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Economic And Political Factors In The 1915 Riots

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Abstract

The 1915 Buddhist-Muslim riots in Ceylon are often attributed to religious animosity, but economic and political factors significantly influenced the environment in which the riots occurred and help to explain the drastic government reaction to the disorders. The Muslims involved, recent arrivals from India called Coast Moors, were primarily traders and moneylenders. Resentment against price increases and alleged profiteering developed among the Sinhalese Buddhists. Before 1915, communal tensions had grown, with many Sinhalese-language newspapers denouncing the Coast Moors for exploitation of the Ceylonese. A Buddhist temperence movement had become a channel for articulating nationalist sentiments and was viewed with suspicion by the colonial regime. Labor unrest and trade unionism had appeared in Colombo prior to the riots. There, the 1915 disorders were led by the most militant urban workers, particularly railway workers, and reflected working-class grievances over rising living costs and unemployment. Fear of German intrigue during the war, the spread of nationalism and terrorism from India, and urban working-class unrest led colonial officials to interpret the riots as a threat to British rule. The officials were divided on the severity of action required, but those favoring the most drastic measures prevailed.

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... In the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, economic grievances were amalgamated with an existing discourse of Sinhala Buddhist victimhood. The pan-Islamic revivalism in the late 1890s coincided with an emergence of an affluent class of Coast Moors (Muslim migrants from South India) who occupied a dominant position in trade in Colombo (Jayawardena, 1970;Kannangara, 1984). This was also a time of global economic turmoil punctuated by price fluctuations, high unemployment and poverty. ...
... Buddhist perceptions of insecurity in relation to Muslims are strongly linked to the discourse of the dominance of Muslims in trade, and there is a long history of calls to boycott Muslim businesses (Jayawardena, 1970). In fact, by the late 19 th century, Anagarika Dharmapala compared Muslims to Jews, who had become prosperous by "Shylockian" methods (DeVotta, 2007, p. 16). ...
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... She writes that, with the aggravated economic hardships the poor had to face after the outbreak of the First World War, fierce resentment developed against profiteering and was directed mainly toward Moor traders. Nonetheless, Sinhala nationalist groups depicted the conflict as a religious and ethnic struggle, where the very existence of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilization was under threat [22]. According to Tambiah [23], the anti-Muslim riots of 1915 looked organized. ...
... Therefore, his writings motivated the Sinhala-Buddhists to develop strong anti-Muslim sentiments and campaigns in the following years. This ended with the historic anti-Muslim riots in 1915 that destroyed millions in trade and the business properties of a section of Muslims in Sri Lanka, as explained in Section 3 of this paper (see also [5,22,36]). ...
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... Proponents of the material rationale, such as Jayawardena (1970Jayawardena ( , 1984, and Jayasekera (1970), taking the Sinhala-Muslim riots in 1915 as an example, unequivocally argue that those riots "had hardly any religious motives" (Jayawardena, 1970: 224, 229). What Jayawardena argues is that the rise in the price of goods due to the war (referring to World War I) led to resentment against profiteering by the traders, with the Moor traders becoming a convenient scapegoat (Jayawardena, 1984: 122, 123,133). ...
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... Ökonomische Rivalität, religiöse Motive und kriminelle Gewalt vermischten sich dabei (vgl. Jayawardene 1970). Erst das Eingreifen des britischen Militärs beendete die Unruhen. ...
... The first such interreligious yet intraethnic violence took place in 1883 when competing Catholic and Buddhist religious processions in Kotahena, Colombo, led to rioting. The next major episode was interethnic and interreligious, with Sinhalese and Muslim communities rioting against each other in 1915 after a longstanding Buddhist religious procession was barred from going past a Muslim mosque, although Sinhalese businesses feeling threatened by Muslim competition may have contributed to the flareup (Jayawardena 1970). ...
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Sri Lanka’s post-independence ethnoreligious tussles show how drastically the island has moved away from pluralism. Indeed, the country represents an illiberal democracy that operates like an ethnocracy. Not only is Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism now embedded, its proponents are determined to consolidate further majority domination while ensuring minority subordination, leading to a “schadenfreude nationalism” wherein many among the majority community take pleasure seeing minorities hagridden and marginalized. This, however, has not prevented various groups engaging with ethnoreligious minorities, learning of their challenges, and involving them in societal relations as distinct yet equal Sri Lankan citizens. This covenantal pluralism can thrive, provided the island’s major stakeholders champion it. The failure to do so will prevent Sri Lankans from achieving their full potential as citizens and leave the island further diminished.
