Failure in nation building in Sri Lanka and rise of Tamil militarism.

Abstract

On September 1978, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launched its first attack by bombing an Air Ceylon passenger jet, the ethnic polarization in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese and Tamils had begun. Since then, most of the scholars focused on the military and political aspect of Tamil militarism like tactics and strategies of the LTTE and the countermeasures undertaken by the government. However, the ethnic polarization has proven itself to be a war which is fought on various fronts. Putting an ideological dimension into the foreground, this paper seeks to examine the role of collective identity in nation building in Sri Lanka with regards to rise of Tamil militarism. This sense of collective identity (as associated with ideology) plays a major role in Sri Lanka for both the state and the LTTE provoke the sense of 'the other'. This paper deals with how this misdoing of nation building intensified the strife between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. It examines how the national identity of the state in Sri Lanka was greatly reduced to only represent those who dominate Sri Lanka's power structures; thus failing to embrace different people from different ethnic backgrounds. The main conclusion would be that the failure in nation building has resulted in the lack of a collective national identity, ultimately giving way to the onset of ethnic polarization in Sri Lanka.