Social Mobility, Popular Ideology, and Collective Violence in Modern Sri Lanka

Riots, rebellions, and other disturbances have broken out periodically in most parts of South Asia in modern times. Both early resistance to British rule and the religious and nationalist violence of the later colonial period have attracted a good deal of attention from scholars. One of the general trends apparent from this research is the weakening of distinctions among “communal,” “economic,” and “political” disturbances, and detailed studies have emphasized the ambiguity of most riots. Ostensibly religious affrays often reflected more general social and economic tensions, while the expression of economic grievances was often channeled by cultural or political beliefs.