... It is worth noting that the writings of Anagarika Dharmapala during this period were mainly targeting the Muslim traders. To quote an example, in 1915, he wrote: [13,35,36]). ...
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... The last five years have seen a surge of conflicts and tension between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in certain parts of Sri Lanka but scholars have noted a longer history of the discourse of fear that underpinned these tensions and the episodes of violence (Bartholomeusz 1996;Gunawardana 1976;Tilakarathne 2003). First recorded conflicts between the Buddhists and Muslims can be traced back to early 1900s (Jayawardena 1970;Kannangara 1984;Roberts 1990). Recent studies highlight the role played by radical religious movements in building mistrust and encouraging conflicts (Schonthal 2016;Silva 2016). ...
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... The last five years have seen a surge of conflicts and tension between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in certain parts of Sri Lanka but scholars have noted a longer history of the discourse of fear that underpinned these tensions and the episodes of violence (Bartholomeusz 1996;Gunawardana 1976;Tilakarathne 2003). First recorded conflicts between the Buddhists and Muslims can be traced back to early 1900s (Jayawardena 1970;Kannangara 1984;Roberts 1990). Recent studies highlight the role played by radical religious movements in building mistrust and encouraging conflicts (Schonthal 2016;Silva 2016). ...
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... The violence lasted more than a week and resulted in the loss of lives and damage to residential and commercial properties (Government of Sri Lanka, 2009). Although thought to be rooted in Buddhist nationalism, economic causes such as the desire to eliminate Muslim business competitors may also have inflamed the riots (DeJayawardena, 1970). Sri Lankan history post-independence is rife with such religious tensions, and this includes all fourmajor religions in the country. ...
... It is worth noting that the writings of Anagarika Dharmapala during this period were mainly targeting the Muslim traders. To quote an example, in 1915, he wrote: [13,35,36]). ...
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இலங்கை பல இன, மத, மொழி, கலாசாரம் என்பவற்றைப் பின்பற்றும் மக்களைக் கொண்ட ஒரு நாடாகும். பன்மைத்துவ சமூக அமைப்பைக்கொண்ட இந்நாட்டில் அரச உருவாக்கமானது பெரும்பான்மையினரான சிங்களவர்களை மையப்படுத்தியதாக அமைந்திருந்தமை இனங்களுக்கிடையிலான குறிப்பாக, சிங்களவர்களுக்கும் தமிழர்களுக்கும் இடையிலான இன முறுகலை ஏற்படுத்தியது. அரசாங்கத்தின் பாராபட்சமான சட்டங்களும் கொள்கைகளும் இம்முறுகலை சிவில் யுத்தம் வரை கொண்டு சென்றது. எனினும் 2009ஆம் ஆண்டு இலங்கை அரச படையினர் தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகளை வெற்றி கொண்டதைத் தொடர்ந்து, இச்சிவில் யுத்தம் முடிவுக்குக் கொண்டுவரப்பட்டு, நாட்டில் அமைதி நிலை மற்றும் சமாதானத்தைக் கட்டியெழுப்பல் என்பவற்றில் கவனம் செலுத்தப்பட்டது. எனினும் யுத்தத்திற்குப் பின்னரான காலப்பகுதியிலும் இன முறுகல் தொடர்ந்தும் நிலவி வருவதை அவதானிக்கக் கூடியதாகவுள்ளது. குறிப்பாக இப்பிரச்சினை பெரும்பான்மை பௌத்தர்கள் மற்றும் சிறுபான்மை முஸ்லிம்களிடையே படிப்படியாக விரிவடைந்து செல்கின்ற நிலை காணப்படுகின்றது. காலனித்துவ மற்றும் சுதந்திர இலங்கையில் இந்நிலையை சுட்டிக் காட்டும் சம்பவங்கள் இடம்பெற்றிருப்பினும் யுத்தத்திற்குப் பின்னர் தீவிரமடைந்துள்ளமையை பல்வேறு மட்டங்களில் அவதானிக்கக் கூடியதாகவுள்ளது. இதனால் பல்வேறு வன்முறைச் சம்பவங்கள், கலகங்கள், பதட்ட நிலைகள் என்பன இவ்விரு இன மக்களிடையேயும் ஏற்பட்டுள்ளன. இந்தவகையில் இக்கட்டுரை யுத்தத்திற்குப் பின்னர் பெரும்பான்மை பௌத்தர்களுக்கும் சிறுபான்மை முஸ்லிம்களுக்கும் இடையிலான உறவை பகுப்பாய்வு செய்வதை நோக்காகக் கொண்டுள்ளது. அதனடிப்படையில் காலனித்துவ, சுதந்திர மற்றும் யுத்தத்திற்குப் பின்னரான காலங்களில் இவ்விரு இனக்குழுக்களுக்கிடையிலான முறுகல் ரீதியான உறவை விபரிப்பதுடன அதனைச் சித்தரிக்கும் சம்பவங்கள், அதற்கான காரணங்கள் மற்றும் அரச நடவடிக்கைகள் என்பவற்றை உள்ளடக்கியதாக இக்கட்டுரை வடிவமைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. இரண்டாம் நிலைத் தரவு மூலாதாரங்களைப் பயன்படுத்தி பண்பு ரீதியான விபரணப் பகுப்பாய்வு முறையில்இக்கட்டுரை எழுதப்பட்டுள்ளது.
