Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka : Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts 9781138302013, 9780203732045

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Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka

Space is dynamic, political and a cause of conflict. It bears the weight of human dreams and fears. Conflict is caused not only by spatial exclusivism but also by an inclusivism that seeks harmony through subordinating the particularity of the Other to the world view of the majority. This book uses the lens of space to examine inter-­religious and inter-­ communal conflict in colonial and post-­colonial Sri Lanka, demonstrating that the colonial can shed light on the post-­colonial, particularly on post-­war developments, post-­May 2009, when Buddhist symbolism was controversially developed in the former, largely non-­Buddhist, war zones. Using the concepts of exclusivism and inclusivist subordination, the book analyses the different imaginaries or world views that were present in colonial and post-­1948 Sri Lanka, with particular reference to the ethnic or religious Other, and how these were expressed in space, influenced one another and engendered conflict. The book’s use of insights from human geography, peace studies and secular iterations of the theology of religions breaks new ground, as does its narrative technique, which prioritizes voices from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the author’s fieldwork and personal observation in the twenty-­first. Through utilizing past and contemporary reflections on lived experience, informed by diverse religious world views, the book offers new insights into Sri Lanka’s past and present. It will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of colonial and post-­colonial studies; war and peace studies; security studies; religious studies; the study of religion; Buddhist studies, mission studies, South Asian and Sri Lankan studies Elizabeth J. Harris is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow within the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham. She is president of the European Network of Buddhist-­Christian Studies and has published widely within Buddhist studies and inter-­religious Studies, including Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, missionary and colonial experience in nineteenth century Sri Lanka (Routledge, 2006).

Routledge South Asian Religion Series

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/asianstudies/ series/RSARS   1 Hindu Selves in a Modern World Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Maya Warrier   2 Parsis in India and the Diaspora Edited by John R. Hinnells and Alan Williams   3 South Asian Religions on Display Religious Processions in South Asia and in the Diaspora Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen   4 Rethinking Religion in India The Colonial Construction of Hinduism Edited by Esther Bloch, Marianne Keppens and Rajaram Hegde   5 Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia Disease, Possession and Healing Edited by Fabrizio M. Ferrari   6 Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia Edited by Anne Murphy   7 Cross-­disciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Buddhist Site Bodhgaya Jataka Edited by David Geary, Matthew R. Sayers and Abhishek Singh Amar   8 Yoga in Modern Hinduism Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga Knut A. Jacobsen   9 Women, Religion and the Body in South Asia Living with Bengali Bauls Kristin Hanssen 10 Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts Elizabeth J. Harris

Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

Elizabeth J. Harris

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Elizabeth J. Harris The right of Elizabeth J. Harris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-30201-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73204-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

This book is dedicated to all the Muslims, Sinhalas and Tamils who died or lost loved ones in Sri Lanka’s bitter ethnic war

Contents



Map of Sri Lanka List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations



Introduction

PART I

The British colonial period

ix x xi xii 1

11

1

The spatial component of the Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginary 1590s to 1815

13

2

The evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary

25

3

The spatial impact of missionary schools

43

4

The spatial impact of church building

68

5

British and Buddhist imaginaries: the sacred cities, the Aryan debate and the Tamil Other

96

6

Ancient cities and narratives of power

PART II

116

The post-­colonial period

143

7

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-­1948 and during the ethnic war

145

8

Ethnic conflict, internal war and the spatial 1912–2009

160

viii   Contents 9

Spatial change and competition after the ending of armed conflict

192



Concluding thoughts

238



Selective glossary Selective timeline Index

242 243 246

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0.1 4.1 4.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18

Sri Lanka Kandy from Lady Horton’s Walk in Cave’s guidebook Kandy from Upper Lake Road in Cave’s guidebook Victory Monument at Kilinochchi (2015) Victory Monument at Puthukkudiyiruppu (2012) The burnt-­out hulk of Farah 3 (2012) ‘Lord Siva’ at the ‘Pancha Maha Devalaya’, Nāga Vihāra (2017) The Buddha under the hood of a cobra, Nāgadīpa/Nainativu The Hindu temple at Nainativu/Nāgadīpa The LTTE-­blasted bridge to Lankāpotuna (2012) Hindu shrine at Lankāpotuna (2015) Buddha Rūpa on top of radio mast at Verugal (Kal-­adi) (2015) Shrine to Ganeśa, Dambakola Paṭuna Image of Śiva at Sambunatha Easwara Sivalayane (2017) Image of Hanuman at Maruthanamadam Aanjaneyar Kovil (2015) Sri Sugatha Vihāraya at Maṅkuḷam (2015) Dēvāles at Buddhist complex at Kanakarayankulam (2015) Kanniyai/Kanniya with Kanniya Vihāra behind the wells (2012) Stall in the car park at Kanniyai/Kanniya (2015) The ‘Sivan temple’ at Kanniyai/Kanniya (2015) On the path to Kanniyai/Kanniya: café billboard (2015)

ix 82 83 194 195 197 204 207 208 209 210 211 215 216 217 218 219 221 222 223 224

Acknowledgements

The research for this book was undertaken in Sri Lanka and Britain. In drawing together Part I, on the British colonial period, my first debt is to the S.G. Perera Memorial Library at Tulana Research Centre, Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, for its magnificent antiquarian and Indological collection. I am also indebted to the community at Tulana, for their warm hospitality during my periods of residence there and the informed conversations I had with its members, particularly its director, Aloysius Pieris. Also in Sri Lanka, I am grateful to the staff at the National Museum Library, to Sarah Niles, the librarian/archivist at the Headquarters of the Methodist Church, to the Buddhist Publication Society and to the National Archives. Within Britain, I am indebted to the archivists at the British Library, the National Archives and the special collections of missiological material within the School of African and Oriental Studies (London University), Birmingham University and Oxford University. In connection with Part II of the book on post-­colonial Sri Lanka, I owe an inestimable debt to my fieldwork participants who gave their time to speak to me, sometimes over several visits. In addition to data included in this monograph, many gave me helpful feedback for the project as a whole. I am also grateful to Sri Lankan friends and colleagues who read through individual chapters for accuracy, particularly Chapters 8 and 9, and academic members of staff at Colombo and Jaffna Universities. During the eight years this book has taken to write, I have given several academic papers on different aspects of the research and have been grateful for the feedback I have received from academic colleagues, particularly at the Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, the American Academy of Religion, the British Association for the Study of Religions, the UK Association for Buddhist Studies, The European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies, Liverpool Hope University and Edinburgh University. Although their names are too numerous to mention, I would give particular thanks to Kim Knott, Stephanie Kappler, Ian Baird, Anne Blackburn, Carol Anderson and Richard Gombrich. I am also inestimably thankful to those who have given me their friendship, even when I have neglected them, as this monograph neared completion.

Abbreviations

AAR ACBC ACTC AGA BASR BBS CBRAS CCP CDG CLRC CNC CMS CMSA EPDP EPRLF EROS GA IDP IPKF JCBRAS JHU JRASGBI JVP LMS LSSP LTTE MCAC MEP MIRJE MSCD

American Academy of Religion All Ceylon Buddhist Congress All Ceylon Tamil Congress Assistant Government Agent or Agency British Association for the Study of Religions Budu Bala Sena Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Ceylon Communist Party Ceylon Diocesan Gazette Copies of Letters Received from Ceylon Ceylon National Congress Church Missionary Society Church Missionary Society Archives Eelam People’s Democratic Party Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students Government Agent Internally Displaced Persons Indian Peacekeeping Force Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Jātika Häḷa Urumaya Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Janatha Vimukti Peramuna London Missionary Society Lanka Sama Samaja Party Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Methodist Church Archives in Colombo Mahajana Eksath Peramuna Movement for Inter-­Racial Justice and Equality Minutes of the Southern Ceylon District of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission. Vol.  I (1816–1830) entitled: ‘Minutes of several Conversations at the General District Conferences between missionaries in the Island of Ceylon from the first

Abbreviations   xiii

NA NMAT NPCSL PA PCMSAE PLOTE PTA P-­TOMS QL RASGBI SLES SLFP SLMC SLNA SMS SPG SPGA SSA STF SU SVV TELO TFP TNA TUF TULF UNP UTHR

Conference of July 29 1816’. Vol.  II (1831–1871) entitled ‘Minutes of Several Conversations at a Meeting of the Wesleyan Missionaries of the Singhalese District begun in Colombo’. National Archives (London) National Movement Against Terrorism National Peace Council of Sri Lanka People’s Alliance Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam Prevention of Terrorism Act Post-­Tsunami Operations Management Structure Extracts from Quarterly Letters addressed to the Secretaries of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, London (1830s) Quarterly Letters addressed to The General Secretaries of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Centenary Hall, Bishopsgate Street Within, London (early 1870s) Extracts from Quarterly Letters addressed to the Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society by Ministers of the South Ceylon District (1875) Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Sri Lanka Ekiya Sanvidhana Sri Lanka Freedom Party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Sri Lanka National Archives Sinhala Maha Sabha Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Archives Social Scientists Association Special Task Force Sinhala Urumaya Sinhala Veera Vidhana Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization Tamil Federal Party Tamil National Alliance Tamil United Front Tamil United Liberation Front United National Party University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna)

