since Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government felt
CCS personnel were insufficiently sensitive
“to the spirit of the times,” and wanted instead
a “more obedient, less intellectually inclined,
and less argumentative” cadre that would carry
out government orders.32 The 1972 Constitution
went further and disbanded the Public Service
Commission, which ensured public servants were
appointed impartially, and the Judicial Service
Commission, which ensured the independence
of the courts, and also did away with judicial
review of legislation. It replaced these entities
with the State Services Advisory Board and the
State Services Disciplinary Board, which were
placed under the Cabinet of Ministers, who
thereafter controlled appointments, transfers and
dismissals, and were allowed to operate outside
the purview of the courts because the judiciary
too was considered a threat to the “popular will.”33
Such reforms allowed politicians to replace
Tamils with Sinhalese within their ministries and
throughout the government, but it also led to de
institutionalization and political decay.34
The autarky and dirigisme the second
Bandaranaike government embraced in the 1970s
led to widespread scarcity of basic goods and
the resulting moribund economy played a major
role in ensuring the J.R. Jayewardene-led UNP
government clinched power in July 1977. The
UNP won by a massive five-sixths majority. The
SLFP was decimated, winning just eight seats.
The Tamil United Liberation Front, comprising
the Tamil Congress and the Federal Party, won 18
seats and became the official opposition. Given
the harm Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s governments
had caused the Tamil community, many Tamils
living in predominantly Sinhalese constituencies
voted for the UNP and Jayewardene. While
Jayewardene had advocated for a Sinhala-only
policy even before Solomon Bandaranaike (indeed
in 1944),35 and resorted to ethnic outbidding in
the 1950s, he was considered a politician-savvy
enough to deal with Tamil anxieties and the
burgeoning Tamil radicalism in the northeast.
Jayewardene was pro-West and pro-market, and
he utilized help from the International Monetary
Fund, World Bank and Western countries to
institute structural adjustment reforms even as he
fundamentally changed the island’s Constitution
again in August 1978. This new constitution
introduced a presidential system, changed the
electoral system (from first-past-the-post to multi
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Global Centre for Pluralism
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was the official language, but also recognized
Tamil as a national language that was to be used
in the northeast for all transactions. Numerous
Tamil youth had joined rebel groups bent on
separatism by the time Jayewardene became
prime minister and he could easily have passed
legislation that would have satisfied Tamils’
legitimate grievances. Rather than pursue
meaningful devolution, however, Jayewardene got
rid of extant village and town councils in 1981
and replaced them with District Development
Councils (DDC), which he hoped would satisfy
Tamils. While these DDCs may have contributed
to minor economic development,36 they also
reinforced the government’s predilection for
centralization. Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists
have consistently opposed devolution for the
northeast, and they have especially contested
Tamil demands for a federal arrangement,
claiming that this would constitute a step
towards separatism. Jayewardene seems to have
agreed with them, for both Machiavellian and
nationalistic reasons.
The Constitution of 1978 provided the president
immense powers. Jayewardene used it to strip
Sirimavo Bandaranaike of her civic rights for
seven years, as punishment for postponing
elections and extending SLFP rule by two years,
until 1977. This prevented her from contesting
elections, which ensured that his most formidable
opponent could not challenge him in his reelection
campaign. He also got Parliament to amend the
Constitution 16 times during his presidential
tenure from 1978–88. The Fourth Amendment
allowed the newly re-elected President
Jayewardene to propose the only referendum held
in Sri Lanka, one which would extend the life of
Parliament and thus allow the UNP to maintain
it five-sixths parliamentary majority for another
term, without any constituency contests and via a
simple national majority.
Beyond the disregard for the rules of
parliamentary democracy, in the referendum
campaign as well, union members, clergy,
academics and civil society activists who opposed
government plans were harassed and beaten.37
This referendum marked the most blatant
violations of liberal democracy up to that point
in time and, in a real sense, created the precedent
for politicians and parties to try and rig elections.
President Jayewardene clearly felt he had to
operate assertively to ensure the success of his
economic reforms, but his actions came at the
expense of good governance.
His government’s most divisive insidious
policies, however, related to the worsening ethnic
situation. Despite glaring evidence that two
decades of Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocentrism
had contributed to a burgeoning Tamil rebellion,
Jayewardene sought to use the instability in the
north to empower himself and the UNP, whose
members resorted to anti-Tamil riots merely a
month after the government took power in 1977.38
The August riots were followed by violence in
Jaffna, the northern capital, in May 1981, just
before the DDC elections. The violence UNP
supporters perpetrated, and security service
personnel enabled, led to numerous Tamil
shops and some homes being destroyed. Most
importantly, the famous Jaffna Public Library,
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a symbol that epitomized Tamil intellectual
achievement and housed many rare manuscripts
among its 95,000 volume collection, was torched.
Tamil youth especially in Northern Province were
resorting to bank robberies and had killed some
police personnel by this time, and this no doubt
contributed to the mayhem in Jaffna. But the
impunity with which government thugs ran amok
while some prominent members within the UNP
inflamed passions by resorting to racist anti-Tamil
rhetoric signaled that worse was to follow.
And worse did follow in 1983, when the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
ambushed an army patrol in July and killed 13
soldiers. This was the largest loss of military
personnel in a single incident, and it led to the
worst ever anti-Tamil pogrom, with government
supporters using electoral roles to identify and
attack Tamils and their properties. They were
aided and abetted by government politicians,
Buddhist monks and military personnel.
Ultimately, thousands were displaced, hundreds
of Tamil properties destroyed, and between 400
and 2,000 Tamils killed.39 President Jayewardene
did not impose a curfew or address the country
until after three days of rioting; when he did, he
evinced almost no sympathy for what the Tamils
had endured. Neither he nor his Cabinet ministers
bothered to visit any of the 70,000 Tamils who
had sought refuge in schools, many within
Colombo. Jayewardene falsely claimed that the
Maoist JVP had been the main orchestrator of
the violence. This assault forced the group to go
underground, from where it mounted a second
bloody insurrection in the late 1980s.