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Introduction: During the colonial period, planting of fast-growing tree species in degraded lands was a common practice in the central highland of Sri Lanka as a biological solution to land degradation problem. Pinus caribaea (P.caribaea) is the most common type of fast-growing tree species in selected for this and the total area planted exceeded 16,000 ha in 1870s (www.forestdept.gov.lk). Control of soil erosion, rehabilitation of degraded soils and regeneration of other tree species were the main goals of the reforestation programme in the highland area (Bandaratilake, 1988). This practice continued even with the introduction of the forest policy of 1970. Out of the 27,771 ha of Pine plantations, 25,091 ha are of P. carbaea, which established easily on depleted soils (Ambagahaduwa et al., 2009). Between 1980 and 1985 P. caribaea was planted by the forest department under a reforestation project of the upper Mahaweli catchment (Bandaratilake, 1988). Replanting with Pine has been abandoned later due to growing concern among the general public and environmentalists on negative issues related to Pine, such as groundwater extraction, natural regeneration, forest fire, soil erosion, wildlife habitats etc., without a proper investigation. In this context, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the biodiversity of a reforestation area. Therefore, this study was initiated to investigate the impact of P. caribaea plantations on vegetation diversity in comparison with nearby vegetation types.
Chapter
This chapter explores the post-war landscape, from mid-2009 to the beginnings of Maithripala Sirisena’s governance, and highlights the realities of ‘conflict transformation’ that Tamils have experienced in their daily lives. Beginning with the initial post-war ‘screening’ process, where Tamil victim-survivors of the End were detained in ‘welfare camps’ by the state, this chapter relies on interviewee descriptions of the militarised environment inhabited by the Tamil population in the post-war Northeastern Provinces. The state is, I argue, re-marketing the armed forces in the post-war phase as a benevolent, positive presence in the Northeast. The military is involved in a range of practices that embed and naturalise its presence, including infrastructure development, economic growth and the ‘rehabilitation’ of ex-LTTE cadres (Satkunanathan 2013). This chapter draws on narratives that describe post-war life as a military occupation designed to suppress and destroy Tamil political and cultural life. Tamil political and civil society actors, the Tamil diaspora and the global actors entwined with the liberal peace project (including international human rights organisations) argue that genuine reconciliation can only arise from accountability: justice must be achieved for the Tamil people killed in their thousands by the state forces at the End. The state’s post-war reconciliation and investigative initiatives, discussed in Chap. 7, can be regarded as a performance—both in discourse and praxis—that conceals the institutionalisation of militarisation. Adopting a view ‘from below’ through the narrative of the Tamil population, this chapter argues that post-war developments indicate the evolution of a national security state. Post-war, the hierarchy of power has been reconfigured and reproduced with Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism at its peak, reinforced by a new logic of triumph over terrorism. The marriage of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism and militarism continues, borrowing heavily from discourses of reconciliation and development designed to pacify the ‘international community’ and extending the naturalisation of the war economy by appealing to tourists interested in ‘war tourism.’
