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Abstract
Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

The Muslim community living in the "South-Eastern Region" of Sri Lanka has long been urging the government authorities to establish a separate Kalmunai administrative district carved out of the coastal belt of the present Amparai district, as an institutional mechanism to improve public service delivery and development administration functions in the region. However, the establishment of the Kalmunai administrative district has continually been challenged, receiving criticism and oppositions from different sources, including from the Muslim community and its politicians. This study analyzes the perspectives of Muslim community and its politics towards the demand for the Kalmunai administrative district and its impacts on the political advocacy and methods to achieving it. This study has found that there are different and contradictory perspectives on the matter of the Kalmunai administrative district among the Muslim political parties and in different segments of the community. It is also discovered that the public understanding on the subject of the proposed district is very minimal. The establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district has frequently failed on many crucial occasions mainly due to the lack of consensus among the Muslims leaders regarding the contested subjects of the proposed district. Additionally, this study has observed that the Muslim leaders have conceptualized the proposed Kalmunai district purely based on ethnicity only and have failed to justify it on public and rational grounds. The study has further found that the establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district and its purported positive impacts would strongly depend on making the demand for the proposed district a more secular and public one.

In Sri Lanka's ethnic politics, the Kalmunai administrative district demand has become the forefront issue in the past few decades. This demand advocates the establishment of a new administrative district—an intermediate decentralized administrative institution connecting the central government and local public in terms of public service delivery, and economic and regional development—for the coastal belt of the present Amparai district in the eastern province. Though the Kalmunai administrative district demand has become a popular concern of the Sri Lanka's ethnic politics in the new millennium and was highly advocated by the political and civil forces among the Muslims of the area, the demand faced ups and downs in its politicization and advocacy process that ultimately challenge the possibilities of establishing the proposed administrative district up till this day. This study attempted to evaluate the history of the politicization and advocacy of the Kalmunai administrative district demand extensively. The finding reveals that although the Kalmunai administrative district demand emerged on rational ground, in due cause, it became over ethnicized and brought more communal criticisms and oppositions that challenged the political advocacy and the success of the demand to a certain extent. Further, the political advocacy of the demand was also on and off in nature and the major advocating party has failed to make the opportunities successful. This study highlights the importance of a continued and collective political advocacy for on rational ground with the purpose of making the Kalmunai administrative district demand a public issue and to transform it as an "input" to the political system for the policy-making process. DOI:10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n3p61

In Sri Lanka, minorities have been facing a number of issues and challenges relating to public administration. When they put forward their reasonable demands, those demands are over-communalized by the ethnic majorities, resulting in them to be continuously sidetracked. The Kalmunai administrative district demand is an example of such a demand which has been highly communalized by recent politics, even though it merely advocates the establishment of an administrative district—an intermediate decentralized administrative institution—in order to improve delivery of public service, enhance regional and economic development, and facilitate linguistic functions in district administration for those living on the coastal belt of the Amparai district. This study examines the extent of the ethnicization and communalization of the Kalmunai administrative district demand, by examining in detail the viewpoints taken by the major ethnic groups and their political parties on the subject. The findings of this study reveal that although the demand advocated a mere form of decentralization initiative—also known as de-concentration—the demand was over-communalized and opposed by other ethnic groups and the political forces representing them. They misunderstood the demand to be one calling for political autonomy and separation. This study finds that rationalist views of the demand taken by ethnic majorities and major political parties would help to resolve the administrative grievances of minorities and achieve the accommodation of the Kalmunai administrative district demand within the larger political system in Sri Lanka. DOI:10.5901/jesr.2016.v6n3p99

With the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Sri Lanka has given priority to the SDGs in its main development agenda and attempting to achieve them by working towards the fulfilment of the basic needs and improving the living standards of the people, progressively alleviating poverty, eliminating all forms of discrimination and inequalities and establishing a society based on social justice and human security. In this regard, Sri Lanka has both prospects and obstacles in the achievement of SDGs. This paper has paid attention to explore the available opportunities and challenges in the journey of achieving SDGs by adopting the Blue-Green economic provisions in Sri Lanka. Additionally, it has also been attempted to present some effective recommendations to overcome those impediments since identifying effective solutions is equally important in finding ways to overcome those impediments. Using the existing secondary literature available in the forms of literary books, journal articles and reports, this study has found that it is a timely requirement of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) to adopt the Blue-Green economic provisions to get back the current unsustainable development of Sri Lanka on the right track and achieve the SDGs by 2030.

Although both Sri Lanka and Malaysia have experienced a parliamentary democracy introduced by the British colonial ruler, there are disparities in terms of the representation of women in parliament. Democracy assures women's roles in politics, as well as their rights to represent in government apparatus, including parliament. However, the majority of democratic countries in the Global West have succeeded, while the majority of those in the Global South have failed in this regard. This particular research comparatively analyzes women's representation in parliament—the higher legislative and decision-making body—in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, both have strictly been following a democratic path in governance from their independence. The findings of the study reveal that the country-based different contextual factors have influenced women's roles in active politics, and their position in parliament representing the public as equally as that of men. This study is descriptive and interpretive in nature, and only secondary data were applied for the analyses of the nature of women's representation in parliament in both countries. DOI:10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n1p111

