Visit https://ebookfinal.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

Tamils and the nation India and Sri Lanka

compared 1st Edition Madurika Rasaratnam

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookfinal.com/download/tamils-and-the-nation-
india-and-sri-lanka-compared-1st-edition-madurika-
rasaratnam/

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookfinal.com

Here are some suggested products you might be interested in.
Click the link to download

A Compendium of the Macrolichens from India Nepal and Sri

Lanka 1st Edition D.D. Awasthi

https://ebookfinal.com/download/a-compendium-of-the-macrolichens-from-
india-nepal-and-sri-lanka-1st-edition-d-d-awasthi/

South Asian Folklore An Encyclopedia Afghanistan

Bangladesh India Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka 1st Edition
Peter J. Claus (Editor)
https://ebookfinal.com/download/south-asian-folklore-an-encyclopedia-
afghanistan-bangladesh-india-nepal-pakistan-sri-lanka-1st-edition-
peter-j-claus-editor/

The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka Rough Guides 3rd Edition

Gavin Thomas

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-rough-guide-to-sri-lanka-rough-
guides-3rd-edition-gavin-thomas/

Contested Lands Israel Palestine Kashmir Bosnia Cyprus and

Sri Lanka 1st Ed. Edition Sumantra Bose

https://ebookfinal.com/download/contested-lands-israel-palestine-
kashmir-bosnia-cyprus-and-sri-lanka-1st-ed-edition-sumantra-bose/
The Sri Lanka Reader History Culture Politics The World
Readers John Clifford Holt (Editor)

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-sri-lanka-reader-history-culture-
politics-the-world-readers-john-clifford-holt-editor/

Milk Spice and Curry Leaves Hill Country Recipes From the
Heart of Sri Lanka Ruwanmali Samarakoon-Amunugama

https://ebookfinal.com/download/milk-spice-and-curry-leaves-hill-
country-recipes-from-the-heart-of-sri-lanka-ruwanmali-samarakoon-
amunugama/

In my mother s house civil war in Sri Lanka 1. ed Edition

Thiranagama

https://ebookfinal.com/download/in-my-mother-s-house-civil-war-in-sri-
lanka-1-ed-edition-thiranagama/

The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka Terrorism Ethnicity

Political Economy Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series
1st Edition Asoka Bandarage
https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-separatist-conflict-in-sri-lanka-
terrorism-ethnicity-political-economy-routledge-contemporary-south-
asia-series-1st-edition-asoka-bandarage/

Camp Life of Sri Lankan Refugees in India 1st Edition

Arockiam Kulandai

https://ebookfinal.com/download/camp-life-of-sri-lankan-refugees-in-
india-1st-edition-arockiam-kulandai/
Tamils and the nation India and Sri Lanka compared 1st
Edition Madurika Rasaratnam Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Madurika Rasaratnam
ISBN(s): 9780190638580, 0190638583
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.47 MB
Year: 2016
Language: english
 Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190638580 Print ISBN: 9780190498320

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Copyright Page 
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.002.0003 Page iv
Published: August 2016

Subject: Asian Politics

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

p. iv Oxford University Press is a department of the

University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective

of excellence in research, scholarship, and education

by publishing worldwide.

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi

Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi

New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With o ces in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece

Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore

South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press

in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by

Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Copyright © Madurika Rasaratnam 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,

or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with

the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning

reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the

Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Madurika Rasaratnam.

Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared

ISBN: 9780190498320

Printed in India
 Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190638580 Print ISBN: 9780190498320

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Acknowledgements 
Published: August 2016

Subject: Asian Politics

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Over the course of researching and writing this book, I have been fortunate to have the support and
encouragement of many people and I would like to say a special thanks to some of them. The book emerged
from my doctoral research and my rst thanks are due to John Breuilly, my supervisor, for his dedicated
support. He took a deep interest in the puzzle this book addresses, and our many discussions over the years
have shaped its arguments and my scholarly development. I have bene ted greatly from the intellectually
stimulating environments of the Department of Government at the LSE, where I completed my doctoral
thesis, the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, where I completed my undergraduate
studies and taught for several years, and the School of Politics and International Relations at the University
of Kent, where I presently teach. I am especially grateful to Mark La ey for his mentoring and friendship.
My understanding of Sri Lankan, Indian and Diaspora politics has been immeasurably strengthened by
numerous friends and colleagues who share my interests. In particular I would like to thank David Rampton,
James Manor, and Jan Jananayagam. My long-standing involvement with the Tamil Guardian has been a
de ning experience, and the countless conversations with the team, past and present, have helped me to
sustain an intimate engagement with Tamil politics. They also provided insightful comments on drafts of
several chapters. I am grateful to Michael Dwyer and Rob Pinney at Hurst for their enthusiasm for the
project—and their patience as I completed the manuscript!

This book and the doctoral dissertation which preceded it would not have been possible without many
interviews and conversations with past and present political leaders, journalists and activists in south India
p. viii and Sri Lanka. The origins of this book can be traced to a chance encounter in 1998 with the late
Dharmaratnam Sivaram, the leading Tamil journalist of recent decades He encouraged me to study politics
and sparked my interest in the historical depth of Tamil nationalist mobilisation and the international
dynamics of Sri Lanka’s con ict, of which he was known as a keen and perceptive analyst as well as a
participant. I am also indebted to the late Anton Balasingham, the chief negotiator and political strategist of
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for generously sharing with me his time, experiences and sharp
insights into Tamil, Sri Lankan and international politics. His wife Adele has also been a source of warm
encouragement. I am also grateful to Gajen Ponnambalam for numerous conversations on Tamil nationalist
mobilisation and for introducing me to his fellow Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka.
I began work on this manuscript soon after my baby daughter was born, and its completion has depended on
the goodwill, encouragement and help of family and friends. My mother has been generous to a fault,
sharing caring for Maalathy with my partner Sutha to allow me the time to write. My dear friend Vino
Kanapathipillai repeatedly went out of her way, extending assistance and thoughtful advice just when they
were most needed—I look forward to repaying my debt as she begins writing up her own manuscript. The
moral support and company of my brother Ramkumar and my other dear old friends Neil Young, Ezra
Zahabi and Barira Limbada added to the pleasures whilst easing the anxieties of both motherhood and
writing. Most importantly, I have relied on Sutha and his a ection, humour and indefatigable enthusiasm
for life. His careful and critical reading also immeasurably improved the text, though I alone am responsible
for any errors. We share the pleasure of seeing it in print. Finally I am indebted to my late grandmother,
Sathyabhama Cumaraswamy, who passed away while I was completing this manuscript. She shared and
developed my interest in politics and history, not least because in her ninety three years she lived through
and sometimes participated in many of the tumultuous events discussed in these pages. It is dedicated to
her.
 Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190638580 Print ISBN: 9780190498320

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Acronyms 
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.002.0006 Pages ix–x
Published: August 2016

Subject: Asian Politics

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

ACTC
All Ceylon Tamil Congress

AI/ADMK
All India/Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Anna Dravidian Progressive Association)

BJP
Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party)

CNA
Ceylon National Association

CNC
Ceylon National Congress

CP
Communist Party

DK
Dravida Kazhagam (Dravidian Association)

DMK
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Dravidian Progressive Association)

FP
Federal Party

INC
Indian National Congress

ITAK
Illangai Tamil Arasu Kazhagam (Sri Lanka Tamil Government Association)
 JVP
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front)

JYC
Ja na Youth Congress

LSSP
Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Lanka Equal Society Party)

LTTE
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

MDMK
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Renewed Dravidian Progressive Association)

MEP
Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (People’s United Front)

MGR
M. G. Ramachandran (leader of ADMK)

PMK
Pattali Makkal Katchi (Common People’s Party)

OHCHR
O ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

SLFP
Sri Lanka Freedom Party

TNA
Tamil National Alliance
p. x

TULF
Tamil United Liberation Front

UNHRC
United Nations Human Rights Council

UNP
United National Party
 Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190638580 Print ISBN: 9780190498320

Search in this book

CHAPTER

Introduction 
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.003.0001 Pages 1–26

Published: August 2016

Abstract
The chapter sets out the book’s core argument: contingent political processes and the more or less
inclusive national identities they produce are causal in explaining the contrasting outcomes of the two
Tamil-speaking regions. The book adopts a conceptual and processes centered approach to ethnic and
national politics. Ethnicity and nation are understood as core concepts of political contestation and
organization in modern national states. Nationalist movements can resolve the problem of reconciling
ethnic pluralism and national identity in more or less inclusive ways. The chapter identi es the speci c
and temporally sustained processes that distinguish successful political movements that can explain
the very di erent national identities that emerged in India and Sri Lanka despite similar conditions.

Keywords: Ethnicity, Nationalism, Mobilization, Conceptual, Concepts, Contestation, Modern state,

Political processes, Temporal, Nation-state
Subject: Asian Politics
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

1
The strikingly divergent political trajectories of the Tamil-speaking regions of south India and Sri Lanka
present an interesting puzzle for the study of ethnicity, nationalism and ethnic con ict. From the early
decades of the twentieth century, movements and ideologies stressing a distinct Tamil political identity and
interest have dominated Tamil politics in both south India and Sri Lanka. However, the relationship
between these movements and their respective states has evolved in very di erent ways and resulted in
dramatically di erent economic and political outcomes for the two Tamil-speaking regions. Tamil Nadu is
today an economically successful and politically stable component of the Indian Union. It has good
development indicators, a ourishing culture industry and has been well represented at the Union level
since independence. In contrast, the Tamil-speaking regions of Sri Lanka have been devastated by thirty
years of high-intensity armed con ict which ended brutally in May 2009 without resolving, and indeed
2
exacerbating, the underlying ethnic polarisation. While Tamil Nadu’s relationship with the government in
Delhi has at times been fractious and tense, disputes have invariably been contained within the
 constitutional framework and never escalated into sustained violence. In Sri Lanka, however, relations
between the Colombo government and Tamil political actors since independence have been marked by
confrontation, abandoned compromises and recurrent violence that escalated into protracted militarised
con ict.

What is peculiar about these contrasting outcomes of south Indian ethnic accommodation and violent
ethnic con ict in Sri Lanka is that they are both diametrically at odds with the historical dynamics of Tamil
politics. In the late colonial period the south Indian Dravidian movement opposed Congress-led Indian
p. 2 nationalist mobilisation as a direct threat to Tamil identity and interests. Then when independence from
Britain approached, Dravidian leaders even advocated separation from India as a means of securing Tamils
against the alleged threats of Indian domination. This antagonism continued in the immediate post-
independence period. For example, the Indian government’s attempts in 1965 to replace English with Hindi
as the o cial language led to widespread and violent protests across Tamil Nadu. Seven people self-
immolated in protest against the act while two took poison, and up to 150 people were killed in ensuing
3
clashes between protesters and police. Con ict did not, however, escalate. Instead, from 1967 onwards,
Dravidian parties have held power at the state level and have worked comfortably within the Indian
constitutional framework. In 1976 the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK), one of the two major
Dravidian parties, even added the All India pre x to its name to signal explicitly its acceptance of the Indian
4
constitutional framework, though it has remained an exclusively Tamil Nadu party. Furthermore, the
Dravidian parties were important partners in the coalition governments which governed in Delhi from the
early 1990s until April 2014.

While Tamil Nadu politics have moved from separation to integration, Sri Lankan Tamil politics have moved
in the opposite direction. From the late nineteenth century, Sri Lankan Tamil politicians led attempts to
form panethnic nationalist organisations, actively collaborating with Sinhalese politicians in these e orts.
As independence approached, Tamil political leaders advocated power-sharing within a single uni ed
constitutional structure as a means of promoting and protecting Tamil interests. Con ict between the
Tamils and the increasingly Sinhala Buddhist state emerged in the wake of the 1956 Sinhala Only act, which
established Sinhala as the sole language of state administration. This sparked demonstrations across the
Tamil-speaking areas, blockading government o ces and bringing civil administration to a standstill.
Although the protests were widespread and sustained, they were nevertheless quite tame in comparison
with the intensity of the language protests in Tamil Nadu. But con ict steadily escalated, despite occasional
and always abortive ‘pacts’ between Tamil and Sinhala leaders, and in 1977 a coalition of Tamil parties,
citing a history of state violence and discrimination, swept the polls in the Tamil-speaking areas on a
platform of independence. At around the same time, episodic confrontations emerged between the now
Sinhala-dominated military and a nascent Tamil insurgency seeking independence through armed struggle.
Military repression and continuing anti-Tamil violence, culminating in the July 1983 pogrom alongside
p. 3 powerful international interventions, tipped the simmering insurgency into a full-blown civil war. The
turning point of the con ict came in 1977 when the newly elected United National Party (UNP) government
adopted a series of pro-market economic reforms, pointedly abandoning the state-led development policies
of previous governments, and thus became an enthusiastic member of the US-led anticommunist alliance,
receiving both developmental assistance as well as military and diplomatic backing in its campaign against
Tamil militancy. Sri Lanka’s decisive shift towards the West and away from its previous ‘non-aligned’
stance prompted in turn Indian intervention that sought to counter the Westward tilt by providing support
and training to an array of Tamil militant groups. These developments fuelled the rapid militarisation of the
con ict whilst irreversibly enmeshing it in the shifting dynamics of Cold War and post-Cold War liberal
order making.

These dramatic reversals, from separation to union in Tamil Nadu and in the opposite direction in Sri Lanka,
despite a range of historical, social and economic similarities between the two cases, make them uniquely
 comparable. India and Sri Lanka have a shared history of British colonial rule followed by sustained
competitive electoral democracy. They have similar social and economic systems, and electoral politics in
both states continue to include patronage networks that distribute public resources of various kinds. They
also have similar patterns of ethnic cleavages with overlapping di erences of caste, religion, language,
biological notions of race based on physical appearance and region. It has been suggested that India’s more
ethnically fragmented population, where the Hindu majority is cleaved by di erences of language and caste,
is more conducive to ethnic accommodation than Sri Lanka’s binary division between a Sinhala Buddhist
majority and a Tamil-speaking minority. However, the idea of a consolidated Sinhala Buddhist–Tamil
con ict in Sri Lanka overlooks regional, religious and caste cleavages that have been important sites of
5
intra-Sinhala and intra-Tamil con ict. Conversely, from the early decades of the twentieth century Indian
Hindu nationalists have sought to create a majoritarian Hindu political identity that incorporates intra-
6
Hindu caste and linguistic cleavages. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in the
April 2014 parliamentary elections relied in part on successfully mobilising cross-caste support in regions
7
where caste identities have long been politically important. In short, the political salience of an
overwhelming ethnic majority in Sri Lanka and a more ethnically fragmented polity in India are themselves
outcomes in need of explanation, and not pre-given variables that can underlie the divergent outcomes of
the Tamil question in India and Sri Lanka.

p. 4
Aims of the book

This book argues that the key to explaining this stark di erence in trajectories is the dominant
understanding of national identity that has come to structure political competition in the two states. The
politically dominant conception of national identity in India un-problematically includes Tamils, whereas
that in Sri Lanka does not. Through a comparative analysis of national identity formation that extends over
time from the late colonial era to the present day, the book argues that contingent—in that they could have
been otherwise—processes of political organisation and mobilisation explain the stark divergence between
the two Tamil-speaking regions. The empirical chapters show how distinct patterns of political activity that
emerged in comparable conditions brought to the fore very di erent conceptions of national identity. In
India patterns of political organisation and mobilisation beginning in the late nineteenth century and
reaching a crucial turning point in the mid twentieth century established the political dominance of the
Indian National Congress and its pan-ethnic conception of national identity that was inclusive of Tamils. In
contrast, in Sri Lanka, a di erent pattern of political activity over the same period and in comparable
conditions established as dominant a Sinhala Buddhist conception of the nation hostile to Tamil claims and
demands. The cross-case comparison sets out the contingency of the patterns of political activity, which
diverged despite similar conditions, as well as their causal force in establishing very di erent conceptions of
the nation and the attendant ethnic accommodations and con icts that these subsequently entailed. The
comparison of each case over time sets out in turn the causal force of national identity in establishing the
divergent relations of ethnic accommodation in India and ethnic polarisation, leading to violent con ict, in
Sri Lanka. Taken together therefore, the comparison between cases and the analysis of each case over time
establish both the contingency of national identities but also their causal force in the divergent outcomes of
the two Tamil-speaking regions. The analysis thus explains the dramatic reversals in south Indian and Sri
Lankan Tamil politics; from separatism to accommodation in the former and from pan-ethnic nationalism
to secession in the latter, as e ects of contingent but temporally continuous political processes and the
more or less ethnically inclusive identities that these create.

The analysis begins in the late nineteenth century and ends in the present day. It is divided into two parts.
Part One examines nationalist and Tamil politics comparatively in the two cases, from their rst emergence
p. 5 in the nineteenth century to a point of mature development in the late 1970s, when the relations of ethnic
accommodation in India and ethnic con ict in Sri Lanka were both apparent and settled. The con gurations
 of Tamil Nadu’s stable accommodation in the Indian national framework have remained largely unchanged
since then, sustaining its ongoing stability as well as relative prosperity and economic development. There
have of course been important political developments as well as socio-economic changes, for example the
8
mobilisation of Dalit political parties, but these have not unsettled Tamil Nadu’s accommodation within
the Indian Union. In contrast, Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict has been through radical shifts, intensifying in
violence as well as internationalising in scope, such that the con guration of actors and their relations have
transformed beyond measure.

Part Two is therefore devoted to Sri Lanka, tracing the genesis, escalation and ending of Sri Lanka’s armed
con ict from the late 1970s to the present, as well as discussing the subsequent and post-war
intensi cation of the underlying antagonism between the Sinhala Buddhist state and a now globalised
Tamil nationalist movement. It focuses on the pivotal role of international actors and processes in the war
and subsequent post-war period. The turn to the international is a departure from the framework of
analysis used in Part One, but one that is grounded in the deep and transformative internationalisation of
Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict. The chapters show how the rapid militarisation of the con ict was coeval with its
internationalisation, and also how the unintended consequences of international action shaped in often
decisive ways the capacity of Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalist actors to pursue their projects,
generally advantaging the former at the expense of the latter. It uses the term ‘liberal peace’ to capture the
directionality of international interventions in Sri Lanka that continue to seek an ethnically inclusive,
liberal-democratic and market-orientated state. International interventions in Sri Lanka are thus
understood as part of a broader set of Western- (primarily US-) led, post-WWII international processes and
institutions orientated towards securing a global paci c order based on the principles of liberal democracy
and market economics. The analysis draws on the now established scholarly and policy literature on liberal
order making, including the literature on Sri Lanka’s con ict, that uses the term ‘liberal peace’ to
characterise international e orts to secure peace and stability in sites of con ict and instability. In this
literature the liberal peace entails a di use and loosely coordinated, rather than centrally planned, set of
activities led by states, non-state actors and multilateral organisations orientated towards overlapping ends
such as con ict management, peace-building, economic reform, development, security sector reform,
human rights advocacy and democracy promotion.

p. 6 The chapters in Part Two show how and why Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalist movements continued
to reproduce themselves and their preferred conceptions of national and ethnic order amidst powerful
international e orts to secure liberal reform. They explain why international e orts failed to realise their
stated ends—an ethnically inclusive liberal, democratic peace—and worked instead to fuel the
militarisation of the con ict whilst inadvertently strengthening the Sinhala Buddhist character of the state
and military that in turn also intensi ed countervailing Tamil nationalist mobilisation. The nalchapter
discusses the role of India and Tamil Nadu in the now internationalised post-war politics of Sri Lanka’s
ethnic con ict and thereby brings the divergent but now intersecting trajectories of the two Tamil-speaking
regions to the present. It shows that these complex and internationalised dynamics have their origins in the
contingent patterns of national identity politics that began in the late nineteenth century. Tamil Nadu
actors’ advocacy on behalf of Tamils in Sri Lanka is locked into a stable accommodation within the Indian
national-state framework that was formed in colonial era political processes, whereas Sri Lanka’s ethnic
con ict—now played out across international fora—is equally rooted in contingent patterns of nationalist
mobilisation that established a dominant and ethnically hierarchical Sinhala Buddhist nationalism
incompatible with Tamil nationalist demands for national autonomy and equality.

The politics of Tamil and national identities in India and Sri Lanka present plausible and interesting cases
for comparison, not just because of the social, historical and economic similarities in which the divergent
outcomes emerged, but also because of their ongoing and important connections. While both countries
share a history of British colonial rule, there were also important pre British political and trade relations
 9
that embedded the island within broader Indian as well as south-east Asian ambits. The social and political
movements that shaped Tamil and national identities from the nineteenth century onwards were also
connected. There were connections between Indian Hindu revivalists and Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka and
connections between the Tamil revivalisms of south India and Sri Lanka. The Indian Congress movement
10
was also in uential amongst Tamil and Sinhala political actors in Sri Lanka.

