EDUCATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF CONFLICT: LINGUISTIC AND SOCIAL PRACTICE AMONG SRI LANKAN ETHNIC MINORITY YOUTH By Christina Parks Davis A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Judith T. Irvine, Chair Professor Thomas R. Trautmann Professor E. Webb Keane, Jr. Associate Professor Barbra A. Meek Christina Parks Davis All Rights Reserved 2011 Dedication To my parents, Thomas G. Davis and Elizabeth N. Davis ii Acknowledgements I owe my gratitude to the students, teachers, and principals at the two schools where I conducted my primary research, which I refer to as Hindu College and Girls’ College. In the year and a half that I spent visiting these schools, I was exposed to some of the most creative, resilient, and determined people I have ever met. I learned more from my daily interactions at these schools than could ever be fully expressed within the confines of this dissertation. I would like to particularly thank the students in the 2007 Grade 11 class at Hindu College. At Girls’ College, I would like to thank the students in the 2008 Grade 10 Tamil-medium class, as well as the Grades 9 and 10 English-medium classes. I would also like to thank the dedicated members of the Kandy Zonal Department of Education, and all the Kandy and Colombo teachers who took time out of their busy schedules to talk to me. This dissertation represents a collaborative work between my Sri Lankan research assistants and me. I am grateful to Kumudhini Nadesan for sharing her insights and experiences with me. It is rare to find someone who thinks so actively and critically about language and social difference. I would like to thank Udayaluxmi Jeyaraman for her patience in dealing with the hundreds of hours of sometimes barely audible recordings. I also want to thank my Sinhala teacher, Bandara Herath, who helped facilitate my research and deepened my knowledge of Sri Lankan history and society. iii There were many others who have substantially contributed to this project. I want to thank Shoba Palninathan for including me in everything that she did—from research trips to tea plantations, movies at Peradeniya University, and tea with her family in Badulla. I also owe my thanks to Sasikumar Balasundaram for his support of my project, both in Sri Lanka and the US. I would also like to express my thanks to Namil Nizan, Irshad, Anushka Pilimatalawwe, Madhu Karunarathne, and Indika Jayaweera for all their help and guidance. Though I will leave them unnamed here, I am grateful to all the members of the congregation at the Peradeniya chapel. During my fieldwork, two families were kind enough to allow me to stay in their homes. The Desilva family, including their cook, Michael, provided me with care and support, not only for the two months in which I lived with them, but throughout my fieldwork. I also owe my thanks to the Pillai family, with whom I lived for seven months. I will never forget our conversations over topics such as educational inequality, jungle survival skills, and Harry Potter on the porch, the roof, or during the evening news. Though I didn’t actually live with them, my daily visits to the Mubarak residence were vital for both my research and my overall well-being. I also owe my thanks to many who helped me in Colombo. I would like to express my appreciation to Sutami Ratnavale, whose guest house provided me with a home away from home in Sri Lanka. Her guidance was crucial throughout my stay in Sri Lanka. I also owe my thanks to Gayatri, not only for taking me to my first Tamil- medium school, but for making me feel a part of her family. I would also like to acknowledge Father Sidney Knight for all of his help. iv During the course of my research I was guided for two professors: Dr. S. Sandarasegaram from Colombo University and Dr. M. Anes from Peradeniya University. Dr. S. Sandarasegaram gave me valuable insight into the Sri Lankan educational system, and Dr. Anes taught me about the history and society of Sri Lankan Muslims. I would like to express particular thanks John Rogers at the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS) who showed generosity and patience in helping me set up my research project in Sri Lanka. Though I had initially come to Sri Lanka with only small Sinhala language grant from AISLS, the Colombo staff put in tremendous effort to assist me. I would like to especially thank Mrs. Ira Unamboowe and Mr. M. de S. Weerasooriya, who enabled me to obtain permission from the Ministry of Education to conduct research in Sri Lankan schools. I would also like to thank Tissa Jayatilaka at the U.S-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission for his help and guidance throughout my research period. In Sri