"A Theme Revisited"? The Impact of the Ethnic Conflict on Women and Politics in Sri Lanka

The 30-year ethnic-based civil war in Sri Lanka between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lanka government ended in May 2009. This article analyzes the impact of the violent ethnic conflict on shaping and reshaping the nationalistic ideology of the women of the majority ethnic group-specifically, the Sinhalese. Based on a field survey of urban, educated Sinhala women in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this article argues that women adopted a Sinhala Buddhist ideology to counter what they perceived as a threat to the integrity of a Sinhala Buddhist nation by the Tamil Hindu minority. In particular, this study demonstrates that the ethnic conflict while reinforcing a gendered ethnoreligious identity also seems to have created a political space for their voices to be heard in representative electoral regimes.