While these connections are pivotal in understanding the constitution of ethnic and national identities, the
analysis here nevertheless takes the two national states—India and Sri Lanka—as discrete units of
p. 7 comparison. It does so because conceptions of national identity and the powerful transformations of
ethnic inclusion, exclusion and hierarchy that they generate are contained within the territorial boundaries
of the state. Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and Indian nationalism were formed amidst cross-border
processes of economic, social and political change, but Sinhala Buddhist nationalism has worked to
marginalise both politically and economically the Tamils in Sri Lanka, not those in India, while Indian
nationalism incorporated Tamils in India, not those in Sri Lanka. Likewise, despite their manifold and
ongoing connections, Tamil politics in India and Sri Lanka have remained distinct and autonomous in their
goals and objectives. Sri Lankan and Indian political leaders have in the past, and usually opportunistically,
raised the spectre of a pan-Tamil irredentism crossing the Palk straits, unsettling Indian and Sri Lankan
state boundaries; but Tamil political activity has always been separated by state borders and de ned by the
11
national framework of its respective state. While Tamils in Sri Lanka have sought support from Tamils in
Tamil Nadu, and the latter are now enthusiastic in providing it, their joint enterprise is in seeking a
12
reorientation of power for the bene t of Tamils in Sri Lanka, rather than a joint political project as Tamils.
For these reasons the analysis presented here works within rather than against the territorial boundaries of
the two states.

The following section sets out the understandings of nationalism and ethnicity as well as the broader
theoretical framework that informs the empirical analysis presented here. The subsequent and third section
reviews existing approaches to ethnicity and nationalism in South Asia and shows how the focus on national
identity and political processes adopted in this study contributes to this literature. The nal and fourth
section then sets out an overview of the subsequent chapters, linking them to the overarching focus on the
causal role of contingent political processes and the powerful—as well as more or less ethnically inclusive—
national identities they create.

Framework of analysis

The nation and ethnicity are understood here as political concepts that are ubiquitous and unavoidable in
the politics of the modern nation-state system. The centrality of the nation and ethnicity derive from their
close connection to the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the sole principle of political legitimacy within the
13
system of nation-states. The claim to rule on behalf of the people is now ubiquitous, such that today
14
‘rulers, however tyrannical their rule, justify their sovereignty as an expression of their nation’s will’.
p. 8 Popular sovereignty insists that authority ows directly from the people, but as the concept of popular
sovereignty evolved and expanded from the late eighteenth century, the people have invariably been
identi ed as a nation; that is a collective—rather than a collection of individuals—constituted as such by a
shared history that in nationalist understandings also entails shared cultural characteristics and a shared
15
attachment to territory. The transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the
interlinked processes of capitalism, war, colonial rule and industrialisation produced a globe-encompassing
system of territorial states that were at the same time also understood as national states; states that were of
and for the people as nations within their boundaries. Ethnicity and nationalism were not however surplus
or accidental by-products of this process; rather, as Andreas Wimmer argues, ‘modernity itself rests on a
basis of ethnic and nationalist principles’. That is:
 The main promises of modernity—political participation, equal treatment before the law and
protection from the arbitrariness of state power, dignity for the weak and poor, and social justice
and security—were fully realised only for those who came to be regarded as true members of the
nation. The modern principles of inclusion are intimately tied to ethnic and national forms of
16
exclusion.

The terms nation and ethnicity are therefore linked in de ning the patterns of inclusion and exclusion.
Almost all national states contain culturally diverse populations that must somehow be reconciled into the
ideal of a historically constituted and culturally homogenous whole. This immediately raises a set of vexed
and contentious questions. Which of the various linguistic, religious, caste or regional groups contained
within the boundaries of the state will come to form the national core, and which will be excluded? It is in
this context of national inclusion and exclusion that terms such as ethnicity, minority, community and
communal acquire their political salience and meaning. In relation to the problem of de ning the
boundaries of national community, ethnicity and its cognates cover the set of di erences that are held to be
inherited and form the basis of categories that identify multi-generational populations. These categories
furthermore can become politically salient as markers of national inclusion, exclusion or hierarchical
subordination.

Class, gender and sexual orientation may also be important and often violent sites of national exclusion and
subordination; but the categories that are de ned as ethnic are di erent in that they may also form the basis
of national claims to political autonomy and maximally self-rule in an independent state. The ethnic
identities that become politically salient contain a historically speci c mix of religious, linguistic, caste and
p. 9 other categories. For example, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism mobilises support from Tamil-speaking
Hindus and Christians but not Tamil-speaking Muslims, who tend to identify politically as Muslims rather
than Tamils. Ethnicity, like the nation, identi es a hereditary population deemed to have a shared past,
cultural solidarity and a claim to territory. As concepts the nation and ethnicity therefore overlap. While all
nations are in part ethnic—even so called ‘civic’ or ‘political’ nationalisms characterise the nation as a
17
multi-generational community with a shared past and shared ‘ancestors’ —ethnicity may also, but does
not always, form the basis of national claims. Caste is an important site of political mobilisation across
India, but does not form the basis of claims to national autonomy. Ethnicity is therefore distinct from class,
gender and sexual orientation not because it is more acute or more important than these other social
categories; in fact in many, if not most, circumstances it may be less so. Rather, ethnicity is distinct because
it can lead to speci c forms of inclusion and exclusion from the national community. Exclusion on the basis
of class, gender and sexual orientation is often linked to calls for greater equality or inclusion within the
existing boundaries of the national state. In contrast, ethnicity may form the basis for wholesale exclusion
of a multi-generational population, but may also serve as the basis of demands for national autonomy.

While ethnic pluralism thereby poses a problem that has to be overcome in the formation of a uni ed sense
of national community, this problem can be solved in more or less inclusive ways. This is apparent in the
contrast between the pan-ethnic conception of the Indian nation linked to the Congress movement and
Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that has dominated Sri Lanka’s politics in the post-independence era.
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s rst post-independence Prime Minister, describes the diversity of India as
‘tremendous’. He notes in particular the di erence between the ‘Pathan of the North-West and the Tamil in
the far South’, whose ‘racial stocks are not the same’ and they di er in ‘race and gure, food and clothing
and of course language’. In between these two extremes are the myriad other groups, and he lists amongst
others the Marathas, the Gujaratis, the Malayalis, the Andhras, the ‘great central block’ of Hindustani-
speakers and the Kashmiris. But amidst all this diversity—all these groups have maintained their ‘peculiar
characteristics for hundreds of years’—there is also a historically constituted unity:
 Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That
unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardisation of externals or
even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of belief and
18
custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.

p. 10 This understanding of the historical origins of the Indian nation has of course always been in con ict with
19
one that is more exclusively Hindu but was nevertheless important in de ning crucial aspects of the
Indian constitutional framework, particularly those related to language. In contrast the Sinhala Buddhist
conception explicitly excludes Tamil-speaking groups from the conception of the national core. Successive
Sinhala leaders from the early twentieth century to the present have equated the Sri Lankan nation with the
Sinhala nation and drawn on a history of the island in which the Tamils are positioned as invaders from
south India repeatedly threatening the ourishing Buddhist civilisation of the Sinhalese. This equation
between Sri Lanka and Sinhala is evident in a speech made by J. R. Jayewardene in 1987 in which he avers:

[The] Sri Lankan nation has stood out as the most wonderful nation in the world because of several
unique characteristics. [The] Sinhala nation has followed one faith, that is Buddhism for an
unbroken period of 2500 years…. The language of the King and the people 2100 years ago had been
Sinhala which we speak today…. Another unique heritage is the country’s history of sovereignty
20
and territorial integrity.

These depictions of national community gain force because they have become the principle axis of social
inclusion and exclusion. The boundaries of national community determine the entitlement to citizenship,
the distribution of economic goods and services, including welfare, military recruitment and the rights to
political representation. The analysis presented in the empirical chapters shows how the relative stability
and prosperity of Tamil Nadu is linked to the inclusion of Tamils within the ‘unity in diversity’ conception
of national identity associated with the Congress movement and politically dominant in the post-
independence decades. In contrast the Sinhala Buddhist conception of national identity excludes Tamils
from full membership of the nation and is linked to the post-independence exclusion of Tamils in Sri Lanka
from economic opportunities and political life, materially manifest in the relative impoverishment of the
21
Tamil-speaking regions and populations compared with their earlier relative prosperity. These material
outcomes are linked to a hierarchical conception of national identity in which Tamils and other minorities
occupy a subordinate positon and thereby are denied equal access to the rights and privileges, or the
‘promises of modernity’, enjoyed by the national Sinhalese. This was set out bluntly by Sarath Fonseka,
Commander of the Sri Lankan Army (2005–9), credited with the May 2009 victory over the LTTE. In an
interview given in 2008, Fonseka declaimed:

p. 11 I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities
and we treat them like our people…. We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give
in and we have the right to protect this country. We are also a strong nation … They can live in this
country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue
22
things.

The cross-case comparison of national inclusion and exclusion in India and Sri Lanka, as well as the
comparison of each case over time, show that these outcomes were not inevitable, but rather dependent on
contingent processes of political mobilisation through which more or less inclusive conceptions of national
identity were asserted, contested and more or less securely established as the organising principles of social
and political activity. The dominance of a pan-ethnic conception of Indian national identity or a Sinhala
Buddhist conception of Sri Lankan identity was not assured in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. In India the Congress movement competed with Hindu, Tamil and Muslim movements that were
in various ways hostile to the Congress’s national claims. Likewise in Sri Lanka, alongside the Sinhala
 Buddhist revivalist movement there were e orts to organise a pan-ethnic nationalist movement along the
lines of the Congress. The Sinhala Buddhist movement was also not assured of success as it had to overcome
intra-Sinhala ethnic cleavages (caste, region and religion) that were important sources of social and
political con ict at this time.

What therefore distinguishes successful ethnic and national movements from ones that fail? Why for
example was pan-ethnic nationalism successful in India while similar e orts in Sri Lanka failed? The
empirical chapters show that successful ethnic and national movements are those that bring together three
activities in a temporally sustained way: articulating an ideological framework that sets out key ideas about
the boundaries of national community and national interests; incorporating politically signi cant and
existing cleavages as well as interest groups; and nally e ectively marshalling support through activities
of direct political mobilisation. This framework builds on and departs from John Breuilly’s comparative
analysis of nationalist movements on the basis of the three functions of nationalist ideology: coordinating
23
diverse political interests, mobilising new groups, and legitimizing the movement to in uential outsiders.
But whereas Breuilly is concerned with the role of ideology, the focus here is on patterns of political activity,
of which setting out a clear ideological framework is only one. As the example of pan-ethnic nationalisms in
colonial India and Sri Lanka show, ideologically similar movements in comparable conditions can have
p. 12 di erent levels of success and therefore di erent outcomes; the causal di erence being absence or
presence of temporally continuous patterns of political activity that bring together the three activities
identi ed above.

In setting out an ideological framework, national movements have to make claims about the ethnic
boundaries of national community: which groups are included and which excluded. National movements
can variously set out a vision of national identity that is inclusive of all ethnic groups, that explicitly
excludes some groups whilst including others, or nally an ethnically hierarchical identity that privileges
some groups while subordinating others. Along with setting out a clear ideological framework, successful
political movements also have to mobilise support; this involves co-opting already powerful social and
political actors and directly mobilising amongst the target population. Groups and individuals who are co-
opted in such a way might support the movement for reasons that are quite apart from the movement’s
ideological objectives—for example, because they want political power. However, all ideological movements
that have become signi cant social and political forces must draw in, alongside the ideologically motivated
cadres, others who more or less consciously use the movement to pursue self-serving ends. Conversely, it
can be seen as a sign of an ideological movement’s success that individuals who are motivated to pursue
social recognition or power come to see the movement in question as a reliable or even unavoidable way of
securing these ends. Thirdly, all successful movements use methods such as mass protests and the channels
of mass communication to reach their target audience directly. This direct mobilisation requires constant
communication and often involves the use of popular and culturally resonant symbols and metonyms. The
scope and medium of direct mobilisation has therefore an impact on the ethnic boundaries of national
community. A movement can only build support amongst a target ethnic category if it is able directly and
e ectively to communicate its message by using resonant language and symbols. There is also a symbiotic
relationship between a movement’s proven capacity to mobilise support directly and its ability to co-opt the
support of powerful actors. Politically ambitious actors are more likely to support an ideological movement,
for whatever reason, if the latter has a proven capability for directly mobilising the support of a target
audience that is also important to the former.

The success of ethnic and nationalist movements is thus analytically distinct from the motivations and
interests of actors who participate in them. Ethnic and nationalist actors can be motivated by a wide range
p. 13 of interests that are quite apart from the stated objectives they pursue. Nevertheless by working to
advance a particular set of ethnic or nationalism claims, even for self-consciously self-seeking reasons,
 they contribute to establishing the public visibility and resonance of those claims and the identities they
entail.

It is important to note two important caveats about the use of the word ‘success’ in this context. Firstly,
success does not refer here to a movement’s capacity to realise its stated outcomes which, in any case, are
often linked to external factors unrelated to its political salience and strength. For example, Sri Lanka
gained independence from British rule primarily because of the consequences of World War Two and the
related momentum of Indian independence. It was entirely unrelated to the fairly anaemic forces of the
anti-colonial movement on the island. Furthermore the Sinhala leaders to whom power was transferred
espoused—at least with British o cials—a pan-ethnic conception of national identity; but this was
extremely thin, not linked to a temporally continuous or socially expansive pattern of political activity, and
as such quickly dissolved after independence, leaving no lasting impact on the dynamics of political life. In
contrast, the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist movement has utterly failed to secure its objective of Tamil self-
rule despite over six decades of powerful and coordinated mobilisation, rst through parliamentary politics,
then armed struggle. Nevertheless Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist mobilisation cannot be described as having
failed, as it has established a Tamil national identity as a dominant political reality which the Sri Lankan
state, international actors and non-nationalist Tamils have to negotiate in the now internationalised ethnic
con ict. Success therefore is not taken to mean a movement’s capacity to achieve stated objectives, but
rather its capacity to establish its preferred identity as an important, if not dominant, organising principle
of social and political life. It is in this way that Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism has been successful, though
having failed to secure its objective; whilst the pan-ethnic conception of Sri Lankan nationalism failed,
although it secured its objective of independence from colonial rule.

A second and related caveat is that success does not imply that a movement has transformed the day-to-day
subjective experiences and allegiances of its target population, or even its active adherents in its preferred
ethnic or national direction. The term ‘identity’ is thus used in relation to nationalism and ethnicity to
describe a spatially, socially and temporally consistent pattern of political activity embedded in formal as
well informal institutions, everyday behaviour and patterns of speech. The assertion that an ethnic or
national identity exists is not meant to imply the existence of an objective ‘group’ or a state of subjective
p. 14 allegiance and continually experienced social solidarity. Rather it is meant to capture a pattern of activity
that is publicly meaningful as ethnic or national and empirically observable over a sustained period of time.
National and ethnic identities are thus sustained patterns of social and political activity that can in turn be
outcomes of political mobilisation. Nationalist movements that capture state power can quickly and
e ectively transform social, economic and political life in their preferred direction by using the material
resources and coercive apparatus of public institutions. However, even national and ethnic movements that
fail to secure state power can nevertheless successfully establish their preferred identities as facts of social
and political life. Through sustained political mobilisation, they can build a broad electoral base and thereby
secure a lasting presence in political life. They can also mobilise mass protests and establish media and
other institutions to reproduce ethnic and national rituals, symbols and rhetoric in a banal but nevertheless
visible and productive way. When nationalist movements successfully mobilise support for an armed
struggle, they not only challenge the state’s territorial control but can also establish de facto governing
institutions that reproduce national identity in a state-like way. The successful assertion of an ethnic or
national identity is thus a matter of outward patterns of social and political behaviour over sustained
periods of time, rather than inward experiences of subjectivity, allegiance and solidarity.
 Contribution to the extant literature

The analysis of ethnicity and nationalism that is presented here is focused on political processes,
contingency and the centrality of national and ethnic categories to the production, reproduction and
contestation of social, political and economic order in modern national states. The growing eld of ethnicity
24
and nationalism has been described as ‘unsurveyably vast’ but the approach here draws on two important
trends. The rst trend is the growing move away from ‘substantialist’ assumptions that presume the
existence of ethnic or national groups towards a focus on the processes and dynamics that underpin
25
nationalist and ethnic phenomena. Secondly, it also draws on the now substantial body of work that links
the political salience of national and ethnic categories to the modern territorial state and its allied political
26
principles of popular sovereignty. Ethnicity and nationalism matter not because they answer an innate
need for group solidarity, or because they are universally important components of human subjectivity; but
because they are powerful principles of political, social and economic ordering in the modern system of
territorial states.

p. 15 This explanation of the divergent outcomes of the two Tamil-speaking regions thus draws on but also
develops important trends in the study of ethnicity and nationalism. While focusing on the contingent
processes through which national and ethnic identities are constructed, it nevertheless also links these
identities to the core dynamics of social and political order in modern states and shows how once
established through long-run processes, they can have a powerful and directive e ect on social, political
and economic life. It argues therefore that while national and ethnic identities are indeed contingent and
constructed, they are not ephemeral and nor are they super uous to political contestation. Rather they are
core and unavoidable components in the struggles to contest and establish the legitimate boundaries of
political community and the authoritative purposes of public power and resources. This explanation also
uses the comparison between the two Tamil-speaking regions to show that while nation-building amidst
ethnic pluralism is a crucial and unavoidable problem, it is a problem that can be resolved in more or less
inclusive ways.

This study is also a contribution to the literature on ethnicity and nationalism in India and Sri Lanka, a
growing and theoretically as well as methodologically varied area of research that has sought to explain the
salience and often con ictual dynamics of ethnic and nationalist mobilisation in the two states. Extant
studies have focused on explaining a variety of phenomena such as Hindu–Muslim riots, caste-based
political parties, the escalation of Sinhala–Tamil con ict, the production of caste and ethnic identities, the
emergence of the south Indian Dravidian movement and the mobilisation of religious and linguistic
identities in north India. There are also two studies that are focused on the two Tamil-speaking regions: the
rst, by Alfred Stepan, Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav, analyses the impact of the di erent models adopted
27
by India and Sri Lanka to manage ethnic pluralism on the two Tamil-speaking regions; while the second,
by Sankaran Krishna, examines how discourses of national identity in India and Sri Lanka shaped India’s
intervention in Sri Lanka’s con ict as well as the relations between these states and their respective Tamil
28
populations.

Amidst the diverse topics of inquiry and analytical approaches, there are nevertheless four areas of focus
that recur both singly and in combination in the explanations of ethnic and nationalist phenomenon in the
two states. The rst is the interests—material and otherwise—of political leaders and their followers and
the extent to which these promote ethnic polarisation or accommodation. Closely related to this is ethnic
p. 16 demography, the second area of focus. A binary ethnic division of the population between two competing
groups—as in Sri Lanka—is linked to ethnic outbidding by political elites and subsequent con ict, whereas
a more fragmented and cross-cutting ethnic structure—as in India—is said to inhibit such polarising
behaviour. The third area of focus is institutions—broadly conceived to include constitutions, but also
decision-making rules and whether these are con gured to promote inclusion or exclusion. Finally, a fourth
 area of focus has been the social and political practices—or discourses—embedded in administrative
categories, patterns of speech and the day-to-day practices of states and other social and political
movements that produce ethnic and national subjectivities as well as ways of being.

The comparative analysis of India and Sri Lanka, as well as each case over time, produces, however, a set of
countervailing empirical examples which show that these factors cannot account for the divergent
outcomes of the two Tamil-speaking regions. Very di erent national identities emerged in India and Sri
Lanka despite similar types of interests, ethnic cleavages and discourses of identity. Furthermore, while
post-independence Indian institutions have been more accommodative of ethnic di erences, these
institutions are in turn embedded in dominant conceptions of identity and interest that are in need of
explanation. The rest of this section discusses some of the key studies to show that in focusing on the causal
dynamics of ethnic and nationalist phenomena, these approaches tend to overlook the public character of
ethnic and national identities as well as their pivotal role in establishing the boundaries of inclusion and
exclusion in modern states. It suggests furthermore that uncovering the causal factors of ethnic and
nationalist phenomena is not the same thing as explaining why in comparable circumstances some national
identities are more inclusive than others, or why some ethnic claims lead to con ict and others do not.

The interests of political elites as well as those of voters have been cited as a causal force in explaining the
politicisation of ethnic identities, party polarisation and violence, as well as explaining instances of ethnic
moderation and e orts to contain or limit violence. Analyses that focus on elite interests include Kristian
Stokke’s argument that Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalist identities were mobilised by political elites
from the dominant class who used nationalist appeals as a means of diverting demands for more
29
substantive forms of economic redistribution. David Washbrook and Christopher Baker likewise cite the
economic interests of rural bosses and urban magnates to explain the emergence of the Dravidian
30
p. 17 movement and Indian nationalism in south India. They argue that these powerful elites adopted party
labels as vehicles for pursing political power, employing ‘publicists’ to produce ideologically charged
propaganda but also frequently shifting their allegiance from Congress to the Dravidian movement and back
again as it suited their interests. In a related argument, Paul Brass foregrounds the character of the political
arena and political elites’ struggle for power in determining whether ethnic symbols become mobilised in
31
politics or not.

