Muslim geographies and the politics of purification in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami

In this paper, we argue that the politics of aid in Sri Lanka 'after' the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami accentuated what we call the 'politics of purification' - the fragmented ethnic politics of territoriality - in Sri Lanka's east. The politics of purification entail geographical imaginations of a nation as 'the same people living in the same place'. We illustrate this with a case study on Muslim geographies in Kalmunai Divisional Secretariat division, on the coast of Ampara District, southeast Sri Lanka, where the politics of relocating Muslim families from the buffer zone created the conditions for the geographical imaginations of the politics of purification to play out. At the same time, our study indicates the antinomies of purification and the political fragmentation of Muslim geographies.