Introduction

In 2009, the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) chose the theme of sacred geographies for their annual conference. I gave an unpublished paper entitled ‘Sacred Landscapes and the Gaze of the Colonizer: A Case Study of Sri Lanka’ drawing on archival material familiar to me (Harris 1993; Harris 2006) but from the new perspective of space and the sacred. I argued that the shifting models of British power in the island conditioned different attitudes to sacred landscapes, from an almost obsessive wish to label and measure them, when the colonial project was in an uncertain infancy, to romantic lyricism, imaginative reconstruction of Sri Lanka’s past and a marketing of the picturesque, when power was secure and the island became an elite visitor destination. As a counterpoint throughout the century, however, adding multiplicity to the colonial gaze, was the evangelical missionary attitude, which saw the demonic hiding within the island’s ‘heathen’ sacred space. Four months before I gave this paper and 61 years after independence from the British in 1948, internal war ended in Sri Lanka with the defeat of the militant separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), on a small patch of land near a lagoon in the north-­east of the island, dubbed ‘the cage’ by Gordon Weiss (Weiss 2011), into which thousands of Tamil civilians had been pushed. Thousands were killed as a result, although the Sri Lankan government condemned as fabrication a documentary that used mobile phone footage to argue that this involved war crimes.1 I had visited the North twice during the war, whilst resident in Sri Lanka, once when the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF ) was in Jaffna in the late 1980s, and once when the LTTE was in control in the early 1990s, and had diligently and emotionally kept track of the successive peace talks followed by successive returns to war that had characterized the years between 1990 and 2009. This death toll, therefore, deeply affected me and prevented any form of triumphalism, although I was relieved that outright war had ended. However, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse, adopted a different stance, joyfully appropriating a lineage that stretched back to the pre-­colonial Sinhala Buddhist kings, who, according to the indigenous vaṃsa (historical chronicle or lineage) tradition, had united and liberated the country against threat. I soon also became aware that Rajapakse’s rhetoric had a spatial expression. Buddhist symbolism was being implanted within majority Hindu, Muslim and

2   Introduction Roman Catholic areas in the former war zones, in effect claiming them for Sinhala Buddhism. When I visited Sri Lanka in 2009 and 2010, research into this aspect of post-­war reality was a priority, leading to a further, unpublished paper, given at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2011: ‘Buddhism and Post-­War Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: The Use and Misuse of Symbolism’. I analysed the importance of symbols in the production of collective ‘insider’ experience but argued that ‘agreed connotations and agreed frameworks dissolve when symbols operate outside the community’ that produced them, illustrating this with what was happening in the North and East, where symbols liberative to the ‘insider’ were becoming embodiments of defeat within other communities. This monograph was born out of these two preliminary studies, through my realization that the gaze of the colonizer and the gaze of the victor were connected, and that both had a spatial expression that could generate conflict. This led to the conclusion that the two historical periods could be brought into creative dialogue with each other using ‘space’ as the conceptual framework. In effect, I realized that my understanding of what was happening in post-­war Sri Lanka could be enhanced by drawing on ‘texts’ and configurations that stretched back into the colonial, and indeed pre-­colonial, periods. So, the aim of this study emerged: to examine inter-­religious and inter-­communal conflict in colonial and post-­colonial Sri Lanka through the lens of space, focussing particularly on exclusion and inclusion of the religious Other, in the conviction that juxtaposing the colonial and post-­colonial can throw light on each and particularly on the post-­war period.

Three interdisciplinary dialogues I have taken almost eight years to write this study and have been drawn deeply into what Knott has called ‘the spatial turn in research on religion’ (Knott 2010; see also Knott 2005), a field much larger than ‘sacred space’, and into three interdisciplinary dialogues: with human geographers such as Yi-­Fu Tuan, Doreen Massey and Lily Kong; with post-­colonial and post-­modern writers on Sri Lanka such as Elizabeth Nissan and Pradeep Jeganathan; and with the theology of religions or what I will term ‘the phenomenology of the confessional’, as expressed in the threefold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Let me say something about each. In 2005, Massey argued that space was not the neutral side-­kick of time, a value-­free container for human interaction or an object of the ‘poetic imagination’ (Bachelard 1994), but rather a dynamic, constructed and imagined category that was the ‘product of interrelations’, ‘predicated on the existence of plurality’, and inherently political (Massey 2005: 9). She built on Lefebvre’s insight that space is socially produced and conditioned by power relations (Lefebvre 1991). Kong and Woods developed this further, with particular reference to religion, in their insistence that the study of space as ‘a main conceptual framework for understanding religious competition, conflict and violence’ was ‘not only desirable, but also essential’ (Kong and Woods 2016: 9). Both demonstrated that

Introduction   3 when the concept of space as a dynamic, imagined and socially produced category is applied to religion, the attributes of sacred space – blessing, protection, access to the transcendent – become overlaid with issues of identity, power, inclusion and exclusion of the Other, and the negotiation of ethnic and community relations. As Winkler, Fernández and Leirvik argued, the deconstruction of space as an epistemic and normative category involves a process of ‘inclusion and exclusion, appropriation and alienation. What is part of one’s own realm, what is excluded? Who belongs at the center and defines the center, and where is the periphery?’ (Winkler et al. 2017: XII). Baird is one scholar who has applied this to Christian missionary activity (Baird 2009). These insights from human geography are fundamental to my study plus the fact that space is dynamic because it bears the weight and complexities of the human imaginary and the human gaze. Our world views, our imaginaries, have a spatial component. Belief itself, according to David Morgan, is not so much a set of abstract propositions but a ‘shared imaginary’ that is expressed through practice, materiality and aesthetics (Morgan 2009). The spatial component of a world view, which Yi-­Fu Tuan termed ‘mythical space’ (Tuan 2008: 88–99), can carry considerable authority but, as Hegarty cogently argues in his analysis of the Mahābharāta as an intervention into the ‘public imagination of early South Asia’, what is authoritative might be different from what is real and factual (Hegarty 2012: 5). Newton Gunasinghe, therefore, analysing the 1983 anti-­Tamil poggrom, spoke of collective ‘constellations of perception’ capable of constructing ‘realities’ that justified the violence (Gunasinghe 1987: 621–662). Sen called these ‘mytho-­histories’ (Sen 2009). Because of the causal relationship between the spatial component of the human imaginary and the inherently political, contest-­filled dynamism of space, I juxtapose in this study chapters on collective imaginaries with chapters on the productions of space that resulted from these imaginaries. My dialogue with post-­colonial and post-­modern scholars was necessary if I was to justify my further juxtaposition of the pre-­colonial, the colonial and the post-­colonial. Was it because there was continuity between these three eras? Was it because the British colonial period and its spatial productions were responsible for the conflicts of the post-­independence period? Or was it because there was radical rupture between the pre-­colonial and the colonial, conditioning the post-­colonial? I will examine the debate in more detail in Chapter 6 in the context of colonial Anuradhapura. It is enough to say here that one group of scholars argued that the Anuradhapura of today was constructed and produced under British colonialism in a radical rupture with the pre-­colonial (Daniel 1996; Jazeel 2009; Jeganathan 1995; Nissan 1985, 1988 and 1989; Weiss 2011). Most drew on Anderson’s excellent but perhaps limited argument, even on his own admission (Anderson 2006: xii), that nationalism was a nineteenth-­century phenomenon and that the commitment to archaeology shown by colonial powers had more to do with power, knowledge and control than disinterested scholarship (Anderson 1983). Another group argued that Anuradhapura remained deeply ingrained in Sinhala consciousness well before the European ‘discovery’

4   Introduction of it (Kemper 1991; Roberts 2004; Sivasundaram 2007). The radical rupture theory was faulty, a point developed more systematically by Sivasundaram later (Sivasundaram 2013). This study suggests a middle path between these two positions when applied more widely than Anuradhapura. There were certainly elements of rupture between the pre-­colonial, the colonial and the post-­colonial but there were also considerable patterns of continuity, although I would wish to emphasize with Hegarty that the forms taken by authoritative patterns from the past are always historically contingent (Hegarty 2012: 5). My dialogue with the theology of religions as expressed in the threefold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism emerged from a long-­ standing interest in inter-­religious studies, most particularly in issues connected with mutual influence, co-­existence and conflict. To the sociologist or anthropologist of religion, however, this particular dialogue could be seen as a disciplinary betrayal within a largely secular, religious studies monograph. I offer a twofold justification. First, although the typology arose in the 1980s in a theological context, it is capable of leaping out of its theological fold to describe three general attitudes towards the Other. In its first theological iteration in the writings Alan Race (Race 1993), exclusivists asserted that there was no salvation outside Christianity. Inclusivists affirmed that all religions had ‘spiritual power’ but that this power ultimately came from Jesus Christ (Race 1993: 38) and pluralists placed religions on an equal footing as windows on an ultimate reality beyond all religions. In the wider iteration that I favour, which can be applied to all religions and in secular contexts, exclusivists draw non-­negotiable distinctions between self and Other. Inclusivists interpret the Other within the ideological framework of their own community, subordinating difference, and pluralists are willing to co-­exist respectfully and affirmatively with the Other on an equal playing field. To use this iteration, I would argue, is not a disciplinary betrayal but a disciplinary enhancement. My second argument, however, is that the typology can offer resources to the religious studies researcher in understanding the ‘phenomenology of the confessional’. As I have stated elsewhere: ‘if social anthropologists are to understand the re-­imagining or re-­constituting of a religious culture through encounter with the Other, in phenomenological terms, they need to engage with the confessional ‘theologies’ at work in that culture’ (Harris 2017: 211), albeit using non-­ confessional methods. In the context of Buddhism, I would frame it as ‘confessional theologies or religious imaginaries’. If one or more of the categories within the typology are apparent within a religious culture, recognizing them as such can serve the secular researcher well. In this monograph, I employ the typology as a tool to interpret the hierarchies present within Sinhala Buddhist spatial imaginaries and argue that the dominant and favoured model within Sinhala Buddhist history is best described as inclusivist subordination of the Other, namely a willingness to include, respect and tolerate the Other at a subordinate level, within a Buddhist cosmological framework.2 Within the typology, this is a classic form of inclusivism.

