Sri Lanka’s pain will spread as national identities are muddled

The entire South Asian subcontinent once ruled by the British is seeing religious and ethnic attitudes harden and divisions deepen, writes Mihir Sharma.

In Sri Lanka, memories of war and terrorism are very much alive. The decades-long civil war between the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was brutal by any standards, and it ended a decade ago with a climactic battle near the Indian Ocean that took thousands of civilian lives.

But Sri Lanka, beautiful and multicultural, has never had just the one fault line. On Easter morning, when hundreds of Christians and hotel guests were killed by suicide bombers there, we were tragically reminded that this is not a country at peace with itself.