Neil Devotta
Biographic Data
| ID | 731407 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Devotta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Devotta |
| SIGNATURE | DEVOTTA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wake Forest University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7311-1914 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 241 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Sri Lanka's Peaceful Revolution
In 2024, Sri Lanka experienced a historic political transformation through peaceful elections that put an end to the country's dynastic politics. Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) of the left-wing People's Liberation Front won the presidency with 56 percent after second-preference votes, while his National People's Power coalition secured an unprecedented 159-seat parliamentary supermajority. This dramatic shift followed Sri Lanka's 2022 economic cr…
Sri Lanka's Agony
Sri Lanka's ongoing economic crisis has led to mass protests demanding the president's resignation and will likely end the Rajapaksa political dynasty. But the sociopolitical and economic transformations that protestors clamor for cannot happen unless the country moves away from its extant embedded ethnocracy
Buddhist Majoritarianism and Ethnocracy in Sri Lanka
Majoritarianism rarely, if ever, accompanies good governance, and Sri Lanka is a case in point. Unwilling to build on a history of pluralism, the island’s post-independence elites manipulated ethnoreligious fissures for political gain. Besides leading to a civil war that lasted nearly three decades, it has also unleashed violence on Muslims and Christians even as the island has consolidated its status as a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. The ensui…
Sri Lanka
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's election as president of Sri Lanka in November 2019 and the covid-19 pandemic have led to increased militarization, while the August 2020 landslide parliamentary victory of the new president's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and subsequent passage of the Twentieth Amendment have set the stage for authoritarian rule. With the Rajapaksa family dominating politics once more, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists also seek to expand majori…
Promoting Covenantal Pluralism amidst Embedded Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s post-independence ethnoreligious tussles show how drastically the island has moved away from pluralism. Indeed, the country represents an illiberal democracy that operates like an ethnocracy. Not only is Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism now embedded, its proponents are determined to consolidate further majority domination while ensuring minority subordination, leading to a “schadenfreude nationalism” wherein many among the majority …
Sri Lanka's Post—Civil War Problems
Sri Lanka's ethnoreligious divisions are bound to continue as long as the likes of Rajapaksa dominate the island's political scene
Religious Intolerance in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka
Post-civil war, Buddhism has gone from being a privileged religion in Sri Lanka to a hegemonic religion. If the ethnic conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam calcified Sinhalese Buddhist sensibilities, the comprehensive victory over the group has emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who insist on majority superordination and minority subordination. This essay discusses how the nationalist ideology undergirding Sinhalese Buddhist…
Civil War and the Quest for Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka
In May 2009, Sri Lanka’s armed forces comprehensively defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The day after the war ended, Sri Lanka’s then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa told
Engaging Sinhalese Buddhist Majoritarianism and Countering Religious Animus in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, an island approximately the size of West Virginia with over 20 million people, is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Ethnically, the Sinhalese comprise 74.9 percent of the popul
A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka
If Sri Lanka’s civil war contributed to democratic recession, the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam emboldened President Mahinda Rajapaksa to become increasingly authoritarian. In the January 2015 presidential election, however, a multiethnic and ideologically diverse coalition led by Maithripala Sirisena defeated the miscalculating Rajapaksa. Seven months later a similar coalition thwarted Rajapaksa’s attempts to make a c…
Parties, political decay, and democratic regression in Sri Lanka
Among states that gained independence following World War II, Sri Lanka was widely considered to have a good chance of succeeding democratically. This promise was sundered when successive leaders embraced ethnocentric policies that were geared towards empowering the majority Sinhalese Buddhists at the expense of minorities. This ethnocentrism contributed to civil war and adversely affected the country's institutions – including the island's polit…
Sri Lanka
While successive post-independence governments' ethnocentric policies undermined liberal democracy and led to Sri Lanka's civil war, the extraconstitutional and extrajudicial strategies President Mahinda Rajapaksa adopted to defeat the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the tactics he has since pursued to perpetuate his tenure as president, and the malpractices he and his supporters have perpetrated in order to create a Rajapaksa family…
From civil war to soft authoritarianism
In May 2009 Sri Lanka's government proclaimed that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which spent 26 years waging a brutal war to create a separate state, had been defeated.1 Amidst the j
