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Sri Lanka POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Race, Religion, and Politics
Like other nations in the South Asia region, Sri Lanka has a
diverse population. Various communities profess four of the
world's major religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and
Christianity. The major ethnic groups include not only the
Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils, who compose 74 and 12.6
percent of the population, respectively, but also Indian Tamils
(5.5 percent of the population) who view themselves as separate
from the Sri Lankan Tamils, as well as "Moors" or Muslims (7.1
percent), "Burghers" and other people of mixed European and Sri
Lankan descent (0.4 percent), Malays (0.4 percent), and tiny
percentages of others including the aboriginal Veddahs, who are
considered to be the island's original inhabitants
(see Sri Lanka - People
, ch. 2).
The society also possesses a caste system similar to that of
India's. Caste in Sri Lanka is politically important for two
reasons. First, members of the national political elite tend to
be members of the higher status castes. Since independence the
overwhelming majority of the prime ministers and the one
president have been members of the Sinhalese Goyigama
(cultivator) caste. Also, voters tend to support people of their
own caste, though caste identification rarely becomes a campaign
issue because electoral districts tend to be homogeneous in terms
of caste and the major parties generally put up candidates of
that caste.
Among Sinhalese, there is also a historically significant
distinction between people who live in the coastal and lowland
areas and those who live in the mountainous central part of the
island, the area that constituted the Kingdom of Kandy before its
conquest by the British in the early nineteenth century. During
the British colonial period and to a lesser extent in independent
Sri Lanka, the two groups, which possess somewhat different
cultures and ways of life, frequently perceived their interests
to be divergent. During the 1920s, for example, the Kandyan
National Assembly advocated a federal state in which the Kandyan
community would be guaranteed regional autonomy
(see Sri Lanka - European Encroachment and Dominance, 1500-1948
, ch. 1).
Apart from religion, ethnicity, and caste, there are social
differences that emerged as a result of British colonialism.
Despite a history of popular support for Marxist parties,
especially the Trotskyite Ceylon Equal Society Party (Lanka Sama
Samaja Party--LSSP), economically based classes in the European
sense are poorly developed in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, welldefined elite groups, including families with planter, merchant,
and professional backgrounds, continued to be important in the
late 1980s despite the redistributive policies of recent
governments. Marks of their special status included not only
wealth but education in the island's most prestigious schools or
overseas, fluency in English, and a higher degree of
Westernization than among other Sri Lankans. In a 1985 survey of
government party parliamentarians since 1970, political scientist
Robert Oberst discovered not only that there was a
disproportionate number of graduates of a handful of elite
schools among UNP and SLFP legislators, but also that elite
secondary school graduates were more likely to assume ministerial
posts and play a central role in the passage of bills than
nonelite school graduates. Nonelite graduates tended to be
backbenchers with limited influence.
In a society as diverse as Sri Lanka's, social divisions have
had a direct and weighty impact on politics. In the late 1980s,
the ethnically, linguistically, and religiously based antagonism
of the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils overshadowed all other
social divisions: the civil war that resulted, especially since
mid-1983, seemed to bode a permanent division of the country. Yet
in the routine operation of day-to-day politics, allegiances
based on family, caste, or region also continued to be of major
importance.
As in India, matters of religion, ethnicity, region, and
language have become public rather than private issues. Persons
have typically viewed personal advancement not only in terms of
individual initiative but also in terms of the fortunes of their
ethnic, caste, or religious community. In India, however, there
are so many different groups, spread out over the country like a
vast mosaic, that no single group has been strong enough to
seriously destabilize the national-level political system.
Dissident movements, such as the Sikh militants in the
northwestern Indian state of Punjab have tended to be limited to
a single region. India's ruling party, Congress (I), preserved
national unity by forming electoral coalitions with disparate
groups such as high-caste Hindus, Muslims, and untouchables and
balancing them off against other groups loyal to opposition
parties.
In Sri Lanka, however, both the nature of diversity and the
attitude of the government have been different. Within the
island's much smaller geographical area, politics have become
polarized because the politically prominent groups are few in
number and clearly defined in terms of language, custom,
religion, and geographical region. Successive governments
moreover, have never attempted to adopt an impartial role in
relation to ethnic rivalries.
Concrete economic and social equity issues have played a
major role in the ethnic antagonisms of Sinhalese and the Sri
Lankan Tamils since independence. Ethnic rivalry, however, draws
upon older and deeper roots. Each community views itself as
possessing a unique and superior culture, based on religion,
language, and race. The integrity of this culture is perceived to
be threatened by the encroachments of the other group. Both
Sinhalese and Tamils, occupying relatively well-defined
geographical areas (the Sri Lankan Tamils in the Northern
Province and parts of the Eastern Province, but with vulnerable
enclaves in large cities; and the Sinhalese in the central and
southern parts of the island), regard themselves as besieged
minorities. The Sinhalese perceive themselves as the only group
of "Aryans" and Buddhists in an overwhelmingly Dravidian and
Hindu region (including the populous state of Tamil Nadu and
other parts of southern India), while the Tamils see themselves
as an endangered minority on the island itself. During the 1980s,
this state of mutual paranoia, sharpened the ethnic boundaries of
both groups and intensified economic and social conflicts.
Data as of October 1988
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