While intuitively appealing, the limitations of elite instrumentalism are apparent when placed in
comparative perspective. For example, Stokke’s analysis does not explain why Tamil and Sinhala elite
interests in political power and securing a highly unequal economic order had to be secured through
competing nationalist frameworks rather than in any other way. During the same period and amidst the
same economic inequality and class interests, Sri Lankan Muslim, Indian and south Indian Tamil elite
interests in power and ongoing economic inequality were similarly secured through other types of political
projects. Likewise Baker and Washbrook’s focus on magnate interests as exhaustive of political mobilisation
fails to explain why Congress was able to build support amongst some magnates (Tamils) but not others
(Muslims), which can only be understood by focusing on the symbolic and cultural content of its political
mobilisation in di erent regions. Paul Brass’s focus on elite actors selectively mobilising and manipulating
ethnic symbols overlooks the varied substance of elite demands which in turn actually cause outcomes of
con ict or accommodation. Sri Lankan Tamil elites’ mobilisation of a distinct linguistic and cultural identity
to demand political autonomy has led to con ict, but the similar Sri Lankan Muslim mobilisation of a
distinct religious identity to demand greater representation as Muslims within the Sinhala Buddhist system
has generally been accommodated. What matters is not which ethnic symbols elites choose to mobilise, but
why some of these symbols come into con ict and others do not.

While the above approaches focus on the interests of leaders in mobilising ethnic sentiments, another set of
approaches begins with the presumption that ethnicity is an important source of voter allegiance
independent of the machinations of political elites. These approaches link ethnic con ict to ethnic
 demography and the character of political institutions. In Kanchan Chandra’s analysis of ethnic parties, she
argues that ethnicity is a rational source of electoral allegiance in patronage democracies such as India,
where access to political power facilitates the personalised ow of public goods but also notes that parties
p. 18 can incorporate multiple ethnic groups if they institute intra-party democracy and allow leaders from
32
upwardly mobile ethnic groups to rise up their ranks. However, voters’ expectations of patronage cannot
explain the very di erent types of demands that ethnic parties make. For example, the main Sri Lankan
Tamil parties have consistently sought autonomy and stayed out of government, even though this limited
their access to the public resources which could be distributed as patronage, although they have not su ered
electorally for this. In contrast, the main Sri Lankan Muslim political parties have consistently joined
whichever government is in power and thereby always secured access to public goods.

In a similar vein, Sumantra Bose and Neil DeVotta have argued that Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict is driven by a
combination of voters’ ethnic allegiances, ethnic demography, majoritarian institutions and elite
33
behaviour. The numerical dominance of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka’s majoritarian constitutional
framework has incentivised Sinhala leaders to pursue Sinhala voters exclusively by progressively outdoing
each other in their e orts to promote Sinhala rights and interests at the expense of Tamil ones. This in turn
fuelled Tamil resentment and an escalating Sinhala–Tamil con ict. Likewise, Kenneth Bush has argued that
intra-ethnic competition is key to explaining key moments of escalation in Sri Lanka’s civil war that were
spurred by erce outbidding as competing elites sought to out-manoeuvre each other by taking successively
34
more uncompromising positions.

Competitive ethnic outbidding has been an important feature of Sri Lanka’s escalating con ict. However, it
has only been e ective because it operated within politically dominant conceptions of Sinhala Buddhist and
Tamil conceptions of national identity that were by no means a guaranteed or self-evident outcome of
earlier political processes. As the historical analysis presented here shows, for most of the colonial era,
intra-Tamil and intra-Sinhala ethnic con ict along religious and caste lines was far more important and
politically salient than Tamil–Sinhala con ict. Caste cleavages were so strong that in 1911 upper-caste
Sinhalese voters preferred an upper-caste Tamil candidate over a lower-caste Sinhalese one in elections to
choose a Ceylonese representative for the legislative council; and as a consequence the Tamil candidate (P.
35
Ramanathan) won. The possibility of Sinhala ethnic outbidding and the production of a dominant
conception of Sinhala hierarchy required, rst, the political consolidation of intra-Sinhala caste, regional
and religious di erences; and second, the emergence of a Tamil national identity demanding Tamil–
Sinhala equality. Neither of these outcomes was inevitable and turned on contingent but temporally
p. 19 extended processes of political organisation and mobilisation. It is only because of the existence of these
stable identities that intra-ethnic outbidding could produce an escalation of ethnic con ict.

Elite and popular interests have also been used to explain ethnic accommodation in south India. Marguerite
Ross Barnett cites the pragmatism of Dravidian leaders to explain the moderation of the movement’s
36
demands from secession to accommodation. She argues that Dravidian leaders dropped the demand for
independence in November 1960—against the wishes of their followers—to prevent the movement being
targeted by the Indian government, which was increasingly hostile to secessionist demands in the midst of
border tensions with China. In contrast, Narendra Subramanian points to the interests of Dravidian
37
movement supporters as moderating the more extreme ethno-nationalism of their leaders. He argues that
the Dravidian parties’ main support base—upwardly mobile middling peasants, small shopkeepers and
clerical workers—used the open and exible structures of the Dravidian parties to blunt their leaders’
ethno-nationalism and radical demands for secession (contra Ross Barnett) whilst pursuing their own
social and political advancement within the Indian constitutional framework. He further argues that the
more authoritarian Tamil and Sinhala Buddhist nationalist parties in Sri Lanka were less open to being
changed by their supporters and thus retained their focus on upholding exclusive ethnic identities.
 These explanations, whilst citing contrasting sources of moderation for the relative stability of south Indian
ethnic politics, are nevertheless equally problematic as they overlook the importance of national identity in
sustaining relations of con ict and accommodation. Ross Barnett’s arguments about the moderation of
Dravidian leaders cannot be applied to Sri Lanka, where even relatively ‘moderate’ Tamil demands for
autonomy, rather than independence, have provoked resolute and angry rejections from Sinhala Buddhist
leaders. Furthermore, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist demands that Tamil identity and interest be treated
equally to those of the Sinhalese are no more or less ‘extreme’ than core Dravidian demands for the
cultivation of Tamil identity and interests. Yet in Sri Lanka con ict emerged because Tamil and Sinhala
Buddhist conceptions of national identity are incompatible; while in India stability ensued because the
politically dominant conception of Indian national identity could accommodate Dravidian demands.

Subramanian’s argument about the moderation of Dravidian party supporters also cannot be used to
explain Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict. Sri Lankan political parties—Tamil and Sinhala—are also not centralised
p. 20 and authoritarian, but quite susceptible to pressure from below. James Manor along with Katharine
Adeney and Andrew Wyatt have argued that it is the weakness of the main Sinhala parties that rendered
them unable to withstand the force of Sinhala Buddhist mobilisation; they also point to the relative strength
38
of the Indian National Congress as a source of India’s more inclusive and stable democracy. However,
linking strong party structures with ethnic accommodation is also problematic as it ignores the Congress
movement’s ethnically inclusive conception of national identity, which developed in tandem with its
39
organisational coherence. Had Sri Lanka evolved a similarly organisationally robust movement with an
ethnically inclusive conception of national identity, then con ict would have been avoided. However, if the
Sinhala parties had evolved cohesive organisations on a Sinhala Buddhist platform, the problem of mutually
incompatible Tamil and Sinhala national identities would have remained, but with the added feature of
organisational stability.

The varied incidence of Hindu–Muslim violence has also been explained in terms of the elite as well as
grass-roots or civil society interests. Ashatoush Varshney has argued that intra-communal civil society
associations that cross the Hindu–Muslim divide have the capacity to prevent and contain Hindu–Muslim
violence at a local level in the aftermath of exogenous shocks, such as the destruction of the Babri Masjid in
40
1992 that led to violence in several cities and towns across India. Varshney argues that these networks and
associations, which were unevenly established during the anti-colonial wave of mass mobilisation in the
1920s and 1930s, can e ectively contain violence by halting the spread of rumours and providing timely
information to the law enforcement authorities. In contrast Steven Wilkinson has suggested that key to
explaining the varied incidence of ethnic riots and violence are the electoral and political interests of
political leaders who are able to control law enforcement authorities. Where these leaders have an interest
in creating ethnic polarisation, they will allow violence to unfold; but where they have an interest in
containing violence—because they are dependent on the votes of ethnic minorities—they will use law
41
enforcement authorities to halt and prevent violence.

These explanations equally overlook the causal force of identities in shaping actors’ proclivity to provoke
and restrain mass violence. Ashatoush Varshney’s argument about the capacity of civil society networks
relies on the presumption that the state—or the law enforcement mechanism—is ethnically neutral and
inclined to prevent violence. As he himself states, his framework cannot be applied to situations where the
state and military are ‘bent on ethnic pogroms’ in which identities and the compulsions they create are
42
p. 21 clearly important. Identities rather than civil society networks are therefore key to explaining the
o cially sanctioned anti-Tamil violence of the 1977–83 era that was an important factor in the escalation
43
of Sri Lanka’s con ict. Identities may also override electoral incentives and provoke violence against
minorities, even where minority votes have become an important component of exercising power. In June
2014, for example, when a Buddhist organisation close to the government triggered anti-Muslim violence in
a southern Sri Lankan town, the security forces were slow to intervene to protect Muslims and their
 property, even though Muslim political parties were members of the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
44
ruling coalition. The anti-Muslim violence was coeval with a resurgent and triumphalist Sinhala Buddhist
nationalism that has dominated Sri Lanka’s politics since the end of the war, and the government chose to
consolidate Sinhala Buddhist support even though this meant alienating Muslim voters. The loss of Muslim
support was not without electoral consequences and subsequently contributed to Rajapaksa’s defeat in the
45
January 2015 elections. Likewise, in the April 2014 general elections, the Hindu nationalist BJP built an
electorally successful cross-caste Hindu alliance in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh following an
eruption of Hindu–Muslim violence in September 2013, the worst in over a decade, which organisations
46
linked to the BJP have been accused of instigating. The electoral growth of parties representing lower
castes and their e orts to build support amongst Muslim voters had previously worked to contain Hindu–
Muslim violence in the state, but countervailing mobilisation towards an alternative Hindu conception of
47
identity that marginalises Muslims has been associated with the return of such violence.

Analyses that focus on institutions have stressed India’s more accommodating constitutional design and
forms of governance for its relative success—when compared with Sri Lanka—in managing ethnic
di erences. Alfred Stepan, Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav argue that Indian leaders’ decision to adopt what
they term ‘state-nation’ policies that explicitly recognise cultural plurality fostered stable accommodation,
while Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict is caused by ‘nation-state’ policies which forcibly sought to create cultural
48
homogeneity out of deeply entrenched cultural heterogeneity. James Manor has argued that India’s
federal design has worked to quarantine con icts within state boundaries and thereby prevented them from
49
turning into challenges to the central government. Paul Brass has also provided an explanation of India’s
success in managing ethnic pluralism that focuses not so much on formal constitutional design but rather
p. 22 on broad rules through which demands for recognition are managed. He suggests that these rules—which
recognise linguistic but not religious demands, requiring broad support and consent from all sides—will
slowly work towards the consolidation of a stable ‘multi-national’ state in India, comparable to that in
50
Switzerland.

Although India’s institutions have been more accommodating of ethnic di erence than those in Sri Lanka,
this is not merely a matter of institutional design or choice. India’s formal recognition of ethnic pluralism
derives from decades of Congress’s anti-colonial mobilisation, which sought to secure political support
51
from multiple and politicised caste, linguistic and religious groups. This produced a series of
accommodative measures and practices within the Congress movement itself that were subsequently
52
incorporated into the Indian constitution, because Congress dominated the Constituent assembly. The
absence of such measures in Sri Lanka is not mere oversight that can be corrected with appropriately framed
constitutional reforms, but rather is linked to the political dominance of the Sinhala Buddhist conception of
national identity and the simultaneous absence of a pan-ethnic one. The argument that India has adopted a
multi-national identity is likewise problematic, as it confuses ethnic claims and ethnic accommodation
with the acknowledgement and making of national demands. India’s management of ethnic di erences,
where this has been successful—as in the Tamil case—has depended on symbolically and organisationally
including these ethnic identities within an overarching conception of the nation as a historically formed
entity. Assertions of linguistic and caste identity have generally sought recognition within the Indian
framework, rather than political autonomy, and are therefore better described as ethnic rather than
national groups. The ‘unity in diversity’ conception of the Indian nation described in the quote above
describes a national identity in which the acknowledgement of ethnic di erence is nevertheless bounded by
the idea of a shared past and importantly a shared future. India’s management of ethnic di erence is
therefore due to the emergence of an ethnically inclusive sense of national identity, rather than a multi-
national one.

Approaches that focus on identity-shaping discourses also o er little scope for comparative explanation, as
broadly similar discourses are evident across both states and in uenced by cross-cutting intellectual
 53
trends, for example the Aryan/Dravidian dichotomy. These studies have focused on the discourses of the
state as well as those of social and political movements. Nicolas Dirks and Nira Wickramasinghe have
discussed the colonial state in India and Sri Lanka respectively: Dirks the importance of British practices
54
p. 23 and ideas in producing caste identities; and Wickramasinghe the role of o cial practices and interests
55
in producing Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Kandyan ethnic identities. Sankaran Krishna’s study of India’s
intervention in Sri Lanka’s ethnic con ict argues that the discursive production of a uni ed national ‘self’
in India and Sri Lanka has also created a series of ethnic ‘others’ that in turn have sustained violent con icts
56
in both states. Finally, Sumathi Ramasway’s study of south Indian Tamil linguistic nationalism explains
its passion—for example, adherents’ willingness to self-immolate to defend the o cial status of Tamil
against Hindi—through the rhetorical tropes, images and metonyms of this literature that constitutes a
57
Tamil-speaking subject de ned by service to the Tamil language.

However, a comparative perspective highlights the limitations of these approaches in accounting for the
divergent outcomes that are the focus of this study. Dirks’ foregrounding of British rule in producing caste
58
identities could equally be applied to British and Dutch practices in Sri Lanka. But whereas in India caste
has become an important vector of mobilisation, allied to but independent of language and ideas of race, in
Sri Lanka caste divisions remained important but are largely incorporated within Sinhala Buddhist and
Tamil nationalist mobilisation. Similarly Wickramasinghe’s focus on colonial attitudes and policies in
constituting ethnic identities in Sri Lanka cannot account for the very di erent political trajectories of these
similarly constituted categories. Twentieth-century Tamil politics have been dominated by the demand for
collective Tamil–Sinhala political equality, while Muslim political leaders have largely accepted and worked
within the Sinhala Buddhist framework. Krishna’s notion of self–other con icts similarly overlooks the
di erentiated nature of relations between the national self and various ethnic groups, only some of whom
become others. For example, the accommodation of Tamil identity within the Indian ‘Unity in Diversity’
conception and the simultaneous exclusion of Muslim identity was contingent on patterns of mobilisation
rather than the working out of self–other logic inherent to the discursive production of identities. Finally,
while the Tamil protests that Ramaswamy seeks to explain were undoubtedly intense and passionate, they
were not uniquely so. There was, for example, a wave of upper-caste self-immolations in the early 1990s
against positive discrimination measures to bene t lower-caste groups, but these were not associated with
59
a previous history of thick and emotive literary expression. Also, as previously noted, while the Tamil
language rights protests were violent and intense in India, the issue has been largely resolved. In
comparison, Sri Lankan Tamil language rights protests were relatively tame, involving in the main limited
p. 24 acts of civil disobedience, but these protests nevertheless provoked lethal bouts of anti-Tamil violence
and the language issue become part of a broader and escalating Sinhala–Tamil con ict that nally led to
civil war in 1983.

The analysis presented here o ers therefore a novel explanation for the divergent outcomes of the two
Tamil-speaking regions that departs from extant analyses. Instead of focusing on the factors that cause
speci c ethnic phenomena, it analyses national identity as an organising principle of the modern state, but
one that can be variously inclusive or exclusive of the ethnic pluralism found within the boundaries of
almost all states. It also shows that while interests, institutions and discourses are important in the
production and reproduction of national and ethnic identities, only a focus on contingent—in that they
could easily have been otherwise—but temporally extended political processes can explain why more or less
ethnically inclusive national identities emerge in comparable conditions. The comparative analyses of
national identity formation presented here show how initial and contingent di erences in the patterns of
national and ethnic politics beginning in the late nineteenth century but subsequently sustained over
several decades produced in India a dominant conception of national identity inclusive of Tamils, and in Sri
Lanka one that was hostile to Tamil demands. The analyses also show how these di erently inclusive
conceptions of national identity and their relations of accommodation and con ict with Tamil political
actors explain the stark disparities between the relative prosperity and stability of the south Indian state of
 Tamil Nadu and the war-shattered impoverishment, state repression and militarisation that characterise
the Tamil-speaking regions of Sri Lanka. The empirical chapters that follow trace the emergence,
contestation and development of Tamil and national identities comparatively from the late colonial period
to the present day. Each of the empirical chapters is organised around a puzzle that foregrounds the causal
role of contingent political processes in producing unexpected patterns of national and ethnic politics. The
nal section of this chapter provides a brief summary of the chapters that follow and shows how the
argument unfolds.

Overview of chapters

Chapter 1 provides an overarching view of the emergence and development of ethnic and nationalist politics
and shows how the process of national identity formation in India and Sri Lanka emerged in comparable
conditions and had to accommodate a similar range of ethnic di erences. The subsequent four empirical
p. 25 chapters of Part One deal in turn with colonial and post-independence politics in India and Sri Lanka.
Chapter 2 discusses colonial India: it explains how and why Congress’s pan-ethnic nationalism became
dominant, despite countervailing mobilisation by Dravidian and Muslim nationalists, and also explains why
it was able to incorporate Tamils but not Muslims. Chapter 3 turns to colonial Sri Lanka and shows why pan-
ethnic nationalism did not develop in Sri Lanka despite arguably more propitious conditions. It also shows
that intra-Tamil and intra-Sinhala ethnic con ict along caste and religious lines was the principal axis of
con ict at this time and describes how the consolidation of distinct but incompatible Sinhala Buddhist and
Tamil national identities overcame these divisions. Chapter 4 then returns to India and traces the post-
independence competition between the Dravidian movement and the Congress party and argues that this
was agonistic rather than antagonistic because of their shared objectives—namely promoting Tamil
identity and interests. It further argues that the Dravidian movement’s accommodation within the Indian
constitutional framework occurred because this constitution accommodated and recognised these core
objectives—rather than because of the relative moderation of Dravidian leaders. Chapter 5, the last in Part
One, then moves back to Sri Lanka and shows that escalating con ict in Sri Lanka was driven by the mutual
incompatibility between Sinhala Buddhist conceptions of an ethnically hierarchical order and Tamil
nationalist demands for collective equality. It argues that Tamil nationalist mobilisation was not simply a
response to exclusion but rather required active and temporally continuous political mobilisation.

Part Two focuses on the escalation and ending of Sri Lanka’s civil war, as well as subsequent post-war
developments. The extant analyses of the con ict and its relentless militarised escalation over three decades
have tended to be ‘internalist’, focusing on the belligerents and their interests and blaming in particular the
LTTE and its allegedly extremist, uncompromising and militaristic character. However, these explanations
struggle to account for important post-war developments. They cannot explain the deepening ethnic
polarisation that continues despite the demise of the LTTE or the ongoing and militarised domination of the
Tamil-speaking areas by the almost exclusively Sinhala armed forces. They also cannot account for the
important shifts in the international alignments of the con ict that have seen growing tensions postwar
between the Sri Lankan government and its former key allies in the war against the LTTE, principally
Western states and India over the latter’s insistence on accountability for wartime abuses, demilitarisation
p. 26 and political autonomy for the Tamil-speaking regions. At the same time it is also important to explain
the new and emergent linkages between international state and non-state actors pursuing liberal reform
and Tamil nationalists on the ground and in the diaspora, who were previously viewed with suspicion as
aligned to the ‘extremist’ LTTE and often subject to repressive anti-terrorism proscriptions intended to
sti e and contain the LTTE’s capacity to mobilise support.

These chapters o er a fresh explanation for the con ict that accounts for these post-war developments by
focusing on the interaction between powerful international interventions on the one hand and on the other
hand the sustained processes of Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalist mobilisation. The chapters show
how and why sustained international interventions into the con ict beginning in the late 1970s fuelled the
processes of both Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalist mobilisation whilst failing to secure their stated
end: an ethnically inclusive liberal–democratic state. The analysis draws from the now established analysis
of international peace-building and liberal intervention in sites of con ict to argue that dominant policy
and academic frameworks which securitise and de-politicise con ict worked in Sri Lanka to produce an
asymmetrical pattern of intervention that generally strengthened the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist project
whilst seeking to contain and marginalise the armed Tamil nationalist threat to the Sri Lankan state. Three
chapters trace these developments in chronological order. Chapter 6 focuses on the Cold War era (1977–94)
and shows how Western interventions under the rubric of anti-communism and Indian intervention to
secure regional dominance interacted with the then simmering insurgency to produce a full-blown civil war
that entrenched the Sinhala Buddhist character of state and society whilst prompting radical shifts in the
con gurations of Tamil nationalist politics. Chapter 7 then turns to the post-Cold War era (1994–2009) and
shows how international actors’ focus on containing or defeating the LTTE, viewed as the principal obstacle
to liberal reform, concealed the stark contradictions between international expectations of liberal reform
and the entrenched dominance of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka’s state, society and crucially
the military. These contradictions that have come to the fore in Sri Lanka’s post-war era are discussed in
Chapter 8, which shows how shifting international alignments have opened up new spaces for the now
globalised Tamil nationalist movement, whilst presenting new challenges for Sinhala Buddhist nationalism
which faces increasingly forceful international demands for liberal reform that can no longer be delayed by
citing the LTTE’s obstructions. The Conclusion discusses the implications of these ndings for the study of
ethnicity and nationalism as well as e orts to manage ethnic con icts through constitutional reform and
broader peace-building e orts.