Chapter
This study explores the role of religious values at the individual and community levels in relation to the moral economy of fishing in Sri Lanka. Comparing daily interactions among Sinhala Buddhist, Tamil Hindu and Muslim fishers in the eastern coastal district of Trincomalee, this chapter explores how fishers choose and mix different value systems to justify various decisions and behaviours. Both religious and fishing motivations are examined. Our findings indicate that people take advantage of the malleable nature of seemingly static religious doctrine to mix, match and choose from different religions to suit the current need and the occasion. Religious beliefs and ideologies also create and sustain socio-political differences, which are further constructed by macro-level political discourses. This chapter also analyses how discourses on religious identity play out in everyday life and how economic rivalries over fishing resources spill over into—or are reinforced by—religious and ethnic tensions in the post-war context. In terms of fisheries governance, the analysis shows that managers need to recognise and understand the role of religion and value systems in shaping the moral economy of fishing, as well as the processes by which religious beliefs and ideology can create and sustain social cleavages.
Article
This article examines the nationalistic authorship of space in Sri Lanka’s post-conflict Northeast as part of the state’s nation-building strategy and as a continuation of a post-colonial process of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalistic revival. Exploring issues of historiography, conflict resolution, physical vehicles of ideology and collective memory, the article demonstrates how land policies, development and the tourism industry in a post-conflict context can go hand-in-hand with dispossession, militarisation and the humiliation of a ‘defeated’ minority community.
Chapter
Es soll im folgenden nicht darum gehen, eine Darstellung des Buddhismus zu geben; vielmehr soll gezeigt werden, wie unter den Rahmenbedingungen kolonialer Modernisierung und massendemokratischer Politik eine Religion in einen ethnischen und religiösen Nationalismus transformiert werden kann.1 Aus der Perspektive eines kolonialen und post-kolonialen state- und nation building können wir das Endergebnis dieser Transformation, den ‚Sinhala-Buddhismus‘ als Ideologie, als Nationalismus, begreifen; aus der Perspektive religiöser Konfrontations-und Re-Interpretationsprozesse können wir den Sinhala-Buddhismus auch als buddhistischen Fundamentalismus begreifen. Für den Gläubigen wie den Nationalisten kommt dieser Unterscheidung keine Bedeutung zu.
Conference Paper
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Since the end of the civil war in 2009, there has been mounting conflict in Sri Lanka as Sinhalese nationalists target Muslim minorities. These nationalist groups regard themselves as defenders of Buddhism who want to restore the supposed ailing state of Buddhism across the country. In this paper I will focus on the role that Sinhala Buddhist animal welfare groups play in promoting this type of discourse. I will look at movements such as Bŏdu Bala Sĕnā (Buddhist Strength Force) and Sinhala Rāvaya (Voice of the Sinhala People) and their association with the halāl abolitionist cause. I will also discuss the case of Bowatte Indaratana Thera who committed suicide by immolation as a way to protest the slaughter of cattle. Finally, I will discuss data obtained from fieldwork I conducted in Sri Lanka in 2011 that further reveal the extent that animal ethics and anti-Muslim rhetoric intersect. I will argue that these cases highlight the way that animal welfarism has been co-opted into a narrative about what constitutes good Buddhist behaviour and that this idealised conduct is contrasted with Sri Lankan Muslims who are depicted as barbaric and uncivilised. I will also argue that this discourse is an extension of the nationalist discourse previously used to target Tamils during the Sri Lankan civil war. In this way, Sinhala Buddhist identity continues to be influenced by the Buddhist revivalism of the 1880s in which Sri Lankan Buddhism was constructed as an ideology under attack by outside forces.
