Sinhalese governments manufactured Tamil separatism through base-securing ethnocentric competition.
Evidence
Successive [Sinhalese] governments were more preoccupied with securing their own base among the Sinhalese … at virtually any cost—or rather, in the political auction, preventing themselves being pushed out by their rivals. If the Tamils had not existed, Colombo would have had to invent them. And, in an important sense, it did. It was Colombo that forced the inhabitants of the north to become different, to cease to be Sri Lankan and become exclusively Tamil (Harris 1990: 221). — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 228
Categorization
- XREF: Strong echo of the reader’s hypothesis in the Base Nation and manufactured-enemy literature: the ‘invented enemy’ claim as a mechanism sustaining in-group solidarity. — connects to: Tamil nationalism and the LTTE were manufactured by Sinhalese ethnocentric government policies. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 227; Sinhalese governments invented Tamil separateness for political self-preservation — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 228; Sinhalese nationalists engineered demographic consolidation of Tamil regions through state land seizure. (+7 more)
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: Harris’s claim implies the rival ethnic identity itself was a state construct — how far does the manufacturing-goes-both-ways argument extend, and what evidence separates primordial vs. invented accounts?
Broader Connections
- Tamil nationalism and the LTTE were manufactured by Sinhalese ethnocentric government policies.
#corroborates(1.00) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 227 - Sinhalese governments invented Tamil separateness for political self-preservation
#corroborates(0.92) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 228 - Nationalists pursue war to deliberately displace Tamils and boost Sinhalese dominance
#expands(0.82) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 278 - Electoral majoritarianism in 1956 gave rise to anti-Tamil violence and empowered extremists.
#expands(0.82) - Sinhalese nationalists engineered demographic consolidation of Tamil regions through state land seizure.
#expands(0.80) - Sinhalese nationalists wage war to displace Tamils and Sinhalize the northeast
#expands(0.80) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 278 - A leftist party adopted anti-Tamil nationalism purely for political advantage.
#exemplifies(0.80) - Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic divisions are recent social constructions, not primordial facts
#corroborates(0.78) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 83 - Sinhalese-Tamil enmity was retroactively projected onto a local dynastic war
#expands(0.75) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 75 - With the Tamil enemy removed, nationalists manufactured a Muslim threat to sustain group solidarity
#expands(0.72) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1369