Notes

1. Until 1972 Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon. For convenience this book will use Sri Lanka throughout.
2. Tamil Naduʼs economic and human development outcomes are good relative to other Indian states. In 2012–13 it had the
third highest domestic output per capita of all the major Indian states (a er Haryana and Maharashtra). See Government
of India, Economic Survey 2014–15, Statistical Appendix, A19. It also has the third highest score on the human development
index. For details, see Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera, ʻRegional patterns of human and child deprivation in Indiaʼ, Economic
and Political Weekly 57 (2012), pp. 42–9.
3. Marguerite Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1976), p. 133.
4. Narendra Subramanian, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: political parties, citizens, and democracy in South India (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 301.
5. See Chapters 3 and 5.
6. Christophe Ja relot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: strategies of identity building,
implantation and mobilisation (with special reference to central India) (London: Hurst & Co., 1996); Thomas B. Hansen and
Christophe Ja relot, The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
7. A. K. Verma, Beg Mizra Asmer and Kumar Sudhir, ʻA sa ron sweep in Uttar Pradeshʼ, The Hindu, 23 May 2014,
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-sa ron-sweep-in-uttar-pradesh/article6037683.ece?homepage=true, last
accessed 30 May 2014 ; Sanjay Kumar, ʻBihar: interpreting the massive mandateʼ, The Hindu, 23 May 2014,
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/bihar-interpreting-the-massive-mandate/article6037680.ece?homepage=true,
last accessed 30 May 2014.
8. Hugo Gorringe, Untouchable Citizens: Dalit movements and democratization in Tamil Nadu (Delhi: Sage Publications India,
2005).
9. Sujit Sivasundaram, Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the bounds of an Indian Ocean colony (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2013).
10. See Chapter 3.
11. Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the question of nationhood (Minneapolis: University of
 Minnesota Press, 1999).
12. See Chapter 8.
13. For the connections between popular sovereignty and nationalism, see Bernard Yack, ʻPopular Sovereignty and
Nationalismʼ, Political Theory 29.4 (2001), pp. 517–36; and Connor Walker, ʻNationalism and political illegitimacyʼ, in
Conversi, Daniele, ed., Ethnonationalism in the contemporary world: Walker Connor and the study of nationalism (London:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 24–47.
14. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995), p. 29.
15. Ibid., ch. 4 and 5.
16. Andreas Wimmer, Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: shadows of modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), p. 1.
17. For critical analyses of the civic–ethnic dichotomy, see Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004), ch. 6; and Bernard Yack, ʻThe myth of the civic nationʼ, Critical Review 10.2 (1996), pp. 193–
211.
18. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (London: Meridian Books, 1969), p. 49.
19. See Chapter 2.
20. J. R. Jayewardene, Daily News, 12 June 1987, Colombo, p. 1, quoted in Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities, p. 41.
21. See Chapter 5.
22. Stewart Bell, ʻInside Sri Lanka: A life given over to warʼ, National Post, 23 September 2008, available at
http://www.nationalpost.com/Inside+Lanka+life+given+over/832374/story.html, last accessed April 2015.
23. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 93.
24. Rogers Brubaker, ʻEthnicity, race, and nationalismʼ, Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009), p. 21.
25. Ibid., p. 28.
26. For key examples, see Brueilly, ʻNationalism and the Stateʼ; Billig, ʻBanal Nationalismʼ; and Wimmer, ʻNationalist
Exclusionʼ.
27. Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, Cra ing State-Nations: India and other multinational democracies
(Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2011).
28. Krishna, ʻPostcolonial Insecuritiesʼ.
29. Kristian Stokke, ʻSinhalese and Tamil nationalism as post-colonial political projects from “above”, 1948–1983ʼ, Political
Geography 17.1 (1998), pp. 83–113.
30. David A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: the Madras Presidency, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: University of
Cambridge, Centre of South Asian Studies, 1976); Christopher J. Baker, The Politics of South India, 1920–1937 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976).
31. Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005).
32. Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: patronage and ethnic head counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007).
33. Sumantra Bose, States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka, India, and the Tamil Eelam movement (New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 1994); Neil DeVotta, Blowback: linguistic nationalism, institutional decay, and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).
34. Kenneth Bush, The Intra-Group Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
35. Chapter 3.
36. Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India.
37. Subramanian, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization.
38. James Manor, ʻThe Failure of Political Integration in Sri Lanka (Ceylon)ʼ, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 17.1
(1979), pp. 21–47; Katharine Adeney and Andrew Wyatt, ʻDemocracy in South Asia: getting beyond the structure–agency
dichotomyʼ, Political Studies 52.1 (2004), pp. 1–18.
39. Sumit Sarkar, ʻIndian democracy: the historical inheritanceʼ, in Kohli, Atul, ed., The Success of Indiaʼs Democracy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
40. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
41. Steven Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
42. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, p. 11.
43. Chapter 6.
44. For reports of the violence, see ʻFear, shock among Sri Lankan Muslims in the a ermath of Buddhist mob violenceʼ, CNN
News, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/19/world/asia/sri-lanka-muslim-aluthgama/, last accessed April 2015 ;
ʻ“Fascists” in sa ron robes: the rise of Sri Lankaʼs Buddhist ultra-nationalistsʼ, CNN News,
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/asia/sri-lanka-bodu-bala-sena-profile/index.html, last accessed April 2015 ;
 International Crisis Group, Crisis Watch Database, Sri Lanka, 1 July 2014, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publica-tion-
type/crisiswatch/crisiswatch-database.aspx?CountryIDs=%7bE3AEAB0F-4DC7-4926-9510-3165AA4F182B%7d#results, last
accessed April 2015.
45. ʻDisillusioned kingmakers: Sri Lankaʼs Muslims may choose oppositionʼ, The Hindu,
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/south-asia/disillusioned-king-makers-sri-lankan-muslims-may-choose-
opposition/article6749341.ece?topicpage=true&topicId=1820, last accessed April 2015.
46. ʻAs riot hit Muzzafarnagar votes, religious divide favours Modiʼ, Reuters, http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/04/10/election-
muza arnagar-bjp-congress-modi-idINDEEA3903W20140410, last accessed April 2015 ; ʻ“Jats and Muslims in
Muzzafarnagar are victims of a devilish design”, Seema Mustafaʼ, Tehelka, http://www.tehelka.com/jats-and-muslims-in-
muza arnagar-are-victims-of-a-devilish-design-seema-mustafa/, last accessed April 2015.
47. For the previous decline in violence, see Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, pp. 160–71; and for the return of Hindu–Muslim
violence, see Badri Narayan, ʻCommunal riots in Uttar Pradeshʼ, Economic and Political Weekly 49.37 (2014), pp. 29–32.
48. Stepan, Linz and Yadav, Cra ing State-nations.
49. James Manor, ʻCenter-state relationsʼ, in Kohli, Atul, ed., The Success of Indiaʼs Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), pp. 78–102.
50. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics, pp. 17–19.
51. Chapter 2.
52. Chapter 4.
53. Chapter 1.
54. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: colonialism and the making of modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2011).
55. Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: a history (London: Hurst & Co., 2014).
56. Krishna, Post-colonial Insecurities.
57. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: language devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1997).
58. John D. Rogers, ʻCaste as a social category and identity in colonial Lankaʼ, Indian Economic and Social History Review 41.5
(2004), pp. 51–77.
59. Dirks, Castes of Mind, p. 275.
 Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190638580 Print ISBN: 9780190498320

Search in this book

CHAPTER

1 The Origins 
Madurika Rasaratnam

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498320.003.0002 Pages 29–48

Published: August 2016

Abstract
This chapter provides an historical overview of ethnic and national politics in India and Sri Lanka. It
shows that despite the di erences of geographic and demographic scale, the two states have a similar
range of salient ethnic identities: caste, race, region and language. There were also synchronicities and
strong ideological overlaps in the development of ethnic and national movements across the two
states. The very di erent resolutions of the national question in India and Sri Lanka could not have
been predicted from the range of political movements and positions visible during the colonial period.
India and Sri Lanka are thus comparable cases and the divergent outcomes reveal the causal force of
contingent political processes.

Keywords: India, Sri Lanka, Colonial, Caste, Language, Aryan, Dravidian, Race, Politics, Overview
Subject: Asian Politics
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
 Introduction

This chapter provides a historical overview of ethnic and national politics in India and Sri Lanka, showing
that despite the di erences of geographic and demographic scale, the problem of ethnicity and national
identity in the two states are comparable. It traces the simultaneous emergence of ethnic and national
politics in India and Sri Lanka during the nineteenth century. This occurred alongside the uneven processes
of social, economic and political transformation associated with British colonial rule. The chapter shows
that the question of national identity in the two colonial states required the accommodation of a similar
range of ethnic identities that included di erences of religion, caste, race, region and language. Along with a
broad synchronicity in the timing of important landmarks in the development of ethnic and national
politics in the two states, there were also strong ideological overlaps in many of the movements concerned.
The very di erent resolutions of the national question in India and Sri Lanka could not have been predicted
from the range of political movements and positions visible during the early decades of the twentieth
century. Thus, despite the apparent di erences of geographic and demographic scale, India and Sri Lanka
are comparable case studies that reveal the causal force of autonomous, open-ended and competitive
political processes in shaping the more or less inclusive resolutions of the national question.

The rst part of the chapter establishes the historical trajectories through which modern ethnic and
national politics rst became conceptually meaningful in late-nineteenth-century colonial India and Sri
p. 30 Lanka. These conditions are usefully analytically separated into the following two related and
synchronous processes: rst, the establishment of the colonial state and the adoption of concepts such as
popular sovereignty and representative government; second, the conceptual and social translation of the
existing cultural and social diversity of the population into modern ethnic categories. The emergence of
national and ethnic politics was also dependent on the social, technological and economic changes that
occurred during the nineteenth century. These include the introduction of mass communication
technologies, beginning with the printing press; the shift to modern forms of education and the emergence
of a Western-educated segment; changes in transportation infrastructure; and the integration of India and
1
Sri Lanka into regional and global commodity, labour and nancial ows. These changes did not replicate
the transformations that took place across western Europe and north America. Indeed, the expansion of
colonial rule in the early decades of the nineteenth century was associated with de-urbanisation and de-
2
industrialisation across many parts of India. Nevertheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, concepts
such as popular sovereignty and the nation, along with the political institutions of the colonial state,
became crucial and established facts of social and political activity in India and Sri Lanka. The third and nal
part of the chapter provides a broad outline of ethnic and national politics in the two countries.
 British colonial rule and modern politics

The antecedents of formal British colonial rule in India and Sri Lanka can be traced to 1611, when the East
India Company rst began its trading activities on the Indian subcontinent. The English company was not
3
the rst to arrive in the region and was not for many centuries the most politically or militarily dominant.
An early lead was taken by the Portuguese, who established trading posts primarily on the western coast of
4 5
India from the early 1500s and the south-western coast of Sri Lanka in 1501. In India European traders,
including the French and the Danes, acted within a vibrant and competitive Indian political system in which
6
Indian rulers vied for control over territory and taxable resources, including trade. From the dissolution of
the Mughal Empire and until the mid-eighteenth century, European trading companies occupied subsidiary
political, economic and military roles in relation to competing Indian rulers who sought to expand and
consolidate their state-building projects. The shift from trade to formal colonial rule on the Indian
p. 31 subcontinent took place in the context of eighteenth-century French and British rivalry in which India
became one of the theatres of globalised military con ict. From the 1740s, troops from the British and
French state armies and navies regularly supplemented the troops of their respective trading companies in
battles for control of Indian trading posts. By the late eighteenth century, the expansion of the French and
British military presence in India and the perceived importance of Indian trade to French and British
national interests altered the balance between the European companies and Indian rulers. The French and
British companies increasingly used their military and nancial resources to intervene in con icts between
Indian rulers and in Indian succession disputes which left their Indian allies heavily indebted to European
company o cials. The East India Company’s decision in 1757 to depose the Nawab of Bengal, replacing him
with a succession of dependants and nally in 1771 directly assuming the governance of Bengal, was the
culmination of a series of events in which British ideals of absolute sovereignty, Indian political rivalries,
Indian indebtedness, as well as the global imperatives of Anglo-French competition, were all present.

From the initial base in Bengal and trading posts in Madras and Bombay, British territorial possessions
gradually expanded over the next century through a mixture of logistics and motivations that included the
7
need to expand and secure the ‘turbulent frontier’ against possible Indian and French threats and the
growing indebtedness of some Indian rulers, as well as the expanding territorial ambitions of others. British
expansion was punctuated by a series of intense military encounters with Indian rulers, principally the
Marathas and Mysore, who were themselves expanding their territories through the logic of militarised
state-building. A decisive victory over Mysore was nally achieved in 1799, while the Marathas were
defeated by 1818. Some of the annexed territory was brought under direct British rule and administered
through the Presidencies of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Alongside this, a large number of Indian
kingdoms were incorporated as Princely States, ruled by hereditary monarchs who retained a veneer of
autonomy within the overall structure of the British Empire. British colonial expansion continued through
the nineteenth century; by 1891 it covered an area of 1.3 million square miles, with a total population of over
8
280 million people.

For much of the eighteenth century the Tamil-speaking areas of south India were the site of intense and
violent contest between post-Mughal successor states and European powers. The clashing territorial
ambitions of Mysore (ruled by Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan), the Nawab of Arcot and the Maratha-ruled
p. 32 kingdom of Tanjore led to frequent battles in which European companies were increasingly involved as
allies and often adversaries of Indian rulers. By the 1760s, the ruler of Arcot had become a dependant of the
East India Company; and by the 1780s, the same was true of the ruler of Tanjore. With the nal defeat of
Tipu Sultan at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Tamil-speaking areas were incorporated into
Company rule and contained within the borders of the Madras Presidency. The vast majority of these areas,
excepting the small princely state of Puddukotai and the French-administered enclave of Pondicherry, were
incorporated as directly administered territories. The Madras Presidency covered an area of 141,001 square
 miles, an area calculated at the time to equal the United Kingdom and Greece combined and containing a
9
polyglot population of almost 36 million, of which just over 15 million were Tamil-speakers.

Formal colonial rule and the rapid incorporation of India into a British-centred global economy from the
10
early decades of the nineteenth century wrought important changes in south Indian society as well as its
11
economic patterns and linkages. Principally the growing commercialisation of the south Indian economy,
evident from the fteenth century, and the well-established links of trade and culture with the Arab Gulf
and South East Asia began to wither. The twin impacts of the industrial revolution and the intensi cation
and consolidation of British rule produced an economic depression during the early decades of the
12
nineteenth century. The overseas and internal markets for south Indian textiles and other artisanal goods,
along with a nascent local iron and steel industry, were soon taken over by British goods. Meanwhile, the
defeat of Indian rulers also dampened demand for artisanal goods, soldiers and other forms of cultural
13
specialists as the courts and their armies were dismantled. Large numbers of former artisans and soldiers
were therefore forced back onto the land just as the Company was seeking to consolidate its rule by
extracting often penal levels of revenue from agricultural production. The overall e ect was predictably to
depress prices and crush economic activity, such that by the time the ‘depression lifted, in the 1850s, what
once had been one of the early modern world’s great commercial economies had been turned into a
14
“backward” agricultural dependency’. South India’s own trading and cultural links with the rest of the
world were thus curtailed and rearticulated along the lines of Britain’s growing political and economic
dominance. The Company’s south Indian troops, nanced in large part by agricultural revenue, were used in
Sri Lanka (1795), Java (1811–15) and Burma (1822–4). At the same time the growing population combined
p. 33 with a depressed local economy centred on agricultural production led to pressure on the land and net
15
labour emigration from south India, including to the expanding plantation economy of Ceylon.

The island of Ceylon was also incorporated into the British Empire against the background of global Anglo-
16
French rivalry and was prompted by the French invasion of Holland in 1794. At that point most of the
island, except for the inland and inaccessible Kandyan kingdom, had been under European political and
economic dominance for almost three hundred years. The Portuguese initially established a trading base on
the south-western coast of the island in 1501, but by the end of the century had annexed the territories
associated with the south-western Sinhala kingdom of Kotte (later Colombo) and the northern Tamil
kingdom of Ja na as Portuguese dominions. Portuguese rule lasted until the mid-seventeenth century
when rst Colombo (1656) and then Ja na (1658) fell to the Dutch East India Company. Dutch rule in its
turn was brought to an end when the French deposed the Stattholder of Holland and installed a friendly
republican government, prompting British fears that the Dutch territory on the island, particularly the
17
natural harbour at Trincomalee, would be used by the French to attack India. East India Company troops
laid siege and captured Trincomalee in August 1795, and by February the next year all the Dutch possessions
on the island had been surrendered to the British. The newly captured territories in Ceylon were initially
administered by the East India Company in Madras, but in 1802 were incorporated as the Crown Colony of
18
Ceylon and brought under the control of the recently established Colonial O ce.

In 1815 the hitherto independent kingdom of Kandy was annexed and brought under British rule. The
Kandyan areas were linguistically Sinhalese and religiously Buddhist, like the low country or south-western
Sinhalese regions that had been under European rule since 1501. However, the di erent historical
experience of the Kandyan areas produced an important regional distinction between the low country and
Kandyan Sinhalese. The low country Sinhalese areas and people were more commercially developed and had
been under Western and Christian in uence for a much longer period; this cultural and economic di erence
19
also became at times politically salient. The capture of the Kandyan areas furthermore triggered an
important change in the island’s economy and demography by opening up the interior areas to plantation
agriculture: initially co ee and then, from the 1880s, tea. Labour for the plantations was sourced from south
India, particularly the Tamil-speaking areas. The increasing commercialisation of the island’s economy,
p. 34 stimulated by its integration into global trade ows, also brought large numbers of other Tamils and
Indians more generally who came to take advantage of the opportunities in trade and commerce. By the late
nineteenth century there were thus two distinct Tamil-speaking populations on the island. The rst was the
population that had migrated in the nineteenth century and settled mainly in the central and south-western
parts of the island. The second was the population in the north-eastern parts of the island that had been
20
established there for several centuries. The 1891 Census of Ceylon recorded the population of the island, a
21
territory of 25, 333 square miles, at just over 3 million. Of this, the majority were Sinhalese (2,041,158) and
22
just under a third were Tamils (723,853). The other signi cant minorities were the Muslims, called
Moormen (197,166); and Malays (10,133), migrants from Malaysia.

Although they were administered separately, the political development of the two colonies, and in particular
the emergence of ethnic and national politics, was crucially shaped by what Thomas Metcalfe has called a
23
‘distinctive ideology of imperial governance shaped by the ideals of liberalism’. This ideology was linked
to the emergent industrial revolution and the associated reform and evangelical movements that were
transforming social, political and economic life in Britain, and replaced the earlier more conservative and
24
purely extractive mercantilist orientation of British rule. British rule was legitimised as a means of
e ecting social and economic progress and development. This sentiment is clearly expressed in Queen
Victoria’s proclamation of 1857, issued to mark the end of the Indian mutiny or rebellion and the beginning
of the British Crown’s direct rule over India, replacing the previously existing indirect rule through the East
India Company. The proclamation stated that it was ‘our earnest duty to stimulate the peaceful industry of
India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer its government for the bene t
25
of all our subjects resident therein’. The in uence of liberal imperialism is also clearly evident in Sri
Lanka. The 1833 report of the Commissioners W. M. G. Colebrooke and C. H. Cameron, appointed to
recommend reforms on the government, judiciary and economy of Ceylon, was optimistic about the
prospects for advancement on the island. The Commissioners stated that Ceylon was ‘the ttest spot in our
Eastern Dominions in which to plant the seeds of European civilization whence we may not unreasonably
26
hope that it will hereafter spread over the whole of these vast territories’.

Self-government through representative institutions was a crucial component of the liberal imperialist
notions of advancement towards European standards of civilisation. Thomas Macaulay, English
p. 35 parliamentarian, historian and law member of the Governor General’s Council in India, stated in 1833
that the day when India’s ‘public mind’, expanded by ‘our system’, sought self-government, ‘it will be the
27
proudest day in English history’. The contemporaneous Colebrooke–Cameron report also recommended a
legislative council with representatives—nominated rather than elected—chosen to represent interests in
Ceylon society. The Commissioners noted that while the prevailing ‘ignorance and prejudice’ would prevent
the government from adopting the Ceylonese representatives’ views, a representative legislature was
28
nevertheless consistent ‘with the policy of a liberal government’.

By the mid to late nineteenth century, the early-nineteenth-century optimism of liberal imperialism had
given way to more conservative attitudes, and British o cials were generally reluctant to grant the
29
possibility of progress towards self-government in both India and Sri Lanka. Despite o cial resistance
and sometimes outright hostility to the possibility of self-government, increasing numbers of Indians and
Sri Lankans were nevertheless adopting the language of liberal representative politics to make demands of
30 31
their respective states. In India from the 1830s onwards and in Sri Lanka from the 1860s, political and
social activity was increasingly orientated towards the colonial state and sought to reform, in uence and
mobilise the power of the state towards their various projects: projects always framed in terms of the
ultimate ideals of progress, development and legitimate government. In the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, political organisations emerged in both countries that claimed to be national in scope; they made at
rst extremely circumscribed but later more expansive demands for greater Indian and Sri Lankan
participation in the business of government. The Indian National Congress (INC), formed in 1885, initially
 32
sought minor constitutional and administrative changes but by the early 1920s had adopted the demand
33
for ‘swaraj’ or self-rule. A similar organisation called the Ceylon National Association (CNA), formed in
1888, also sought minor constitutional changes. It was supplanted by the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) in
1917 which in turn was replaced in 1946 by the United National Party (UNP). The problem of national
identity and ethnic diversity was conceptually hard-wired into this politics and was ever present, more or
less explicitly, in the wrangling and manoeuvring of all signi cant actors, o cial and uno cial alike.

