SAJAforum: Sri Lankan Perspectives on the Bombay Attacks and Their Aftermath

This weekend, The Guardian reminded us that “[b]ehind the headlines of wealthy westerners fleeing Mumbai’s terror frontline, it was ordinary Indians who bore the brunt of the bloody attack[s]” in India’s financial and cultural capital this past week. Those same headlines might easily lead one to conclude that the Bombay attacks are significant only or primarily for their geopolitical, economic, and personal consequences for people in the West.

However, the attacks and their aftermath are certainly being experienced rather acutely throughout the South Asian subcontinent itself and within South Asian diaspora communities in other parts of the world. Take, for example, Sri Lanka. Certainly, the people of Sri Lanka have plenty else on their minds these days, with military clashes between the government and the Tamil Tigers proceeding apace and major floods destroying thousands of homes and displacing tens of thousands of people, many of whose lives already had been disrupted by the ongoing fighting. Nevertheless, these serious events — each worthy of greater international media attention in its own right — have not kept Sri Lankans from also experiencing the ramifications of this week’s Bombay terrorist attacks.

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