This paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the ‘lure of land’: first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became ‘home guards’ who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers’ precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A ‘cunning state’ thereby betrays its own ‘frontiersmen’, while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.

本文研究了高度军事化的殖民计划（斯里兰卡北部韦利奥亚马哈威利发展计划的“L系统”）中斯里兰卡干旱地区边境的农民政治矛盾。通过对分两波加入该计划（1980 年代和 2009 年后）的定居者的生活史进行详细的人种学研究，我们展示了所谓的“土地诱惑”的运作方式：首先，作为（al）诱惑吸引无地家庭实现成为稻农的神话梦想；其次，这种土地的诱惑与民族主义的领土愿望密切相关，这种愿望将定居者转变为这片土地的爱国殖民者：由于其战略位置位于僧伽罗人和泰米尔人居住地区之间的边境地区，定居者成为居住在这片土地上的“家园卫士”并保护边疆。但土地的诱惑并非没有矛盾：边境的生活是危险的（对于早期定居者而言），经济上也不稳定（对于早期和晚期定居者而言），因为国家无法兑现土地和水的承诺。尽管定居者的生活条件不稳定、令人失望和沮丧，但政府官员采取了各种策略，一再推迟承诺和微妙的威胁，以阻止定居者放弃殖民计划。因此，一个“狡猾的国家”在捍卫其民族主义领土议程的同时，背叛了自己的“边疆居民”。