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Lost Quest for Separatism in Sri Lanka
The ethnocentric policies successive Sri Lankan governments pursued against the minority Tamils pushed them to try to secede, but the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) immanent contradictions—the quest for state-building and independence juxtaposed with fascistic rule and terrorist practices—undermined the separatist movement and irreparably weakened the Tamil community. The Sri Lankan government's extraconstitutional counterterrorism str…
Jathika Hela Urumaya and Ethno-Religious Politics in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka in 2004
With a newly formed leftist alliance headed by President Kumaratunga seizing power, and with the separatist Tamil rebels factionalized, Sri Lanka's peace talks remained suspended. And with the president seeking to change the Constitution to extend her tenure as head of state and the opposition vowing to topple her government, the island appears poised to experience even more instability and chaos
Civil Society and Non-Governmental Organizations in Sri Lanka
Since of late Sri Lanka's nationalist forces have branded local NGOs and activists promoting peace to be unpatriotic and claimed that they undermine the country's sovereignty. The pro-peace groups that especially rely on foreign funding for their activities are also branded parasitic. Such attacks can be said to be part of a nationalist ideology rooted in chauvinism and a belief that Sri Lanka's minorities live there under the majority community'…
From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict
Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 p…
Sri Lanka in 2003
Bolstered by international support, Sri Lanka's government and separatist Tamil rebels continued evaluating ways to end two decades of ethnic carnage. The absence of conflict saw the economy improve and the rebels strengthen their capabilities. But peace talks over the contentious northeast were suspended, and the president initiated a constitutional crisis when she sought to undermine the government. This and other factors ensured that Sri Lanka…
Blowback
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 …
Understanding Contemporary India
Sri Lanka' political decay
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka's Sinhalese politicians began outbidding each other on who could provide the best deal for their community. This ethnic outbidding was initially influenced by linguistic nationalism, though it was soon also used to undermine agreements designed to accommodate the minority Tamils. The Sinhalese tolerated ethnocentrism and illiberal governance because this relatively deprived the Tamils even as it benefited the…
Is India over-extended? When domestic disorder precludes regional intervention
Why did India not go to Sri Lanka's rescue in May 2000 when the island's leadership begged it to intervene to save nearly 40,000 soldiers who were close to being captured by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? India's disinclination to get involved, even as Pakistan, China and Israel provided arms to Sri Lanka, raises the question of whether the country is still committed to the Indira Doctrine (which operates as India's equiv…
South Asia Faces the Future
History," wrote Hegel, "teaches that history teaches men nothing." Despite 19 years of ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka's political, civic, and religious leaders have failed--or refused--to see that their actions have poisoned interethnic relations and engendered a stubborn and cruel civil war
The Utilisation of Religio-Linguistic Identities by the Sinhalese and Bengalis
The twentieth century evidenced how both the Sinhalese and Bengalis switched emphases between their religio-linguistic identities, utilising them as primary and secondary ethnic markers, to pursue their respective goals. By first emphasising religion as a primary identity marker, the Sinhalese energised the quest for Sri Lankan independence, while the Muslim Bengalis helped legitimate Mohammed Ali Jinnah's claim regarding a 'two nation theory' an…
Blowback
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 …
From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict
Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 p…
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Lost Quest for Separatism in Sri Lanka
The ethnocentric policies successive Sri Lankan governments pursued against the minority Tamils pushed them to try to secede, but the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) immanent contradictions—the quest for state-building and independence juxtaposed with fascistic rule and terrorist practices—undermined the separatist movement and irreparably weakened the Tamil community. The Sri Lankan government's extraconstitutional counterterrorism str…
Jathika Hela Urumaya and Ethno-Religious Politics in Sri Lanka
South Asia Faces the Future
History," wrote Hegel, "teaches that history teaches men nothing." Despite 19 years of ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka's political, civic, and religious leaders have failed--or refused--to see that their actions have poisoned interethnic relations and engendered a stubborn and cruel civil war
Sri Lanka
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's election as president of Sri Lanka in November 2019 and the covid-19 pandemic have led to increased militarization, while the August 2020 landslide parliamentary victory of the new president's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and subsequent passage of the Twentieth Amendment have set the stage for authoritarian rule. With the Rajapaksa family dominating politics once more, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists also seek to expand majori…
Sri Lanka