Introduction   5

A narrative method Brun and Jazeel lament that post-­colonial studies have been criticized because of the ‘levels of abstraction at which critical interventions are made’ (Brun and Jazeel 2009: 4). An antidote to abstraction is the particularity of narrative. Abstract theory has never attracted me or rather I have always sought to contextually embody it so that theory does not ignore the subjects of its research. This study, therefore, is a contextually dense work that privileges the voices of agents in my narrative. The oral exchanges of the nineteenth century cannot be recovered but nineteenth-­ century voices can be brought to life to a limited extent through diaries, memoirs, letters and published lectures. I quote from these liberally. Diaries are also used to illustrate the post-­colonial with the addition of newspaper articles, my own personal observation and fieldwork interviews in five research visits in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2017. In 2012 and 2015, I travelled to the North and East of Sri Lanka, and in 2017, to the North alone. During each of these visits, I observed changes in the religious landscape and visited contested sites, observing in the process what Perera calls ‘war tourism’ (Perera 2016). My fieldwork was qualitative and consisted of semi-­structured interviews with Sri Lankan Buddhists, Hindus and Christians in the South, the East and the North, with the aid of an interpreter when my participants chose to speak in Sinhala or Tamil. Both my personal observations and the data I gained through these interviews should be seen within the framework of my narrative method. My fieldwork data is intended to be illustrative rather than representative. I sought a balance in age, gender, religion and ethnicity but my choice of participants was also influenced by relationships with people within all communities, built up over my 34 years of contact with the country. Their voices and my own observations join voices and observations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also important to stress that all the names of my participants have been changed to protect anonymity. In using a narrative method, I concur with Roberts that ‘Theory must be constrained by empirical material’ (Roberts 2004: 168) but would add that the relationship between theory and the empirical should be dynamic and interactive. A narrative technique needs theory, in this case spatial theory, if it is to escape provisionality, but theory needs narrative and the empirical as an interrogative tool if it is to remain vibrant and valid. Representing history, however, whatever method is employed, is fraught with difficulty. That the object of historical study is constructed in the act of examination and that this act of examination is conditioned by the situatedness of the researcher are now generally accepted. That I am a ‘foreigner’ and a woman, that I have lived in Sri Lanka, have completed a doctorate in Buddhist Studies at a Sri Lankan University, have a love for Buddhism and have had a decades-­long relationship with people from all ethnic communities in the country have certainly affected my ‘translation’ of its history and the attitudes of my participants. Ananda Abeysekera’s iteration of this argument is forceful. In effect, his position is that those who believe they can accurately and objectively represent history are delusional. For by seeking to re-­present the past, they split history off

6   Introduction from itself, in a denial of its dynamism, complexity and contingency. The historian becomes the imperialist, interpreting and translating the past through the lenses of the present (Abeysekera 2010). Obeyesekere reduces the emotive tenor of this but makes similar points: Evidence itself can be opaque and that is why our historical and ethnographic accounts are full of holes, lacunae, and that is why our histories and ethnographies are, fortunately, contested and contestable by our colleagues. What we call ‘truth’ unfortunately is an allusive and illusive deity. (Obeyesekere 2017: 270) This study, therefore, does not claim to be definitive, although its narrative method is more conducive to re-­presenting the past than a purely theoretical work would have been. It is a work in process, conditioned by my own limitations and the choices I felt constrained to make if the research was to be manageable. I do not, for instance, attempt to cover the colonial periods of the Portuguese (1506–1650s) and Dutch (1650s–1790s) in detail. I concentrate on the British period from the 1790s to 1948. With reference to Christian presence during the British period, I focus on Protestant rather than Roman Catholic Christianity, and on Buddhist majority areas rather than the Hindu-­majority North. On the indigenous side, I focus on Sinhala Buddhist rather than Tamil imaginaries, although Tamil perspectives are present in my fieldwork. These choices are partly justifiable through appeal to power relations. Although Roman Catholics have always outnumbered Protestants in Sri Lanka, in the British colonial period, Protestant missionaries were perceived by Buddhists as a greater threat than the older Roman Catholic presence. Likewise, with reference to the development of the ethnic conflict, I would argue that it was the Sinhala imaginary that had more power in the country’s polity and more influence in the development of the ethnic conflict than the Tamil. I also do not give adequate coverage to the Muslim presence in Sri Lanka and the recent tension between Muslims and Buddhists. Justice could only be given to this in another monograph. I am not the first to utilize the conceptual framework of space to examine Sri Lankan polity. Brun and Jazeel’s edited collection, Spatializing Politics (Brun and Jazeel 2009), recognized the agency of space and that post-­colonial studies needed to be re-­materialized (Brun and Jazeel 2009: 4) However, the spatial politics of religious identity hardly featured. Jazeel rectified this in his later monograph, Sacred Modernity, which examined the utilization of nature in Ruhuna National Park and Sri Lanka’s ‘Tropical Modern Architecture’ within ‘the very modern politics of Sri Lankan nationhood’ (Jazeel 2013: 11), through their subtle foregrounding of Sinhala Buddhist history and identity, and the subordination of other religious identities (Jazeel 2013: 169). It is an important complement to this study. Before both, however, came a challenge from Jonathon Walters (1995) concerning the contested, power-­laden ‘multireligious fields’ of Sri Lanka: that they should be given more attention if a holistic history of religion in Sri Lanka is to be created. This book takes up this challenge.

Introduction   7

The book’s structure My study is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the nineteenth century and the second, with the post-­1948 period, with particular reference to the development of the ethnic conflict. Chapter 1 examines what we know of the Sinhala imaginary during the Kandyan Kingdom (sixteenth century to 1815) and under the Portuguese, with particular focus on the land of Sri Lanka and the inclusion or exclusion of minorities. I identify both inclusivist subordination and exclusivism in Sinhala attitudes to the Other, whether Tamil or European. Chapter 2 examines the spatial imaginary of the evangelical Protestant missionaries, who arrived in Sri Lanka from 1805 onwards. Predicated on exclusion and indivisibility (Hassner 2003), this imaginary drew a non-­negotiable distinction between ‘heathen’ and Christianized space. The chapter ends with missionary reactions to the British colonial administration’s seeming endorsement of Buddhism in civic space. I demonstrate here that the missionary imaginary was not shared by the British administration and, therefore, that Sri Lankan Buddhists were faced with diversity within colonial spatial practice. Chapter 3 moves to the material, by examining the spatial impact of Protestant missionary schools and Buddhist reactions to this. I demonstrate that, although opposition to missionary schools occurred early in the century, Buddhists did not generally see missionary schools as a threat until they realized the impact of missionary theological exclusivism on their children and the potency of intra-­Christian competition. After this, exclusivist spatial strategies were adopted by Buddhists in defensive opposition to the asymmetries of power they saw in the educational system. Chapter 4 examines the impact of the building of churches by Christian missionaries and the Diocese of Colombo, and, again, Buddhist responses. I demonstrate that the first missionary churches were modest, functional buildings, often funded by subscription, and that some Buddhists donated land for them. As with schools, however, tolerance changed to defence, when Buddhists realized just how rigidly Christians drew a line between Buddhist and Christian space. The chapter ends with a case study of the building of St Paul’s church in Kandy, adjacent to the Daḷadā Māligāva (Temple of the Tooth). Chapter 5 returns to the imaginaries of the agents in my narrative, by focussing on two themes within the British imaginary that influenced attitudes to Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva: the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka; Tamils as Invaders and Sinhala people as Aryan. Sri Lankans also entered these debates, sometimes using them as a ‘counter-­tool’ to create their own colonial and post-­colonial identities (Sugirtharajah 2003: xiii) and the chapter ends with this indigenous voice. Chapter 6 examines the development of Anuradhapura in the nineteenth century as a colonial administrative centre and a site for the validation of ‘history’ through archaeological development. I examine the importance of the city within Sinhala consciousness, the changing physical appearance of the city, the restoration and excavation of its ancient ruins and the influence of southern revivalist Buddhists, who, in response to British actions, called for the sacred areas of the city to be ‘set

8   Introduction apart’ as a possession of the Sinhala Buddhist ‘nation’, adopting an exclusivism that was close to the imaginary of the evangelical missionaries. In Part II, Chapter 7, begins, again, with the human imaginary, this time the spatial component of Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries in the post-­colonial period between 1948 and 2009, when Sinhala nationalism conditioned and was conditioned by an increasingly violent ethnic conflict. I argue that the motif of inclusivist subordination continued to underpin the spatial and cultural models proposed to solve ethnic polarization and the perceived threat of a ‘Tamil homeland’, and examine the representations of history that informed them. The chapter ends with contesters of the dominant imaginaries, namely Buddhists who nuanced ethnic essentialism and sought to challenge what they saw as avijja (ignorance) within the Sinhala community. Chapter 8 examines the origin and escalation of the ethnic conflict. I first focus on actions taken by Sinhalas and Tamils to realize their vision for the governance of Sri Lanka, particularly with reference to inclusion or exclusion of the ethnic or linguistic Other. I then turn to the suffering within all communities during the period of armed conflict, when two nationalisms fought over space, drawing attention to the targeting of religious space and the exploitation of religious symbolism. Lastly, I examine political process and two peace initiatives that broke down for reasons connected with the spatial imaginaries of the agents in the conflict. Chapter 9 combines the narrative of my own observational visits to the former war zones and the Sinhala-­dominated South, since the ending of armed conflict, and the voices of my fieldwork participants to examine how the Sri Lankan landscape changed after May 2009 to express victory over the LTTE and Buddhist dominance, and Sinhala and Tamil responses to this. I begin with government-­ sponsored victory monuments and the opening up of the North for ‘war tourism’ before passing to the South – the renovation and confident expansion of Buddhist vihāras and the development of more exclusivist attitudes to the religious Other. I then examine spatial changes in the North and East from the redevelopment of ancient sites identified as Buddhist to the discovery or creation of new Buddhist sites and the growth of inter-­religious competition. Lastly, I survey Buddhist, Christian and Hindu responses to this. To add a word about terminology, I have used the term ‘Sri Lanka’ throughout this monograph for the sake of consistency, although this designation belongs to the twentieth century. The Sinhala people in Sri Lanka have been described as Singhalese or Sinhalese. I prefer to use a simple plural, ‘Sinhalas’.