The previous government, led by Prime Minister
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, had pursued autarky
and dirigisme that may have caused economic
stagnation, but nonetheless allowed many
Sinhalese with connections to the regime to
monopolize trade within certain sectors. The open
market that came with the structural adjustment
approach undertaken by the Jayewardene regime
undermined such monopolies even as it allowed
Tamil retailers and wholesalers new opportunities
to thrive.40 The systematic manner in which
Tamil businesses were destroyed and the support
Sinhalese businessmen provided rioters suggest
that the riots were also fanned by Sinhalese
businessmen determined to eliminate their Tamil
competitors.41 The pogrom caused Tamils living
and working in the south to flee to homes and
ancestral abodes in the northeast, and many
among them joined the various rebel groups that
had formed since the early 1970s. Thousands also
f
led the island, to eventually form the potent Tamil
diaspora. This pivot away from pluralism marked
the beginning of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which was
to last 27 years.
VI. ETHNIC CONFLICT AND
SOFT-AUTHORITARIANISM
With the Sinhalese being a clear majority, it was
too easy for ambitious politicians to manipulate
ethnic sentiments when seeking elected office.
But democracy necessitates inclusion, and how
a country treats minorities is one important
determinant of its democratic credentials.
Countries like India may have had no choice in
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accommodating minorities, given India’s ethnic
tapestry. Others like Canada and Belgium, despite
lacking as complex an ethnic diversity, recognized
multiple identities and set up institutions that
permitted multiculturalism and civic nationalism.
Sri Lanka’s leaders went out of their way to do
the opposite, and in the process also undermined
the liberal democracy that was well within the
island’s grasp.
Ethnocentrism and ethnic conflict trivialize the
liberal tenets undergirding democracy. This is
because civil wars especially privilege narratives
rooted in security, territoriality and sovereignty,
and thereby deemphasize individual, civil,
political and group rights. In this context, those
seen to be operating against the state are the
ones most affected. In the Sri Lankan case, the
majority Sinhalese initially put up with myriad
anti-democratic practices the state directed at
Tamils because they, as a community, benefitted
from such practices and were least affected by the
counter-terror activities the state mounted against
the LTTE and its perceived supporters. Yet,
illiberalism cannot be compartmentalized, and
the policies used to intimidate and control Tamils
eventually were directed at all Sri Lankans as the
country hurtled towards authoritarianism.42
For instance, one of the first pieces of legislation
the government passed to counter Tamil
separatism was the Prevention of Terrorism Act of
1978, which allowed the security forces to arrest,
detain without trial and keep incommunicado
for 18 months anyone suspected of promoting
terrorism. Scores of innocent Tamils got caught
in its dragnet and this legislation together with
the 1983 riots may have done more to radicalize
Tamils than all the previous anti-minority policies
put together. The state of emergency that was
continuously imposed also allowed the armed
forces and Tamil rebels to operate in grotesque
ways. Tit-for-tat attacks targeting innocent Tamil
and Sinhalese villagers and Buddhist clergy
saw hundreds murdered.43 Dispassionate and
unbiased governance is a hallmark of democracy,
but the ethnocentrism successive governments
had facilitated undermined impartial institutions
and any approach to pluralism—because the
Parliament, bureaucracy, military, educational
institutions and the courts were all operating
within an ethnic prism. The fear psychosis
and culture of revenge the civil war promoted
hardened attitudes and further exacerbated this
situation.
The no-holds-barred attitude the government and
security forces adopted was easily justified as
a response to the LTTE’s modus operandi. The
group had attacked and coopted other Tamil rebel
organizations so as to claim sole representative
status for the Tamils and embarked on a
murderous strategy to create eelam (a separate
Tamil state). It assassinated anti-LTTE Tamils;
perfected suicide bombing and influenced other
terrorist groups; killed numerous military and
political leaders, including President Ranasinghe
Premadasa in 1993; assassinated former Indian
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991; resorted to
extortion within and outside Sri Lanka; forcibly
recruited children into its forces; evicted over
60,000 Muslims from Northern Province; and
used civilians as human shields. In the process
of trying to set up eelam, the LTTE sought to
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transform Tamil life in some positive ways;
they, however, ended up transmogrifying the
community.44 As the Economist aptly put it the
LTTE were ultimately “as vicious and totalitarian
a bunch of thugs as ever adopted terrorism as a
national liberation struggle.”45
Successive attempts at ceasefires and conflict
resolution failed because the LTTE were never
serious about settling for any solution short
of eelam and the Sri Lankan government was
never committed to meaningful devolution. An
aggrieved and nationalist Tamil diaspora pitted
against equally committed Sinhalese Buddhist
nationalists only fanned the ethnic flames. For
instance, India-brokered talks in Thimpu, Bhutan,
in July–August 1985, led to Tamil rebel groups
making four principal demands (that thereafter
formed the basis for much of what the LTTE
insisted on in subsequent talks): Tamils to be
recognized as a distinct nation; the northeast
designated as their historical homeland; Tamils
allowed the right to self-determination; and
all Tamils granted Sri Lankan citizenship. The
latter was in response to the plight of Indian
Tamils, many of whom had shifted to Northern
Province, particularly following the 1983 anti
Tamil pogrom. The Sri Lankan government
refused to accept the conditions and ongoing
violence between rebel groups and government
forces during the discussions (despite a ceasefire
having been agreed to) caused the Thimpu talks
to collapse. Similarly, attempts by President
Chandrika Kumaratunga to promote federalism
and create a new constitution also failed
in 2000, partly due to LTTE and Sinhalese
Buddhist nationalist intransigence, but also due
to opposition within her own People’s Alliance
coalition and the UNP playing spoiler. The
Norwegian-sponsored peace process during
2000–06 also failed because both sides refused
to compromise, and the LTTE especially violated
its terms with abandon.46 These failed processes
make clear how important timing can be. The
more the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict intensified,
the more uncompromising people on both sides
became.