While successive post-independence governments' ethnocentric policies undermined liberal democracy and led to Sri Lanka's civil war, the extraconstitutional and extrajudicial strategies President Mahinda Rajapaksa adopted to defeat the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the tactics he has since pursued to perpetuate his tenure as president, and the malpractices he and his supporters have perpetrated in order to create a Rajapaksa family…
Religious Intolerance in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka
Post-civil war, Buddhism has gone from being a privileged religion in Sri Lanka to a hegemonic religion. If the ethnic conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam calcified Sinhalese Buddhist sensibilities, the comprehensive victory over the group has emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who insist on majority superordination and minority subordination. This essay discusses how the nationalist ideology undergirding Sinhalese Buddhist…
Control Democracy, Institutional Decay, and the Quest for Eelam
O n 25 January 1998, just ten days before Sri Lanka celebrated fifty years of independence, three Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels crashed an explosives-filled truck through the gates of the country's most revered Buddhist temple, damaging its roof and facade. Had the inner sanctum, which Buddhists believe holds a tooth of Lord Buddha, been destroyed, the island would most likely have undergone ethnic rioting on a scale greater than…
Promoting Covenantal Pluralism amidst Embedded Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s post-independence ethnoreligious tussles show how drastically the island has moved away from pluralism. Indeed, the country represents an illiberal democracy that operates like an ethnocracy. Not only is Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism now embedded, its proponents are determined to consolidate further majority domination while ensuring minority subordination, leading to a “schadenfreude nationalism” wherein many among the majority …
A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka
If Sri Lanka’s civil war contributed to democratic recession, the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam emboldened President Mahinda Rajapaksa to become increasingly authoritarian. In the January 2015 presidential election, however, a multiethnic and ideologically diverse coalition led by Maithripala Sirisena defeated the miscalculating Rajapaksa. Seven months later a similar coalition thwarted Rajapaksa’s attempts to make a c…
Is India over-extended? When domestic disorder precludes regional intervention
Why did India not go to Sri Lanka's rescue in May 2000 when the island's leadership begged it to intervene to save nearly 40,000 soldiers who were close to being captured by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? India's disinclination to get involved, even as Pakistan, China and Israel provided arms to Sri Lanka, raises the question of whether the country is still committed to the Indira Doctrine (which operates as India's equiv…
From civil war to soft authoritarianism
In May 2009 Sri Lanka's government proclaimed that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which spent 26 years waging a brutal war to create a separate state, had been defeated.1 Amidst the j
Engaging Sinhalese Buddhist Majoritarianism and Countering Religious Animus in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, an island approximately the size of West Virginia with over 20 million people, is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Ethnically, the Sinhalese comprise 74.9 percent of the popul
Sri Lanka's Agony
Sri Lanka's ongoing economic crisis has led to mass protests demanding the president's resignation and will likely end the Rajapaksa political dynasty. But the sociopolitical and economic transformations that protestors clamor for cannot happen unless the country moves away from its extant embedded ethnocracy
Civil Society and Non-Governmental Organizations in Sri Lanka
Since of late Sri Lanka's nationalist forces have branded local NGOs and activists promoting peace to be unpatriotic and claimed that they undermine the country's sovereignty. The pro-peace groups that especially rely on foreign funding for their activities are also branded parasitic. Such attacks can be said to be part of a nationalist ideology rooted in chauvinism and a belief that Sri Lanka's minorities live there under the majority community'…
Buddhist Majoritarianism and Ethnocracy in Sri Lanka
Majoritarianism rarely, if ever, accompanies good governance, and Sri Lanka is a case in point. Unwilling to build on a history of pluralism, the island’s post-independence elites manipulated ethnoreligious fissures for political gain. Besides leading to a civil war that lasted nearly three decades, it has also unleashed violence on Muslims and Christians even as the island has consolidated its status as a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. The ensui…
Parties, political decay, and democratic regression in Sri Lanka
Among states that gained independence following World War II, Sri Lanka was widely considered to have a good chance of succeeding democratically. This promise was sundered when successive leaders embraced ethnocentric policies that were geared towards empowering the majority Sinhalese Buddhists at the expense of minorities. This ethnocentrism contributed to civil war and adversely affected the country's institutions – including the island's polit…
Sri Lanka' political decay
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka's Sinhalese politicians began outbidding each other on who could provide the best deal for their community. This ethnic outbidding was initially influenced by linguistic nationalism, though it was soon also used to undermine agreements designed to accommodate the minority Tamils. The Sinhalese tolerated ethnocentrism and illiberal governance because this relatively deprived the Tamils even as it benefited the…
The Utilisation of Religio-Linguistic Identities by the Sinhalese and Bengalis
