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.