Lanka and the US, I received valuable advice from well-seasoned Sri Lankan scholars including Anne M. Blackburn, Jeanne Marecek, Daniel Bass, Ian Barrow, Dennis McGilvray, and John Richardson. I also benefitted from conversations with Elizabeth Frantz, whose ethnographic research coincided with my own. My research in Sri Lanka was based on a decade of research and language study in India. I want to express my utmost appreciation to Dr. K. Karunakaran for introducing me to the Tamil language in the fall of 2000. In helping facilitate my language study and research in India, guiding my dissertation research, and welcoming me into his home, he proved to me much more than a language teacher. I also owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. L. Ramamoorthy, who generously tutored me in Tamil in the summers of 2004 and 2005, and, in a wonderful twist of fate, came to the University of Michigan to teach Tamil from v 2008-2009. During this period, he helped me to analyze and prepare the final transcripts for this dissertation. I would also like to acknowledge James Lindholm at the University of Chicago, whose teaching methods allowed me to grasp Tamil grammar in a way that I never had before. I would also like to thank all of my Tamil teachers over the last decade, including Dr. Shanmugam, Dr. C. Sivashanmugam, and Dr. T. Muthukrishnan at Bharathiar University in Coimbatore; Dr. Barathy, Dr. Sundar Kalaiyappan, Mrs. Jayanti, and Mr. David at the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AIIS) in Madurai; Dr. Natanasabapathy, Dr. Ganesan, Dr. Chandramohan, and Dr. Nataraja at Annamalai University in Chitambaram; and Dr. L. Ramamoorthy and Dr. G. Ravishankar at the Pondicherry Institute for Linguistics and Culture. I would also like to thank the office staff, librarians, and graduate students at Bharathiar University and Annamalai University for all their help with my Tamil studies. I would like to particularly thank Dr. Kalai Selvi Sivakumar, who took me under her wing at the very beginning of my studies, and has remained my friend since. At the University of Michigan, I would to convey my gratitude to my dissertation committee members, Judith T. Irvine, Thomas R. Trautmann, Webb Keane, and Barbra A. Meek. They have all mastered the art of knowing when to give encouragement and when to give critical feedback. I appreciate the way in which they pushed me to develop my ideas further. In addition to my committee members, there were other professors who also helped me develop my work, including Bruce Mannheim, Erik Mueggler, Barbra Metcalf, Farina Mir, Sumathi Ramaswamy, and Michael Lempert. My intellectual experience at University of Michigan was enriched by conversations with other anthropology students working in South Asia including Laura vi Brown, Katherine Martineau, Frank Cody, Daniel Bass, Sonia Das, and Erika Hoffman. I would also like to particularly acknowledge Sherina Feliciano-Santos and Laura Brown for being my companions and intellectual sparring partners throughout the dissertation writing process, which can be bleak and difficult at times. I would also like to thank Claire Insel, Anna Genina, Kirstin Swagman, Aparna Ramakrishnan, Heloise Finch, Guillermo Salas, and Jessica Smith for sharing their ideas with me. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the University of Michigan linguistic anthropology lab for their feedback. Financial support for this project what provided by the Fulbright Institute of International Education, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS), and by a University of Michigan Department of Anthropology Research Award. Through the U.S-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission, I was able to obtain institutional affiliation in the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya University. I would like to thank my parents for their support and patience. They not only took interest in hearing every detail of the dissertation experience (from the problems I had trying to write my first grant proposal to the giant spiders infesting my room in Kandy), but even came to visit me in Sri Lanka, providing their own opinions and observations. Finally, I would like to Canaan Albright for his love and humor. vii Table of Contents Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………..ix List of Appendices………………………………………………………………………...x List of Abbreviations…..…………………………………………………..……………..xi Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...…...xii Chapter One: Introduction: “Kandy is Our Place. You are Puttalam.”……...…………..1 Chapter Two: Language and Educational Policies, Inequity, and Conflict from the Post- Independence Period to the Present …………………………….……………………….48 Chapter