The twentieth century evidenced how both the Sinhalese and Bengalis switched emphases between their religio-linguistic identities, utilising them as primary and secondary ethnic markers, to pursue their respective goals. By first emphasising religion as a primary identity marker, the Sinhalese energised the quest for Sri Lankan independence, while the Muslim Bengalis helped legitimate Mohammed Ali Jinnah's claim regarding a 'two nation theory' an…
Civil War and the Quest for Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka
In May 2009, Sri Lanka’s armed forces comprehensively defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The day after the war ended, Sri Lanka’s then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa told
Sri Lanka in 2003
Bolstered by international support, Sri Lanka's government and separatist Tamil rebels continued evaluating ways to end two decades of ethnic carnage. The absence of conflict saw the economy improve and the rebels strengthen their capabilities. But peace talks over the contentious northeast were suspended, and the president initiated a constitutional crisis when she sought to undermine the government. This and other factors ensured that Sri Lanka…
Sri Lanka's Structural Adjustment Program and Its Impact on Indo-Lanka Relations
Sri Lanka celebrates 50 years of independence in 1998 with the majority Sinhalese engaged in a protracted conflict with minority Tamil1 rebels determined to create a separate state. Given that the nearly 60 million Tamils in India's Tamil Nadu state act as a sociocultural bastion for Sri Lanka's Tamils, an analysis of Indo-Lanka relations inevitably regards the ongoing ethnic conflict, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, Tamil sentiment in Tamil Nadu, and…
Sri Lanka's Structural Adjustment Program and Its Impact on Indo-Lanka Relations
Sri Lanka celebrates 50 years of independence in 1998 with the majority Sinhalese engaged in a protracted conflict with minority Tamil1 rebels determined to create a separate state. Given that the nearly 60 million Tamils in India's Tamil Nadu state act as a sociocultural bastion for Sri Lanka's Tamils, an analysis of Indo-Lanka relations inevitably regards the ongoing ethnic conflict, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, Tamil sentiment in Tamil Nadu, and…
Control Democracy, Institutional Decay, and the Quest for Eelam
O n 25 January 1998, just ten days before Sri Lanka celebrated fifty years of independence, three Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels crashed an explosives-filled truck through the gates of the country's most revered Buddhist temple, damaging its roof and facade. Had the inner sanctum, which Buddhists believe holds a tooth of Lord Buddha, been destroyed, the island would most likely have undergone ethnic rioting on a scale greater than…
The Utilisation of Religio-Linguistic Identities by the Sinhalese and Bengalis
The twentieth century evidenced how both the Sinhalese and Bengalis switched emphases between their religio-linguistic identities, utilising them as primary and secondary ethnic markers, to pursue their respective goals. By first emphasising religion as a primary identity marker, the Sinhalese energised the quest for Sri Lankan independence, while the Muslim Bengalis helped legitimate Mohammed Ali Jinnah's claim regarding a 'two nation theory' an…
South Asia Faces the Future
History," wrote Hegel, "teaches that history teaches men nothing." Despite 19 years of ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka's political, civic, and religious leaders have failed--or refused--to see that their actions have poisoned interethnic relations and engendered a stubborn and cruel civil war
Understanding Contemporary India
Sri Lanka' political decay
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka's Sinhalese politicians began outbidding each other on who could provide the best deal for their community. This ethnic outbidding was initially influenced by linguistic nationalism, though it was soon also used to undermine agreements designed to accommodate the minority Tamils. The Sinhalese tolerated ethnocentrism and illiberal governance because this relatively deprived the Tamils even as it benefited the…
Is India over-extended? When domestic disorder precludes regional intervention
Why did India not go to Sri Lanka's rescue in May 2000 when the island's leadership begged it to intervene to save nearly 40,000 soldiers who were close to being captured by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? India's disinclination to get involved, even as Pakistan, China and Israel provided arms to Sri Lanka, raises the question of whether the country is still committed to the Indira Doctrine (which operates as India's equiv…
Sri Lanka in 2003
Bolstered by international support, Sri Lanka's government and separatist Tamil rebels continued evaluating ways to end two decades of ethnic carnage. The absence of conflict saw the economy improve and the rebels strengthen their capabilities. But peace talks over the contentious northeast were suspended, and the president initiated a constitutional crisis when she sought to undermine the government. This and other factors ensured that Sri Lanka…
Blowback
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 …
Sri Lanka in 2004
With a newly formed leftist alliance headed by President Kumaratunga seizing power, and with the separatist Tamil rebels factionalized, Sri Lanka's peace talks remained suspended. And with the president seeking to change the Constitution to extend her tenure as head of state and the opposition vowing to topple her government, the island appears poised to experience even more instability and chaos
Civil Society and Non-Governmental Organizations in Sri Lanka
