ABSTRACT
An inquiry into the state of research on race and ethnicity in the Asian Region must begin with one important question. Why is it that well developed research communities in Sri Lanka and India did not predict, or even devise concepts to understand, the nature and degree of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict or India’s regional violence? Why were they so unprepared that when the conflict finally became intractable, there was no literature to offer a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon, no empirical evidence on which to begin further exploration and very few conceptual insights into the historical roots of the violent social upheavals that were taking place? The same questions have been raised in other areas of the world where ethnic and racial tensions have erupted into overt conflict.1
