In The Shadows of Ceylon Tea; Post-Colonial Feminist Analysis on Access to Justice in Cases of Intimate ‘Partner Violence Among Malaiyaha Tamil Women in Sri Lanka’s Tea Plantations

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-646-3_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Intimate Partner Violence; Legislations; Malaiyaha Tamil Plantation Community; post-colonisation; Plantation Patriarchy

Abstract

The global tea industry has celebrated the flavour of Ceylon Tea for centuries while erasing the historical and continuing marginalization faced by Malaiyaha Tamil women who sustain its production. Unlike the broader sociological literature on gender-based violence, few scholarly contributions explore the interplay between substance of law and lived realities in access to justice among female victims of intimate partner violence within Malaiyaha Tamil community. This study employs a post-colonial feminist lens to critically examine how intimate partner violence (IPV) within Malaiyaha Tamil women is protected, obscured and perpetuated within socio-economic structures of Sri Lanka’s tea plantations. It argues that while domestic and international legal frameworks nominally protect women against IPV, the law has failed to account for compounded vulnerabilities resulted through double colonisation, caste, ethnicity, culture and plantation patriarchy. Using doctrinal and intersectional approach, the study reveals how outdated legal definitions, institutional inertia, language barriers and systemic exclusion undermines Malaiyaha women victims from accessing justice. Through a critical analysis of law and secondary qualitative data, the study demonstrates an urgent need to reimagine legal protections by focusing on lived realties and addressing power asymmetries that underpins intimate partner violence and broader socio-economic order of plantation community. Ultimately, it calls for an urgent effort to bridge the gap between law and reality in application, highlighting that legal remedies alone are inadequate without deconstructing the structures of historical and social oppression.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - K. M. N. T. Konara
AU  - H. C. N. Herath
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/15
TI  - In The Shadows of Ceylon Tea; Post-Colonial Feminist Analysis on Access to Justice in Cases of Intimate ‘Partner Violence Among Malaiyaha Tamil Women in Sri Lanka’s Tea Plantations
BT  - Proceedings of the International Tea Symposium (InTSym100 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 185
EP  - 198
SN  - 2468-5747
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-646-3_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-646-3_11
ID  - Konara2026
ER  -