Ethno-Religious Violence in Colonial Sri Lanka, 1853–1915

Sri Lanka in 1915 was rife with tensions in response to colonialism, ethnic assertion, migration, economic change, and religious revival. The island was also part of an Indian Ocean theatre of the First World War that saw action and intrigue. Against that backdrop erupted the 1915 anti-Moor pogrom, the scale and intensity of which was unprecedented. 1915 often serves as a reminder that communal violence in Sri Lanka did not emerge after Independence in 1948; instead, it has deeper roots within the colonial period. Yet, the narrative that 1915 was the beginning of such violence can also be misleading. 1915 did not mark the beginning of Sinhalese-Moor conflict, but was, in fact, the culmination of recurrent violence between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How should we understand the significance of the attacks against Moors in 1915?This book re-opens a neglected chapter in Sri Lanka's history by critically re-examining the deeper roots of ethno-religious violence between Sinhalese and Moors. It explores the role of colonial discourse and policies on public order and trade in bringing ethno-religious groups into conflict with each other, while analysing the impact of Buddhist and Islamic revival on group assertion. Sinhalese and Moors are not flattened to victims or passive subjects of colonial rule. Instead, the book explores their agency and processes of identity formation, and their ability to negotiate with a powerful colonial state. Meanwhile, the book situates Sri Lanka in the First World War, and explores how pressures and assumptions flowing from the global context of the War impacted the colonial state's response to the pogrom, shifting it from initial inaction to eventual excess.