Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTDevelopment is an important, yet contentious word, in the history of post‐colonial Sri Lanka. Typically, it is linked with economic progress and societal change, intricately woven into political processes and frequently utilized as a platform to promote Sinhala‐Buddhist ethnonationalist agendas. This article looks at post‐colonial Sri Lanka's 'core development project' — the Mahaweli Development Programme — and its post‐war revival with the military as a key actor. Through a detailed ethnographic study, it traces the way in which the military assumed extraordinary powers and became vital to the post‐colonial project of development and the militarized practices that enabled this. The author argues that this project of militarized development unfolds in a fourfold manner: by normalizing the presence of the military; by ensuring the military is seen as charitable; by blurring the boundaries between the military and civilians; and lastly by portraying the work carried out by the military as transformative. The article concludes by demonstrating that this militarized project of development is the latest iteration of the long‐standing post‐colonial project of Sinhala‐Buddhist state expansion, enabled through development.

In the span of two years, Sri Lanka saw one of the biggest protests in South Asia, ousted a president and his government, defaulted on its sovereign debt, declared bankruptcy, appointed an unelected president, went to the IMF for a bailout loan, delayed elections, moved even further away from justice and reconciliation, and celebrated 75 years of independence. While the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family from government hinted at change for the country, the appointment of Ranil Wickremesinghe demonstrated a firm commitment to lack of reform or accountability. Austerity, intimidation, instability, and further decay followed. These economic and non-economic shocks converged to reveal a country where multiple crises of dissent, debt, decay, and decline were inextricably bound together, with no way forward yet in sight.

AbstractThis paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka's dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme ('System L' of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the 'lure of land': first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became 'home guards' who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers' precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A 'cunning state' thereby betrays its own 'frontiersmen', while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.