Regional politics play a decisive role in national politics when region poses ethnic groups in competing manner. Sri Lanka's Eastern province has been a contested region in terms of ethnic and territorial integration as well as the integration of majority and minorities from the independence of the country, during civil war, and in the post-civil war era. This study explores the ethnic groups' competition for political control and autonomy, as well as its impact in Eastern Sri Lanka. This study has employed both qualitative and quantitative data, collected mainly through secondary sources such as literary books, book chapters, journal articles, newspaper cuttings, and government documents, which are analyzed and presented through interpretive and descriptive manners. The study has found that the Eastern province has been a contested choice for the ethnic majority to extend their ethnic domination, and to implement ethno-centric development-cum settlement policies and programs, all of which are ultimately induced to change the ethnic composition of the region and pushed ethnic minorities to mobilize and demand for more decentralized power and autonomy in the region. The thirty-year prolonged civil war made the region not only a war-torn, but also let to undermining regional democratic principles, including minorities' rights for autonomy. The study also reveals that the new emerging post-war political context at the provincial and national levels continues to undermine the minorities' hopes for autonomy in the region. Nevertheless, the region has emerged as 'role-model' for ethnic cohesive politics.

The traditional Muslim politics in Sri Lanka transformed with the formation of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and its active communal politics under its founder-leader, M.H.M.Ashraff. While representing the interests of the Muslim community, particularly those living in the north-eastern region, SLMC through its politics of bargaining and consensus voiced and advocated for the interests, rights and privileges of the Muslim community as well as contributed to their socio-economic and cultural upliftment at the crossroad of ethnic conflict and civil war. Although SLMC received popular mandate from the Muslim community, the party fell into fragmentation with the unexpected demise of its founder-leader in 2000, and splits were instigated shortly. This fragmentation caused a severe effect in the distinct path of Muslim politics in Sri Lanka. This study examines the fragmented nature and the trends of Muslim politics, particularly the politics of SLMC in post-Ashraff era and their impact. This study reveals that the fragmentation within SLMC caused leadership crisis and emergence of many Muslim political parties that promoted ugly politics of opportunism. This trend ultimately reduced the bargaining strength of Muslim politics, negatively influenced representative politics, leading to the negligence and marginalisation of Muslims' concerns and grievances in national politics. The leadership crisis and regionalism also negatively influenced the politics of SLMC and other Muslim parties in post-Ashraff era. This study also finds that unifying splinter-groups, reforming party structure and procedures, and redefining goals and path of achieving them would not only strengthen the politics of SLMC and other Muslim political parties but also would give a new brand for Muslim minority politics in Sri Lanka.

With the increase of ethnic conflicts and ethnic groups' mobilizations for ethno-nationalism to secure and share state power, the concept of decentralization has also been getting attention in ethnically plural countries, and many of them have taken advantages of adopting decentralization policies for the empowerment of diverse groups in their state cum nation-building process. Similarly, the requests and supports for the adaptation of different forms of decentralization as to accommodate number of political and administrative demands and claims emerging from different ethnic groups within a country has also increased in the recent past. This has induced the researcher and international actors to develop different definitions, interpretations, and objectives for decentralization on its ethnic diversity accommodation perspective. This paper attempted to conceptualize the decentralization as a tool for ethnic diversity accommodation through reviewing the existing literary definitions, explanations and with researchers' interpretive arguments. The finding reveals that decentralization initiatives, like other impacts, in number of ways, contributes to accommodate rights, interests, needs and claims of competing ethnic groups, especially of ethnic minorities and accommodate them within the larger political system and their local attachments. However, the success of this process highly depends on the mechanisms adopted for sharing powers and responsibilities; the nature, subject and decree of decentralized power; and the willingness of authorities to allow the groups to exercise those powers, with other factors.

Positioning minority concerns within a power-sharing mechanism is a key issue that has been influential in Sri Lanka's modern state-building process experimented from the later part of the colonial period. Throughout the post-independent era, most state-building projects were critically debated with regard to sharing political autonomy between the majority Sinhalese and the minorities. This study attempts to locate the claims and concerns of minorities seeking political autonomy in Sri Lanka's state-building and power-sharing discourse. The study found that the state-building process in Sri Lanka has always been a struggle between establishing a majoritarian-ethno-nationalist hegemonic state system and preserving the right of minority ethnic groups to political power-sharing. The study further found that (a) insufficient emphasis given towards understanding power-sharing and federalism as a means to accommodate diverse interests and rights, including the political autonomy rights of minorities, (b) the opportunistic politics of opposition parties, and (c) the ethno-nationalist agenda of the majority Sinhalese were the major factors that have induced to undermine the minorities' claims for political autonomy. The ultimate result of this is the continuous struggles by minorities to situate their political autonomy demands within Sri Lanka's state-building and power-sharing discourse.

One of the major objectives of decentralization is to facilitate the administrative machinery of a government to deliver public services efficiently and effectively to all segment of public, including the minority groups living within a state. In a multi-ethnic country, the decentralized administration with specific provisions and institutional arrangements can help to promote and protect the rights and privileges of minorities. However, in Sri Lanka, decentralization has been a contested topic of debate in terms of minority accommodation. This study attempts to access the constitutional and institutional arrangement of ethnic minority accommodation in decentralized administration, the status of their practice, and the related issues in Sri Lanka. The finding reveals that even though Sri Lanka has adopted decentralized administrative system at different levels, but it has failed to accommodate the rights and interests of ethno-linguistic minorities within the system. The study identifies the non-implementation of the constitutional provisions on minority language (Tamil) in administrative affairs as one of the key factors motivated to the minority grievances in decentralized administration in Sri Lanka. It is further identified that the lack of commitment to follow and implement the constitutional provisions and the acts of ethnic discrimination and marginalization in administrative affairs have compelled the minorities to claim and advocate for more institutional and policy reforms in decentralization discourse in Sri Lanka. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p533