In the 1950s Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the main language and replace with it with Sihala and Tamil was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language. This work looks at the subsequent outcome this had.
This book analyzes the way ethnic outbidding, initiated by Sinhalese linguistic nationalists in the mid-1950s, led to the unfair treatment of Sri Lanka's minorities and to institutional decay, which in turn mobilized the Tamils to seek a separate state. The author's explanation, based on hitherto overlooked primary research, utilizes a historical institutionalist perspective and encompasses primordialist, constructivist, and instrumentalist explanations to explain Sri Lanka's civil war.