While British o cials were often hostile and dismissive of the claims of these organisations, they
nevertheless framed their objections in the language of popular sovereignty. That is, while British o cials
p. 36 might have eschewed the possibility of democratic self-government, they nevertheless had to rest the
legitimacy of British rule ultimately in its ability to protect and promote the interests of its Indian and Sri
Lankan subjects. As Michael Billig notes, for the modern state, ‘sovereignty has descended from heaven to
34
earth, from the clouds to the soil of the homeland and to the collectively invoked bodies of its inhabitants’.
British o cials often claimed that they had a much clearer understanding of the needs of the Indian and Sri
Lankan populations than Indian or Sri Lankan politicians who simply sought their own self-interest. A clear
expression of this sentiment was made by the Viceroy Lord Du erin (serving 1884–8) who dismissed the
INC by stating that it was a ‘microscopic minority’ and that it was impossible to entrust to such an
organisation the ‘safety and welfare’ of the ‘majestic and multiform empire’ for which the British stood
35
responsible ‘in the eyes of God and before the face of civilization’. At the same time, British o cials also
invoked the ethnic pluralism of the Indian and Sri Lankan politicians to challenge these politicians’ national
claims. In India, Congress’s claim to be nationally representative was challenged along the lines of religion
36 37
and caste by Muslim and lower-caste representatives with more or less explicit British support. Similarly
in Sri Lanka, the CNC’s claims to be nationally representative were challenged along the lines of region and
language by Kandyan Sinhalese and Tamil representatives—again with more or less explicit British
38
support.

Eventually the transition from British colonial rule to independence was e ected through constitutional
changes that saw a gradual expansion of elected Indian and Sri Lankan representation in the political
institutions established during the early decades of the nineteenth century, along with greater executive
power for elected representatives. These changes invariably involved contestation over the extent and
balance of ethnic representation. During most of the nineteenth century, until the reforms of 1920,
constitutional change was slow and incremental. In India the rst substantive step came with the 1909
Indian Councils Act (also called the Morley–Minto reforms) which introduced for the rst time the elective
principle to the Imperial and Provincial legislative councils, with representatives elected indirectly from the
members of local district and municipal boards. The 1909 reforms also introduced the principle of separate
Muslim electorates; that is, Muslims voters were formed into a distinctive electoral college to facilitate the
election of speci cally Muslim representatives. The intention was to ensure adequate Muslim
representation, as in most electoral constituencies Muslims were a minority of the eligible voters.
39
Constitutional change in Sri Lanka was also slow during much of the nineteenth century. There was little
change to the nominated legislative council created in 1833 by the Colebrooke–Cameron reforms, save
p. 37
for the addition of two extra representatives in 1886: one for the Muslims and one for the Kandyan
Sinhalese, the latter seen as requiring separate representation from the low country Sinhalese.

The pace of reform in the twentieth century was comparatively more rapid than that in the nineteenth
century. In India, just a decade after the 1909 act, the Montague–Chelmsford reforms of 1919 allowed for
the direct elections of Indians (from largely territorial constituencies) to the Provincial legislatures, and
indirectly from the Provincial legislature to the Imperial legislature, now moved to the new capital in Delhi.
The 1919 act also devolved a limited amount of executive responsibility to Indians at the provincial level.
These reforms were rejected by the INC and other nationalists, including a signi cant number who sought
to use political violence as a means of directly overthrowing British rule. The push for more extensive
 reform led to the 1935 Government of India Act which expanded the franchise further and granted
responsible government, albeit under the nal executive authority of the Viceroy, at provincial and central
levels. India was governed under the provisions of the 1935 act until independence and partition in 1947,
following which, in 1952, the Indian Constituent Assembly adopted India’s post-independence constitution
and elections were held for the rst time with a universal franchise.

The pace of reform in Sri Lanka in the twentieth century was equally rapid, with important changes to the
40
constitutional structure coinciding with major reforms in India. The electoral principle was gingerly
introduced to the legislative council in 1909, with the creation of an additional educated Ceylonese seat
selected by an electorate restricted on the basis of education and property. The August 1917 Montague–
Chelmsford announcement of reforms in India spurred the creation of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC)
to press for an expansion of the electoral principle and territorial rather than communal representation.
These demands were resisted by Kandyan Sinhalese and Tamil politicians, who insisted on special electoral
provisions to o set the demographic majority of the low country Sinhalese translating into electoral
dominance. A series of reforms throughout the 1920s contained a mixture of territorial and communal
electorates, a limited franchise and extra weighting to increase the representation of the minorities—
principally the Tamils and the Kandyan Sinhalese. The next stage of reforms in Sri Lanka, as in India, was
tasked to a commission, the Donoughmore Commission, which remarkably arrived on the island in
p. 38 November 1927 just as the similarly-tasked Simon Commission arrived in India to protests and boycotts
by Indian nationalist groups, including Congress. The Donoughmore Commission, unlike its equivalent in
India, met with a full and exhaustive range of Sri Lankan politicians and formulated a far-reaching set of
proposals. It set out a constitutional structure based on the London County Council system, in which
executive committees elected by the entire legislature—named the State Council—were tasked with
responsibility for the major areas of government. The state councillors were to be elected primarily on the
basis of territorial constituencies and universal franchise.

The clear emergence of ethnic and national politics in India and Sri Lanka was not associated with the
transformative social and economic changes that accompanied the expansion of representative politics and
the elective principle in North America and western Europe. In India as in Sri Lanka, for the duration of the
nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, the proportion of the population engaged in
political activity that was framed through the concepts of nation and ethnicity was small and limited. This is
apparent in the size of the proportion of the electorate that was eligible for the franchise when it was
restricted through literacy and property quali cations; the 1919 reforms in India extended the franchise to
just two per cent of the population, while in Sri Lanka the 1921 reforms extended the franchise to just over
41
one per cent of the population.

The emergence of mass political movements in the early decades of the twentieth century also did not signal
the creation of a uniform public culture. Shahid Amin’s study of peasant perceptions of Gandhi in the 1920s
shows that the o cial statements set out by Congress Party workers and Gandhi himself were starkly
dissonant with millennial expectations and ambitions for social mobility through which Gandhi’s rural
42
audience reframed his message. Similarly, the prevalence of signi cant economic inequality meant that
even during the periods of limited franchise, electoral contestation was organised through vote banks and
43
the often coercive mobilisation of patron–client networks. Patronage networks were therefore crucial to
the production of ethnic accommodation in India and ethnic con ict in Sri Lanka, and therefore cannot be
used to explain the divergence.
 Framing ethnic diversity in India and Sri Lanka

The colonial states of India and Sri Lanka brought together populations containing a diversity of social and
p. 39 cultural groups. By the late nineteenth century this diversity was framed and understood through the
categories of caste, language, religion and race; categories that were built into the structures of the colonial
44
state. There is an ongoing debate on the relationship between modern ethnic categories and pre-modern
cultural di erences. An in uential body of post-colonial scholarship suggests that modern ethnic identities
and therefore ethnic antagonisms are largely the products of colonial rule. However, these arguments are
challenged by others who suggest that these categories were politically and socially signi cant in the pre-
British period and their salience in modern politics is the result of Indian and Sri Lankan agency as much as
45
colonial systems of governance.

The approach adopted here sidesteps questions of colonial power, historical continuity and the agency of
colonial subjects at the centre of debates on the meanings and subjective experience of cultural di erence.
Rather, it suggests that by the late nineteenth century, many of the cultural practices touched by the social,
political and economic transformations associated with the colonial state would inevitably have been
translated into the modern categories of religion, caste and language. The long-established institutions,
philosophical traditions and ritual practices that were incorporated into the Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and
Saivite religious revivalisms of the late nineteenth century could not have simply disappeared or avoided
contact with modern conceptions of religion as a confessional system and potentially ‘national’ institution.
Similarly, the established Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala and Urdu literary traditions and practices would also not
have disappeared or avoided translation into modern languages, reproduced through print and studied
through modern conventions of literary analysis. In Ernst Gellner’s terminology, this process involved the
translation of pre-modern high cultures into modern, academy-produced culture, rather than the
46
translation of pre-modern wild culture into modern high culture. In other words, the transformation of
pre-modern cultural di erence into modern categories of religion, language and caste is understood here as
a matter of inevitable conceptual translation, leaving aside questions of agency and continuity. Furthermore
and what is important for this study is that the social and cultural diversity of the Indian and Sri Lankan
populations was framed, administered and discussed through remarkably similar ideas and categories. As a
consequence, the problem of national identity in India and Sri Lanka had to contend with the same range of
ethnic categories that included caste, language, religion, race; and in Sri Lanka, also region.

By the late nineteenth century, modern ethnic categories were an established part of colonial public culture.
p. 40 They were not only extensively used in the administrative practices of the state, but also formed the basis
of the expanding range of social and political activities undertaken by Indians and Sri Lankans themselves.
The decennial census operations undertaken by the colonial governments of both states organised the
population according to categories of language, religion, race and caste. These categories were also
important in routine administrative practices such as recruitment to state agencies—including the police
and military, the distribution of public funds for education and the administration of civil law. At the same
time social reform movements and political associations also based their activities on these very same
ethnic categories. Religious and linguistic revival and reform movements, as well as caste associations,
47
worked within the same frameworks and sets of assumptions as the colonial state. An important and
in uential set of ideas that in uenced the use of ethnic categories—by o cials as well revivalists and
nationalists—claimed that the Indian and Sri Lankan populations could be divided into racially distinct
Aryan, Dravidian and Muslim populations on the basis of language, race, religion and caste. This racial
categorisation was used by a wide range of actors in both countries to set out the substance of national
identities and national histories that included some linguistic, religious and caste groups, but excluded
others.
 The Aryan/Dravidian distinction, with Muslims as civilisational outsiders, evolved from the late-
eighteenth-century study of Sanskrit by British scholars who were based mainly in Calcutta and were
48
identi ed by themselves and others as Orientalists. Noticing the structural similarities between Sanskrit
and European languages, particularly Latin and Greek, Sir William Jones argued that they must have come
from the same root language at some stage, and furthermore that speakers of these languages shared
common ancestors. The term Aryan, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘noble’ or ‘honourable’, was introduced by
the Sanskritist Max Muller in the 1840s and it quickly acquired nineteenth-century racial implications
49
absent from the eighteenth-century work of the Calcutta Orientalists. Thomas Trautmann has argued that
Sir William Jones’ study of Sanskrit was situated within a larger biblical ethnology that emphasised the
unity of mankind. In keeping with this, eighteenth-century perspectives of Indian society generally viewed
all Indian languages and cultures as derived from the same Sanskritic roots. The Orientalist characterisation
nevertheless saw the Muslims as outsiders and invaders responsible for the destruction and degradation of
Sanskritic Hindu civilisation; a theme that became important to Hindu nationalist interpretations of Indian
history.

p. 41 The notion that all Indian languages were derived from Sanskrit was challenged by scholars working on
south Indian languages, in particular Tamil and Telugu. First Francis Ellis Whyte in 1816, and then Robert
Caldwell in 1856, argued that the south Indian languages were independent of Sanskrit and had an
alternative source. Caldwell used the term Dravidian, also derived from Sanskrit and originally used to
designate south Indian Brahmin groups, to label the south Indian language group, language speakers and
50
their cultural and literary heritage. The distinction between the Aryan and Dravidian components of
Indian society gave rise to two competing understandings of Indian civilisation and history: one in which
the Aryans became the bearers of civilisation, and in the other the Dravidians. The Aryan/Dravidian
distinction also mapped broadly onto a north/south regional divide separating the Aryan north from the
Dravidian south. From the late nineteenth century, proponents of both accounts began to draw on then
popular biological conceptions of race in which racial types, identi ed through physical features,
particularly skin colour, were used to explain intellectual and cultural or ‘civilisational’ attainment.

In the Aryan narrative of Indian history, Indian civilisation is created by the foundational act of Aryan
migration. In this view, light-skinned or Caucasian Aryans who migrated to India from the central Asian
51
and Caucasian regions brought with them the Sanskrit language and Hindu religion. Upon entering India
they found less civilised and darker-skinned people—identi ed as Dravidian—whom they variously either
exterminated, pushed into the mountainous regions or incorporated within their social structure as low-
caste labourers. In India the Aryan idea was taken up by Hindu nationalists and used to characterise Indian
national culture and history as racially Aryan, religiously Hindu and based on Sanskrit culture and language.
The golden age of Indian civilisation was identi ed with the Vedic period when key Sanskrit texts were rst
thought to have been composed. In the Hindu nationalist conception, this Vedic–Aryan golden age was
brought to an end by Muslim ‘invasions’ that subsequently triggered the decline of Aryan social order and
led to corruptions in Hindu thought and practices. Practices such as caste and gender inequality were thus
blamed on the decline triggered by the Muslim ‘invasions’. Indian Muslims were thereby rendered outside
the national core and, along with Muslim culture and religion, seen as an ever threatening cultural, religious
and even demographic threat to the Hindu–Indian nation.

This view of the non-Aryan peoples as less civilised was challenged by south Indian scholars, particularly
p. 42 Tamils (Sri Lankan and Indian) who, building on Caldwell’s Dravidian ideas, created an alternative
52
Dravidian view of Indian society and history. The Dravidian view reversed the hierarchy of the Aryan view
and argued that the original Dravidian society had attained a high level of civilisation based on egalitarian
and humanist principles, but was destroyed by the Aryan invasions. The Aryans, far from civilising the
subcontinent, brought with them the uncivilised practices of caste and gender hierarchy associated with
Hinduism. From the early decades of the twentieth century, the Dravidian category became politically
 signi cant in south India and was used to frame south Indian, particularly Tamil, language, culture, literary
history and people as racially Dravidian. Using the Aryan association with Sanskrit and Hinduism, Dravidian
activists argued that Hinduism, the caste structure and Sanskrit were all alien impositions on an otherwise
egalitarian and religiously plural Tamil society. The Dravidian idea was also used by anti-caste movements
across India to identify lower-caste groups with the original Dravidians conquered and enslaved by the
invading Aryans.

As discussed further in Chapters 2 and 3, while the Dravidian idea was an important pole of south Indian
Tamil social and political life, it was less in uential amongst the Sri Lankan Tamils. Nonetheless, the
Aryan/Dravidian dichotomy did have consequences in Sri Lanka. Linguistic analysis in the early nineteenth
century established that the Sinhala language had more in common with Sanskrit and the north Indian
languages than Tamil and the south Indian or Dravidian languages. The Sinhalese people were thereby
classi ed as Aryan and this led a number of British o cials and scholars, along with Sinhala revivalists, to
produce an Aryan narrative of the island’s history and national identity, one that was structurally identical
53
to the Hindu nationalist vision. From the late nineteenth century, Buddhist revivalists, like their Hindu
counterparts in India, used the Aryan idea to characterise Sri Lankan national identity and national history
as religiously Buddhist, as well as linguistically and culturally Sinhalese. The foundational act of the island’s
history was deemed the migration from north India of Aryan Sinhalese, who subsequently adopted
Buddhism. In this narrative, the ourishing Sinhala Buddhist civilisation, with its developed system of
irrigated rice farming, was destroyed by the invading south Indian Dravidian Tamils. As with the Muslims in
India, the Tamils in Sri Lanka were thereby rendered outside the Sinhala Buddhist core and equally seen as a
cultural, religious and demographic threat to the Sinhala Buddhist nation.

Finally, the Aryan/Dravidian dichotomy was also in uential in framing ideas about caste, particularly in
p. 43 south India. A complex, regionally as well as historically, varying phenomenon, caste practices and
norms nevertheless contain a number of similarities across the subcontinent that extend to Tamil and
Sinhalese society in Sri Lanka. The English term ‘caste’ covers two separate indices of social hierarchy: jati
54
(or birth group) and varna (or social class). The varna classi cation of society into four hierarchically
ranked groups is derived from Hindu theology and set out in a series of Sanskrit texts which ascribe to each
group a set of qualities and a related set of social roles and functions. The highest-ranking groups are
Brahmins (priests and ritual specialists), then Kashatriyas (rulers and warriors), followed by Vaishyas
(commercial groups and other wealth creators) and nally the Shudras (or servile toilers). In Sanskrit
theology an individual’s position in the varna scheme is determined by the merits of their previous life,
while their relative status in the next life is determined by their ful lling the obligations that arise from
their varna status in this life. An individual’s rank is contained within the substance or essence of their
body, such that people of higher caste are regarded as of purer and more auspicious substance. For those of
high caste, the bodies of low castes are polluting, as is any food prepared or touched by them.

Although substance is determined by birth (such that Brahmin bodies are always more auspicious and pure
than those of Shudras), it can also be a ected by daily conduct; contact with substances that Sanskrit texts
deem pure impart a quality of auspiciousness, while contact with substances deemed polluted can render
the substance of a body polluting to others. This division of the universe of substances into pure and
polluting has also created a fth order, not formally recognised in the varna status, who deal with especially
polluting substances—dead esh (animal as well as human) and human waste. Caste groups or jatis
associated with polluting activities such as removing and treating dead human and animal bodies, working
with animal esh (leather workers for example) and removing human waste are subject to a set of practices
known by the term ‘untouchability’. Untouchable groups were—and in many places continue to be—denied
access to public spaces such as schools, temples, common wells and public roads. From the early decades of
the twentieth century the term Dalit, meaning oppressed or broken, has also been used by caste groups
55
treated as untouchable as a term of political and cultural resistance.
 The bodily practices of caste hierarchy—particularly taboos about food, engaging in work associated with
untouchable groups and the prohibitions on untouchable groups’ access to temples and other public spaces
—became the objects of social and political protests in India and Sri Lanka from the early decades of the
p. 44 twentieth century. They have also produced three important political and social strategies for
overcoming caste hierarchy. One approach argued that caste hierarchies and the violent exclusion of
untouchable groups were inherent to Hinduism, and therefore the only way of excising caste was to
56
abandon Hindu thought and practice wholesale. In the Tamil-speaking regions, this approach was closely
associated with the Self-Respect Movement and later the Dravida Kazhagam (DK). The Self-Respect
Movement and the DK, both working within the Dravidian framework, encouraged their followers to
abandon Hindu lifecycle rituals, caste names and Hindu worship whilst staging acts of iconoclasm—book
burning and idol smashing—as a means of shattering the ritual status of Hindu objects of worship. A second
approach was to suggest that caste hierarchy and particularly the practices of untouchability were later
corruptions of Hindu theology. In this approach, most closely associated with Gandhi, caste taboos could be
overcome by reforming both upper-caste and lower-caste behaviour whilst all castes remained within the
fold of Hindu belief and practice. Political and social associations that adopted this approach encouraged
activities such as inter-caste dining, public upper-caste performance of lower-caste work, access for lower
castes to privileged upper-caste spaces and more controversially encouraged lower-caste groups to adopt
upper-caste practices—such as vegetarianism, teetotalism, orthodox lifecycle rituals and the worship of
gods from the high Hindu pantheon. The third approach, linked to Nehru, saw caste along with other
‘communal’ divisions as relics of a pre-modern era that would inevitably be eroded by the forces of
modernity and industrialisation.

While the varna hierarchy provides the theological basis of caste hierarchy and was incorporated into
colonial administrative structures, the actual experience of caste is through a second category of human
community, known across most of south Asia by the term jati or its equivalents. The term jati identi es a
clear social group bound generally by practices of intermarriage and interdining. There are innumerable
named jati groups: some con ned to small locales and identifying a population of only a few thousand, and
57
others ranging across vast regions and numbering in the millions. Only Brahmin and untouchable jatis are
clearly identi able with their respective varna. For most other jati identities, social position and status has
rarely been a matter of xed inheritance. Instead the social status of a particular jati has been determined by
relative political and economic power and has allowed for a great deal of social mobility. Groups that have
gained prestige and status through arms-bearing, control of land or commercial wealth have often been
able to convert this to social status by adopting varna norms, that is by restricting their marriage practices,
p. 45
worshipping the gods of the high Hindu pantheon and adopting appropriately Kshatriya-like lordly
lifestyles (for arms-bearing groups) or the Vaishya-like lifestyle of the paci c and settled man of worth (for
58
commercial and landowning groups). The varna hierarchy is therefore better understood as an ideal index
of social ranking than a description of social practice. The Brahmin’s ritual status was only ever a means to
legitimise the already existing wealth and power of upwardly mobile groups and many Brahmins were the
59
dependants of their wealthy landowning or commercial patrons.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, caste in both its varna and jati manifestations was an established
part of colonial public culture. In India the varna hierarchy was incorporated into colonial legal codes as part
60
of Hindu personal law and also used to categorise jati groups in the census enumerations. This led to a
61
number of caste associations demanding an upward revision of their varna status. Even in Sri Lanka where
varna was not formally incorporated into colonial administrative practice, jati groups such as the Sinhala
Karava and Salagamas sought o cial recognition for their claims to Kshatriya and Brahmin status
62
respectively. The increasingly public prominence of the varna hierarchy had speci c implications for
south Indian society, including the Tamil-speaking areas. Here commercial and artisan groups as well as
large landowners, many of whom had very restrictive and varna-like social practices, nevertheless did not
perform rituals, in particular the investiture of males with the sacred thread, which marked Kshatriya and
 Vaishya status in north India. Except for the Brahmins and the untouchables, the vast majority of south
63
Indian Hindu jati groups were therefore classi ed as Shudras in the vefold varna scheme. This division
between Brahmins and the rest of south Indian society implied therefore a racial division between Aryan
Brahmins and Dravidian non-Brahmins. A number of south Indian scholars argued that caste was brought
to south Indian society by the racially Aryan Brahmins as a means of enforcing social and political
64
dominance over the previously egalitarian Dravidian society. The Aryan (Brahmin)/Dravidian (non-
Brahmin) divide also became an important pole of political activity during the early decades of the twentieth
century. This Brahmin/non-Brahmin duality was not, however, in uential within Sri Lankan Tamil politics.
Instead, as Chapters 3 and 5 show, the Gandhian and Congress approach to transforming caste hierarchy
has been far more in uential in Sri Lankan Tamil society than the radical reform agenda of the Dravidian
movement.

