This book is a study of social change in Sri Lanka during approximately the first five decades of the island’s independence. It deals with changes in a number of key areas of social, economic and political life that were decisive for both the successes and the failures of the newly independent nation’s search for modernity, prosperity, and happiness. In this collection of essays, Sarath Amunugama deals with one of the central themes in Sri Lanka’s socio-political transformation during the colonial and post-colonial phases, the land question. Land has provided the material basis for modern Sri Lanka’s development policies, electoral politics, inter-class political alliances, ethnic conflict and civil war, Left-wing insurgencies, inter-ethnic relations as well as political and religio-social ideologies.