As though to make up for the past neglect of Sri Lanka, there has been lately a spate of writing on the island and the complexities of its politics, particularly in relation to the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic conflict. As is only to be expected in a highly sensitized situation, much of this writing specially in newspapers, tends to be either consciously or unconsciously tendentious or simplistic in its perception, whether it be of the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict or its implications for India’s Sri Lankan policy. Such writing, moreover, encourages politicians to indulge in bizarre attitudinizing fouling the atmosphere and, in the process, making it more difficult for a rational solution to emerge and worse still, pressurizing the Governments to rush to rash conclusions as many believe has happened now.
March-April 1988, volume 12, No 2