The ethnic diversity of the Indian and Sri Lankan populations was therefore framed in comparable ways that
p. 46 invoked the categories of race (Aryan, Dravidian and Muslim), religion, caste, language and, in Sri Lanka,
region (low country versus Kandyan Sinhalese). These categories were used by colonial o cials as well as
Indians and Sri Lankans themselves to make claims about the national identities and national histories of
these societies. They have remained central to the question of national identity and ethnic diversity in both
states. While the politics of national identity are discussed in terms of the same categories of ethnic
di erence, it has been argued that the structure of ethnic demography is di erent. That is, India’s more
fragmented ethnic demography, in which the Hindu majority is intersected by divisions of caste and
language, is more conducive to ethnic accommodation than the binary Sinhala–Tamil division that has
65
dominated Sri Lankan politics in the post-independence period.

However, this argument overlooks the important extent to which the axis of ethnic con ict within both
states has shifted over time. The earliest forms of modern associational activity in the south Indian Tamil-
66
speaking areas (emerging in the early nineteenth century) were Hindu revivalist organisations and this
67
activity produced often violent con ict with Tamil-speaking Christians and Muslims. However, Hindu
revivalism in the south Indian Tamil areas did not develop into a substantial political force, and by the early
decades of the twentieth century had given way to the competing, though ideologically overlapping,
Congress and Dravidian movements. The Dravidian movement also accommodated and incorporated
Muslim identity, such that the Hindu–Muslim divide has not been as politically signi cant as it has in north
68
India. The Hindu–Muslim division has not however disappeared, and in post-independence India the
Hindu nationalist movement has sought to consolidate a Hindu national identity by overcoming intra-
69
Hindu caste and linguistic divides. Furthermore, the absence of Hindu nationalist mobilisation in the
Tamil-speaking areas is not guaranteed, and there is a debate as to whether contemporary Hindu
nationalist mobilisation is eroding the largely secular political culture established by the Dravidian parties
70
in Tamil south India.

Similarly in Sri Lanka, while the majority population could be identi ed as linguistically Sinhalese and
religiously Buddhist, the Sinhala Buddhist category is internally divided by caste as well as the distinction
between high country Kandyan and low country Sinhalese. Importantly, for much of the colonial period,
intra-Sinhala and intra-Tamil distinctions were far more signi cant as axes of social and political con ict
p. 47 than the distinction between Tamils and Sinhalese. In the late nineteenth century, politics amongst Sinhala
elites involved caste-based con ict between the landowning Goyigama caste, on the one hand, and on
the other, the non-landowning but commercially successful caste complex known by the acronym KSD—
71
standing for Karava ( shing), Salagama (cinnamon peelers) and Durava (toddy tappers). In the 1911
elections the Goyigama Sinhalese preferred to vote for a Tamil from the landowning Vellala caste than for a
72
Sinhalese candidate from the Karava caste. Meanwhile amongst the Tamils there was acute political and
social con ict between Hindus from the landowning Vellala caste and Christians from non-landowning
73
castes. The analysis in Chapters 3 and 5 shows how the consolidation of competing Sinhala Buddhist and
 Tamil nationalist projects in post-independence Sri Lanka was e ected by processes of political
mobilisation and contestation that actively worked to overcome intra-Sinhala and intra-Tamil divisions.

Conclusion

The emergence of very di erent conceptions of national identity in India and Sri Lanka thus occurred
despite comparable and connected histories of British colonial rule and national identity in the two states
having to encompass a similar range of ethnic pluralism that was framed through the shared ideas of Aryan
and Dravidian historical origins. The politics of national and ethnic identities were also played out in both
states through electoral competition, in which patronage networks played an important role. The divergent
outcomes of the two Tamil-speaking regions cannot therefore be explained by temporally static variables
such as material interests, structures of ethnic demography or political institutions. Rather they are the
e ects of patterns of political activity sustained over long periods of time through which more or less
p. 48 inclusive conceptions of national identity are asserted, contested and more or less securely established.

Notes
1. For a discussion of the transformations associated with British rule in India, see Manu Goswami, Producing India: from
colonial economy to national space (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and David A. Washbrook, ʻSouth India
1770–1840: the colonial transitionʼ, Modern Asian Studies 38.3 (2004,) p. 37. For Sri Lanka, see ch. 18–23 in K. M. De Silva, A
History of Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005); Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon: an export economy in transition,
(Homewood, Ill: Irwin, 1966); and Lennox A. Mills, Ceylon under British rule, 1795–1932, with an account of the East India
Companyʼs embassies to Kandy, 1762–1795 (London: Frank Cass, 1964).
2. Christopher A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
3. Bayly, Indian Society.
4. Michael N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
5. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka.
6. The discussion of the eighteenth-century British transition from trade to empire in India draws on Bayly, Indian Society
and P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America c. 1750–1783 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005).
7. John S. Galbraith, ʻThe “Turbulent Frontier” as a factor in British expansionʼ, Comparative Studies in Society and History 2.2
(1960), pp. 150–60.
8. Government of India, Census of India 1891, 1892.
9. Ibid.
10. Goswami, Producing India.
11. Washbrook, ʻSouth India 1770–1840ʼ.
12. Bayly, Indian Society.
13. ʻIn the last years of the eighteenth century at least 2 million men circulated in Indiaʼs “military market place” looking for
mercenary employment in the armies of its regional potentatesʼ: David A. Washbrook, ʻIndia, 1818–1860: the two faces of
Colonialismʼ, in A. Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century (Volume III) (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), p. 405. Figure taken from D. H. A. Kol , Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: the ethno-history of the military
labour market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 110–16.
14. Washbrook, ʻSouth India 1770–1840ʼ, pp. 507–8.
15. Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South Asia: agricultural labour in the Madras Presidency during the nineteenth century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).
16. This account is taken from Mills, Ceylon under British Rule; C. J. Je ries, Ceylon: the path to independence (London: Pall
Mall Press, 1962); and De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka.
17. Je ries, Ceylon, pp. 14–15.
18. This reflected parliamentʼs growing insistence on controlling distant territorial possessions (Marshall, The Making and
Unmaking of Empires).
19. For a history of the rise of low country Sinhalese commercial groups, see Michael Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite
 Formation: the rise of a Karava elite in Sri Lanka, 1500–1931 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
20. K. Indrapala, The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: the Tamils in Sri Lanka c.300 BCE to c.1200 CE (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa,
2007).
21. Colonial O ice, Census of Ceylon 1891 (Colombo: Government Printer, 1892).
22. The 1891 Census did not distinguish between the two. Indian Tamil labour migration at this time was to a substantial
extent cyclical and also unregulated. As tea plantations replaced co ee plantations, the demand for labour became less
seasonal and the labourers became more settled on the island. The 1921 Census did distinguish between the two
populations. It shows that the total Tamil population of 1,120,358 consisted of 602,735 Indian Tamils (54 per cent) and
517,623 Sri Lankan Tamils (46 per cent). See Table 5.
23. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 28.
24. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
25. Quoted in Cyril Henry Phillips, The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947: select documents (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1962), p. 10.
26. Quoted in G. C. Mendis, The Colebroke–Cameron papers: documents on British colonial policy in Ceylon, 1796–1833 (Oxford:
University Press, 1956), p. 152.
27. Quoted in Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj, p. 34.
28. Quoted in Mendis, The Colebroke–Cameron Papers, p. 54.
29. For British o icial attitudes towards India from the mid nineteenth century, see Sarvepalli Gopal, British Policy in India,
1858–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); and Thomas R. Metcalf, The A ermath of revolt: India, 1857–
1870 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
30. S. R. Mehrotra, Emergence of the Indian National Congress (New Delhi: Vikas, 1971).
31. Michael Roberts, ʻStimulants and ingredients in the awakening of latter day nationalismʼ, in Roberts, Michael, ed., Sri
Lanka: collective identities revisited (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997).
32. Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: competition and collaboration in the later nineteenth century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968).
33. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885–1947 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989).
34. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995), p. 29.
35. Quoted in Gopal, British Policy in India, p. 175.
36. Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
37. Eleanor Zelliot, ʻCongress and the Untouchables, 1917–1950ʼ, in Sission, Richard and Stanley Wolpert, eds, Congress and
Indian Nationalism: the pre-independence phase (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988).
38. Wickramasinghe, Ethnic Politics.
39. As in India, there was greater change at the level of local government: during the 1860s, municipal councils were
established for Galle, Colombo and Kandy, with an electorate based on a restricted franchise that included Sri Lankans
(Mills, Ceylon under British Rule).
40. This account is taken from De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka; Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: a history of
contested identities (London: Hurst & Co., 2006); and Jane Russell, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution,
1931–1947 (Dehiwala, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo, 1982).
41. In India the franchise was extended to 6.5 million people out of a total population of 306 million (Sarkar, Modern India, pp.
36, 337). In Sri Lanka the franchise was extended in 1921 to just over 53,000 out of a total population of just under 4.5
million (G. P. S. Harischandra De Silva, A Statistical Survey of Elections to the Legislatures of Sri Lanka, 1911–1977, Colombo:
Marga Institute, 1979, pp. 79–82).
42. Shahid Amin, ʻGandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–2ʼ, in Guha, R., ed., Subaltern Studies, Volume III
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
43. For India, see David A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: the Madras Presidency, 1870–1920 (University of
Cambridge: Centre of South Asian Studies, 1976); and Baker, The Politics of South India. For Sri Lanka, see Russell,
Communal Politics.
44. There is a large literature on the social classifications of colonial rule, particularly in relation to India. Examples include
Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: the British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1996); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: colonialism and the making of modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2001); Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: post-colonial theory, India and ʻthe mystic Eastʼ (London: Routledge,
1999); and Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1990).
45. For contrasting accounts of the impact of British colonialism on the caste system, see Dirks, Castes of Mind; and Susan
Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1999). Similarly for contrasting accounts of the impact of British colonialism on religiously motivated collective
 violence, see Christopher A. Bayly, ʻThe Pre-History of “Communalism”? Religious conflict in India, 1700–1860ʼ, Modern
Asian Studies 19.2 (1985), pp. 177–203; and Pandey, The Construction of Communalism.
46. Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
47. For a discussion of the importance of revivalist activities and particularly nationalism in di using modern administrative
categories and processes amongst non-elite sections of colonial society, see David Rampton, ʻ“Deeper hegemony”; the
politics of Sinhala nationalist authenticity and power-sharing in Sri Lankaʼ, Comparative and Commonwealth Politics 49.2
(2011), pp. 245–73.
48. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004).
49. For details, see Trautmann, Aryans, ch. 5, 6.
50. Ibid., pp. 145–53.
51. For accounts of the Aryan narrative of Indian history, see Goswami, Producing India; Peter Van der Veer, Imperial
Encounters: religion and modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), and Trautmann,
Aryans.
52. V. Ravindran, ʻDiscourses of empowerment: missionary Orientalism in the development of Dravidian nationalismʼ, in
Brook, Timothy and André Schmid, eds, Nation Work: Asian elites and national identities (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 2000); Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and Nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras (Berkeley and
London: University of California Press, 2006).
53. John D. Rogers, ʻHistorical images in the British Periodʼ, in Spencer, Jonathan, ed., Sri Lanka: history and the roots of
conflict (London: Routledge, 1990); K. N. O. Dharmadasa, Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness: the growth of
Sinhalese nationalism in Sri Lanka (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Marisa Angell, ʻUnderstanding the
Aryan Theoryʼ, in Tiruchelvam, Mithran and C. S. Dattathreya, eds, Culture and Politics of Identity in Sri Lanka (Colombo:
International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 1998).
54. This account of caste is taken from Bayly, Caste, pp. 1–24.
55. John C. B. Webster, ʻWho is a Dalit?ʼ in Michael, S. M, ed., Untouchable: Dalits in modern India (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,
1999).
56. For discussions of these competing approaches to caste, see Dirks, Castes of Mind; Bayly, Caste; and M. S. S. Pandian,
Brahmin and non-Brahmin: genealogies of the Tamil political present (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007).
57. As Baker notes, the ʻ1891 Census in Madras set out to catalogue subcastes defined by interdining and intermarriage: it
counted up to 25, 000 before giving up and admitting that the list was far from completeʼ. The Politics of South India, 1920–
1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 4.
58. Bayly, Caste.
59. Baker, The Politics of South India, p. 29.
60. Dirks, Castes of Mind.
61. K. Nambi Arooran, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism 1905–1944 (Madurai: Koodal Publishers, 1980), p. 31;
Dirks, Castes of Mind, p. 223.
62. Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, p. 140.
63. Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India, 1976), pp. 15–17; Bayly, Caste, p. 32.
64. Ravindran, ʻDiscourses of empowermentʼ; Trautmann, Languages and Nations.
65. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), p. 37.
66. D. Denis Hudson, ʻTamil Hindu responses to Protestants: nineteenth-century literati in Ja na and Tinnevellyʼ, in Kaplan,
Steven, ed., Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity (New York and London: New York University Press, 1995);
Pandian, Brahmin and non-Brahmin.
67. R. Suntharalingam, Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India, 1852–1891 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press,
1974).
68. J. B. P. More, The Political Evolution of Muslims in Tamilnadu and Madras, 1930–1947 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1997); J.
B. P. More, Muslim Identity, Print Culture and the Dravidian Factor in Tamil Nadu (London: Orient Longman, 2004).
69. Hansen and Ja relot, The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India.
70. For contrasting views on this issue, see articles by John Harriss, ʻWhatever Happened to Cultural Nationalism in Tamil
Nadu? A reading of current events and the recent literature on Tamil politicsʼ, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics
40.3 (2002), pp. 97–117; and S. V. Rajadurai and V. Geetha, ʻA Response to John Harrissʼ, Commonwealth and Comparative
Politics 40.3 (2002), pp. 118–24.
71. For the commercial rise of the Karava, see Roberts, Caste Conflict; see also De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, p. 428.
72. Wickramasinghe, Ethnic Politics, p. 31.
73. Nicholapillai Maria Saveri, A Catholic–Hindu Encounter: relations between Roman Catholics and Hindus in Ja na, Sri Lanka,
1900–1926 (Ja na, Sri Lanka: Centre for Performing Arts, 1993).
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
hands against a son of Monomach. But if thou wilt march against the
house of Oleg, we will not only go with thee, but take our sons also.”

The prince, however, asked for volunteers to attack Yuri, and a large
number went with him. On passing the Dnieper, he sent Ulaiba, his
boyar, to learn what was happening in Chernigoff. The boyar hurried
back, bringing news that the allies of the Kief prince were acting
with Sviatoslav. Chernigoff friends also sent to Izyaslav, saying that
his allies were deceiving him foully. “They wish to slay or to seize
thee, and liberate Igor. They have kissed the cross to Sviatoslav, and
also to Yuri.”

The Kief prince now sent envoys to confer in his name with the sons
of David: “We agreed on a great work, and kissed the cross to each
other,” said the envoys. “Let us kiss it again, so that there be no
disagreement hereafter.” “Why kiss again? We have kissed already,”
replied the sons of David. “What harm in kissing the cross?” said the
envoys. “The cross is salvation.” But they refused to kiss it a second
time. The envoys repeated now these words from Izyaslav to the
sons of David: “I have heard that ye are deceiving me, that ye have
sworn to Sviatoslav to seize me or to kill me because of Igor. Is this
true, brothers, or is it not true?” They would not answer. At last one
of them said to the envoys: “Withdraw, we will summon thee later.”
They consulted long, and then called the envoys.

“We have kissed the cross to Sviatoslav,” declared they frankly. “We
grieve over Igor, our cousin. He is a monk now; set him free, and we
will ride at thy stirrup. Would it please thee if we held thy brother?”
The treaty papers were cast at their feet, and these words were
added in answer: “Ye took oath to be with me till death, and I gave
you the lands of both sons of Oleg. I expelled Sviatoslav; I won his
lands and gave you Putivl with other places. We divided Sviatoslav’s
property between us. I took Igor’s. And now, brothers, ye have
broken your oath. Ye invited me hither intending to kill me. Let God
be on my side and [71]the power of the life-giving cross. I will
manage as the Lord may assist me.”

The prince asked Rostislav, his brother, to bring Smolensk forces

from all sides. He sent to Kief also, explaining the conduct of the
sons of David, and reminded the people of what they had promised.
The Kief men decided immediately to go forward in boats and on
horseback to help him. “We rejoice,” declared they in a message,
“that God has preserved thee. We come and bring our sons with us,
according to promise!” When thus excited, some man in the throng
called out loudly: “We will fight for our prince, but think first of one
important thing. Here in this city is the enemy of our prince. Let us
slay him to finish that family in Chernigoff, and then go!” The people
rushed to the monastery, and before Prince Vladimir, the
metropolitan, or the commander in the city, could stop them they
had seized Igor, and slain him.

Izyaslav was at the edge of Chernigoff when news of Igor’s death

came to him: “If I had thought of this, I should have guarded him
more carefully,” said he to his warriors. “Men will say now that I
wished to kill Igor, but God knows that I did not.” “Be not
concerned,” answered his warriors. “God knows, and people know,
also, that not thou, but his own cousins killed him; they who took an
oath to thee, and then conspired traitorously to kill thee.”

Izyaslav seized Kursk, where he placed his son, Mystislav, and thus
barred out the Polovtsi. But Glaib, son of Yuri, came later with
Sviatoslav to take the place. The people would not raise a hand
against Glaib, since he was a grandson of Monomach. They would
have fought against Sviatoslav had he come unassisted, as they
informed Mystislav, who returned to his father.
Glaib, after installing posadniks, left that region, and the Polovtsi
were free to appear again. Rostislav of Smolensk led in large forces
to help his brother, the Grand Prince, and after an involved and
tedious war, ending rather against Izyaslav than for him, the
Chernigoff princes were unable to continue the struggle; their
territory was stripped of provisions, and ruined in great part; they
had no food for their warriors, and could not pay Polovtsi allies. Yuri
had sent a son with forces, but he would not go with his main
strength in person, and without Yuri the Chernigoff princes were
unable to stand against Izyaslav and his brothers. [72]

In such straits, they sent these words to Yuri: “Thou didst kiss the
cross to go with us against Izyaslav; thou hast not done so. Izyaslav
came, burned our towns, took our country. He came a second time;
he burned and seized what he spared at the first attack, but thou
hast neither come to us nor fought against Izyaslav. If thy wish is to
march now against the Kief prince, we will go with thee; if not, we
are freed from our oath; we have no wish to perish in war
unassisted.”

From Yuri came no answer of value, hence they turned with

proposals to the Kief prince. He replied that he would consult with
Rostislav and then answer finally. He consulted with his brother for
form’s sake, and then made peace with the princes of Chernigoff,
who took oath to forget Igor’s death, and be in friendship for the
future. Kursk remained in their possession.

At this time Rostislav, Yuri’s eldest son, once prince in Novgorod,

came to Kief, declaring that he had quarreled with his father, who
refused him land in Suzdal; hence he had come to Izyaslav with
homage. The Kief prince gave him those five towns held formerly by
Sviatoslav, son of Vsevolod, and also Gorodok, where Izyaslav did
not wish to see Yuri’s son Glaib, to whom he sent this command:
“Find lands with the sons of Oleg.”

In autumn, the Grand Prince went to Gorodok, taking Rostislav with

him. The sons of David were there, but no son of Oleg. When
Izyaslav mentioned this, the princes replied: “We are here. It is
indifferent whether they come or not; they and we took the oath to
make common cause with thee, and to go with thee against Yuri,
starting when the rivers should be frozen.” They who had been Yuri’s
allies a short time before had now become his enemies, and allies of
Izyaslav. When the time came, Izyaslav left Vladimir, his brother, in
Kief, and visited Smolensk, to confer with Rostislav.

