Post-1956 Sri Lankan extremists sustained each other by feeding off reciprocal escalation

Evidence

The first ever anti-Tamil riots took place a couple of months after the 1956 election. More anti-Tamil riots followed in 1958, 1977, and 1981. The 1983 anti-Tamil riots were a veritable pogrom, with Buddhist monks leading rioters in some instances. The 1983 riots led to the ongoing ethnic conflict, from which a Tamil diaspora of between 800,000 and one million has fled and now helps support the LTTE. Over 70,000 have been killed, and tens of thousands of poor and innocent Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims displaced. What is arguably most tragic is that the 1956 election forced Sri Lanka to adopt a trajectory that disempowered Sinhalese and Tamil moderates and instead empowered extremists. Now the LTTE—which is branded a terrorist organization by the European Union, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada—is pitted against a radical Sri Lankan state responsible for manifold human rights violations. The extremists feed off each other, but the majoritarian rule that has sustained them has also jettisoned secularism, encouraged jingoistic political parties, and created a nationalist ideology that undermines attempts at conflict resolution. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core question: external-enemy dynamics where each side’s escalation manufactures and legitimates the other, matching the comparative-liberalization/polarization literature. — connects to: Sri Lanka’s 1956 election introduced ethnic outbidding as a political tactic — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 121; Electoral majoritarianism in 1956 gave rise to anti-Tamil violence and empowered extremists.; Political extremists on both sides sustain each other through reciprocal escalation. (+1 more)
• SEED: The 1956 election as a hinge where majoritarian vote-seeking permanently empowered extremists over moderates offers an essay angle on how democratic incentives manufacture civil enmity.

Broader Connections

• Political extremists on both sides sustain each other through reciprocal escalation. #corroborates (0.95)
• Electoral majoritarianism in 1956 gave rise to anti-Tamil violence and empowered extremists. #expands (0.85)
• With the Tamil enemy removed, nationalists manufactured a Muslim threat to sustain group solidarity #expands (0.80) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1369