From Independence to Aragalaya

An indispensable political history of independent Sri Lanka, from the post-war years to the 2022 uprising.

In February 1948, following centuries of colonial rule—by the Portuguese, Dutch and British successively—Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) gained its independence. Unlike neighbouring India, it did so peacefully; indeed, at the time, many considered it a model for emerging post-indepe­ndence states, with every prospect of a prosperous and successful future. Yet, within ten years, the island nation was already experiencing its first serious open ethnic tensions, revolving around the relationship between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations.

Events like the anti-Tamil riots of 1958 both shook the nation and prefigured the wider civil war that erupted in 1983 bet­ween government forces and the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), led by Velupillai Prabhakaran—a hugely destructive conflict that raged for twenty-six years until the Tigers’ final demise in May 2009.

Starting from independence and continuing up to the spring 2022 Aragalaya (Uprising)—which eventually toppled wartime Defence Secretary–turned-President Gota­bhaya Rajapaksa, following hapless economic misgovernment—this book examines major events, recurring themes and underlying trends in Sri Lanka’s often fraught, contested history. While the ethnic conflict may be over, Mark Salter suggests, many of the issues that gave rise to it are yet to be fully addressed.

Mark Salter is a journalist, analyst and writer, and the author of To End a Civil War: Norway's Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka and From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka (both published by Hurst). A former BBC radio journalist, he first visited Sri Lanka in 2002, and has lived on the island since 2019.