“A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which does not exist between them and any others … This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation; pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.”

Mill’s writing on the subject is relevant to the Sri Lanka situation. He further states that,
“Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. … Among a people without fellow feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of a representative government cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, pamphlets, newspapers, speeches do not reach them. One section does not know what options or what instigation are circulating in another.”

Mill seems to be describing the two nationalities in Sri Lanka. He describes how an army composed of one nationality occupying areas populated by another nationality would behave.
“Above all, the grand and only reliable security in the last resort against despotism of the government is in that case wanting – the sympathy of the army with the people. … To the rest of the people foreigners are merely strangers; to the soldier, they are men against whom he may be called, at a week’s notice, to fight for life or death… Soldiers to whose feelings half or three fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners, will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would in doing the same thing against declared enemies. ”

It is important for all communities in Sri Lanka and their diaspora engage in rational discourse and search their souls to find a just solution.