1983, thirty years on: Teflon Mahinda and Scapegoat Ranil
Rajan Philips-August 3, 2013
Sri Lanka has had many watershed moments in the last hundred years, some quiet and positively consequential, others violent and destabilizing. To the first category belong the introduction of universal franchise in 1931, and independence from colonial rule that came in 1948. SWRD Bandaranaike’s election victory in 1956, and the Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978, were not violent, nor were they destabilizing in themselves, but they gave rise to violent and destabilizing watershed moments, namely, the periodical riots targeting minorities from 1956 onward, culminating in July 1983 and everything that followed including the war. The violent and destabilizing events that do not fit this schema are the 1915 Sinhalese-Muslim riots and the 1971 JVP insurrection. The second JVP insurrection of the late 1980s was not an extension of the first, but rather a part of the July 1983 aftermath.
