9 - Conclusions: Elites, Masses and the Rajapaksa Presidency

Summary

In May 2017, construction workers building Colombo's new Shangri La hotel reported the discovery of human skeletal remains under the site. For a brief period, work was paused. Discomfort and embarrassment served to interrupt the forward march of development, as people wondered what might have been uncovered, and what it might lead to. Who were these people? How did they die? How did their bodies come to be buried in that spot? The ten acre piece of land in question was previously the headquarters of the Sri Lankan army, and had been the nerve-centre of military operations during the civil war. Were these the bodies of those who had gone missing or who disappeared in that period?

Shortly after the end of the war in 2009, the army was relocated in order to release this prime piece of real estate facing the Arabian sea and Galle Face Green for commercial development. The Hong Kong-based Shangri La group which purchased it had reportedly invested US$600 million to transform the site into a majestic and exclusive property development with a hotel, luxury apartments, and a shopping mall.

Upon the discovery of the human remains, an investigation was announced. In the meanwhile, construction work resumed and was completed within six months. The Shangri La hotel was ceremonially opened by the president in November 2017. No further information on the investigation was released, or is likely to emerge, so that the discovery of the bodies under this temple to affluence and futurism remains only as a macabre metaphor – a glimpse of the way in which development is being used to bury the conflict and consign it to the past. This task may not be easy: with over 65,000 complaints of missing people that have accumulated in various commissions of enquiry over the course of the war, there are possibly many more such skeletons to be uncovered in the years to come.

In this book, development and conflict have been articulated in terms of the dynamics of two separate spheres. On the one hand, as Cowen and Shenton (1996) explain, there are the ‘immanent’ processes by which real world socio-economic transformations affect the dynamics of nationalist consciousness, ethnic politics, and the course of the civil war.