ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the sociospatial impact of the majority–minority encounter, focusing on these overtly innocent but simultaneously disturbing tourism practices around sites of ‘dissonant heritage’. It examines how tourism practices that substantiate exclusionary forms of cultural hegemony diminish the spaces available for minority self-expression and erode the possibilities of a consensual postwar public sphere. The chapter explores the complexities of a dissonant heritage or a heritage that sits incongruently or disturbingly within a culturally different space. The temporary mobility of tourists is perversely connected to more permanent human displacements through ‘dark travel’ itineraries that reiterate refugee movements across the former warscape. The resurgence of ethnicised cultural and commemorative sites in the north, through the recovery of Tamil religious and community spaces and by continued military and newer tourism activities, weakened the ground for reconciliatory dialogues in the immediate postwar period.
