ABSTRACT
Over the last thirty years scholars have analysed Sri Lanka as a polity bedevilled by cycles of ethnic conflict, revolutionary insurgency, electoral and other related forms of political violence. Factors contributing to these dynamics have included state centralization, authoritarianism and aggrandizement (Manor 1979; Moore 1990); elite domination and political patronage (Fernando 1973; Oberst 1985); a paternalistic state-led welfarism which, whilst contributing to high human development indicators, has nonetheless also failed to harness the agency of beneficiaries or encourage more thorough going political integration (Moore 1985, 1989; Mayer 2000); and, finally, the reproduction of a hegemonic Sinhala Buddhist nationalism (Brow 1996; Tambiah 1992; Rampton and Welikala 2005). Alongside these seemingly negative features of political culture, Sri Lanka has
also witnessed high levels of political engagement and awareness in relation to both voter turnout and political party identification, as well as an electoral system which at times has produced fairly regular governmental change-over between the two main contending political parties, the UNP and SLFP (Jayasuriya 2005). Yet despite these apparently more positive features of the parliamentary democratic system, political engagement has also been consistently mobilized around Sinhala nationalist platforms. It would therefore be worthwhile exploring those elements that have contributed to the reproduction of Sinhala nationalism in more detail.
