Michael Roberts* This article was composed in 2001 and appeared in the Marga booklet series on A History of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. It is reproduced here without changes, but has also been embellished with hyperlinks to pertinent items on web — some of which may have been presented more recently. Pictures have also been inserted. As of November 2016 emphases have been introduced via highlighting in blue or dark blue;while paragraph separation has been increased.
I
In recent years* I have been working on the subject of Sinhala consciousness over the last four centuries. In the present context of a hot war between forces that represent the Lankan Tamils and those seen to represent the Sinhala majority in particular [in 2000-01], this interest necessarily forces one to take a stance on the contemporary situation. Broadly speaking, my political position is liberal humanist and favours a devolutionary scheme that recognises the Sri Lanka Tamils as a “nationality” and involves a sharing of power, whether at the centre or through federal units or a mixture of the two. This places me alongside articulate elements in Sri Lanka, including several friends at the Colombo branch of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, the Social Scientists’ Association, the Marga Research Institute and the universities, who advocate this line of politics. Continue reading
The fusion of both these interests led to Chinese
