Tamils and the nation: India and Sri Lanka compared

This dissertation examines the divergent trajectories of ethnic and national politics in the Tamil speaking regions of India and Sri Lanka. Despite comparable historical experiences and conditions, the south Indian Tamil speaking areas were peaceably accommodated within a pan-Indian framework whilst Sri Lankan politics was marked by escalating Tamil-Sinhala ethnic polarisation and violent conflict. The dissertation explains these contrasting outcomes by setting out a novel theoretical framework that draws on the work of Reinhart Koselleck and his analysis of the links between concepts and political conflict. It argues that in the era of popular sovereignty the nation and ethnicity have become central and unavoidable concepts of political order, but concepts that can be deliberately constructed through political activity in more or less inclusive ways. Setting out the conceptual connections between the nation, ethnicity and popular sovereignty, the dissertation shows how the conceptual tension between a unified national identity / interest and ethnic pluralism becomes a central and unavoidable locus of political contestation in the era of popular sovereignty. Tracing the politics of ethnicity and nationalism in India and Sri Lanka from the late nineteenth century to the late 1970’s, the analysis shows that the accommodation of Tamil identity within Indian nationalist frameworks and the escalation of Tamil – Sinhala ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka cannot be linked to differences in ethnic demography, political system, historical experiences or the structure of economic incentives. It reveals instead that these divergent outcomes are best explained as effects of contingent and competitive processes of political organisation and mobilisation through which deliberately more or less ethnically inclusive national identities are asserted, established and then contested

Eyes wide shut : persistent conflict and liberal peace-building in Nepal and Sri Lanka

The decisive, albeit different, endings of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal and subsequent post-war developments challenge key assumptions about conflict that have informed post-Cold War international efforts to produce peace in such conflict zones. International intervention—including in Sri Lanka and Nepal—characterises armed conflict as sustained by specific political economies that can only be stably resolved by establishing liberal democracy and market economics. This paper examines liberal peace engagement in Sri Lanka and Nepal to challenge a crucial assumption of the persistent conflict thesis, namely the separation between political contestation and armed conflict. It argues that the divergent post-conflict outcomes of continuing ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka and constitutional reform in Nepal reveal strong continuities in the dynamics of pre-war, war and post-war politics. This continuity challenges the presumed separation of politics and violence that drove international engagement to produce liberal peace and suggests that such engagement, far from encouraging reform, may have (inadvertently) sustained conflict in both cases

Eyes wide shut?: persistent conflict and liberal peace interventions in Nepal and Sri Lanka

The decisive, albeit different, endings of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal and subsequent post-war developments challenge key assumptions about conflict that have informed post-Cold War international efforts to produce peace in such conflict zones. International intervention—including in Sri Lanka and Nepal—characterises armed conflict as sustained by specific political economies that can only be stably resolved by establishing liberal democracy and market economics. This paper examines liberal peace engagement in Sri Lanka and Nepal to challenge a crucial assumption of the persistent conflict thesis, namely the separation between political contestation and armed conflict. It argues that the divergent post-conflict outcomes of continuing ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka and constitutional reform in Nepal reveal strong continuities in the dynamics of pre-war, war and post-war politics. This continuity challenges the presumed separation of politics and violence that drove international engagement to produce liberal peace and suggests that such engagement, far from encouraging reform, may have (inadvertently) sustained conflict in both cases