Abstract

Because of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long ethnic conflict between the Sri Lankan government and militant groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the comparatively brief but bloody conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), violence has occupied an important place in contemporary Sri Lankan literature. This essay surveys the role of violence in contemporary Sri Lanka literature in English, Tamil, and Sinhala, considering the ways in which literature bears witness to violence, mourns violence, protests violence, and calls for and models dialogue and reconciliation.

Highlights

  • TERROR, TRAUMA, TRANSITIONS aftermath of the military conflict during which attacks were carried out against journalists and activists

  • There are two moments to which writers go back over and over again because they signify the reasons for the start of the ethnic conflict, a rending of one type of nationalism and the inauguration of another

  • The burning of the building and the tomes inside represented to Sri Lankan Tamils an attack on their very culture and identity

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Summary

Introduction

TERROR, TRAUMA, TRANSITIONS aftermath of the military conflict during which attacks were carried out against journalists and activists. The poet Cheran [Rudhramoorthy], son of the great Sri Lankan Tamil poet Mahakavi, writes about this in his poem “The Second Sunrise” (as translated from the Tamil by Chelva Kanaganayakam): “What happened?/ My town was burned;/ my people became faceless;/ in my land, my air,/ in everything,/ the stamp of outsiders” (Cheran, 2011: 7; l.10-15).

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Conclusion

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