Notes 1 On 14 June 2011, Channel 4, a British TV station, broadcast, ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ late at night, gaining over 700,000 viewers. It had previously been shown at the UN in New York and Geneva. Some of the footage it contained had been broadcast in August 2009. The Sri Lankan government declared the footage to be false. Complaints made to Channel 4 by the government, however, were not upheld by Ofcom, an independent media regulator. 2 I reflect further on the concept of inclusivist subordination in Harris 2017: 215–223.

Introduction   9

References Abeysekera, Ananda, 2010. ‘The Im-­possibility of Secular Critique: The Future of Religion’s Memory’. Culture and Religion 11.3: 213–246. Anderson, Benedict, 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York and London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict, 2006 Revised Edition. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York and London: Verso. Bachelard, Gaston, 1994 (1958) (Maria Jolas trans.). The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How we Experience Intimate Places. Boston, MA: Beacon. Baird, Ian G., 2009. ‘Identities and Space: The Geographies of Religious Change amongst the Brao in Northeastern Cambodia’. Anthropos H.2: 457–468. Brun, Catherine and Tariq Jazeel, 2009. Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri Lanka. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage: 168–193. Daniel, E. Valentine, 1996. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gunasinghe, Newton, 1987. ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Perceptions and Solutions’. In Charles Abeysekere and Newton Gunasinghe (eds), Facets of Ethnicity in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association: 61–71. Harris, Elizabeth, 1993. Crisis, Competition and Conversion: The British Encounter with Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2006. Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harris, Elizabeth, 2017. ‘Syncretism or Inclusivist Subordination? An Exploration into the Dynamics of Inter-­Religious Cooperation’. In Mika Vähängas and Patrick Fridlund (eds), Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism: Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion. Leiden: Brill: 209–225. Hassner, Ron, 2003. ‘ “To Halve and To Hold”: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility’. Security Studies 12.4: 1–33. Hegarty, James, 2012. Religion, Narrative and Public Imagination in South Asia: Past and Place in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata. Abingdon: Routledge. Jazeel, Tariq, 2009. ‘Geography, Spatial Politics, and Productions of the National in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost’. In Catherine Brun and Tariq Jazeel (eds), Spatial­ izing Politics in Postcolonial Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Sage: 122–145. Jazeel, Tariq, 2013. Sacred Modernity: Nature, Environment, and the Postcolonial Geog­ raphies of Sri Lankan Nationhood. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Jeganathan, Pradeep, 1995. ‘Authorizing History, Ordering Land: The Conquest of Anuradhapura’. In Pradeep Jeganathan & Qadri Ismail (eds), Unmaking the Nation: The Politics of Identity and History in Modern Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association: 106–134. Kemper, Stephen, 1991. The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Knott, Kim, 2005. The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis. London and Oakville: Equinox. Knott, Kim, 2010. ‘Religion, Space and Place: The Spatial Turn in Research on Religion’. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 1: 29–43. Kong, Lily and Orlando Woods, 2016. Religion and Space: Competition, Conflict and Violence in the Contemporary World. London and New York: Bloomsbury.

10   Introduction Lefebvre, Henri, 1991 (1974). Donald Nicholson-­Smith (trans.). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Massey, Doreen, 2005. For Space. Los Angeles: Sage. Morgan, David (ed.), 2009. Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief. Abingdon: Routledge. Nissan, Elizabeth, 1985. The Sacred City of Anuradhapura: Aspects of Sinhalese Buddhism and Nationhood. Unpublished PhD dissertation. London School of Economics. Nissan, Elizabeth, 1988. ‘Polity and Pilgrimage Centres in Sri Lanka’. Man 23.2, June: 253–274. Nissan, Elizabeth, 1989. ‘History in the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation’. Social Analysis 25, September: 64–77. Perera, Sasanka, 2016. War Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise. New Delhi: Sage. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 2017. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Śri Vikrama Rājasinha. Colombo: Sail Fish. Race, Alan, 1993. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions 2nd Ed. London: SCM. Roberts, Michael, 2004. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Sen, Atreyee, 2009. ‘Inventing “Women’s History”. Female Valor, Martial Queens, and Right-­wing Story-­tellers in the Bombay Slums’. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology June, Issue 54: 33–48. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2007. ‘Buddhist Kingship, British Archaeology and Historical Narratives in Sri Lanka c.1750–1850’. Past and Present 197, November: 111–142. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Territory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sugirtharajah, Sharada, 2003. Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. Tuan, Yi-­Fu, 2008 (1977). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press. Walters, Jonathan, 1995. ‘Multireligion on the Bus: Beyond “Influence” and “Syncretism” in the Study of Religious Meetings’. In Pradeep Jeganathan and Qadri Ismail (eds), Unmaking the Nation: The Politics of Identity and History in Modern Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Weiss, Gordon, 2011. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka & the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. London: The Bodley Head. Winkler, Ulrich, Rodríguez Fernández, Lidia and Leirvik, Oddbjorn (eds), 2017. Con­ tested Space, Common Ground: Space and Power Structures in Contemporary Multi­ religious Societies. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi.

Part I

The British colonial period

1 The spatial component of the Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginary 1590s to 1815

The mythic reason [for Sinhala attachment to the land of Sri Lanka] is that this [Sri Lanka] was the dream land of the Buddha himself.… This was the land where finally the religion of the Buddha was going to be at peace in its Theravāda original form. Constantly there were attempts to sort of get rid of this – annihilate this through invasions and the worst of it all were the three European invasions. (Fieldwork interview with Jaya)

This quote from one from my fieldwork interviews offers an imaginary that pictures the whole island of Sri Lanka as the possession of both the Buddha and the Sinhala people. It is an envisioning that seems to stretch back to words such as these from the Rājāvaliya, which imply that the Buddha had a unique relationship with Sri Lanka: And, moreover, from amongst the god-­chiefs of the 10,000 worlds, Buddha called the god Ṣakra, who had the care of this blessed Sakwaḷa, and gave the illustrious island of Laṇká into his charge; he also entrusted Prince Vijaya [mythical founder of the Sinhala people believed to have arrived in Sri Lanka on the day the Buddha died] to his care, giving him protective water and thread. The island of Laṇká he entrusted to the god Upulvan; and departed this life. (The Rājāvaliya; Gunasekera 1954: 15) This chapter first examines what we know of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness in the Kandyan Kingdom, after it emerged as the bearer and landscaper of Sinhala Buddhist identity in the 1590s, before turning to one example – the poetry of Alagiyavanna Mukaveṭi as examined by Berkwitz – to illustrate models of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness under the Portuguese. Lastly, I comment on the beginning of British rule. My focus is the attribution of meaning to the land of Sri Lanka, and the cosmology, narratives and sense of Sinhalaness that lay behind it, particularly with reference to the inclusion or exclusion of the Other. Key to this is representation of the past, particularly of the Vijaya myth, the founding myth of the Sinhala people, and Sinhala dynastic culture, and the link

14   The British colonial period between both and the land of Sri Lanka (Coomaraswamy 2000: 27–28). To use Kemper’s words, Sinhala consciousness concerns ‘the presence of the past’ in each era of the country’s history (Kemper 1991: 2).

Sinhala Buddhist consciousness in the Kandyan Kingdom (1590s–1815) In examining Sinhala Buddhist consciousness during the Kandyan Kingdom, I align myself with those who have argued for the existence of a developed sense of difference between Self and Other in the Sinhala Buddhist community, Otherness being constituted not only through ethnicity and religion but also through markers of identity such as caste. In stating this, I am not arguing for a Sinhala Buddhist nationalism at this time, although I agree with Kemper that ‘something – whether one calls it a set of identities, beliefs or practices, a discourse, a relationship between king and clerics – was there, ready to be transformed’ into something like nationalism (Kemper 1991: 17). Rather, I am arguing for a sense of Sinhalaness at this time. Michael Roberts has given us the most comprehensive account of this, contesting studies by post-­colonial scholars such as Nissan and Stirrat (Nissan and Stirrat 1987) and Spencer (Spencer 1990), who argued that strong ethnic differentiation was a modernist political development, dependent on the ruptures brought by colonialism (Roberts 2004: 8–10). However, Roberts drew on several earlier works that argued that the apparent porousness of boundaries between different religious practices and ethnic groups in the Kandyan Kingdom was underpinned by the enforcement of a strict hierarchy of the sacred, played out in space, or what I term in this monograph, inclusivist subordination. I turn to these and other complementary perspectives before examining Roberts’s argument in more detail.

Kandy: a landscaped, hierarchical polity Duncan, a human geographer, was the first contemporary scholar to subject the city of Kandy, when capital of an independent kingdom, to spatial analysis. Its landscape, he argued, ‘was designed to be read as a testimony of the kings’ responsibility as the guardians of Buddhism and to impress the people of the kingdom with the legitimacy and power of their rulers’, as well as the role of the gods. Its ‘symbolic layout’ and its religious symbols, therefore, were ‘metonyms for the power and celestial splendour of the gods’ (Duncan 1990: 59) and mirrored the design of the cosmos. In other words, the relationship between the Buddha, the king and the gods was communicated and enacted through landscaped space, the king as mediator between the gods and the people, and protector of the Buddha’s presence through his relics.1 Duncan’s study, in effect, argued that the city of Kandy was spatially organized to evoke a cosmic pattern of unity, control and subordination, flowing from the king and the gods, who lay under the ultimate authority of the Buddha. This pattern was mirrored in lay devotional practice, which honoured the Buddha as bearer of ultimate truth and the gods, as mundane protectors, capable of granting mundane blessings.

Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries   15 Duncan’s detailed examination of the Äsala Perahära demonstrates that ritual reinforced this spatial landscaping and devotional practice, visually presenting the King as both the god Śakra and a cakravartin (Pāli: Cakkavatti), a wheel-­ turning Buddhist monarch (Duncan 1990: 132–133). After the tooth relic was inserted into the ceremony in the eighteenth century, the representatives of the dēvāles came after those from the Daḷadā Māligāva (Duncan 1990: 128–139). This cosmically endorsed model of progressive subordination was mirrored in the city’s governance in what Tambiah termed a ‘galactic polity’. This ‘polity’, according to Tambiah, was one in which the social and political processes of the state could be inclusive of minorities and immigrants, but only if they were capable of being ‘incorporated within the larger [Buddhist] cosmological and economic framework’ (Tambiah 1992: 175). I concur. To use my own terminology, Tamils, Christians, Muslims, Śaivites and the powers worshipped by these groups, were tolerated and respected through a subordinating inclusivism, within a predominantly Buddhist framework. If these groups were willing to accept this positioning, a serviceable harmony and unity was possible. The importance of unity at mundane and cosmic levels in the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary has been examined by both Daniel and De Silva Wijeratne, who drew on Bruce Kapferer’s work (Daniel 1996: 28; De Silva Wijeratne 2014: 25). Kapferer, in the late-­twentieth century, pioneered the academic rehabilitation of exorcist ceremonies in Sri Lanka, through his argument that curative exorcism concerned the re-­structuring of consciousness so that order and harmony replaced disorder (Kapferer 1997: 39). And the harmony to which he referred was one in which both deities and demons were subordinated to the Buddha through a ‘re-­hierarchialization’ (Kapferer 1997: 291). Daniel, therefore, stressed fear of fragmentation in Sinhala Buddhist consciousness. Fragmentation was chaos and chaos was the antithesis of harmony and a ‘hierarchical and holistic (Buddhist) state’ (Daniel 1996: 28). One major implication of this is that porous boundaries between religious identities within the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary, before 1815, could not exist within a completely equal playing field. Consciousness was structured to include hierarchy and this hierarchy was the bastion against fragmentation. Roberts’s study of Sinhala consciousness in the Kandyan Kingdom is complex and I simplify it considerably. At one level, he argued that the Sinhala language itself possessed within it a deeply embedded ‘inside-­outside’ metaphor (Roberts 2004: 30), which could variously be applied to caste, village belonging, low country ( pāta rata) versus high country (uda rata), and to the foreigner, the enemy or the stranger (Roberts 2004: 31–32). Roberts explained, ‘I am referring here to what can be called a “segmentary form” in language-­pattern that is like a Chinese box and has a confederative structure of successive inclusions, or exclusions’ (Roberts 2004: 31). At this linguistic level, the boundaries between Self and Other were real but could be permeable and context-­dependent. Key to Roberts’s argument, however, was that this metaphor co-­existed with an imaginary that envisioned the entire island of Sri Lanka as Sinhalē, as belonging to the Sinhala people, with the Kandyan Kingdom at the centre, such that it

16   The British colonial period could rightly be called the Kingdom of Sinhalē (Roberts 2004: 13 and 54).2 Roberts argued that this did not mean that the kings of Kandy administered the whole island. They administered part of it3 and the term Sinhalē was sometimes used in this more restricted sense (Roberts 2004: 56). Alongside this sense, however, was one that encompassed the entire territory of the island, through the motif of homage. If what could be considered homage was offered to the kings of Kandy from the outer parts of the country, an essentially subordinating action, then this was seen as affirming the sovereignty of Kandy over the whole. A ‘tributary overlordship’ was in operation (Roberts 2004: 71) and, in the Sinhala imaginary, such overlordship signified that Kandy remained the cosmic centre of the island, led by a god-­king, who was governed by Buddhism. Even the Dutch, Roberts argued, accepted for pragmatic reasons the role of ‘vassal’ in its dealings with the Kandyan Kingdom, whilst retaining its administrative and commercial power over the maritime areas (Roberts 2004: 59 and 69–70). Roberts cites a letter sent to the Dutch by Rājasinha II in the 1650s, soon after they had ousted the Portuguese, stating that all ‘the black people of this my island of Ceilao, wheresoever they may be, [are] my vassals by right’ (Roberts 2004: 78). Obeyesekere offers evidence that the British also, before 1815, could refer to the Kandyan country as Sinhalē (Obeyesekere 2017: 54) but to return to Roberts, he later added, ‘The Sinhalaness of the Sinhala rulers was an incorporative form of collective consciousness either assimilating others or encompassing others (for instance the Yon and the Muslims) into the hierarchical order of their society as distinct categories’ (Roberts 2004: 114). Significantly, the totally Other that could not easily be subordinated was likely to be cast as demonic. Both Roberts and de Silva Wijeratne find evidence that Tamils could be placed in this category as a source of potential fragmentation (Roberts 2004: 134; De Silva Wijeratne 2014: 42–44). The creation of unity through inclusivist subordination and hierarchy can clearly be seen in Roberts’s ‘tributary overlordship’, which embodied a subor­ dinating, spatial division between centre and periphery, and between Self and Other, held together by a narrative of harmony that was maintained through ritual, art, homage, pilgrimage and the idea of Sinhalaness. This imaginary was reinforced, as Obeyesekere has shown, with reference to the last Kandyan king, by ‘royal circuits’, gaman māligāva (lit. palace for journeying), through which the king travelled to selected territories, asserting his symbolic authority through offering gifts and building temporary or more permanent palaces (Obeyesekere 2017: 153–157). Behind this was an even more deeply embedded envisioning, informed by the vaṃsa tradition – that the whole island and the Buddha were symbolically one. Kemper’s words are apposite: For the Mahāvaṃsa, the locale is the island itself which becomes, in a way at once literal and metaphoric, the ground on which the story unfolds, for it is here that unity is realized.… Recall that when the yakās gave the island to the Buddha, they gave it to him wholecloth, leaving no place for

Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries   17 themselves.… The Vaṃsatthappakāsini (A Pali Commentary on the Mahāvaṃsa) asserts the unity between the Buddha and the island even more strongly … the Buddha’s body and the island are symbolically one. (Kemper 1991: 52) In Chapter 5 of this book, I contest the view that the chronicles were ‘discovered’ by western orientalists such as George Turnour. Although a Sinhala version of the Mahāvaṃsa was only published in the 1930s after English translations (Obeyesekere 1994: 31), the narratives within the chronicles were present in other forms, for instance in dance, temple murals, chants and rituals (Sivasundaram 2007), in the teaching given to lay people by the monastic Sangha and pilgrimage. Reed’s study of the Kohomba Kankariya dance is important. Its primary focus is nineteenth- and twentieth-­century adaptations but the dance had a much older provenance, having been ‘the most important ritual in Kandyan villages’ (Reed 2010: 24). Its narrative underpinning is the iconic Mahāvaṃsa narrative of Vijaya/Kuveni. One of the ‘comic dramas’ that Reed found in its modern iteration involved a priest from South India being trained to speak correct Sinhala, ‘demonstrating that he must learn to assimilate to the dominant culture’ (Reed 2010: 26). There is no reason to believe that such interludes were absent from dances held before the end of the Kandyan Kingdom, particularly since it embodies the trope of subordination that was landscaped into its geography. It confirms De Silva Wijeratne’s argument touched on above that the categories of Sinhala and Tamil had a cosmologically determined meaning connected with order and fragmentation before the colonial period (De Silva Wiyeratne 2014: 42–44). Chronicles such as the Mahāvaṃsa were not, however, re-­enacted within the Kandyan Kingdom to offer onlookers a purely educational history of the island (Kemper 1991: 84; Scheible 2016). They ‘addressed an audience that was already convinced’ and aimed to arouse serene joy ( pasāda) and emotion (saṃvega), as the Mahāvaṃsa states at each chapter’s end (Kemper 1991: 84). I concur with Scheible’s argument that the Mahāvaṃsa is a multivalent text that should be read for its ‘literary effects rather than for literal historiography’ (Scheible 2016: 19) and one of these ‘effects’ was to nurture virtue amongst a textual community through engendering feelings such as religious urgency. Her points are similar to those made by Berkwitz in his study of the thirteenth-­century Sinhala text, the Thūpavaṃsa, in which he argued that the question for Sri Lankans was not what ‘the past was’ but ‘what the past does or at least was thought to do’ (Berkwitz 2004: 1). Referring to the whole vaṃsa tradition, he stressed that Sri Lankan historical writings assumed a ‘much more dynamic role in medieval Sri Lanka than simply to function as records of the past’. Rather, they ‘worked to transform the world’ they described (Berkwitz 2004: 5–6). And this could include, for Coomaraswamy, another ‘effect’ – affirmation of group identity, religious commitment and religious hierarchy (Coomaraswamy 2000: 29–32). As for the land of Sri Lanka, Scheible contested reading ‘Dhammadipa’ as ‘Island of the dhamma’, preferring the alternative meaning – lamp. The Mahāvaṃsa presented the island, ‘which is metaphorically like a lamp’ as