The most serious attempt to deal with devolution
and put an end to the conflict took place in 1987,
but the ham-handed and overbearing Indian
involvement that accompanied this effort also
internationalized and further complicated the
civil war. Indeed, geo-political and regional
considerations were increasingly shaping the Sri
Lankan story. A government military offensive in
May–June 1987 to capture territory in the Jaffna
Peninsula led to Indian involvement. The timing
coincided with Sri Lanka’s tilt towards the West,
even as the so-called “Indira Doctrine” influenced
Indian geopolitics. This stance suggested India’s
security considerations were co-terminous with
what took place throughout South Asia, and South
Asian states should therefore avoid regional and
international entanglements that were inimical
to Indian interests; and that India could also not
disregard the plight of extraterritorial minorities
with ties to ethnic groups in India as the resulting
dynamics inevitably affected it.47 The 1971
Pakistan civil war that led to the creation of
Bangladesh no doubt influenced this position,
although Sri Lanka’s tilt towards the West caused
its amplification during the early 1980s.
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President Jayewardene’s attempts to cozy up
to the West without regard for Indian security
concerns,48 and the sour relations between him
and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had
led India to secretly arm and train Tamil rebels
in the 1980s.49 When it appeared the May–June
1987 military offensive was likely to crush Tamil
militants, pressure from the Indian state of Tamil
Nadu caused Gandhi’s son and successor, Rajiv, to
impose on the Sri Lankan government and LTTE
the 1987 Indo-Lanka Peace Accords, which called
for the LTTE to give up their weapons and for Sri
Lanka to institute devolution. The effort failed.
The LTTE ended up fighting the Indian Peace
Keeping Force (IPKF) that was stationed in the
northeast, in what turned out to be India’s longest
war. The Sri Lankan government did pass the
13th Amendment to the Constitution, which led to
provincial councils and the Northern and Eastern
provinces being merged, but the IPKF presence
led to much hostility against India and caused
Jayewardene’s successor, Ranasinghe Premadasa,
to demand that the Force leave the island. Some
IPKF personnel had acted in a region unleashing thewaspredatory fashion
against Tamil civilians and the Force was equally
unpopular among both Tamils and Sinhalese
when it left in March 1990.50 However, the IPKF
presence had helped the government scotch a
second violent uprising by the JVP because the Sri
Lankan forces did not have to battle Tamil rebels
in the north and JVP rebels in the south at the
same time.
The provincial councils, which were designed
to address Tamils’ grievances by devolving
some powers to regionsunleashingthe ended up operating
throughout Sri Lanka (except the predominantly
war-torn Tamil northeast). Moreover, elections
for the Northern Provincial Council wa only
held in September 2013 after much international
pressure was brought to bear on the Sri Lankan
government. Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists
had vociferously opposed the Indo-Lanka Peace
Accords and its attendant IPKF presence and
northeast merger. The nationalists were especially
opposed to the 13th Amendment granting
powers over police and land to the provinces.
The Sri Lanka Supreme Court upheld the 13th
Amendment soon after it was passed, but, in 2006,
ruled that the merger of the Northern and Eastern
Provinces was invalid.51 While this still meant that
the provinces controlled police and land powers,
in reality these, and all other powers vested
in the provinces, are regulated by the central
government.52
The Provincial Councils, had they been allowed
to operate as per the 13th Amendment, might
have satisfied most Tamils, especially after it
became clear that the LTTE quest for separatism
was headed for a dead end. But successive
governments have preferred to operate in
paternalistic and centripetal fashion when
dealing with provinces, and the suggestion that
empowered Northern and Eastern Provinces
(the latter where Tamils and Muslims constitute
a clear majority) could promote separatism and
undermine the island’s unitary state status has also
precluded the predominantly Sinhalese provinces
from asserting themselves. Today, parties and
politicians at the national level not only often
dictate how provincial budgets, which the national
government allocates, get spent, they also use
the provincial councils to appoint supporters as
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councillors, despite this being the purview of
provincial leaders. Disempowering provincial
councils was taken to new heights under the
Mahinda Rajapaksa government, which came
to power in November 2005 and catapulted the
country towards authoritarianism.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa gets credit
for having defeated the LTTE, which many
military experts predicted was not possible.
The controversial manner in which his
government and military did so, however, has
led to accusations of war crimes. Given his
longstanding and solid Sinhalese Buddhist
credentials, Rajapaksa could have easily used
the victory over the LTTE to pursue measures
that accommodated some Tamil grievances. He
instead pursued policies that further marginalized
minorities, including Muslims who had been
anti-LTTE and opposed to separatism, even as he
sought to create a political dynasty rooted in soft
authoritarianism.53
On the authoritarian front, Rajapaksa, and what
came to be called the First Family, controlled
nearly 70% of the country’s budget even as
they used various tactics (bribing, engineering
defections, ordering investigations and ensuring
negative media coverage) to keep opposition
weak; undermined institutions (especially
Parliament and courts) so as to arrogate power
within the executive branch and among family
members; resorted to unfair election practices
(including pre-election rigging); muzzled the
independent media, which led to self-censorship;
terrorized civil society; widened surveillance of
opponents; expanded state and family influence
in the private sector (especially banks and finance
companies); and allowed the regime’s supporters
to engage in corruption and sexual predation with
impunity. He had Sarath Fonseka, the former
army commander who designed the war strategy
to defeat the LTTE, arrested in humiliating
fashion and thereafter court-martialed on flimsy
grounds in retaliation for running against him in
the 2010 presidential election; and he likewise
orchestrated the impeachment of the very first
female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after
she rendered an unfavourable decision.54 While
all this directly impacted democracy and good
governance, the regime’s attempts to militarize the
country, and use Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism
to destabilize the northeast and target Muslims,
especially undermined whatever hopes there were
for reviving pluralism in a post-conflict setting.
