ABSTRACT
On 4 February 1948, Ceylon attained independence from the British Empire. One of the first tasks that Ceylon undertook after attaining independence was to secure the demographic composition of the Sinhala areas. Despite holding onto electoral politics, it degenerated into an ethnocracy; a biopolitical transformation effected through law, the violence of law and the violence of ‘lawlessness’. In biopolitical rule, states wage wars ‘as managers of life and survival, of bodies and race’, and power is exercised for the ‘improvement of the species or races’, and this can be achieved through measures other than military action. In the case of Ceylon, the state, using its elected legislature, implemented law, the Ceylon Citizenship Act, and produced an effect of battle – the expulsion of the Indian Tamils – and thereby improved the lives of the Sinhala Buddhist race/species that it managed/fostered. Sinhala Buddhist extremists, led by Buddhist monks, attacked peaceful Tamil demonstrators protesting the enactment of the Official Language Act.
