ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the scholarship on Sinhala (-Buddhist) nationalism, Tamil nationalism (and separatism), and Muslim ethnic identity politics. These competing ideological outlooks have distinct relationships with the Sri Lankan state. They have fuelled violent contestation over the past century; vice versa, they have themselves been heavily shaped by this conflictual dynamic. After a short summary of the vast literature on nationalism and conflict in Sri Lanka, this chapter zooms in on more recent work: retrospective accounts of the war years as well as analyses of the turbulent development that occurred in the transition after the 2009 defeat of the Tamil militancy.