Since of late Sri Lanka's nationalist forces have branded local NGOs and activists promoting peace to be unpatriotic and claimed that they undermine the country's sovereignty. The pro-peace groups that especially rely on foreign funding for their activities are also branded parasitic. Such attacks can be said to be part of a nationalist ideology rooted in chauvinism and a belief that Sri Lanka's minorities live there under the majority community'…
From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict
Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 p…
Jathika Hela Urumaya and Ethno-Religious Politics in Sri Lanka
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Lost Quest for Separatism in Sri Lanka
The ethnocentric policies successive Sri Lankan governments pursued against the minority Tamils pushed them to try to secede, but the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) immanent contradictions—the quest for state-building and independence juxtaposed with fascistic rule and terrorist practices—undermined the separatist movement and irreparably weakened the Tamil community. The Sri Lankan government's extraconstitutional counterterrorism str…
From civil war to soft authoritarianism
In May 2009 Sri Lanka's government proclaimed that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which spent 26 years waging a brutal war to create a separate state, had been defeated.1 Amidst the j
Sri Lanka
While successive post-independence governments' ethnocentric policies undermined liberal democracy and led to Sri Lanka's civil war, the extraconstitutional and extrajudicial strategies President Mahinda Rajapaksa adopted to defeat the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the tactics he has since pursued to perpetuate his tenure as president, and the malpractices he and his supporters have perpetrated in order to create a Rajapaksa family…
Parties, political decay, and democratic regression in Sri Lanka
Among states that gained independence following World War II, Sri Lanka was widely considered to have a good chance of succeeding democratically. This promise was sundered when successive leaders embraced ethnocentric policies that were geared towards empowering the majority Sinhalese Buddhists at the expense of minorities. This ethnocentrism contributed to civil war and adversely affected the country's institutions – including the island's polit…
Engaging Sinhalese Buddhist Majoritarianism and Countering Religious Animus in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, an island approximately the size of West Virginia with over 20 million people, is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Ethnically, the Sinhalese comprise 74.9 percent of the popul
A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka
If Sri Lanka’s civil war contributed to democratic recession, the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam emboldened President Mahinda Rajapaksa to become increasingly authoritarian. In the January 2015 presidential election, however, a multiethnic and ideologically diverse coalition led by Maithripala Sirisena defeated the miscalculating Rajapaksa. Seven months later a similar coalition thwarted Rajapaksa’s attempts to make a c…
Civil War and the Quest for Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka
In May 2009, Sri Lanka’s armed forces comprehensively defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The day after the war ended, Sri Lanka’s then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa told
Religious Intolerance in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka
Post-civil war, Buddhism has gone from being a privileged religion in Sri Lanka to a hegemonic religion. If the ethnic conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam calcified Sinhalese Buddhist sensibilities, the comprehensive victory over the group has emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who insist on majority superordination and minority subordination. This essay discusses how the nationalist ideology undergirding Sinhalese Buddhist…
Sri Lanka's Post—Civil War Problems
Sri Lanka's ethnoreligious divisions are bound to continue as long as the likes of Rajapaksa dominate the island's political scene
Promoting Covenantal Pluralism amidst Embedded Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s post-independence ethnoreligious tussles show how drastically the island has moved away from pluralism. Indeed, the country represents an illiberal democracy that operates like an ethnocracy. Not only is Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism now embedded, its proponents are determined to consolidate further majority domination while ensuring minority subordination, leading to a “schadenfreude nationalism” wherein many among the majority …
Buddhist Majoritarianism and Ethnocracy in Sri Lanka
Majoritarianism rarely, if ever, accompanies good governance, and Sri Lanka is a case in point. Unwilling to build on a history of pluralism, the island’s post-independence elites manipulated ethnoreligious fissures for political gain. Besides leading to a civil war that lasted nearly three decades, it has also unleashed violence on Muslims and Christians even as the island has consolidated its status as a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. The ensui…
Sri Lanka
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's election as president of Sri Lanka in November 2019 and the covid-19 pandemic have led to increased militarization, while the August 2020 landslide parliamentary victory of the new president's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and subsequent passage of the Twentieth Amendment have set the stage for authoritarian rule. With the Rajapaksa family dominating politics once more, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists also seek to expand majori…
Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (24 works) · Political science (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Sri lanka (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Development economics (18 works) · Economics (18 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Politics (18 works)