18   The British colonial period having been ‘primed by the Buddha’ (Scheible 2016: 64), for his relics and his continued presence. In other words, the entire land of Sri Lanka is seen in the chronicles and, by extension, I would argue, by Sinhalas in the pre-­colonial period, as having been moulded specifically by the Buddha for the light of the dhamma. The land of Sri Lanka as the body of the Buddha was given concrete expression within the pre-­colonial imaginary in the Buddhist narratives which surrounded the island. It is not accidental that the Buddha’s visits to the island, recorded in the Mahāvaṃsa, stretched from the North to the South, encompassing the whole body of Sri Lanka, or that the arrival of the tooth relic is seen to have happened in the East. The territorial unity of the island was created by the narratives connected with these sacred places and, according to Kemper, maintaining their integrity was seen primarily as a moral task to protect Buddhism (Kemper 1991: 76). Eight or 16 places of pilgrimage developed in the Sinhala imaginary – atamasthāna vandanāva and solosmasthāna vandanāva – surrounding the island, from Nāgadīpa in the North to Dighavapi in the East, to Kälaṇi and Tissamahārāma in the South.4 All were linked to the Buddha’s visits to the island as recorded in the Mahāvaṃsa. The eight places of pilgrimage were most certainly known and celebrated in the Kandyan Kingdom, although it is disputed when the idea of 16 places developed (Perera 2016: 208–209). The Buddhist, the English-­language journal of the theosophists in Sri Lanka, referred to the tradition in the later years of British colonialism, but with a certain amount of hesitancy about which places were to be included (Amarasekera 1922). I would support Obeyesekere, however, when he referred to the traditional importance of the ‘obligatory pilgrimage’ for Sinhala Buddhists, without specifying the exact number of sites, and linked it to the creation of a moral community that stretched beyond the caste and devotional distinctions that separated Sinhala village from Sinhala village (Obeyesekere 1979: 290–291). Traditionally, few Buddhists would have been able to visit all eight or even 16 sites but that was not the most important thing. Pilgrimage to one or two sites was part of an imaginary that pictured those sites as part of a larger island-­wide Buddhist drama. Within the Kandyan Kingdom before European domination, therefore, a pan-­ Sinhala Buddhist consciousness was present, not only in the landscaping of the capital, with its inbuilt, unity-­creating hierarchy, but also by an envisioning of the island as the body of the Buddha, surrounded by narratives and by the Buddha’s real presence in his relics. It was a consciousness that was informed by the enactment rather than the reading of chronicles such as the Mahāvaṃsa. Within this imaginary, the Other could be respected and included if they were visibly subordinate and willing to accept this position within the Buddhist imaginary. During the period of the Kandyan Kingdom, however, three Others moved on the borderline between what could be inclusively subordinated and what threatened unity – the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. Roberts’s study of Sinhala war poems from the Kandyan Kingdom between 1638 and 1805 offer an excellent insight into how the imaginary I have outlined dealt with these.

Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries   19 He interpreted the poems as ‘praise poetry’, designed to renew and legitimize kingship (Roberts 2004: 111). Written sometimes to a drum-­beat rhythm, they mobilized the Kandyan troops and praised a large number of chieftains. All assumed a collective ‘we’ and a threatening Other, namely the Portuguese, Dutch or British, who, ‘on occasions’ were linked with the Buddhist personification of temptation, disorder and evil, Māra (Roberts 2001: 118). According to Roberts, they reinforced the king-­centred polity of the Kingdom as a ‘collective identity’ with ‘a hierarchical form of unity’ (Roberts 2004: 115 – emphasis Roberts’s, bold in original). On the evidence of Roberts’s extensive quotes from the poems, spatial terminology appears in each of those he opted to study, evidencing a continued identification between Sinhala consciousness, the collective ‘we’ feeling, and territory, after the Portuguese and Dutch arrived. For instance, in the Mahā Hatana, composed around 1658, the following sentiment is found, ‘Let us together with our famous (and) courageous Lord [i.e. king], Let us protect the whole land (derana) from the enemy by evicting them’ (Roberts 2004: 120, bold in original). He compared it to an earlier poem of the late 1580s, the Sītāvaka Hatana, which referred to ‘mē rata, mē Lakdiva (this country, this Lankā)’ (Roberts 2004: 120). Roberts, therefore, concluded that Sinhala collective identity was ‘threaded by a distinct allegiance to place: namely, Trisinhalaya, Tunsinhalaya, Siri Laka, Lakpura and other labels used to associate the king and his followers with the island taken as a whole’ (Roberts 2004: 121).5 Significant, in the context of this study, is Roberts’s not unsurprising argument, underpinned with quotes from the poems, that ‘the value attached to the island had a Buddhist complexion to it’ (Roberts 2004: 124). In these poems, the Other is a European Other and Roberts demonstrates, drawing on Kapferer, how this Other was demonized and, additionally, that its disintegration was accepted as beneficial (Roberts 2004: 125). Using my concept of inclusivist subordination, the poems are another demonstration that if the Other cannot be included, within a hierarchical structure, it must be gauged out and destroyed.

Sri Lanka under Portuguese rule To examine the Sinhala imaginary under the Portuguese, particularly as expressed through exclusion or inclusion of the Other, I turn to another study of poetry, this time by Stephen Berkwitz (Berkwitz 2013), of the Sinhala Buddhist poet, Alagiyavanna Mukaveṭi (b.  1552), who lived in the lowlands, initially attached to the Court at Sītāvaka under Rājasiṃha I. In line with the theme of this study, I focus particularly on how Mukaveti portrayed the Other. Berkwitz chose five poems and examined them chronologically, demonstrating that they embodied a range of responses to the Portuguese and to other religious traditions, from accommodation to resistance (Berkwitz 2013: 6). The first poem, Sävul Sandēśa (The Cock’s Message), written in the early 1580s, when Sītāvaka was under threat from the Portuguese, used classical poetic models to eulogize both Rājasiṃha I, and the city and territory that

20   The British colonial period glorified him. The verses were rich with cosmological and spatial symbolism (Berkwitz 2013: 48–53). They also, Berkwitz argued, validated a traditional ‘culture-­power formation’ that could accommodate ‘pluralistic religious forms and identity’ (Berkwitz 2013: 53). Berkwitz referred to a ‘syncretic religious culture’ under Rājasiṃha I that was able to attribute a high status to Hindu deities, such that Rājasiṃha I, himself, was described with reference to them. This is an important point but I would prefer to read it in conversation with Roberts and Duncan, and my own concept of inclusivist subordination. The kings of Sri Lanka were intimately linked with the power of the gods and mediated this power, but were ultimately subject to the Buddha, as giver of meaning. Only on the surface could the boundaries between different practices be blurred, although the cock of the poem, for instance, visits both Buddhist and Hindu shrines ‘without dwelling on what makes them different’ (Berkwitz 2013: 63). Nevertheless, Berkwitz’s argument is significant in the light of the changes that occurred in Alagiyavanna’s later poems. As long as the Portuguese were kept at bay and traditional cultural-­power relationships were preserved, religious identity could remain inclusive and unproblematic with Buddhist and Hindu practices shading into each other (Berkwitz 2013: 62–63), albeit with a hierarchy. The second poem, Dahamsoňḍa Kava (Poem of King Dhammasoṇḍa), written when traditional cultural-­power relationships were unravelling, because of external and internal threat, demonstrates, according to Berkwitz, a more critical attitude towards Rājasiṃha I, through its prioritizing of moral characteristics over fame and glory (Berkwitz 2013: 69). Its narrative framework was more narrowly Buddhist – the para-­canonical ‘jātaka’ tale of a king who is willing to give up everything to hear the dhamma. Yet, Berkwitz argued that religious inclusivism was still present. Hindu imagery, for instance, was used to praise an ancient king and ‘a fairly heterogenous view of religious identity’ can be detected, particularly at the beginning (Berkwitz 2013: 80), in spite of the prioritization of Buddhism (Berkwitz 2013: 84). Behind the poem, reflected in form as well content, Berkwitz argued, lay the fear that the Buddha’s teaching was being lost and that rulers were no longer submitting to it. Its tone, therefore, moved towards a greater exclusivism. Berkwitz’s analysis of the next two poems further demonstrates the effect of political and religious change, in this case the take-­over of Sītāvaka by Koṭṭe and the Portuguese. The third, a poem based on the Kusa Jātaka, further elevated the need for moral accomplishments in a king. It ‘offered a new basis for expressing power and claiming status in a colonial setting’, namely through morality (Berkwitz 2013: 130). It was the fourth poem, Subhāṣitaya (Well-­Spoken Words), however, that embodied the most radical expression of Buddhist identity in response to the Portuguese, according to Berkwitz. Berkwitz dated it to 1611 before the poet converted to Christianity (Berkwitz 2013: 134). The poem argued, with polemical force, for the superiority of Buddhism in the context of the growing exclusivism within Portuguese missionary efforts, under the influence of the Counter Reformation in Europe

Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries   21 (Strathern 2010: 197). It was morally didactic, representing a new departure in Sinhala literature, and drew not only on specifically Buddhist moral maxims or ‘words’ but also from a wider indic base, including Śaivism. According to Berkwitz, however, a clear distinction was present between the ‘false’ and the true, and a forceful critique of the wickedness of contemporary society (Berkwitz 2013: 145–146). And, although Hindu maxims were included as ‘good words’, Śaivism, overall, was subordinated to Buddhism and ridiculed (Berkwitz 2013: 151), through the view that the worship of gods could not assist a person to gain liberation. Berkwitz’s conclusion was that the poem represented an early attempt to ‘evoke a distinct and exclusive notion of the Buddhist religion as superior to all others’, in a context that presupposed the existence of other religious systems (Berkwitz 2013: 153–154). The last poem chosen by Berkwitz, Kustantīno Haṭana (The Way of Constantino), was written after Alagiyavanna’s conversion to Roman Cath­ olicism and, according to Berkwitz, expressed a religious and cultural hybridity (Berkwitz 2013: 179) that was subversive of both religions. He placed it within the Sinhala War Poem category, since it honoured the qualities of a Portuguese ‘captain-­general’ (Berkwitz 2103: 163) using conventional poetic methods, and praised both Roman Catholic ideals and Buddhism. Convinced of Alagiyavanna’s authorship, Berkwitz argued that it represented both a point at which the legitimacy of Portuguese rule was recognized and negotiated (Berkwitz 2013: 190) and a point at which a poet such as Alagiyavanna could hold together both Christianity and Buddhism, with Jesus taking on, at certain points, the role of a bodhisattva or protective deity, subordinate to the Buddha himself (Berkwitz 2013: 195), in what I would term a return to inclusivist subordination. I have quoted Berkwitz at length because he, as Roberts, argued for an early form of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness or Sinhalaness in the face of the Other. Although I diverge from Berkwitz in his downplaying of hierarchy between religions in the early poems, Berkwitz is right to stress that Alagiyavanna’s poetry created a ‘modern Buddhism’ more exclusivist than its forbears, capable of drawing a spatial line between a Buddhist self and a threatening Other, in order to negotiate colonial encounters. The Other, however, had to be perceived as threatening before defensive exclusivism emerged. Under the Dutch, generally speaking, the model of inclusivist subordination that I have outlined was allowed to flourish. Alagiyavanna’s solution – holding together Buddhism and Christianity within a hierarchy – became general practice, particularly for those in government service, who were forced to undergo Christian baptism to assume office. The Dutch, in effect, not only allowed a form of dual belonging at the level of religious belief, turning a blind eye to the fact that ‘baptized Christians’ still patronized Buddhist vihāras, but also played into the Kandyan Kingdom’s wish to see them as ‘vassals’. Their priority, after all, was economic profit not exclusivist models of proselytization. I now turn to the nineteenth century and what we know of the imaginary of Sinhala Buddhists as the British took over.

22   The British colonial period

The nineteenth century Among the factors that influenced Sinhala Buddhist spatial consciousness in the nineteenth century were: the activities of the evangelical Protestant missionaries; the Aryan/Dravidian debate; and the archaeological project of the British administration. The next three chapters examine the first, the fifth chapter, the second, and the sixth, the third. Each factor nurtured the emergence of exclusivist attitudes. My summary of Berkwitz’s analysis of Alagiyavanna’s poetry, however, suggests that the drawing of exclusivist boundaries between religions was not a new phenomenon under the British. As Alagiyavanna’s poetry responded to the greater religious exclusivism of the Portuguese, so Buddhists under the British responded to the exclusivism of the evangelical missionary spatial model by moving towards a defensive exclusivism. Before this nineteenth century movement, however, in the last years of the Kandyan Kingdom, elements within Kandyan polity were whipping up antagonism against another Other – the Tamil. Obeyesekere highlights two ‘outrageously anti-­Tamil’ poems from the ending of the Kandyan Kingdom, Ähälēpola Varnanāva (In Praise of Ähälēpola) and Kirala Sandēśaya (The Lapwing’s Message, Obeyesekere 2017: 83–106). In the context of the rivalry between the last king of Kandy and Ähälēpola, and British collusion, these refer to ‘Tamil darkness’, ‘the poisonous, cruel and filthy Tamil’ (2017: 89) and Ähälēpola as the ‘vanquisher of Tamils’ and a bodhisattva (Obeyesekere 2017: 95). Obeyesekere refers to the ‘unprecedented terms of abuse heaped on the king, a South Indian by descent, unthinkable in classic sandēśa tradition’ (2017: 96). It was a demonization for political ends. Both inclusivist subordination of the Other and defensive exclusivism became central within Sinhala consciousness under British colonialism. At the beginning of British rule, archival evidence suggests that the monastic Sangha sought a co-­ existence with the British that was a product of what I have termed inclusivist subordination. Rāghavan’s point is apposite: the monastic Sangha continually hoped for a sharing of power with British administrators, assuming that a traditional model of interdependence between the Sangha and the state was possible (Rāghavan 2016: 104–115). They also attempted co-­existence with the evangelical missionaries, believing that co-­operation was better than competition, in spite of the differences they perceived between the two religious systems (Harris 2012). It was when these models were ridiculed that other, more exclusivist, models re-­emerged to protect the island as a Buddhist space that could nurture its children educationally and religiously. At the moment when the British arrived, therefore, there was a strong sense of Sinhalaness among Sinhala communities. Its preferred mode of operation was to create unity through inclusivist subordination of the Other. When the Other appeared as a threat, however, an alternative model of defensive exclusivity could be drawn on, as it was during the Portuguese period. When the British arrived, therefore, Buddhists in Sri Lanka hoped for a co-­existence that would enable them to continue to subordinate the imperial and the Christian to Buddhism and traditional Sinhala practices. The borderline between what was

Sri Lankan Buddhist imaginaries   23 capable of subordination and what could be perceived as a threat to the existence of Buddhism, however, was not fixed. It shifted according to context and the different agents involved, as the following chapters demonstrate.

Notes 1 See Obeyesekere (2017: 212–214) for a legitimate critique of Duncan’s arguments about the last king of Kandy. This does not affect, however, the argument I have cited. 2 According to Obeyesekere, the term itself was probably coined in the context of European expansionism to denote the Kandyan Kingdom as a separate entity (Obeyesekere 2017: 69n), but I argue with Roberts that this would be in the context of the kingdom’s claims over the whole island. 3 Obeyesekere refers to five areas under the direct rule of Kandy, Udunuvara-­Yatinuvara, Matale, Dumbara, Harispattuva and Gampola (Obeyesekere 2017: 151). 4 The 16 places of pilgrimage or Solosmasthanaya are: Mahiyangana (Uva); Nāgadīpa (Jaffna), Kälaṇi (Western Province), Śrī Pāda, Dīvaghuha Stūpa – a cave near Śrī Pāda, where the Buddha is believed to have rested; Dighavapi Stūpa (Eastern Province), Muthiyangana Stūpa (Badulla, Uva Province); Tissamahārāma (Southern Province); Śrī Mahā Bodhi in Anuradhapura; Mirisavätiya Stūpa (Anuradhapura); Ruvanvälisäya (Anuradhapura); Thūpārāma Stūpa (Anuradhapura); Abhayagiri Stūpa (Anuradhapura); Jetāvana (Anuradhapura); Sela Chaitya in Mihintale; Kiri Vihāra (Kataragama) (Meegama 2012: 142n). 5 See Roberts (2004: 54–60) for a discussion of the terms Trisinhala and its synonyms, which were used to denote the whole island in the same way as Sinhalē, but offering the concept of three, traditionally interpreted as three regions, although Roberts problematizes this. See also Obeyesekere (2017: 19 and 69n).

References Amarasekera, A.B.M., 1922. ‘The Sixteen Great Places of Worship in Sri Lanka’. The Buddhist 8, 25 February: 5; 9, 4 March: 3–4; 10, 11 March: 3; 11, 18 March: 4. Berkwitz, Stephen, 2004. Buddhist History in the Vernacular: The Power of the Past in late Medieval Sri Lanka. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Berkwitz, Stephen, 2013. Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism: Alagiyavanna and the Portuguese in Sri Lanka. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coomaraswamy Radhika, 2000. ‘Of Vijaya and Maruta: Reflections on Nationalist Discourses of Race and Diversity’. Nēthrā 4.1–2: 23–53. Daniel, E. Valentine, 1996. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. De Silva Wijeyeratne, Roshan, 2014. Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Duncan, James S., 1990. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape in the Kandyan Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gunasekera, B., 1954 (1900). The Rájávaliya or A Historical Narrative of Siṇhalese Kings from Vihaya to Vimala Dharma Surya II. Colombo: George J.A. Skeen. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2012. ‘Memory, Experience and the Clash of Cosmologies: The Encounter between British Protestant Missionaries and Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka’. Social Sciences and Missions 25.3: 265–303. Kapferer, Bruce, 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

24   The British colonial period Kemper, Steven, 1991. The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Meegama, S.A., 2012. Famine, Fevers and Fear: The State and Disease in British Colonial Sri Lanka. Dehiwela: Sridevi. Nissan, Elizabeth and Stirrat, R.L., 1987. ‘State, Nation and the Representation of Evil’. Sussex Papers in Anthropology, 1. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 1994. ‘Ethnicity and Pluralism in Sri Lanka’. The Thatched Patio 7.2: 30–35. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 2017. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Śri Vikrama Rājasinha. Colombo: Sail Fish. Perera, Sasanka, 2016. Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise. New Delhi: Sage. Rāghavan, Suren, 2016. Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka’s Civil War: Ethnoreligious Nationalism of the Sinhala Saṅgha and Peacemaking in Sri Lanka 1995–2010. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox. Reed, Susan A., 2010. Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Roberts, Michael, 2001. Sinhala-ness and Sinhala Nationalism (Marga Monograph Series on Ethnic Reconciliation, No. 4). Colombo: Marga Institute. Roberts, Michael, 2004. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Scheible, Kristin, 2016. Reading the Mahāvaṃsa: The Literary Aims of a Theravāda Buddhist History. New York: Colombia University Press. Spencer, Jonathan (ed.), 1990. Sri Lanka, History and the Roots of Conflict. London: Routledge. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2007. ‘Buddhist Kingship, British Archaeology and Historical Narratives in Sri Lanka c.1750–1850’. Past and Present 197, November: 111–142. Strathern, A., 2010. Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Tambiah, Stanley J., 1992. Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

