Abstract:
The internal civil war had taken place in Sri Lanka for last three decades and it
destroyed mankind in the country. But the war and terrorism (arm conflict) has
stopped by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) in 2009. The fundamental reason
for this ethnic conflict was an ideology of ethnicity or misunderstanding of ethnic
phenomena, and, which was the huge challenge for the sovereignty of the country.
In Sri Lanka, there are many ethnic groups namely Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslims and
Burgers and so on who determine their identity and solidarity in various levels.
(George Frerks and Bark Klem (Etd), 2004). In past history, Tamils, Sinhalese and
Muslims were maintained their rigid relationship and they were fighting as unity
for the independent of Sri Lanka against British colonial masters. Then, ethnic
relationship was broken by some collection of incidents in the past. So this ethnic
conflict had growth through some socio-economical and political circumstances of
this country. Thus, this paper aim to conceptualize the idea of ethnicity and ethnic
relation and to understand the ethnic relationship in the south eastern region of
Ampara district through the history. Further, this study tries to examine the current
progress of ethnic cohesion among Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims in the area of
research. This is primarily a qualitative study. Data have collected from primary as
well as secondary sources. As secondary data, the research articles, magazines,
electronic sources and literatures have used. The primary data have gathered
through questionnaire (50: based on simple random sampling method), and two (2)
focus group discussions (FGD) with the participation of local people and social
activists. In addition to this, the data have also been collected from the structured
interview with key informants. Finally, it found that the ethnic relation in the study
area was strengthened in early period, and it collapsed during the war time and,
after 2009 again they are maintaining the rigid relationship within the ethnic
groups. However, pathetically, the new era of resettlement activities of the
government and the emergence of Buddhist movements highlights as crucial issue
to re-raise the same ethnic misunderstanding (prejudice) and discriminations as
they had earlier during the war period. Hence, this study suggested that this
problematic circumstance has to be mitigated by the government and civil society
organizations in order to ensure the democracy and the peaceful environment by
considering all ethnic groups in the study area as well as in Sri Lanka.
