Seventeen years after the guns went silent, Sri Lanka is still fighting over what the war meant and who counts as a victim.
May 18, 2026 marked the 17th anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war. As custom dictated, the Sri Lankan government commemorated it as a Remembrance Day and a War Heroes’ Day. Other institutions, including schools, followed suit. Many of them had built their own war memorials, and they commemorated students who had joined the military and died during the conflict. For my generation, the last that lived through the war and saw it for what it was, none of this came as news.
I remember the conflict only too well. I remember the injuries and casualties, the senseless terrorist attacks, the ethnic cleansing, and the brutal reprisals by the state. The latter, we were told, were necessary in the war against terrorists, because terrorists were not supposed to live; they were meant to be vanquished, forever. As Sri Lankans, we were supposed to accept this narrative and leave it at that.
Not surprisingly, throughout much of the country, May 18, 2009, has become very much a day of liberation, an event to be valorized and mythologized. It has been so ever since, and I suspect it will remain so, regardless of the politics.
At the time, I was doing my O Levels and focused on my studies. I recall the day clearly. I had an exam in the morning. When we went into the examination hall, the television news anchor declared that victory was at hand. When we came out, another news anchor was showing grisly images from the battlefield and the bullet-ridden face of the leader of the terrorist group that had waged war against the state for over 30 years. I was with two friends that day, one a Muslim and the other a Tamil. I am not sure what they felt, but I felt some relief. Reflecting on the day now, I am happy to say that I have grown wiser.
A war that was always with us
For what we did not realize at the time, despite the signs that were clearly there for all to see, is that the war that scarred my country did not begin three or four decades earlier. In one sense, it was always with us. Since I am not a historian, I can do little but point out books, articles, essays and other materials that historicize the conflict. Reading them now, I realize that there are so many ways of interpreting the war, putting it in perspective, apportioning blame, and proposing solutions. One thing remains clear: 17 years on, though we celebrate the end of war, we have yet to embrace peace.
Here, I am not regurgitating liberal tropes that love, not war, is the answer. I don’t think you need to go that far to acknowledge how badly the Sri Lankan conflict damaged a once promising country. At its peak, in the 1950s and 1960s, Sri Lanka seemed on the cusp of a major transformation. Located at the heart of the Indian Ocean, occupying a strategic position — the two geographic tropes that are most frequently invoked about the island today — it had a storehouse of resources and capital to draw from. Already it boasted a good social welfare system. What was required, development theorists observed, was long-term, sustainable and equitable growth to solve the problem.
Two visions of nationality
As with otheroccupying colonial powers, the British operated on the principle of divide and rule. This pitted one community against all others. The local elite who dominated politics even before independence was granted to the country failed to see beyond these divisions. In 1919, when the Ceylon National Congress was formed, modeled on the lines of the Indian National Congress, cleavages of caste, class and ethnicity had become all too evident and palpable in Sri Lankan society. As historians have noted, by this point there were two contending and contrasting visions of nationality: an all-inclusive Sri Lankan, or Ceylonese, and a more insular Sinhalese or Tamil identity.
By independence in 1948, these contradictions had come to the fore. Over the next few years, the Sinhalese majority touted the line that British colonialism had entrenched non-Sinhalese groups, especially Tamils. They pointed out that Tamils had dominated the elite Ceylon Civil Service, that they had progressed over the Sinhalese. For the latter, this was a historical anomaly that needed correction. It was part of a broader pattern of injustice that European colonialism had wrought in Sri Lanka.
The problem, of course, was that there were many ways of resolving it. Many of those who wanted to correct it preferred a hostile and confrontational approach that ultimately soured relations between the two communities.
After 1956, when the then democratically elected government enacted reforms aimed at reversing colonial historical wrongs, but which actually alienated the Tamil minority, there was no turning back.
Sri Lanka had its peculiar ethnic and religious patterns. These are very different from those of India. By 1978, they had fueled separatist sentiments. By 1983, the year Sinhalese mobs unleashed a pogrom against Tamils, things had become untenable. From then on until 2009, suicide bombings and brutal state repression became facts of life.
An elusive program for peace
To those who have not lived through these years or have only the dimmest memory of them, it is difficult to explain what it was like living through war. I come from the proverbial South of the country, which is dominated by the Sinhalese. My experience differed from those in the North, who were bombarded on the one hand by state embargoes, and on the other by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the group that proclaimed Eelam or a separate state for Tamils of Sri Lanka. For many in the North, if not most, this would have been akin to a choice between a rock and a hard place.
In one sense, I suppose, the North and the South share a common memory of war. The South sent many of its young to fight for a unitary state; the North dispatched many of its young in pursuit of a separate one. The aims may have differed; they may have been at variance with each other. But both sides thought they were fighting for a just cause, and in the end, both were pitted inexorably against one another. When the state did crush the rebels, in the most violent way imaginable, nothing could have brought the two communities together other than the most rational program for peace. It was this program for peace that eluded us in the years after independence. It has been eluding us ever since.
Looking back now, I realize how naïve most of us in the South were in thinking that the end of war would automatically bring about the dawn of peace. Far too many people were killed in the course of 30 years. These deaths continue to haunt Sri Lankans, be they mothers of Sinhalese soldiers or mothers of Tamil martyrs. Against the backdrop of these tensions, any government serious about pursuing peace would have pursued an agenda of reconciliation. Since 2009, no government has taken this to heart.
These tensions are reflected in the very words and terms both sides of the divide use when describing the events of May 18, 2009. The southern side — which, of course, cannot be limited to the Sinhalese, since there are Muslims and even Tamils who celebrate the end of the war — call it Victory Day, or Liberation Day.
The northern side — which comprises not just Tamils, but also Sinhalese, Muslims and other groups that have a sobering view of the war, including civil society outfits — call it a Day of Remembrance and, among a few of them, Genocide Remembrance Day. Although the last stages of the war were very bloody and allegations of genocide have been made, including by the local Tamil political leadership, the war has not been officially termed as such. But in the minds of those who oppose the triumphalist overtones of state narratives, it may have been. In any case, Western politicians, including in the U.S., invoke the term in connection with the end of the war.
Undercurrents of grief and memory
Perhaps, in some strange way, we can unite ourselves by these differences of perception. In that sense, the first step we can take toward understanding the other side — whether you are a mother or widow who lost her son or husband to the war, or the traumatized family of a citizen who was made to disappear because of his or her links to a separatist or terrorist group — is by discerning the undercurrents of grief and memory. The differences cannot be erased, but in recognizing that they are there, that they cannot be wished away, perhaps we can set ourselves on the long road to reconciliation.
This is a big ask. Perhaps it is also wishful thinking. I am not sure. But commemorating the end of a war is utterly, deeply problematic. It depends on who does the commemorating and who defines when a war ended and when it began. It also depends on who controls the narrative. Sri Lanka’s civil war, – where the same events are claimed as liberation by one side and genocide by another – is no different from conflicts like the one ongoing in Gaza and the West Bank, where narrative control remains contested. 17 years ago, I was taken in by certain narratives. 17 years later, I am happy to say that I have outgrown them. Yet Sri Lanka has yet to come to terms with the fact that there is never one narrative when it comes to war. The sooner we realize this, the better it will be for everyone — most importantly, for the victims.
*The opinions of contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of We Are One Humanity. Submissions offering differing or alternative views are welcome.