Novgorod had assembled large forces to march against Yuri, and

now sent many warriors, as did Smolensk. They moved down the
Volga, and, finding no trace of Yuri, ravaged both sides of the river
as far as Uglitch. Here news came that the sons of David, with
Sviatoslav, brother of Igor, had marched to assist them, but had
halted in the Vyatichi country to see who would be victor, the Kief
prince, or Yuri.

“Let them come or stay,” replied Izyaslav, and he sent Novgorod men
and others to take Yaroslavl on the Volga. This they [73]did after
much effort, and returned with great booty. A week before Easter
the weather became so warm that the army could not remain in the
country. Horses walked to their bellies in water. Rostislav went back
to Smolensk, and Izyaslav to Novgorod and thence to his capital.

This campaign cost Yuri’s country seven thousand men led away
captives, besides all the property burned and ruined. Upon Izyaslav’s
return to Kief, he learned from his boyars that Yuri’s son, Rostislav,
had worked against him in his absence, and had said to the people:
“If God helps my father, he will visit Kief and take Izyaslav’s house
from him, and also his family.” “Send this traitor back to his father;
thou art keeping him here to thy ruin,” said the boyars. The prince
summoned Rostislav, and, without receiving him, gave this message:
“Thou didst come to me and say that thy father was unjust and
would give thee no land. I took thee in as a brother, I gave thee
lands, and now thou wouldst seize Kief from me.” Yuri’s son sent
back this answer: “Neither in my heart nor my mind was the thought
which thou hast mentioned. If he who has lied is a prince I am ready
to meet him, if of lower degree, either Christian or pagan, judge
thou between us.” “Ask no judgment of me,” replied Izyaslav. “I
know what thou wishest. Go back to thy father.”

The boyars put Rostislav in a boat with three men and sent him up
the river. His warriors were retained, and his property taken.

Rostislav bowed down to his father in Suzdal, and said: “The whole
Russian land desires thee. Men say in Kief that their prince has
dishonored them. March thou against Izyaslav.” These words imply
clearly that Yuri’s son had worked with zeal against Izyaslav, and
that the complaint of the boyars was well founded.

Such an “insult” to Rostislav greatly offended Yuri, who demanded

angrily, “Is there then no place for me or my sons in Russia?” He
assembled his forces quickly, hired Polovtsi, and was soon ready for
action.

It was not anger alone which roused Yuri; he believed that his day
had come, the long deferred day of triumph. His son’s report that he
would find in the south serious allies, decided his movements, and
he marched forward with all speed. He had reached the land of the
Vyatichi, when Vladimir, son of David, warned Izyaslav, saying: “Be
ready for action; thy uncle is marching.” [74]Izyaslav prepared, and
with the sons of David sent envoys to Sviatoslav, brother of the late
Igor, reminding him of their treaties.
Sviatoslav gave no answer at first, but guarded the envoys to keep
men away from them. Meanwhile he consulted with Yuri. “Art thou
going against Izyaslav? Tell me truly lest I ruin my lands without
reason.” “I go, of course,” replied Yuri. “My nephew made war in my
lands and set fire to them. He drove out my son, and insulted me. I
will avenge the wrong done, or I will lay down my life.”

On receiving this answer, Sviatoslav, unwilling to break his oath,

without reasons which men might hold sufficient, commanded his
envoys to speak thus to Izyaslav: “Return Igor’s property, and I will
be with thee.” “Thou hast kissed the cross to put aside enmity
because of Igor and his property,” replied Izyaslav, “but now thou
dost mention them when my uncle is marching against me. Keep thy
oath, or else break it.”

Sviatoslav joined forces with Yuri. Yuri and Sviatoslav then sent the
sons of David a message, but they sent the answer only to Yuri: “In
the last war thou didst swear to be with us. But when Izyaslav took
all our lands and burned the towns in them, thou wouldst not come
to us. Because of this we kissed the cross to Izyaslav, and we cannot
jest with salvation.”

Yuri marched southward, expecting the Polovtsi and awaiting

submission from Izyaslav, his nephew. Rostislav of Smolensk, with
large forces, hastened to strengthen his brother. Yuri advanced to
Pereyaslavl, thinking that Izyaslav might yield; but Izyaslav did not
yield. “If my uncle had come with his sons only,” said he, “he might
have had the best province in my possession, but as he leads in the
hated Polovtsi, and with them my enemy, I am forced to the field by
his action.”

Izyaslav talked thus to persuade Kief men to march against Yuri.

They had insisted on peace, and declared that they could not raise
hands against a son of Monomach. But, influenced by Izyaslav’s
words, they at last consented to go, though unwillingly. Crossing the
Dnieper, the Grand Prince met Yuri’s army, the advance troops being
Polovtsi, and repulsed it. Then the two armies stood all day and
night facing each other. In the night Yuri sent to his nephew this
message: “Thou hast ravaged my country, thou hast taken seniority
from me, but spare Christian [75]blood now. Let me seat a son in this
city of Pereyaslavl, and rule thou in Kief. If not, let God judge
between us.”

Izyaslav detained the envoy, and led out all his men to meet Yuri.
Next morning the bishop, with tears in his eyes, begged thus of
Izyaslav: “Make peace with thy uncle. If thou do so, thou wilt save
the land from sore misery, and have great reward from God.” But the
prince would not listen. The armies were face to face that day till
evening, the river Trubej between them. At a council called by
Izyaslav, some favored crossing the river: “God gives thee the
enemy; seize him,” said these men. “Remain where thou art,” said
others. “Thy uncle is wavering, he will vanish in the night. Let him
go, do not touch him.” The first advice pleased the prince, and he
crossed the river. Next day at noon the armies came very near
fighting, but Yuri halted, and in the evening withdrew. Again there
were two minds in Izyaslav’s council: “Thy uncle is fleeing,” urged
one mind; “attack him before he escapes thee.” “Follow not,” urged
the other; “there will be no battle; thou wilt have victory for
nothing.” This time too Izyaslav took the first advice.

At daybreak next morning the battle began. It was resolute at the

opening and venomous on both sides, but soon all of Izyaslav’s
contingents from the Ros River fled. Seeing this, the sons of David
and the Kief men fled also. Pereyaslavl, persuaded already by Yuri’s
son, Rostislav, opened its gates without fighting, and thus the battle
was ended.
Izyaslav had pierced an opposing regiment, but when in the rear of
it he saw that all had deserted him, and knew that nothing save
flight remained. He reached Kief with only two attendants, and went
immediately to Volynia; but he withdrew to reopen the struggle.

On reaching Volynia Izyaslav sent to Poland, Bohemia and Hungary

for aid. Aid was promised, but he wished aid itself, and not promises,
hence he sent envoys a second time bearing rich presents, with the
injunction to get what he asked for. Knowing now what it was to
fight against his uncle when the people were indifferent or opposed
to him, he sent these words to Yuri’s elder brother, Vyatcheslav: “Be
my father and take the throne of Kief; if not I will ruin thy country.”

Vyatcheslav, alarmed by the threat, sent this message to Yuri:

[76]“Make peace, defend my country, come hither thyself; we shall
then see what to do. If thou come not, I must act as seems best to
me.” Yuri set out at once with his troops, taking Polovtsi also.
Izyaslav marched from Volynia against him. To Vyatcheslav came
Rostislav and Andrei, sons of Yuri, and soon Yuri himself came.
Vladimirko of Galitch moved to the boundary and thus checked Poles
and Hungarians.

The Poles, greatly alarmed by news from their own land that
Prussian tribes were attacking them, went home. Hence the allies
sent these words to Yuri and Vyatcheslav: “Though ye are as fathers
to Izyaslav, ye are now warring against him. As Christians and
brethren we should all be united. Can you not arrange peace with
your son and your brother? Ye might remain in Kief. Ye yourselves
know who should be there. Let Volynia and whatever else is his go
to Izyaslav. Let Yuri give back the Novgorod tribute.”

“God reward you,” replied Yuri and his brother. “Since ye ask for
peace and wish well to us, let Izyaslav return to Volynia, and go ye
to your own lands; we will discuss then with Izyaslav.” The allies
withdrew, and the uncles proposed terms to their nephew. But the
affair halted because Yuri’s eldest son and a nephew advised with
great earnestness not to make peace with Izyaslav. Yuri took this
advice all the more readily, since Izyaslav’s allies had gone to their
own lands, and he thought it easy to force down his nephew. “I will
expel Izyaslav and take his lands,” said Yuri, and he moved with his
brother to do this.

Yuri and his forces invested Lutsk, and for many weeks fought
around the city. The besieged lacked water greatly. Izyaslav strove to
aid them, but Vladimirko of Galitch barred the way; he desired
victory for neither side. Volynia, independent of Kief, was what he
wished. Izyaslav sent to him, saying: “Reconcile me with my uncle
Yuri.” Vladimirko was willing, in fact he was very glad to attempt this.

Andrei, Yuri’s second son, was for peace and counseled his father.
“Give no ear to my brother or cousin,” said he. “Make peace, O my
father, do not ruin thy possessions.” Vyatcheslav favored peace also.
He had his own reasons for doing so. “Make peace,” said he to Yuri.
“If not, and thou go, Izyaslav will destroy my country.” [77]

Yuri finally agreed to peace. His nephew yielded Kief, and Yuri gave
back the Novgorod tribute. Izyaslav visited his uncles, and all sides
promised to return booty taken since the action near Pereyaslavl.
After that Yuri went back to Kief, and wished to give it to
Vyatcheslav, to whom it belonged by seniority, but the boyars
dissuaded him. “Thy brother could not hold Kief,” said they. “It will
be neither his nor thine, if thou yield it.” Yuri took his son from
Vyshgorod, and gave the place to Vyatcheslav.

Meanwhile, 1150, Izyaslav sent to find herds and property seized

before peace was concluded, but when his men had found what they
were seeking, and asked for it, Yuri refused it, and they went back
empty-handed. Thereupon Izyaslav sent a complaint and threat to
his uncle: “Keep thy oath, for I cannot remain thus offended.” Yuri
made no answer, and Izyaslav took arms again, urged, as was said,
by Kief people.

At this time Yuri’s son Glaib was encamped not far from Izyaslav,
who suddenly attacked him in the night. Glaib escaped with much
difficulty, having lost everything he had. Next day he sent to his
cousin this message: “Yuri is my father, so art thou, and I render
thee homage. Thou and Yuri will settle all questions. But give thy
oath that thou wilt permit me to visit my father. If thou do, I will
come and bow down to thee.” Izyaslav gave the oath. Glaib went to
Yuri, and Izyaslav hastened to the steppe to get aid from the Black
Caps, who rejoiced with unbounded delight when they saw him.

Yuri, on hearing that his nephew had gone to the Black Caps, left
Kief at once, crossed the Dnieper and hastened to Gorodok. As soon
as Yuri withdrew from Kief, Vyatcheslav entered. The Kief people
went out in great crowds to meet Izyaslav, who was not slow in
coming. “Yuri has left us,” said they. “Vyatcheslav is in the palace,
but we do not want him. Go to Holy Sophia, and then take the
throne of thy fathers.” “I gave thee Kief,” said Izyaslav, in a message
to his uncle, “but thou wouldst not take it. Now when thy brother
has fled, thou art willing. Go to thy Vyshgorod.” “Even shouldst thou
kill me for staying, I would not go,” answered Vyatcheslav.

Taking a few attendants, Izyaslav went to his uncle and bowed down
before him. Vyatcheslav rose, kissed him and they sat down
together. “Father,” said Izyaslav, “I give thee homage, [78]I cannot do
what thou wishest, such is the power of the people. They are
opposed to thee. Go to Vyshgorod; from there we two will manage.”
“When thou didst invite me to Kief,” answered Vyatcheslav, “I had
kissed the cross to Yuri. If Kief is thine now, I will go to Vyshgorod.”
And he went.
Meanwhile Yuri called on the sons of David and Oleg for assistance,
and Vladimirko was marching from the west. Izyaslav, greatly
alarmed, prepared for defense very promptly and went with boyars
to Vyatcheslav in Vyshgorod. “Take Kief,” said he to his uncle, “and
with it what lands thou desirest; the rest leave to me.” Vyatcheslav
was offended at first. “Why didst thou not give me Kief when thou
wert forcing me out of it shamefully?” asked he. “Now when one
army is moving against thee from Galitch and another from
Chernigoff, thou givest me my inheritance.” “I offered thee Kief,
declaring that I could live with thee, but not with Yuri,” said Izyaslav.
“Thee I love as my father. And I say now again: Thou art my father,
and Kief belongs to thee.” These words softened Vyatcheslav and he
kissed the cross to consider Izyaslav as his son, and Izyaslav swore
to regard him as a father. “I am going to Zvenigorod against
Vladimirko,” said Izyaslav. “Be pleased thou to enter Kief and let me
have thy warriors.” “I will send all of my warriors with thee,” replied
Vyatcheslav.

Vladimirko was now in the field to help Yuri, and Izyaslav marched
westward at once to hasten the struggle, but when he came near
the enemy his men forsook him. “Vladimirko has a countless host,”
cried they. “Do not destroy us and forfeit thy own life. Wait till
another time.” “Better die here than suffer disgrace such as that!”
exclaimed Izyaslav. Nevertheless all fled the field, and the Kief prince
was left with only his personal following. He fell back on the capital
safely, though he might have been captured. Vladimirko thought the
whole movement a strategy, hence he followed on cautiously,
looking for ambushes everywhere. Izyaslav found his uncle in Kief,
waiting anxiously. They counseled awhile and then sat down to
dinner. During dinner news came that Yuri was crossing the Dnieper,
and with him the men of Chernigoff. “This is not our day!” exclaimed
the two princes, and they fled from Kief, Vyatcheslav going to
Vyshgorod, and Izyaslav back to Volynia. [79]
Next day Vladimirko and Yuri met outside Kief and greeted each
other on horseback. The Galitch prince visited all the holy places in
the city, and then bade farewell to his father-in-law in friendship. He
took with him Yuri’s son, Mystislav, and installed that prince on the
boundary of Volynia. Later on Yuri gave this whole region to his best
son, Andrei.

Andrei fixed his camp in Peresopnitsa, and during the winter Izyaslav
sent an envoy to him. “Reconcile me with thy father,” said he. “My
inheritance is not in Hungary or Poland. Ask from thy father the
return of my land on the Goryn.” He sent this request, but bade his
envoy look sharply at all things. He was planning to fall on Andrei, as
he had fallen on Glaib, Yuri’s other son, some time earlier.

The envoy found everything in excellent order, and a strong force of

warriors in readiness. Andrei, unsuspicious, or feigning to be so,
turned to Yuri in favor of Izyaslav, but Yuri would not yield a whit to
his nephew. “My uncle,” declared Izyaslav, “would drive me to exile.
Vladimirko of Galitch has taken my land at command of Yuri, and is
now making ready to march on Vladimir, my capital.” So he sent
Vladimir, his brother, to Hungary to ask aid of the king, who marched
straightway with an army on Galitch. “I, thy brother, have started,”
wrote the king. “Join me at once with thy forces. Vladimirko will see
the men whom he has offended.”

Vladimirko had friends in Hungary, who sent him information, hence

he left Bailz, where his camp was, and hastened forward to meet the
Hungarian forces at Peremysl. There he discovered that he was no
match for the king in the field, so he begged the archbishop and two
bishops from Hungary with certain influential boyars to help him. He
lavished gold without stint on these prelates and boyars, and they in
return urged the king to go home and make war at another time. He
yielded, and sent this explanation to Izyaslav: “The Greek Emperor is
moving against me; I must return to my own country to meet him,
but next summer I can send ten thousand men, or even more if thou
need them.”

The Hungarian force vanished, and was as if it had never seen

Galitch. Izyaslav, foiled for the moment by his enemy, sent Vladimir a
second time to Hungary with this message: “Vyatcheslav’s boyars,
the people and the steppe tribes have sent for me. [80]If thou must
stay at home to prepare for the Greek Emperor, send me the aid
which thou hast promised, and I will be with thee hereafter at all
times.” The king sent him now ten thousand men, and with these
warriors he set out against Kief.

On the way news was brought to him that Vladimirko was following.
A council was summoned, and the boyars spoke thus: “Thou art
marching on Yuri, and Vladimirko is pursuing; our position is
perilous.” “Ye have come out of Kief,” replied Izyaslav; “ye have lost
land and property, ye have lost all. I have lost my inheritance. I must
get back my own and win yours in the same effort. If Vladimirko
comes, God will decide between us. If Yuri should meet me, the Lord
will judge also in his case.” And leaving Sviatopolk, one of his
brothers, behind in Vladimir, his capital, to guard the place, he
moved forward with the Hungarians and his own men.

On the way Vladimirko was joined by Andrei, and both forces

followed together. Though sometimes at skirmishing distance,
Izyaslav wisely abstained from action, and sent on Vladimir to
Bailgorod, where Boris, son of Yuri, was feasting. If a collector of
taxes had not raised the bridge, Boris would have been seized at
table. Unable to get possession of the place without a battle,
Vladimir rejoined Izyaslav, and they hastened on toward Kief. When
Vladimirko’s men came up, they approached and sounded a trumpet.
People ran out and lowered the bridge willingly. This advance force
entered Bailgorod, and Boris hurried away to his father. Yuri, greatly
alarmed by the strength of the enemy marching against him, left
Kief at once, crossed the Dnieper, fled on, and took refuge in
Gorodok.

All Kief went out to meet Izyaslav. The delight of the people this
time seemed real. Yuri, whom the city never really liked, had
become most unpopular, and they now rejoiced to be rid of him.

On the west, beyond Bailgorod, Vladimirko and Andrei were

manœuvering for battle with Izyaslav, when suddenly news reached
them that their enemy was in Kief with his forces, and Yuri
powerless in Gorodok. Vladimirko’s rage was unbounded. “I cannot
see how my father-in-law manages,” said he to Andrei. “I cannot
understand how ye, his sons, help him. Thou, Andrei, hadst thy
camp on the Goryn; Boris was in Bailgorod. We might have
[81]forced Izyaslav to action and lamed, or defeated him, but Boris
left us and gave the road to our enemy. Thy father then abandoned
Kief, and Izyaslav is now Grand Prince. To-day the whole Russian
land is on his side. I leave you, and go now to Galitch.”

Yuri had no friends in the south, where all had hoped for his
downfall. The campaign seemed indeed like some folk-tale. A battle
might have ruined Izyaslav; a quick march secured him dominion.

Vladimirko turned home, but to each town he said as he came to it:

“Give me the silver and gold that I ask of you. If ye refuse I will take
what I find at the sword’s point.” No town or city had the silver or
gold, or the coin or utensils to meet this demand of Yuri’s ally, hence
people were forced to take every ornament from the necks and the
arms of their women, and give them to the master of Galitch.
Vladimirko took from all in this way till he reached his own boundary.
At last the hour of triumph had sounded for Yuri’s simple-minded
brother. On the day after his entrance to Kief, Izyaslav sent this
message to his uncle: “I salute thee, my father. I have sinned before
thee, but I repent. I have sinned a first, and a second, and a third
time. I repent now of all these transgressions, and, if thou forgive,
God will pardon me. I give thee Kief; come thou and sit on the
throne of thy fathers.” Thus Izyaslav acknowledged completely the
right of uncles as opposed to the sons of their elder brothers, a right
against which even personal qualities, or the respect of people
availed not.

“God give thee strength, my son,” replied Vyatcheslav, “because thou

hast given me due honor. It was thy duty thus to act long ago. Thou
hast given honor to God by the honor given me. Thou sayest that I
am thy father; I say that thou art my son. I have no son, and thou
hast no father; thou art my son, thou art also my brother.”

Uncle and nephew now kissed the cross to each other not to part in
defeat or in triumph. The Hungarians were feasted, received rich
presents, and went home. The two princes sent Izyaslav’s son on a
mission to Hungary, to assure the Hungarian king of the Kief princes’
gratitude, and to make offer of service, asking, too, that if the need
came the king would send troops, as he had sent them recently.
Rostislav of Smolensk was invited to aid in liberating [82]Kief, for they
thought, and thought rightly, that Yuri would not yield without a
struggle.

Yuri now summoned all his allies. Sviatoslav moved promptly and
met Vladimir, son of David, in Chernigoff; then their forces sailed
down in boats to Gorodok, where they joined Yuri. Izyaslav, the
other son of David, joined the Kief princes. Rostislav of Smolensk
came to Kief early with his forces. Yuri moved with his allies from
Gorodok to the Dnieper and strove hard to cross, but was foiled in
each effort by his nephew. Strengthened now by large forces of the
Polovtsi, he marched toward the south and crossed at the second
ford, below Kief, then turning back, he advanced on the capital.
Izyaslav and his uncle, disposing their men in the city and around it,
waited for the coming conflict.