Consequently, as opposed to returning lands that
has been taken over to set up camps and High
Security Zones in the northeast, the Rajapaksa
government went on building even more
camps post-war, and also constructed military
administered hotels and guesthouses. The lack
of demobilization and increased militarization
saw soldiers operating tea shops and barber
salons in Tamil areas (principally along the
A-9 highway connecting the north and south),
working on military-run farms that were created
using state lands and Tamil-owned properties
(while many landowners languished as part of
the internally displaced), and running tourist and
business ventures the private sector had hitherto
overseen. A rigorous surveillance system in the
northeast saw military personnel attending all
functions, especially in Tamil villages, even as
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rehabilitated LTTE cadres were also used to
monitor village activities. A Presidential Task
Force, superintended by President Rajapaksa’s
brother Basil, controlled all development in
Northern Province (with NGOs and donor
agencies repeatedly prevented from carrying
out vital programs). The Tamil version of the
the national anthem was banned. Cemeteries the
LTTE had erected to commemorate its dead were
f
lattened and military barracks built over them in
some instances. Buddhist pagodas and military
monuments celebrating victory over the LTTE
were conspicuously built along northern roads in
ways smacking of Sinhalese Buddhist hegemony,
while Buddhist monks were provided with land
to set up temples in some locales, and Buddha
statues and bo (ficus religiosa) trees erected in
certain Tamil and Muslim villages in the northeast
so as to brand these regions Buddhist (even
though in many instances no Buddhists lived
there). Furthermore, Sinhalese colonization of
Tamil areas was encouraged (a policy that various
governments had facilitated especially in Eastern
Province since independence), streets and villages
in the northeast were provided Sinhalized names,
and water and other resources in the east rationed
in ways to create tension between Tamils and
Muslims.
All this ensued as rumors spread that Tamil
women recruited to work on military-run farms
were engaged in illicit affairs and prostitution
and the widespread use of alcoholism, drugs,
and pornography throughout Tamil communities
caused anomie and ruptured families; periodic
claims of a LTTE recrudescence led to search
and detention operations that kept Tamils
scared and discombobulated; and the two ex
military governors of Northern and Eastern
Provinces operated as if their primary goal was
to try and ensure that Tamils were kept hopeless
and prostrate.55 In the early 1960s, Sirimavo
Bandaranaike’s Permanent Secretary for Defense
and External Affairs, N.Q. Dias, had called for
military bases to be set up throughout Northern
Province so as to pacify and control Tamils, and
the Rajapaksa government’s policies decades later
were rooted within this mentality. The speed with
which this transformation took place caused many
among the Tamil community to claim that the
government was overseeing a policy of “cultural
genocide.”56
With the Sri Lankan Tamils having embraced
separatism, the Tamil-speaking Muslims were
long considered the “good minority.” They too
paid a heavy price during the ethnic conflict,
however, since the LTTE targeted Muslims in the
northeast and evicted all Muslims from Northern
Province. During the civil war, a number of
Muslims used their links to the east and worked
as government intelligence operatives; and
Muslim politicians consistently lobbied Muslim
and Middle Eastern countries on behalf of Sri
Lanka. The community was nonetheless stunned
when mobs led by Buddhist monks destroyed a
300 year-old Muslim shrine in September 2011.
A longstanding mosque in Dambulla, a prominent
Buddhist pilgrimage site, was attacked in April

Three months later the blatantly racist,
anti-Islamic (and anti-Christian) Bodu Bala Sena
(Buddhist Power Force, BBS) was launched,
which thereafter led to regular attacks against
Muslims, their properties and mosques, even as
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enclave south of Colombo, when mobs supported
by police commandos killed two Muslims, and
destroyed dozens of homes and other property.57
The BBS enjoyed links to the Rajapaksa family,
and this enabled it to orchestrate violence against
Muslims and their properties with impunity.58
The group combined notions of Ranaviru, anseniormostinhadipa and
dhammadipa with post-9/11 Islamophobia, and
liaised with Burma-Myanmar’s 969 Movement
led by the firebrand monk Ashin Wirathu, who has
led violent campaigns against Muslims there. The
BBS has claimed that Muslim fundamentalists
seek to transform Sri Lanka into an “Arabian
country,” and thereby justified its campaign
to ban halal products, the construction of new
mosques using funds from the Middle East and
women wearing the niqab. It has further claimed
that Muslim employers seek to seduce Sinhalese
women and that Muslim stores sell special
underwear designed to make Sinhalese women
sterile. Reading the publications and listening
to them shows that groups like the BBS are
obsessed with demographics and their vilification
of Muslims appears to borrow a page from the
equally communal-minded Hindutva forces in
India.
The first major ethnic riots in Sri Lanka took
place in 1915 between Sinhalese and Muslims,
and many Muslims feared that the BBS and its
supporters were bent on commemorating the
event in 2015. Given the well-calibrated attack
in Dharga Town, and that Muslims mobilized to
vote against President Rajapaksa in the January
2015 presidential election, there was every reason
to believe that a Rajapaksa victory would have
cataclysmic consequences for the community.
But Rajapaksa lost, with both Muslims and
Tamils playing a major role in his defeat. And his
attempts to make a comeback as prime minister
via the August 2015 parliamentary elections also
fell flat.59 His defeat not only allowed the island’s
minorities to breathe easier; it also provided the
country’s new leaders the chance to institute
policies promoting pluralism, although Sri
Lanka is most unlikely to become a prototype for
pluralism in the developing world.
VII. THE POTENTIAL FOR
CHANGE
Giving into international pressure, President
Rajapaksa had appointed the Lessons Learned and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in May 2010
to investigate the civil war from February 2002,
when the final ceasefire agreement with the LTTE
took effect, to May 2009, when the actual conflict
ended. The Commission’s report was strong
on reconciliation and weak on accountability,
but it concluded that, “the root cause of the
ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka lies in the failure of
successive Governments to address the genuine
grievances of the Tamil people” and insisted
that a political solution to address the causes
of the conflict was “imperative.”60 Rajapaksa
not only cavalierly disregarded the LLRC’s
recommendations, but crossed swords with the
international community regarding alleged war
crimes committed by the government and military.
