Ethnic attachments in Sri Lanka

"The role of ethnicity in post-colonial states remains a highly contested issue in current scholarship, and with Ethnic Attachments in Sri Lanka Lakshmanan Sabaratnam offers a new voice. By examining the uses of ethnic identity in Sri Lankan society from the early medieval period through the present day, Sabaratnam explores the paths these ethnicities have taken through the centuries.

Ethnic Attachments in Sri Lanka takes account of the religious assertion of ethnicity in the early medieval period and traces the cultural geography of ethnic regions under Portuguese and Dutch rule. It also looks at how institutional collaboration between British rulers and the upper levels of the native population resulted in a class society.

After exploring this genealogy of ethnicity in Sri Lanka, Sabaratnam explains how the present civil war is actually due to competitive politics, which in turn have heightened differences in religion and language, and not the reverse."--BOOK JACKET.