Article
The end of the civil war in 2009 heralded hope that a new era of peace and inter-ethnic cooperation might be possible in post-war Sri Lanka. This hope now seems, at best, mere wishful thinking, as this article highlights an emerging conflict between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and Sri Lankan Muslims. Through detailed analysis of online social data, argued evidence is provided that Muslim Sri Lankans are now at the receiving end of Islamaphobic rhetoric, even violence, from Sinhala Buddhist nationalist organisations, driven by a belief that the Muslim community represent a threat to Buddhism. The article suggests that Sinhala nationalists have skilfully adopted new internet technologies which have proved effective in their anti-Muslim campaigns. It becomes necessary to conclude that these attacks on Muslim minorities are an extension of pre-existing oppression patterns faced by other minorities residing on the island, particularly Tamils. Indeed, the rhetoric behind these attacks bears a striking resemblance to the type of nationalist discourse found during the Sri Lankan civil war.
Book
Buddhism is widely known to advocate a stance of total pacifism towards all sentient beings, and because of this, it is often thought that Buddhist doctrine would stipulate that non-violent food practices, such as vegetarianism, be mandatory. However, the Pali source materials do not encourage vegetarianism and most Buddhists do not practice it. Using research based on ethnographic evidence and interviews, this book discusses this issue by presenting an investigation of vegetarianism and animal ethics within a Buddhist cultural domain. Focusing on Sri Lanka, a place of great historical significance to Buddhism, the book looks at how lay Buddhists and the clergy came to understand the role of vegetarianism and animal ethics in Buddhism. It analyses whether the Buddha preached a view that encouraged vegetarianism, and how this squares with his pacifism towards animals. The book goes on to question how Buddhist food practices intersect with other secular activities such as traditional medicine, as well as discussing the wider implications of Buddhist animal pacifism including vegetarian political movements and animal rights groups. Shedding light on a subject that, until now, has only been tangentially treated by scholars, this interdisciplinary study will be of interest to those working in the fields of Buddhist Studies, Religion and Philosophy, as well as South Asian Studies.
Article
This article reconsiders the forms and functions of colonial police actions in the repression of organized dissent. In part, it is a study of changing patterns of repressive behaviour in worsening economic conditions, an approach which explains the concentration on the inter-war period, cleaved as it was by the acute economic disruptions of the Depression years. In part, it is an investigation of the connections between perception and action. Focusing on Colonial Office instructions regarding protest policing, it examines the ways in which police and military security forces in the British Empire constructed enemies of colonial state ‘order’. This, it is argued, shaped the resultant strategies of repressive restriction, riot control, and labour containment adopted.
Article
The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visual-iconic and written forms of cultural transmission that pre-dated print technology, while drawing attention to the relative uniformity of the Sinhala language in both geographical and temporal scale. A semantic pattern of political alliances based on the opposition of inside to outside which works contextually like a nestling Chinese-box is one dimension of this linguistic order. This supported the tendency of Sinhalese representations to adopt an associational logic which merged past enemies (the wicked Tamils) with contemporary enemies (the Portuguese, the English) during the liberation struggles of the Kandyan state and its militia in the pre-1818 period. Such tendencies and the continuation of disparaging epithets coined during the period of Portuguese imperial intrusion into the vocabulary of the twentieth century must inform any theoretical efforts to distinguish the collective consciousness of the Sinhalese after the substantial transformations initiated under the British from that which is expressed so powerfully in the war poems of the pre-British period.
Article
In 1915 the south-western quadrant of Ceylon was convulsed by a week of rioting in which the Buddhist Sinhalese majority attacked a Muslim minority known as the Moors. The consensus amongst historians has long been that the pogrom (as it is best described) was the spontaneous result of religious tension and/or economic grievances at the popular level, with no leadership beyond the uncoordinated activities of local agitators. The consensus ignores significant evidence of wider orchestration, including the activities of itinerant gangs and other mobile agitators, the deliberate propagation of identical false rumours throughout the affected area, and the activities of individuals and societies associated with the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist movement. Although the picture is far from complete, the best interpretation of the evidence is that this movement orchestrated the pogrom, albeit with varying degrees of success in each locality. That it was able to do so shows that Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism (as opposed to non-communalist, Ceylon-wide nationalism) was more deeply entrenched than is usually thought, which helps to explain Sri Lanka's political direction later in the century.
Pioneer Rebels among the Colombo Working-class
  • Jayawardena