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President Maithripala Sirisena’s 2015 victory
over Rajapaksa has led to a greater willingness
to deal with issues of accountability, although no
one expects government and military personnel
who oversaw and conducted the violence against
Tamils towards the final stages of the war to
face stiff penalties. With the LTTE leadership
responsible for war crimes eliminated, there is
no political will among the majority Sinhalese to
see soldiers, widely considered to be ranawiruwo
(war heroes), held responsible for their crimes.
It is easily observed that many Sinhalese believe
that Tamils, having supported the LTTE, have
received their just comeuppance. Thus, for
example, Dingiri Banda Wijetunga, Sri Lankan
president from May 1993 to November 1994,
could say that Sri Lanka had no ethnic problem—
it only had a terrorist problem.61 This mindset
makes achieving full-fledged accountability for
crimes committed during the civil war politically
impossible.
Since coming to power in January 2015, the
Sirisena government has adopted some policies
to address Tamils’ grievances: it replaced the
ex-military governors in the north and east with
respected civil service personnel; appointed
the Tamil who was the senior most Supreme
Court justice as Chief Justice; supported the
Tamil National Alliance, which was vilified as
the LTTE’s proxy during the war, becoming the
main opposition in Parliament and its leader
becoming the leader of the opposition; returned
some military-held lands in the north and east to
civilians; released a number of Tamil prisoners
held over long periods; instituted an Office of
National Unity and Reconciliation under former
President Chandrika Kumaratunga; set up an
Office of Missing Persons; and has promised to
create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and Office of Reparations in response to the
UN Human Rights Council resolution Sri
Lanka cosponsored in September 2015. The
government also hopes to change the Constitution
and electoral system, and it is possible that
attempts will be made to accommodate some
of the Tamils’ major grievances in the process.
But with majoritarianism now embedded, no
politician among the Sinhalese seriously considers
federalism an option. Similarly, the idea of self
determination is considered code for separatism
and there will not be any language to this effect
going forward. The best the Tamils can expect is
some devolution, within a unitary state structure.
This is to say that whatever inclusion gets
instituted, it will be minimal and not affect the
extant majoritarian setup.
Today, Tamils’ most immediate demands center
on four issues: having lands taken over by
the military returned; getting the military to
demobilize, especially in the Northern Province;
ensuring accountability for those killed and
disappeared; and receiving reparations for
property and lives lost. Along with this, the vast
majority in the northeast clamour for dependable
employment, decent education for their children
and a safe climate to carry out their livelihoods.
Issues of federalism and devolution, while not
unimportant, are far from their minds. This seems
to be lost among some in the Tamil Diaspora,
who propagate unrealistic demands and rhetoric,
making it easy for Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists
to harp on the LTTE bogey and obstruct necessary
reforms rooted in pluralism.
20 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
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While political parties and leaders have alternated
in power in post-independence Sri Lanka,
Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism has consistently
triumphed, and this at the expense of pluralism
and democracy. Instituting pluralism, and thereby
trying to regain the island’s democratic promise,
necessitates accepting and learning from the
mistakes committed. Yet, the communal trajectory
that post-independence Sri Lanka adopted has
emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists,
whose longstanding zeitgeist is rooted in notions of
sinhadipa, dhammadipa and the attendant belief
that majority domination and minority subjugation
is fully justified.
Such is the majoritarianism governing the Sinhalese
Buddhist cosmos in Sri Lanka. Consequently, one
is unlikely to see the sort of pluralism befitting a
liberal democracy taking root on the island. The best
one can hope for at the moment is limited pluralism
where minorities live with a sense of security and
dignity.
VIII. SRI LANKA AND THE
DRIVERS OF PLURALISM
The literature on path dependency makes clear
how timing and sequence of policies shape
political processes and how seemingly relatively
unimportant events can snowball and lead to
movements of great consequence.62 In this
context, one can speculate whether Sri Lanka’s
ethno-religious and political trajectory would
have been much different had the Constitution
left by Britain’s Soulbury Commission instituted
minority rights in the form of a bill of rights,
or had the Soulbury Constitution allowed for
meaningful devolution, or had D.S. Senanayake
not died when he did, or had the B-C Pact and
even the D-C Pact been institutionalized, or
had J.R. Jayewardene used his supermajority in
Parliament to ram through policies that rectified
prior governments’ practices. In short, Sri
Lanka did have many opportunities to change
the island’s “hardware” and thereby control the
manner in which ethno-religious and cultural
sentiments were fanned (i.e., how its “software”
operated). But Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism
rooted in mytho-history, British shortsightedness,
misplaced and displaced trust among elites,
political opportunism, and the hardening of
attitudes as ethnic tensions transmogrified into
terrorism and war crimes ensured this did not
happen. The reality in Sri Lanka is that while
governments may promote policies supporting
pluralism, this will only take place in ways that do
not threaten the majoritarianism now in place.
Utilizing the above narrative, the following are
the ways in which the four drivers associated with
Governance and Diversity in this project have
contributed to Sri Lanka’s failure to institute
pluralism.
Livelihoods and well-being

• Tamil over-representation in bureaucracy,
  military and university system (partly stemming
  from colonial policies) empowered them socio
  economically in ways that upset Sinhalese.
• Excluding Indian Tamils (disenfranchising them)
  negated their ability to utilize the political process
  21
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  when seeking to better their livelihoods.
• Making Sinhala the only national language and
  using it to increase Sinhalese Buddhists in the
  bureaucracy excluded Tamils from the state sector.
• Instituting a quota system and forcing Tamils
  to score higher for university entry lowered
  opportunities for their socio-economic progress.

