By Rihaab Mowlana

Every few months, Sri Lanka seems to rediscover a truth it has never fully confronted. The phrase changes shape depending on who is saying it and where it appears, but the meaning remains familiar. Foreigners only. This time, it has returned to public conversation not through policy or press statements, but through stories. Locals sharing videos, posting screenshots, recounting refusals, describing moments that were small in isolation but heavy in implication. A denied reservation. A rule that appeared suddenly. A space that welcomed some bodies while quietly excluding others.

This behaviour is not new. What feels new is the clarity with which it is being named, and the collective memory that now sits behind the anger. Because people remember what came before this moment, and more importantly, what came just before.

When Foreigners Only Really Means White

For years, foreigners only, has been framed as a business choice. A target market. A branding decision. Sometimes it was disguised as a dress code. Sometimes it was explained away as crowd control. Sometimes it was never said out loud at all, enforced instead through glances, tone, or who received a menu first. But beneath all of it sat an unspoken assumption that has shaped Sri Lanka’s hospitality industry for decades. That certain foreigners make a place better.

It is important to say the quiet part clearly. Foreigners Only has rarely meant all foreigners. It has almost always meant white foreigners. Western accents. Western passports. Western skin. This distinction matters, especially now that at least one establishment has justified its policy by claiming that white patrons do not sell drugs at parties and do not start fights.

It is a remarkable statement, not only for its racism, but for its confidence. Criminality is assigned to brown bodies. Respectability is granted to white ones. Behaviour is racialised, and exclusion is framed as logic rather than prejudice. When assumptions about behaviour follow skin colour so neatly, it becomes difficult to pretend this is only about safety.

A Colonial Hangover, Rebranded

That hierarchy did not emerge by accident. It is a colonial hangover that Sri Lanka has never fully reckoned with. Colonial rule trained societies to associate authority, civility, and legitimacy with whiteness, while casting locals as problems to be managed. Those ideas did not disappear with independence. They softened, adapted, and embedded themselves into social spaces, resurfacing whenever power or profit was at stake.

Hospitality has long been one of the clearest places where this thinking plays out. Who is seen as desirable. Who is seen as disruptive. Who is welcomed automatically. Who is treated as an exception. When an establishment assumes that whiteness equals safety, it is not responding to evidence. It is repeating inherited belief.

The timing of this resurgence matters. During COVID, and in the months that followed, the tone from many of these same spaces shifted dramatically. With tourism at a standstill, establishments that once marketed themselves almost exclusively to foreigners suddenly discovered the local customer. Instagram captions softened. Promotions began speaking directly to Sri Lankans. Menus were adjusted. Prices were reframed. There was gratitude, or at least the performance of it. Locals were not just welcome then. They were necessary.

Welcome, Until You Are Not

It was Sri Lankan customers who kept tables filled when flights stopped landing. It was local spending that kept staff employed, rents paid, and doors open. Birthday dinners, casual drinks, weekend brunches, staycations, and small indulgences became acts of economic survival for the hospitality industry. People showed up not only because they wanted to, but because they were told, explicitly and implicitly, that supporting these spaces was part of national recovery. That context is impossible to separate from the present moment.

The anger online is not only about being turned away. It is about amnesia. It is about watching establishments revert to old hierarchies the moment foreign currency begins flowing again, as though the last few years were a temporary inconvenience rather than a shared crisis. It is about being welcomed when convenient and erased when no longer essential.

The justifications offered only deepen the problem. Safety is the most common defence. Drugs. Fights. Behaviour. But safety is not neutral when it is applied selectively. If drugs and violence were truly the concern, rules would target actions, not skin colour or nationality. Behaviour would be monitored consistently. Consequences would be enforced equally.

Instead, security becomes a socially acceptable language for exclusion. A way to make prejudice sound responsible. A way to claim moral high ground while reinforcing racial and class boundaries. When whiteness is treated as a proxy for good behaviour, discrimination is no longer hidden. It is institutionalised.

What makes this moment resonate is that it is not theoretical. These are not abstract debates about access. They are first-person accounts. Named places. Screenshots of messages. Stories that echo each other across different parts of the island. The repetition matters because it shifts the conversation from isolated incidents to a pattern.

Some establishments will argue that they are simply catering to a specific market. That this is business, not discrimination. But business decisions are never neutral. Choosing who you welcome and who you exclude is always a statement of values, whether or not it is acknowledged as such.
Hospitality is not only about food, drinks, or views. It is about atmosphere. It is about who gets to feel comfortable, respected, and present in a space. When that comfort is rationed along racial lines, it stops being hospitality and starts being gatekeeping.

The irony is that many of these places would not exist in their current form without the support of local customers during the hardest years the industry has faced. Gratitude that expires the moment it is no longer needed does not read as gratitude at all. It reads as entitlement.

This moment will pass, as these moments often do, until the next story surfaces. But the record remains. So does the question Sri Lanka keeps circling without answering honestly. Who are these spaces really for, and what does hospitality mean when it comes with a hierarchy attached?

Until that question is confronted directly, foreigners only will never be just a policy. It will always be a mirror.