The long-running conflict in Sri Lanka appeared to have finally run its course in 2002 when an unprecedented ceasefire agreement was signed by the newly elected government of Prime Minister Ranil Wikramsinghe and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). By 2008 however, after a series of political upheavals among the dominant Sinhalese, a devastating tsunami that killed 35,000 people, new factional fighting among the Tamil militants, and renewed clashes between the LTTE and the military, peace on the island has crumbled under the force of another violent spiral. Like the rest of South Asia, there was little in the island's history to predict the conflict that has dominated Sri Lanka's political landscape for more than 25 years and claimed nearly 65,000 lives. The rise of rigid and polarized ethno-religious identities that have fed violent confrontations has edged out more moderate and accommodating voices on all sides.

How did Sri Lanka's strong secular ethos at independence in 1947 crumble and distort one of the most promising democratic experiments in the developing world? As in the cases of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, this chapter traces the rise of extremism in Sri Lanka by looking at a three-way identity struggle between secular, ethno-religious and geopolitical identity conceptions. The chapter argues that as the influence of these three elements has waxed and waned in Sri Lanka, it has created conditions that foster extremism and violence.