Context:
• Sri Lanka has been in severe economic distress which has caused extreme deprivation to its people.
• Most of them sight the reason of foreign exchange reserves which are needed not only to import food but also to service external debt.
• But there some other structural issues which need to be examined
Ethnic Tensions:
• Sri Lanka’s political arrangements have been a mix of nationalism in politics and welfare capitalism in economics since the end of colonial control.
• Ethno-nationalism was fueled in order to create a nation state based on a Sinhala identity, which had begun to emerge in the 1950s.
• It can be found in the official “Sinhala Only” language policy that was implemented at the time. Despite the fact that it was later diluted, it fueled ethnic nationalism and made the Tamil-speaking population feel uncomfortable.
• The appeasement of the Buddhist clergy, which is virtually entirely Sinhala, contributed to the Tamils’ linguistic marginalisation.
• It not only alienated the Tamil-speaking populace, but also resulted in the foundation of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organisation, as well as a civil war.
