Sri Lanka’s civil war: what kind of methodologies for identity conflict?

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, scholarship on Sri Lanka’s civil war has been dominated by the question of identity, especially ethnic, linguistic and religious identity. In parallel to this, at a personal level, escaping the ethnic reality is almost impossible for a Sri Lankan. I recall very well from different time periods of recent political history, how dramatically people identified each other and how rapidly these forms of identification could change. I draw from personal experience, having lived in a rural village in the North Western province,2 where the main livelihood was toddy tapping and minor agricultural work,3 and where nearly 80 per cent of the population were Catholic.