Thanks fellows for all your comments. I am in SL now and on the move with only intermittent internet access. I can only respond briefly and selectively.

I appreciate Veerthu’s incisive retort to Dayan’s position and its reification of the state and thus of the present order. Cyberviews’ writing is not only lucid, but his questions are pertinent. Some of them are in realms to which my expertise does not extend. Nor are they easy to answer. I do not see evidence of the Elle Gunawansa’s of the world becoming mellower in political perspective -and there are always new Malindas, Champikas etc arising to keep the flames burning – assisted by their mirror images (e.g Pottu Amman) on the other side.

Ordinary Lankan: your position seems utopian to me, rather like Manik Sandrasagara in Circles of Violence albeit with differences. Individualism is part of the Western foundations of the world since the Renaissance and also the basis of market capitalism. But nevertheless all individuals are socially constituted – so the issue is how we should develop institutions in SL that can reproduce a tolerant majority (among all ethnic groups) and a pluralist conception of state and society.

Sumane: while our communitarian identities developed their present shape in the British period and beyond, they had earlier roots. Read Kemper’s books for one angle. Also note my criticism of Ben Anderson in reviewing Kemper for Modern Asian Studies in 1996. But more especially see the arguments and data in my Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period (2004 Yapa). For the manner in which a caste ideology against mixtures (the karapothu lansi, the thuppahi, the kāberi) was bolstered in the British period by European racial theories (Aryan etc) see the first chapter in PEOPLE INBETWEEN (1989 Sarvodaya). Key evidence for this thesis incidentally comes from the works of Piyadasa Sirisena, a kind of Gunadasa Amarasekara of his time. That time was in the British period, but his thinking was anticipated in the hatan kavi (war poems) of the 17th century and of 1803/04 on the Ingrisi hatana.

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Despite MR’s enlightening analysis, I still have many unanswered questions: In the context of a globalised world and the geo-political realites that play out in a regional and interational context, what will be the impact on Sri Lanka vis-a-vis the India factor? What will be the response of the UK, USA, Japan and the EU? Do we have a Serbia-Kosovo parallel here? or a Northern Ireland parallel, (thanks to the persistence of US facilitation) and notwithstanding the Ian Paisleys who were no different to our Elle Gunawansas and Ellawala Medanandas.

There is also the economic dimension. Can a war be fought with the prospect of the people bucklig under the weight of the economic burdens being relentlessly heaped on the?. Will the government survive in the face of in the wake of rising prices and falling real incomes, while the politicians are seen to be indisciplined,reeked in corruption and living ostentatioulsy? If the government falls will this allow for a saner dispensation with the backing of a more sympathetic International Community?

Even if wishful, I do not wish to see “confederative nationalism die” instead I still see remission a possibility. There are still forces of good in this country and the dam of apathy has to give way at some point!

For the majority tamil and muslim people who are not in citadel-colombo or in mullaitivu-bunker, but in the receiving end of the current nation building exercise by the (sinhala) State in East- I am not sure if the post-war project would mean anything else, an attempt to create a dominant nation and to complete what was begun in 1956. It is not too difficult for them to see through ‘apex’ and ‘sharp end’ involvement for what they are – convenient and opportunistic instruments, to use as foil.

To think that a war that would in all practical sense not recognise the difference between tamil and tiger – as the casualty figures from the north will cleary indicate – would produce a post-war environment ripe for (over arching) nation building is at best an affront to the collective memory of tamils and muslims and at worst a sign of pre-determined truimphalism. A scary proposition!

Nation building (over arching or otherwise) need not wait for executin of war but it could and should start talking to the tamils and muslims who have been ejected out as the ‘ceylonese’ morphed into ‘sinhalese’ to the exclusion of the others. It means even talking beyond LTTE, who after all don’t represent all the tamils. In this context to latch on to Karuna, Pillayan, Mahattya group (?), ex-Plote etc seems desperate. Looks like the din or war is pretty disorienting at the FDLs, even if they are as far as in Geneve!