Enabling anti-Tamil riots that destroyed homes and businesses and directly undermined livelihoods.
Law, politics and recognition

• The Ceylon Citizenship Act No. 18 of 1948
  disenfranchised Indian Tamils.
• Passing the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956
  (Sinhala Only Act) began the process of excluding
  Tamils at various levels.
• Anti-Tamil riots in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 (in
  Jaffna) and especially the pogrom in July 1983.
• Failure to institute the Bandaranaike
  Chelvanayakam Pact of 1957.
• Failure to institute the Senanayake-Chelvanayakam
  Pact of 1965.

Passing the 1972 Constitution without any input
from minorities and providing Buddhism foremost
status and declaring Sri Lanka a unitary state.

• Banning the JVP following the 1971 insurrection
  and also following the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom.
• Passing the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978
  that led to many innocent Tamils being imprisoned
  and tortured.
• The July 1987 Indo-Lanka Peace Accords that led
  to 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which set
  up the provincial council system and merged the
  Northern and Eastern province into a single unit.

The 2007 Supreme Court ruling that demerged the
northeast into two provinces and the consistent
opposition to any meaningful devolution.

• Provincial councils being undermined by
  centripetal governance.
  Citizens, civil society and identity
• Mytho-history, including notions of sihadipa and
  dhammadipa.
• Elements of civil society that was more “bonding”
  or exclusive (including individuals from same
  group) than “bridging” or inclusive (including
  individuals from a variety of groups).

The fascistic nature of the LTTE and its impact on those who lived in the territories it controlled.

• The various policies of the Sirimavo Bandaranaike governments that made the country more of an ethnocracy than a democracy.
• The Mahinda Rajapaksa government opposing the national anthem being sung in Tamil and the various other ways in which it sought to dominate and humiliate Tamils. The Maithripala Sirisena government now trying to introduce reforms that are conducive to good governance and pluralism.
• Minorities being forced to deal with a mainly Sinhalized bureaucracy, especially in areas outside of the northeast.
  Regional and transnational influences The state of Tamil Nadu in India and its influence
  on the Indian central government when

promoting the interests of Sri Lanka’s Tamils
(including Indian Tamils).

• J.R. Jayewardene pursuing close ties with the West
  (especially the United States) and the way this
  22 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
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  Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka
  effected Indo-Lanka relations.
• India secretly arming and training Tamil rebels in
  the 1980s.
• The Indo-Lanka Peace Accord partly setting up the
  provincial council system.
• The Indian Peace Keeping Force being stationed
  in the island in the late 1980s and the war that
  ensured between the IPKF and LTTE.
• Sri Lanka’s closer ties to the Chinese during the
  Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency.
• International pressure on Sri Lanka to pursue
  accountability for alleged war crimes and post-war
  reconciliation with Tamils.
  23
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  NOTES
  1 Neil DeVotta (2004), Blowback: Linguistic
  Nationalism, Institutional Decay and Ethnic
  Conflict in Sri Lanka (Stanford: Stanford
  University Press).
  2 For the 1911 figures, see E.B. Denham (1912),
  Ceylon at the Census of 1911 (Colombo:
  Government Printer), 196, 245. For the other
  f
  igures, see Department of Census and Statistics
  Sri Lanka, “Census of Population and Housing
  2012,” 20–1, accessed 26 January 2017, http://
  statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/CPH2011/index.
  php?fileName=Key_E&gp=Activities&tpl=3.
  3 See H. Kumarasingham, ed. (2015), The
  Road to Temple Trees: Sir Ivor Jennings and
  the Constitutional Development of Ceylon:
  Selected Writings (Colombo: Center for Policy
  Alternatives).
  4 I.D.S. Weerawardana (1960), Ceylon General
  Election 1956 (Colombo: M.D. Gunasena), 87.
  5 Howard W. Wriggins (1961), “Impediments
  to Unity in New Nations: The Case of Ceylon,”
  American Political Science Review 55:2 (June),
  316.
  6 See Kumarasingham, xxii–xxv.
  7 See Sharada Nayak (2014), The Raj Agent in
  Ceylon 1936–40 (New Delhi: Education Resources
  Center Trust).
  8 The Estate Tamils continue to be among the
  most marginalized in Sri Lanka; and many of
  their local leaders feel the government and estate
  owners conspire to keep the community socio
  economically disempowered so as to ensure a
  cheap labour force for the tea industry. Author
  interviews (2013), in Hatton and Nuwara Eliya,
  July. Also see Daniel Bass (2012), Everyday
  Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: Up-country Tamil Identity
  Politics (New York: Routledge).
  9 See Steven Kemper (1991), The Presence of
  the Past: Chronicles, Politics and Culture in
  Sinhala Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press);
  Gananath Obeyesekere (1997), “The Vicissitudes
  of the Sinhala-Buddhist identity through Time
  and Change,” in Sri Lanka: Collective Identities
  Revisited, vol. 1, edited by Michael Roberts
  (Colombo: Marga Institute); H.L. Seneviratne
  (1999), The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism
  in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago
  Press); Stanley J. Tambiah (1992), Buddhism
  Betrayed?: Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri
  Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Neil
  DeVotta (2007), “Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist
  Ideology: Implications for Politics and Conflict
  Resolution in Sri Lanka,” Policy Studies no. 40
  (Washington D.C.: East-West Center).
  10 Quoted in Roshan Peiris (1996), “Rahula Hits
  Back,” Sunday Times (Colombo), 5 May, accessed
  26 January 2017, http://www.sundaytimes.
  lk/970921/news2.html.
  11 Kitsiri Malalgoda (1976), Buddhism in Sinhalese
  Society, 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival
  and Change (Berkeley: University of California
  Press).
  24 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
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  Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka
  12 This is because D.S. Senanayake was seeking to
  promote his son Dudley Senanayake to succeed
  him.
  13 James Manor (1989), The Expedient Utopian:
  Bandaranaike and Ceylon (Durham, N.C.: Duke
  University Press).
