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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 12, 2020

which needed solutions for the root causes of the conflict and real contribution to the
long-term healing process and any trust-building among the conflicting parties.

The ethnic policy of the post-independent state in Sri Lanka has contributed to

strengthen divisions among different ethnic and religious communities. The war is a
by-product of those policies. Northern and the Eastern parts of Sri Lanka are Tamil

majority areas while the Southern part of the Island remains predominantly
Sinhalese area. The political demography revealed that the ethnic groups are

ethnically and geographically separated, and interactions between them are rarely

seen, and if caught, they are usually agitated (Orjuela, 2003). At the end of the war,
a process of reconciliation was initiated by the Government of Sri Lanka and still

struggling to establish enduring peace in the country. However, the achievements of
those initiatives have been questioned. It has been observed, even though the

government official declaration of the peace initiatives and reconciliation weighted

towards economic reconstruction, and there is no peace in the minds of the citizens
of Sri Lanka (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), (Athas,

2009).

The reason for long lasting war in Sri Lanka has been violent culture of conflicts,
societal beliefs, and collective Memory. Cumulatively, all the peace attempts have

been obstructed by politically mobilized groups. Reconciliation consists of mutual

acceptance and recognition, peaceful relations, and positive attitudes. In the process
of reconciliation in a conflict context, Sri Lanka should ultimately lead to collective

forgiveness. The normative body of knowledge acknowledges there is a mutual
responsibility on the shoulders of conflicting parties to break a path to meaningful

reconciliation with forgiveness, a precondition for reconciliation which requires
decisions to learn new aspects about their group, learn about the rival group and to

develop a vision for the future that combines both groups to establish peaceful

relations (Bar-Tal & Rosen, 2009).

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