SINHALESE AND TAMIL NATIONALISM AS POSTCOLONIAL POLITICAL PROJECTS FROM ABOVE, 1948-1983

This article examines Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka in the period from independence in 1948 to the rise of militant Tamil sep aratist nationalism in the early 1980s. Inspired by recent development s in political geography, the core of the argument is that Sinhalese a nd Tamil nationalism represent post-colonial political projects where nationalist material and discursive practices have been initiated by s egments of the dominant class for Be purpose of mobilization within po litical alliances. More specifically, it is argued that Sri Lankan pos t-colonial politics has been characterized by three kinds of political alliances; ethnic class alliances, political patron-client networks a nd strategic government alliances. The emergence and radicalization of Sinhalese and Tamil nationalist politics should be understood as a ma tter of continuities and changes in the material and discursive practi ces within these alliances. In the early post-colonial period, this po litics of alliances ensured a degree of political participation and so cial redistribution, and as such served to defuse ethnic and class ten sions. In the late post-colonial period, the neglect of the material a nd discursive practices of the ethnic class alliances and particularly the strategic government alliances undermined the legitimacy of the p olitical system and led to a radicalization of Tamil nationalist deman ds in the 1970s and the emergence of militant Tamil nationalism from b elow in the 1980s. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.