According to Jayasuriya (2004), Sri Lanka – known as Ceylon until 1972 – was characterized by impressive social welfare in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s but has experienced intense social warfare since the 1970s. In this chapter, I explore whether the two are causally related. I begin by reviewing the country's history of ethnic violence and educational expansion. Next, I analyze whether educated individuals contributed to ethnic violence in influential ways. Finally, I investigate whether any of the educational mechanisms promoted ethnic violence.

Ethnicity and ethno-nationalist violence in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is located on an island off the southern tip of India and is inhabited by 20 million people from diverse linguistic and religious backgrounds. The Sinhalese are the largest ethnic community and comprise nearly three-quarters of the island's total population. The Sinhalese speak Sinhala, an Indo-European language, and are nearly all Buddhist. Their progenitors emigrated from India approximately 3,000 years ago and gradually absorbed other peoples (including communities already living on the island and other more recent immigrants from the Indian mainland). Although sharing the same religion and language, the Sinhalese are divided between the Kandyan and Low-Country Sinhalese, an internal division with only limited social significance that resulted primarily from geography and historical differences in the extent of European colonial influence.