In the country of Sri Lanka (which used to be called Ceylon) the war between the Buddhist Sinhalese people and the Hindu Tamils has been going on for decades. In the 1990s the war consists of guerrilla fighting and terrorist attacks of one group on the other. The Sinhalese majority wants the Tamils to leave the country and militant Tamils, known as the Tamil Tigers, are fighting back against laws that favor the Sinhalese nationalists. For most of the time that the Tamils have lived in Sri Lanka (over 2,000 years) the two groups have lived peacefully together. There was much intermarriage and "cultural cross-fertilization" and Tamil Hinduism and Sinhalese Buddhism "were highly syncretic -- deities, rituals and caste structures were mixed and matched." In the middle of the nineteenth century a Buddhist book called the Mahavamsa (from the sixth century A.D.) was translated to modern language and it was "popularized by Sinhalese nationalists" who wanted the British to leave.
The Mahavamsa told the story of the establishment of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Buddha's choice of the Sinhalese as his "chosen people." According to the legends in the book, Buddha said that the faith would die off in India and only be preserved by the Sinhalese. Invading Tamils from India later took control of the country and "allowed Buddhist institutions to whither." This led to a rebellion by a Sinhalese Buddhist prince named Duttugemunu who said, "not for glory, but for the religion do I wage this battle."
In 1956, after Sri Lanka got its freedom from the British, an ambitious Tamil politician named Solomon Bandaranaike used the Mahavamsa to stir up nationalist feeling among the Sinhalese. Although he never really believed in the idea, "the tide of nationalism got away from him." Bandaranaike was assassinated by Buddhist monks when he tried to back down on these nationalist Buddhist ideas. After Bandaranaike died, the Sinhalese majority...