Colonization as Politics: Political Use of Space in Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia

“…Both Muhudu Maha Vihara and Digavapi are located in the southern part of the Eastern Province where the three major ethnic communities in Sri Lanka -the Sinhalese, the Tamils, and the Muslims -live in close proximity and compete for resources. Access to the two sites and the use of the land surrounding them have for more than 60 years been contested by local ethnic communities, as indeed has the surrounding area in a more general sense (Manogaran 1994;Nuhman 2016). The visit came about due to complaints of Muslim destruction of temple ruins considered sacred by Sinhalese Buddhists, presented to the president himself by the leaders of the Buddhist order, the Sangha.…”

Mediating the margins: the role of brokers and the Eastern Provincial Council in Sri Lanka’s post-war transition

“…The large and scrubby buffer zone that separated the coastal settlements in the northeast from the rest of the country was inhabited by communities practicing shifting cultivation, which were more mobile and remained less legible to the state. 23 The Northeastern frontier became central to the discursive and material reproduction of the post-colonial state, performing a range of functions; a zone of demographic expansion for the land poor peasantry in the wet zone; a civilizational frontier occupied by the Tamil 'other' which helped promote a sense of nationhood amongst the Sinhala majority; a zone of accumulation as a result of investment in settlement projects which brought 'barren' lands under cultivation.…”