Sri Lankans are squabbling over monuments

On a wooded hill edged by rice fields in Sri Lanka’s northern Mullaitivu district sit the ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery. Members of the country’s Sinhalese majority call it “Kurundi Viharaya”. For Tamils, who are mostly Hindus and consider the war-battered north their homeland, it is “Kurunthoor Malai”. Since 2018, when the state archaeological department began excavating the site, Tamil and Sinhalese nationalists have rowed over which community has a greater claim to it.

Sri Lanka’s long civil conflict, between the secessionist Tamil Tiger rebels and Sinhalese-dominated government, has left deep scars in Mullaitivu. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were slaughtered by the army there in 2009 during the war’s terrible denouement, according to the UN. Some locals who fled the fighting were only permitted to return in 2013. It was around then that the department started showing interest in the many archaeological sites, including Kurundi, dotted across the vanquished Tigers’ former domain.