“We are now ready for battle,” said Vyatcheslav to his nephews.
“Yuri is my brother, though younger, and I wish to bring my seniority
before him. God in his judgment considers the right side.” So he
summoned an envoy and gave these instructions: “Go thou to Yuri,
my brother: bow down to him in my name and say these words from
me: ‘I have said often to thee, Yuri, and to Izyaslav, shed not
Christian blood, ruin not the Russian land. I have tried to restrain
thee from war. I have regiments and power of my own which God
gave me. Still I have not fought for myself, though thou, Yuri, and
also Izyaslav have deeply offended me, not one time, but many.
Izyaslav, when going to fight against Igor, said that he was not
seeking Kief for himself, but for me, his father. Then, when God gave
him victory, he kept Kief for himself, and took also Turoff and Pinsk
from me. That is how Izyaslav offended, but I, keeping Christians in
mind and the Russian land, did not remember it against him. Thou,
brother Yuri, when going to Pereyaslavl to fight against Izyaslav,
didst say: “I seek not Kief for myself. I have an older brother who is
to me as a father; I am seeking Kief for that brother.” But, when God
aided thee to take Kief, thou didst keep it. Thou didst seize from me,
besides, Dorogobuj and Peresopnitsa, and gavest me only
Vyshgorod. Thus did ye wrong me. All this time I sought no redress
out of love for the Russian land and for Christians. Ye would take no
decision of mine; ye sought war. I strove to dissuade thee from war,
but ye would not listen. Thy answer was that thou couldst not give
homage to a junior. But Izyaslav, though he has failed [83]twice
before in his word to me, has given now what is mine; he has
yielded up Kief, and calls me father. Thou hast said: “I cannot bow
down to a junior.” I am older than thou not a little; I was bearded
before thou wert born. If it is thy wish to defy my seniority, God will
render judgment.’ ”

To this Yuri answered: “I bow down to thee, brother; thy words are
true, and well spoken. Thou art to me in the place of a father, and if
it is thy desire to arrange matters clearly, let Izyaslav go to Volynia
and Rostislav return to Smolensk. I will settle all questions then with
thee.” “Brother Yuri, this is what I will say in answer,” retorted
Vyacheslav. “Thou hast seven sons, and I do not hunt them away
from thee. I have two adopted sons, Izyaslav and Rostislav, with
some others still younger. I will add this: Do thou for the good of the
Russian land and of Christians go to Pereyaslavl, thence to Kursk
with thy sons, and beyond is Rostoff, thy great inheritance. Send
home the sons of Oleg. After that we will settle, and shed no
Christian blood. But if thou must have thy own way, the Purest Lady
and her Son will judge between us.”

Yuri gave no answer to these words, but next morning he appeared

before Kief with his forces. There was nothing but skirmishing till
toward evening, when a part of each army engaged. The Kief troops
drove back their opponents, and fought with such vigor that Yuri
withdrew his whole force and marched westward to meet Vladimirko,
his ally from Galitch, who, as he heard, was now hastening to join
him. He appeared before Bailgorod, from which his son Boris had
fled some time previously, and summoning the citizens, said: “Ye are
my people, open the gates to me.” “Has Kief opened its gates?” was
the answer. The gates remained closed, and Yuri marched farther.
The Kief princes set out in pursuit and overtook him near Rut River,
beyond Bailgorod. There they strove again to make peace, but
failed, since the sons of Oleg and the Polovtsi opposed it.
As they could not come to terms, the Kief princes were anxious to
force a battle before Vladimirko could strengthen their enemy. Yuri
wished to defer the engagement till Vladimirko could join him. His
first intention was to pass Rut River, prevent the Kief troops from
crossing, and wait for his ally in a favorable position. But all his
movements to gain time were useless, and he was compelled [84]to
turn promptly to battle. Andrei, now Yuri’s eldest son, for Rostislav
had died recently, ranged his father’s warriors in order of battle.
“Thou hast striven much for the good,” said Izyaslav and his brother
to Vyatcheslav, “but thy brother opposes at all times. We are willing,
if need be, to lay down our lives to save thy rights for thee.” “My
sons,” replied the old man, “I have been opposed all my life to
bloodshed. We are on this field to-day because of Yuri. God will
judge between him and me.”

Andrei advanced in the front rank, led the battle, and made the first
lance cast. His lance broke, his shield was torn from him, his helmet
was shivered, and he fell from the horse, which was wounded under
him. Izyaslav also engaged in the front rank; thrown from his horse,
he fell and was lost among the slain and wounded.

The battle was brief, but decisive. Izyaslav’s men fought willingly this
time, while Yuri’s showed no heart in the struggle. His Polovtsi fled
without using an arrow. After them fled the sons of Oleg, and next
Yuri himself and his sons. Many prisoners were taken, many men
slain. Among the slain was Vladimir, son of David, Prince of
Chernigoff.

When the victors, returning, passed over the field after hunting their
fugitive opponents, they saw a man trying to rise from a great pile of
dead and wounded. Some foot warriors ran up and struck him. “I am
a prince!” he was able to say. “Thou art the man we are seeking,”
cried they, and slashed at his helmet, thinking him a son of Oleg, or
David. “I am Izyaslav. I am your prince,” called he to them. They
raised him then with gladness, and praised the Lord, who had saved
him.

The Kief princes urged Izyaslav, son of David, to take his brother’s
corpse, hasten with all the strength in him to Chernigoff, and sit on
the throne before Sviatoslav could forestall him. (This was a real
case of running for office.)

From the battlefield Yuri fled to the Dnieper, which he crossed, and
then sped forward to Pereyaslavl for refuge. Sviatoslav fled to
Gorodok, but as the son of Oleg was enormous in person, and
mortally weary from fighting and fleeing, he could not move farther,
though eager to do so. If he had had wings and could have used
them, he would have flown through the air to Chernigoff; as it was,
he sent forward his nephew, son of Vsevolod, who learned [85]at the
Desna that Izyaslav, son of David, was already on the throne.
Vladimirko of Galitch, on hearing of his father-in-law’s defeat,
hastened homeward.

At last Vyatcheslav and his nephew were in safety on all sides. They
returned to Kief, which they entered in triumph, and held the place
with pleasure, at least for the moment.

Vladimirko of Galitch now dealt a sore blow at his enemies. Having

heard that Mystislav, son of Izyaslav the Kief prince, was bringing in
Hungarians, he lay in wait to destroy them. He found means to place
a great quantity of wine within reach of the foreigners and they
seized it and had a rich feast that evening. Just before daybreak
Vladimirko attacked and slew nearly all of them, reserving but few
for captivity. Mystislav escaped with his personal attendants. “If God
give health to the king, and to me,” said Izyaslav, when he heard of
the slaughter, “Vladimirko will pay for this dearly.”
Yuri, still in Pereyaslavl, was inciting Vladimirko, and collecting fresh
Polovtsi, so the Kief princes marched to expel him. After fighting two
days before the town, on the third they burned its outskirts and sent
these words to Yuri: “We salute thee. Go thou to Suzdal. Leave a son
in Pereyaslavl. We may not leave thee there; thou wouldst bring in
Polovtsi.” Yuri could get no aid from Vladimirko or the Polovtsi. His
own forces were greatly decreased, and he would not weaken
Suzdal, hence he returned this answer: “I will march to Gorodok,
remain there a time, and go afterward to Suzdal.” To this the reply
was that he might remain one month in Gorodok, and then he must
go to Suzdal. If he would not agree to this, they would attack
Gorodok, as they had attacked Pereyaslavl. There was no escape
now, so, though unwilling, Yuri and his son kissed the cross to go in
one month to Suzdal. He promised also to make no attack on Kief
while it was held by Izyaslav and his uncle, and his uncle made no
treaty with Sviatoslav, son of Oleg.

Leaving his son Glaib in Pereyaslavl, Yuri went to Gorodok. Andrei,

his eldest son, begged to go in advance to Suzdal. “We have naught
now in this place,” said he to his father. Sviatoslav, hearing that Yuri
had agreed with Vyatcheslav and his nephew, sent to Izyaslav, son
of David, in his own name and in that of Sviatoslav, son of Vsevolod,
asking for what had belonged to their [86]fathers. Izyaslav gave
those lands to them, but on condition of their leaving Yuri, and
acting with the sons of Mystislav.

Yuri had not the heart to go home with defeat, and when the month
had passed, and the time came to go to Suzdal he broke his oath
and remained in Gorodok. Izyaslav with his warriors, the Prince of
Chernigoff with his men, also the son of Vsevolod promptly moved
against him. The son of Oleg sent his forces, but would not appear
himself against his old ally. Yuri shut himself up in the place and
fought, but at last he grew weary; he could not win victory alone,
and no help was visible on any side. He was forced finally to swear
again that he would go back to Suzdal. He went this time, and left
his son Glaib in Gorodok. Because of the Gorodok oath breaking,
Pereyaslavl had been taken from Glaib, and given to Mystislav, son
of the Grand Prince.

On the way home, Yuri stopped to see his friend Sviatoslav, son of
Oleg, who received him with honor and gave him things needed for
his journey. This friendly visit caused, very likely, the meeting
between the princes of Kief and Chernigoff in 1152 (Sviatoslav, son
of Vsevolod, was present at this meeting), at which they decided to
deprive Yuri of his foothold between the South and Chernigoff. Then
they razed Gorodok, fired the ruins and consumed the place utterly.
They left not one thing on the site of it.

“Yuri sighed from his heart,” as the chronicler states, when he heard
of this destruction, and began at once to rally his forces. Rostislav of
Ryazan came with his brother; Sviatoslav, son of Oleg, broke his
treaty with the Kief prince and came to aid Yuri. A great host of
Polovtsi appeared from all hordes between the Don and the Volga.
An immense army assembled. “They burned my Gorodok,” said Yuri,
“and also the church in it. I will burn their cities in return.” And he
marched on Chernigoff.

The Kief prince sent this message at once to his brother in

Smolensk: “If Yuri moves against thy land, I will hasten to aid thee.
If he passes thee, do thou hurry hither with warriors.” Rostislav saw
that Yuri, when passing Smolensk lands, would strike at Chernigoff,
so marching with speed he reached Chernigoff before his uncle, and
shut himself in there with Sviatoslav, son of Vsevolod. Polovtsi
legions appeared that same day, and fell straightway to burning the
suburbs.
Yuri himself with his allies came in sight the next morning. [87]Twelve
days and nights did the Suzdal prince struggle with the city but the
defense was so stubborn that he seized nothing, mastered no part of
Chernigoff. On the thirteenth morning came news that Vyatcheslav
and Izyaslav were hurriedly approaching with all the Kief forces. The
Polovtsi, active at looting and burning, fled when they saw that real
fighting and danger were near them, and Yuri was forced to
withdraw. He went first to Novgorod, then to Rylsk, and was about
to start for Suzdal when the son of Oleg reproached him as follows:
“Thou art leaving me when thou hast ruined my property. All the
grain in this land has been trampled by Polovtsi. Thy Polovtsi have
fled, and thou thyself art deserting. After thee will come Izyaslav,
and he will destroy what remains here because I broke faith with
him, and gave thee assistance.” Yuri engaged to leave troops, but his
words were merely vain promises. He left only fifty men of his
guard, and Vassilko, his son, to protect all that country.

At Novgorod appeared Izyaslav, with his allies. In three days he was

master of all save the innermost fortress. Sviatoslav, son of Oleg,
asked then for peace, which the Kief prince wished at first to refuse,
but he granted it finally and returned to Chernigoff. There he
received news from his son, Mystislav, that he had overtaken and
crushed Yuri’s Polovtsi, freed a great number of captives and
recovered much booty. Yuri made still another effort, but a weaker
one and his defeat was decisive.

Thus ended Izyaslav’s struggle with his uncle. Yuri’s main ally,
Sviatoslav, was reduced to take gladly the place that was given him.
There remained still another of Yuri’s assistants, the last one, his
son-in-law, Vladimirko of Galitch, and to him Izyaslav now turned his
attention. [88]
[Contents]
CHAPTER IV
 ANDREI BOGOLYUBOFF
In 1151 the Kief prince and King Geiza of Hungary attacked
Vladimirko near Peremysl, where, though hemmed in by the armies,
he managed to escape to the town with a single attendant. He
informed the king straightway, that, mortally wounded and dying, he
begged him for peace and forgiveness. He sent also, through
agents, great presents and bribes to Geiza’s attendants and to the
archbishop. “Let me not die without peace or pardon,” implored he.
“Great is my sin, but forgive me.”

Notwithstanding all protests from Izyaslav, peace and pardon were

granted, Vladimirko promising to return the towns seized from
Izyaslav, and to be his ally, both in defeat and in triumph. Vladimirko
was lying in bed, as if mortally wounded, and seemed to dread his
last hour, then approaching.

When King Geiza was sending officials with a cross, which the dying
man was to kiss, Izyaslav objected with anger. “That man jests with
every oath,” said he. “It is vain to send a cross to Vladimirko.” “This
is the very wood on which died Christ our Lord,” explained Geiza. “By
God’s will it came to Saint Stephen, my ancestor. If Vladimirko kisses
this cross, survives, and breaks his oath, I will lay down my life, or
capture Galitch and give it to thee. I cannot kill a man on his death-
bed.”

Izyaslav yielded, but Mystislav, his son, who was present, added
these words: “He will break the oath surely, and I repeat here before
this holy cross, forget not thy word, O King of Hungary, but come
again with thy warriors to Galitch, and do what thou hast promised.”
“If Vladimirko breaks his oath,” replied Geiza, “I will ask thy father to
help me in Galitch, as he has asked me up to this time.” Vladimirko
kissed the cross to do all that he had promised. [89]

On his way home Izyaslav sent posadniks to take possession of the

towns which were to be returned to him. These men came back
quickly with news that not one town had been given to them—one
half of the oath was now broken. On learning that Yuri was marching
against Izyaslav, Vladimirko at once sent troops to help Yuri, and
thus broke the rest of his oath. He returned home only when the
Grand Prince was marching against him a second time.

Izyaslav sent Borislavitch, his boyar, who had witnessed the oath on
the holy cross of Saint Stephen, to demand the towns promised.
“Say to Izyaslav,” said the Galitch prince, “that he attacked me
unawares and perfidiously, that he brought a foreign king with him,
and that I will either lay down my life, or avenge the wrong done
me.” “But, thou hast taken an oath to the king and to Izyaslav,” said
the boyar. “Wilt thou foreswear the cross?” “Oh, that little cross!”
retorted Vladimirko. “Though that cross be small it is mighty,” said
the boyar. “Men have told thee that Christ the Lord died on that
wood, and that thou wouldst not live if thy promises were broken.
Dost remember?” “I remember that ye spoke many words to me
then, but leave this place now and go back to thy Izyaslav.”

While the boyar was leaving the courtyard, Vladimirko started for
vespers, but halted to ridicule him. When, on his way back from the
church, the prince reached the spot where he had stood to revile
Borislavitch, he call out on a sudden: “Some one has struck me on
the shoulder!” He could not move his legs, and would have fallen
had men not seized him. He was borne to his chambers and placed
at once in a hot bath, but he grew rapidly worse, and died that same
night.
Borislavitch, who had passed the night at a village by the wayside,
was roused hurriedly next morning at daybreak, and bidden to wait
till the prince should recall him. Some hours later a second message
came, asking him to return. When he reappeared at Vladimirko’s
palace, servants clothed in black came out to meet him. In the chief
seat was Yaroslav, son of Vladimirko, dressed in black; his boyars
also were in black, every man of them. Yaroslav burst into tears as
he looked at the envoy, who learned at once how Vladimirko had
died in the night, though in perfect health a few hours earlier. “God
has shown his will,” [90]said Yaroslav; “thou art called back to hear
these words from me. Go thou to Izyaslav, bow down to him and say
from me: ‘God has taken my father, be thou in his place. There were
questions between thee and him, those questions the Lord will judge
as he pleases. God has taken my father and left me here in place of
him. His warriors and attendants are all at my order. I salute thee, O
father, receive me as thou dost Mystislav, thy son. Let him ride at
one of thy stirrups, and I with my forces will ride at the other.’ ”

The boyar went home with this message, which seems to have been
sent to win time and lull Izyaslav, for no towns were returned, and
all things remained as they had been.

Hence, in 1153, the Grand Prince again moved against Galitch. The
two forces met at Terebovl, but the battle was strangely indecisive
as to victory, though its results were more useful to Yaroslav than to
the Grand Prince. One part of the Kief force defeated one part of
Yaroslav’s army, while the other part of those forces was badly
beaten and pursued by the Galitch men. Izyaslav, impetuous as
usual, broke the ranks of his opponents and drove them far from the
first place of onset, but his brothers and allies were beaten, and
hopelessly scattered.
Izyaslav, having no forces with which to continue the struggle,
returned to Kief and abandoned all plans against Galitch. Some
months later he married a Georgian princess, and died shortly after,
1154. Kief and the south mourned greatly for this prince, and most
of all mourned Vyatcheslav his uncle. “Thou art where I ought to be,
but against God all are powerless,” sobbed the old man, bending
over the coffin.

If in Kief men were saddened by this death, they rejoiced in

Chernigoff immensely. Izyaslav, son of David, who yearned for Kief
as a man yearns for her of whom he is desperately enamoured, set
out for the city at once, but was stopped at the Dnieper by
Vyatcheslav, who sent this inquiry: “Why hast thou come? Who has
called thee? Go back to thy Chernigoff.” “I wish to weep over my
cousin. I was far from him when he died. Let me weep at his coffin,”
implored Izyaslav. By the advice of the boyars, and the son of the
dead prince, this request was rejected. They dared not trust the son
of David, and were waiting impatiently for Rostislav to take the place
of his brother. [91]

Prompt action was taken meanwhile to divide the Chernigoff cousins.

Vyatcheslav sent for Sviatoslav, son of Vsevolod, who came at once,
without knowledge of his uncle’s death. The Smolensk prince
appeared at the earliest moment, and all felt relieved when Rostislav
sat in the place of his brother, as a son and subordinate of
Vyatcheslav, the Grand Prince, though really commanding. “Act,” said
the Kief men, “as did thy brother, and Kief will be thine till thy death
hour.”

The first act of Rostislav was a settlement with Sviatoslav, son of

Vsevolod. “I give thee Turoff and Pinsk,” said he to this nephew,
“because thou didst come to my father, I give thee good lands for
that act of thine.” Sviatoslav took this large gift with gladness. There
was need to attach him firmly, since his uncles of Chernigoff were
treating already with Yuri, whose son Glaib was now marching on
Pereyaslavl with a strong force of Polovtsi. Rostislav sent his son
straightway to that city with assistance. The Polovtsi had attacked,
but at sight of Kief warriors they withdrew beyond the Sula.
Rostislav resolved then to march on Chernigoff, and crossing the
Dnieper he was ready to move forward when a courier galloped up
with the message: “Vyatcheslav, thy uncle, is dead!”

After the prince had been interred with great honor, Rostislav went
back to the army and held a council: “Return to the capital,” said the
Kief boyars, who wished to be sure of the offices. “Settle there with
the people, and begin to rule anew well supported. If Yuri comes,
make peace or war, as need dictates.” Rostislav did not take their
advice, but moved on Chernigoff, sending this message first to
Izyaslav, son of David: “Wilt thou kiss the cross to reign in
Chernigoff, while I am in Kief?” “I know not what I have done to
make thee march against me. If thou come, we shall have that
which God gives,” was the answer.

But this far-seeing son of David had sent Polovtsi under Glaib to
Pereyaslavl, and was in fact warring at that time with Rostislav. He
now joined Glaib with great promptness. Rostislav, finding no zeal in
Kief boyars, and thinking himself outnumbered and powerless, lost
courage, and discussed terms of peace with the son of David. Such
indecision roused Mystislav, son of the recent Grand Prince, who left
his uncle with these words: “Soon neither thou nor I will have any
place.” Rostislav, deserted by his nephew, [92]and outflanked by the
Polovtsi, fought two days, and then fled, saving his life with much
difficulty. The Polovtsi turned now toward Kief, which they
threatened. “I wish to go to you,” was the message sent by Izyaslav
to Kief citizens. The capital was helpless, Izyaslav was the one man
to save it. “Come thou to Kief, lest the Polovtsi take us. Thou art our
prince, come at once,” was the quick answer.

Izyaslav needed no second call. He appeared, took the throne of

Kief, and sent Glaib, son of Yuri, to Pereyaslavl. When Yuri heard
that Izyaslav, his nephew, was dead, and that Rostislav, his other
nephew, was in Kief, he set out with strong forces immediately, and
was nearing Smolensk, for which he intended the first blow, when
he learned that Vyatcheslav, his brother, was dead; that Rostislav
was defeated, that Izyaslav, son of David, was reigning in Kief, and
Glaib his own son, was prince in Pereyaslavl.

Rostislav, who had reached Smolensk and had collected men, was
marching to meet Yuri. Each now wished peace with the other. Yuri
was hastening to Kief, which he coveted beyond everything else.
Rostislav, who had no desire at that juncture for Kief, was glad to
agree with his uncle, and they made peace with apparent sincerity.
Yuri continued his march toward Kief, and Rostislav retired to his
own capital. Near Storodub, Yuri met his old ally, Sviatoslav, son of
Oleg, with whom was Vsevolod’s son, Sviatoslav, who appeared now
with a prayer for reinstatement. “In days past I lost my mind
altogether. Forgive me.” These were his words to Yuri. The son of
Oleg interceded, and Yuri gave pardon, making Sviatoslav kiss the
cross not to desert either him, or the son of Oleg. All three set out
then for Chernigoff.

Before reaching that city the son of Oleg sent the Kief prince this
message: “Go out of Kief, brother, Yuri is marching against thee.”
Izyaslav was unwilling to leave Kief. A second message came, but he
took no note of it. Thereupon Yuri sent these words: “Kief is my
inheritance, not thine.” Without right, and without the special favor
of the people, Izyaslav could not remain, so he answered: “I am
here not of my own will; the Kief people sent for me. Kief is thine,
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookfinal.com