  14 “‘I’ll Do It in 24 Minutes’ Now Says Mr.
  Bandaranaike,” Ceylon Daily News, 15 January
  1956, 5.
  15 Donald Horowitz considers ethnic groups that
  have “benefitted from opportunities in education
  and non-agricultural employment” to be
  “advanced.” Given that the predominantly Tamil
  Northern Province ranks low in terms of economic
  productivity (mainly due to its arid climate),
  Horowitz classified Tamils as an advanced group
  in a backward region. See Donald Horowitz
  (1984), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley:
  University of California Press), 233.
  16 Quoted in House of Representatives (1956),
  Parliamentary Debates, 14 June, col. 1917.
  17 Quoted in House of Representatives (1956), col.
  1711.
  18 Seneviratne, 204.
  19 Quoted in Manor, vi.
  20 See “F.P. Acceptance of Sinhala Act Ignominious,”
  Ceylon Daily News, 4 September 1957, 11; “More
  Reactions to the Outcome of P.M.-F.P. Talks,”
  Ceylon Daily News, 27 July 1957, 3.
  21 House of Representatives (1957), Parliamentary
  Debates, vol. 30, col. 1271.
  22 As K.M. De Silva has noted, the ethnic conflict
  that ensued was one between “a majority with
  a minority complex, and a minority with a…
  majority complex.” See K.M. De Silva (1998),
  Reaping the Whirlwind: Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic
  Politics in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Penguin Books),
  304.
  23 For a good account of these anti-Tamil riots, see
  Tarzie Vittachi (1958), Emergency ’58: The Story
  of the Ceylon Race Riots (London: A. Deutsch).
  24 Quoted in House of Representatives (1958),
  Parliamentary Debates, 20 November, col. 1747.
  25 S. Sivanayagam (1991), “The Phenomenon of
  Tamil Militancy,” in Sri Lankan Crisis and India’s
  Response, edited by V. Suryanarayan (New Delhi:
  Patriot Publishers), 40.
  26 Nigel Harris (1990), National Liberation
  (London: I.B. Tauris), 222.
  27 Harris (1990), 221.
  28 Chandra R. De Silva (1984), “Sinhala-Tamil
  Relations and Education in Sri Lanka: The
  University Admissions Issue—The First Phase,
  1971–77,” in From Independence to Statehood:
  Managing Ethnic Conflict in Five African and
  Asian States, edited by Robert B. Goldman and
  A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (New York: St. Martin’s
  Press), 125–46; Neelan Tiruchelvam (1984),
  “Ethnicity and Resource Allocation,” in From
  25
  Global Centre for Pluralism
  Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
  Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka
  Independence to Statehood: Managing Ethnic
  Conflict in Five African and Asian States, edited
  by Robert B. Goldman and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson
  (New York: St. Martin’s Press),185–95; Patrick
  Peebles (1990), “Colonization and Ethnic Conflict
  in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka,” Journal of Asian
  Studies 49:1 (February): 30–55; A. Theva Rajan
  (1995), Tamil As Official Language: Retrospect
  and Prospect (Colombo: International Center for
  Ethnic Studies); Ambalavanar Sivarajah (1996),
  Politics of Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka (New
  Delhi: South Asian Publishers); M.R. Narayan
  Swamy (1994), Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to
  Guerrillas (Delhi: Konark); A. Jeyaratnam Wilson
  (2000), Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its
  Origins and Development in the Nineteenth and
  Twentieth Centuries (Vancouver: University of
  British Columbia Press).
  29 The demand was most forcefully articulated in
  the May 1976 Vaddukoddai Resolution and July
  1977 manifesto of the Tamil United Liberation
  Front, a political grouping comprised of multiple
  Tamil parties that won all Northern Province
  constituencies in the 1977 parliamentary elections.
  30 A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (1994), S.J.V.
  Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan
  Tamil Nationalism, 1947–77 (Honolulu:
  University of Hawaii Press), 115.
  31 Satchi Ponnambalam (1983), Sri Lanka: The
  National Question and the Tamil Liberation
  Struggle (London: Zed Books), 174.
  32 Bradman Weerakoon (2004), Rendering unto
  Caesar: A Fascinating Story of One Man’s Tenure
  under Nine Prime Ministers and Presidents of Sri
  Lanka (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications), 127.
  33 Rohan Edirisinha and N. Selvakkumaran (2000),
  “The Constitutional Evolution of Ceylon/Sri Lanka
  1948–98,” in Sri Lanka’s Development Since
  Independence: Socio-Economic Perspectives and
  Analyses, edited by W.D. Lakshman and A. Tisdell
  (Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publications,
  Inc.), 103.
  34 For details, see Neil DeVotta (2014), “Parties,
  Political Decay, and Democratic Regression in
  Sri Lanka,” Commonwealth and Comparative
  Politics 52:1 (January): 139–65.
  35 For a good account of the attempt to make Sinhala
  the only national language in the colonial State
  Council see Jane Russell (1982), “Language,
  Education and Nationalism—the Language Debate
  of 1944,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social
  Studies 8:2, pp. 38–64.
  36 Bruce Matthews (1982), “District Development
  Councils in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey 22:11
  (November): 117–34.
  37 Jagath P. Senaratne (1997), Political Violence
  in Sri Lanka, 1977–90: Riots, Insurrections,
  Counterinsurgencies, Foreign Intervention
  (Amsterdam: VU University Press).
  38 When a group of businessmen that had advised
  Jayewardene’s election campaign visited him
  following the August 1977 anti-Tamil riots and
  warned against the anti-Tamil posturing of those
  in the government, he told one of them: “You are
  26 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
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  Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka
  a lawyer; I am a politician. I need this [Tamil]
  problem for the survival of my party.” Author
  interview with Godwin Fernando, who was among
  those who went to see Jayewardene, 1 January

39 The low figure was the government estimate,
while others put the number killed around
2,000. See Patricia Hyndman (1988), Sri Lanka:
Serendipity Under Siege (Nottingham, UK:
Spokesman), 26.
