Ask a member of Sri Lanka’s dominant ethnic group why the country seems plagued by racial and religious strife, which is resurging in the wake of terrifying Islamist terrorist attacks, and you will often get the same answer.
We are fighting for our very survival, they’ll say. Though the Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhist, make up three-quarters of the population and dominate politics, many see themselves as an embattled minority.
“They’re trying to destroy us — please tell someone in the government to take action,” Nelligala Dhammaratne, an influential young monk, recalled his Buddhist followers telling him just before riots broke out against the country’s Muslim minority last year.
Such fears are not unique to Sri Lanka. Around the world, dominant majorities increasingly see themselves as imperiled minorities.
That dynamic, sometimes known as a majority with a minority complex, is thought to be a major factor in the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, religious nationalism in Asia, and white nationalist terrorism in the United States and New Zealand.
The drivers of this trend are often subtler than Sri Lanka’s history of civil war, but can be just as consequential. Demographic change, global interconnectedness and even the rise of democracy can make majorities feel as if their dominance is endangered, leading to fear of — and sometimes attacks on — minorities whose very existence is perceived as an existential threat.
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