40 See Newton Gunasinghe (1984), “The Open
Market and its Impact on Ethnic Relations in
Sri Lanka,” in Sri Lanka: The Ethnic Conflict:
Myths, Realities, and Perspectives, Committee
for Rational Development (New Delhi: Navrang),
197–214.
41 Gunasinghe (1984).
42 Neil DeVotta (2015), “From Counterterrorism to
Soft-Authoritarianism: The Case of Sri Lanka,”
in Critical Perspectives on Counter-Terrorism,
edited by Lee Jarvis and Michael Lister (London:
Routledge), 210–30.
43 See Narayan Swamy (1994) and Wilson (2000).
44 Neil DeVotta (2009), “Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam and the Lost Quest for Separatism
in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey 49:6 (November
December): 1021–51. Also see M.R. Narayan
Swamy (2003), Inside an Elusive Mind:
Prabhakaran: The First Profile of the World’s
Most Ruthless Guerrilla Leader (Colombo: Vijitha
Yapa Publications).
45 “Truth and Consequences,” Economist, 30 April
2011, 46.
46 See Mark Salter (2015), To End a Civil War:
Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka
(London: Hurst & Company).
47 S.D. Muni (1993), Pangs of Proximity: India’s
and Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis (New Delhi:
Sage Publications); N.S. Jagannathan (1990),
“Anatomy of a Misadventure,” Mainstream 28:24,
p. 3.
48 Attempting to lease oil farms in Trincomalee
(in the northeast) to an American concern,
agreeing to host a powerful Voice of America
station, allowing the US aircraft carrier Kitty
Hawk to dock in Colombo in November 1985,
and recruiting Israel’s Shin Beth and Mossad and
Britain’s ex-Special Air Service commandos to
train Sri Lankan military personnel were among
issues that rankled India at a time when that
country was suspicious of especially US strategy
in the Indian Ocean.
49 See Narayan Swamy (1994).
50 For Indian involvement in Sri Lanka, see Muni
(1993); K.M. De Silva (1995), Regional Powers
and Small State Security: India and Sri Lanka,
1977–90 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press); and P. Sahadevan and Neil DeVotta
(2006), Politics of Conflict and Peace in Sri
Lanka (Delhi: Manak Publications Pvt. Ltd.),
chapter 9.
27
Global Centre for Pluralism
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51 Sri Lanka comprises of 25 districts and nine
provinces. Between 1987 and 2006 the island had
eight provinces due to the Northern and Eastern
Provinces being merged.
52 For details on the provincial councils, see Amita
Shastri (1992), “Sri Lanka’s Provincial Council
System: A Solution to the Ethnic Problem?,”
Asian Survey 32:8 (August): 723–43.
53 Hard authoritarian leaders rule by diktat, while
soft authoritarian rulers manipulate features of
democracy to maintain legitimacy even as they
undermine democratic institutions, the rule of law
and pluralism.
54 See Neil DeVotta (2011), “Sri Lanka: From
Turmoil to Dynasty,” Journal of Democracy
22:2 (April): 130–44; Jason G. Stone (2014), “Sri
Lanka’s Postwar Descent,” Journal of Democracy
25:2 (April): 146–57.
55 According to one NGO, the ex-military governor
of Northern Province went so far as to limit the
number of chickens that could be distributed to
destitute Tamil villages. Author interview with a
leading NGO official, Colombo, July 2013.
56 The information in this paragraph is based on
scores of interviews conducted throughout the
island between 2012 and 2015 with civil society
activists, NGO personnel, journalists, academics,
clergy members, labour leaders, and local and
national level politicians.
57 Farzana Haniffa (2016), “Stories in the Aftermath
of Aluthgama,” in Buddhist Extremists and
Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in
Contemporary Sri Lanka, edited by John Clifford
Holt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016),
164–93.
58 On at least one occasion, Muslim proprietors
who tried to file a court case against the BBS for
attacking their store were warned against doing
so by members of the Rajapaksa family. Author
interview, August 2013, Colombo.
59 For details pertaining to the January and August
2015 presidential and parliamentary elections,
respectively, see Neil DeVotta (2016), “A Win for
Democracy in Sri Lanka,” Journal of Democracy
27:1 (January): 152–66.
60 Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Lessons
Learnt and Reconciliation (2011), 291, http://
www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/Current_Affairs/
ca201112/FINAL%20LLRC%20REPORT.pdf.
61 Quoted in Asoka Bandarage (2009), The
Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism,
Ethnicity, Political Economy (London:
Routledge), 14.
62 See, for instance, Paul Pierson (2000),
“Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the
Study of Politics,” The American Political Science
Review 94:2 (June): 251–67.
28 Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies
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Majoritarian Politics in Sri Lanka
CASE AUTHOR
Neil DeVotta is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University.
His research interests include South Asian security and politics, ethnicity and nationalism, ethnic conflict
resolution, and democratic transition and consolidation.
Acknowledgements
The Centre gratefully acknowledges the collaboration of Will Kymlicka, of Queen’s University, Jane Jenson,
of the Université de Montréal, and the other members of our international research advisory group. The
Change Case Series was developed with generous support from the International Development
Research Centre.
This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre,
Ottawa, Canada.
The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
This analysis was commissioned by the Global Centre for Pluralism to generate global dialogue about the
drivers of pluralism. The specific views expressed herein are those of the author.
The Global Centre for Pluralism is an applied knowledge organization that facilitates dialogue, analysis
and exchange about the building blocks of inclusive societies in which human differences are respected.
Based in Ottawa, the Centre is inspired by Canadian pluralism, which demonstrates what governments and
citizens can achieve when human diversity is valued and recognized as a foundation for shared citizenship.
Please visit us at pluralism.ca
Global Centre for Pluralism
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Accounting for Change in Diverse Societies