2 The evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary

It pains my heart when I reflect how many of those deluded and ignorant people are daily passing into an awful Eternity, destitute of the knowledge of God and his Son Jesus. (CMS missionary, Browning, writing at a time of disease in Kandy)1

The evangelical missionary attitude towards space in Sri Lanka was conditioned by the theology embodied in this quote, which condemned Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and even Roman Catholicism as false, idolatrous and unable to snatch people from ‘an awful eternity’, namely the fires of hell.2 The consequence of this theology was that there was no room for inclusivity. Christian mission had to be exclusivist. No missionary would have disagreed with the view that Christianity ‘can never consent to take its place side by side with other religious systems. Jesus Christ cannot occupy a pedestal or niche in the common Pantheon’ (Anon 1891: 246). The missionaries, therefore, arrived, from 1805 onwards,3 with an expectation that they would be involved in a battle between the conflicting truth claims of Christianity and the other religions of Sri Lanka. And the metaphors they used to express this were predominantly spatial, taken from farming and the battlefield. The space that was Sri Lanka was a ‘field’ or a ‘stony place’ which had to receive seed or be broken, and produce fruit.4 It was a ‘moral wilderness’ (Gogerly 1837: 47), a territory into which ‘inroads’ had to be made so that ‘conquest’ was possible. Buddhism, the religion I concentrate on, was a ‘stronghold’,5 a ‘tower’, a ‘citadel’6 that had to be ‘swept away’, ‘conquered’ or surrounded by a more powerful force, within a ‘field’, where ‘ground’ had to be occupied7 and never relinquished. The missionary task was ‘Christian warfare’ carried out not by violence but by spiritual struggle.8 And once inroads had been made, the ‘garrisons’ of Christianity had to be defended and not abandoned (Copleston 1900: 34).9 According to Obeyesekere, the Mātara region in southern Sri Lanka, throughout the colonial period, ‘had always been self-­consciously Buddhist’, supporting Kandyan aspirations well before 1815 (Obeyesekere 2017: 118). This was not lost on the missionaries. Galle, for instance, embodied the ‘innermost shrine’ of a ‘rampant’ Buddhism (Shipstone 1872: 160).10 It formed the heart of ‘the great

26   The British colonial period strongholds of Buddhism’, which included Mātara (Nicholson 1874). Although Nicholson in 1875 could stress the plurality of Mātara – 16,586 Buddhists, 97 Hindus, 1,333 Muslims and 615 Christians (Nicholson 1875: 12–20) Wesleyan missionary, D.J. Gogerly, wrote, in the 1830s: Generally speaking I think that Matura is one of the least promising of all the fields cultivated by this mission.… Our preaching in all places is that of attack, although, we trust, in strict accordance with the mild and holy principles of the Gospel. (Gogerly 1837: 46–47)11 In the same letter, after speaking of a ‘small chapel’ in the village of ‘Weheragampitta’, he continued, ‘There is a Budhist temple in the immediate vicinity, but at least Christianity here, through our mission, may fairly be regarded as contesting the ground with some appearance of superiority’ (Gogerly 1837: 49). As evidence, he mentioned that no coconuts were smashed to the goddess Pattini ‘during the last sickness’. To augment this kind of imagery, the concept of the hunt was sometimes used: On account of the strong hold which Buddhism has upon the minds of the Singhalese generally in the south of the island, all the conquests of Christ­ ianity are as the wresting of the prey from the teeth of the enraged lion. (Spence Hardy 1864: 217) As late as 1885, an editorial in the Wesleyan magazine, The Ceylon Friend, could write of mission in the southern province of Uva: It will doubtless gratify our friends to know that important strategic positions have been taken up in Uva and from them we mean to conduct a vigorous campaign on behalf of righteousness against the abounding wickedness of that fair but sadly neglected region. We believe in war, in desperate war, and we shall watch the conduct of our vanguard with sympathetic eagerness. Badulla is the capital of the Principality.… Haldummulla has also been occupied and regular services have been inaugurated there.… We hope shortly to be able to announce that our triangulation has been completed by the residence of a missionary and catechist in Bandarawella.12 Romanticism about Sri Lanka’s landscape did surface in missionary writings but it was always tempered with ambiguity, in line with these metaphors. No less than other British people in Sri Lanka, nineteenth-­century missionaries were struck by the sheer physical beauty of the country but unalloyed delight in this was impossible. For the missionaries, there was always a leech or a snake in paradise because of the presence of ‘non-­Christian’ religions and their ‘idolatry’. Nicolson, writing from Galle in 1874, described the mountains on one side of his mission house and the ‘ocean outline’ on the other and continued:

The Protestant missionary imaginary   27 Here, we stand above all that expanse of floral and vegetable life, so that the luxuriance and fruitfulness of Lanka come grandly before us. But it is not this natural loveliness that now fixes our attention; we go under those waving palms, then through the fields in which the young rice is fresh and promising, and cross some long narrow paths not made for shoe-­wearing travellers; the life of humanity is our strongest charm, for the sufferings of heathendom are in painful contrast with the beauty and fertility of the land. (Nicholson 1874: 247)13 He continued to describe some villagers close to a tavern, ‘unutterable degradation’ in one and ‘evil cunning’ in another (Nicholson 1874: 247). Implicit within missionary vocabulary, therefore, was a demarcation between ‘heathen’ space and Christianized space. Exhilaration about the natural beauty of the land could not be unalloyed whilst the people within it remained Buddhist, since the space surrounding them could not be other than ‘heathen’. Heathen space, within the missionary world view, was both physical/material and psychological. When converts moved into that which was Christianized, the missionary expectation was that heathen space, both physical and psychological, would be rejected completely. The two were incompatible, divided in a cosmic dualism that pitted truth against falsehood, worship of the one God against idolatry, joy against fear and dread, and salvation against eternal damnation.14 That this ‘heathen’ space contained the whole of life for Buddhists – its structures of meaning, its loving family relationships, its duties, its ways of dealing with birth, death and illness – was not appreciated. At a cognitive level, Protestant missionaries recognized that both spaces, the Christianized and the heathen, were plural. There were different forms of Protestant Christianity in Sri Lanka, which held different doctrines,15 and, in the first half of the nineteenth century at least, the missionaries distinguished between Buddhism, and exorcism and spirit religion, which they linked with the demonic (Clough 1816b: 399, quoted in Harris 2006: 30), although they soon realized that Buddhist monks supported the kapurālas, the priests of the dēvāle system, and sometimes took part in dēvāle ceremonies, even acting as ‘exorcist, pretending to propitiate and expel the devil’ (Armour 1817: 237). So, Wesleyan missionaries, Harvard and Clough, declare in a school report, ‘And we have been informed by converted Priests, that it is not an uncommon thing, for the Priests of Budhu themselves, to pay offerings to these Satanic Dewallahs’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 2). At the level of soteriology, however, both spaces were uni-­vocal. Protestant Christianity could save eternal souls from hell. Buddhism and spirit religion, and the patterns of meaning and culture that encompassed both, sent souls into it, although spirit religion was seen as more pernicious and pervasive than Buddhism, because of its capacity to invoke fear. So Wesleyan missionary, John Shipstone, wrote in 1871, drawing on informal conversations with people in Palolpitiya near Galle: In reality so far as a real knowledge of Buddhism and an observance of its tenets goes, setting aside their dislike to taking life of which more anon,

28   The British colonial period worshipping the priests, presenting them with food, and flowers to the temple, they must justly be called worshippers of devils. They are literally in bondage to devils, to avert whose malice they are charmed in profusion. They charm their food and they charm their bodies. But as though the terror of devils were not enough, they charm themselves against all varieties of sickness of which they suspect them to be the authors; and not only so, for I saw a young man a short time ago who wore one in order to win a case which he was instituting in a police court. (Shipstone 1871: 116) The demonic and the satanic, namely exorcism and spirit religion, therefore, combined with idolatry as a characteristic of space in the south of Sri Lanka in the missionary imaginary. And the body became one space within which this worked. A body and, by extension, a mind in the grip of ‘heathen’ space was dark, clouded and deluded, locked in a culture of revenge that belied the natural timidness, ‘a gentleness and respectfulness of manner’ (Spence Hardy 1841b: 222), that the missionaries recognized in the Sinhala people.16 In 1864, Spence Hardy could, therefore, describe the ‘minds of the Kandyans’ in 1815, as ‘denser than the mist that settles on the sides of their mountains, after a night of monsoon rain’ (Spence Hardy 1864: 137). Throughout the century, the missionaries did not significantly change this imaginary. For the majority of them, the ‘native mind’ could not be other than ‘filled with an imagery the most deadly and disgusting’, necessitating that ‘it must be thoroughly cleansed from its pollution before it could become the residence of the truth in its purity’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 3). On the other hand, they recognized that Sri Lankans possessed pride in their religion and culture. A spatial remedy for this indicative of the missionary imaginary was suggested by Spence Hardy: The printing of a set of maps in Singhalese (the Malabars, we believe, are provided with this requisite) would do more to root out error and to establish the power of the Government, by convincing the Ceylonese of the absurdity of their religion and their own insignificance as a people, than any other method with which we are acquainted, involving so small an expense. (Spence Hardy 1842: 24–25) This view of the Buddhist body and mind was then projected onto the material expressions of Buddhism, onto temple, vihāra and pilgrimage site. These were also separate from the space in which the salvific could be accessed and, therefore, were shot through with darkness, fear and the demonic. They defied God and were the material, spatial expressions of idolatry and the satanic at a macro and micro level. Spence Hardy imagined the macro dimension in this way: Could we be transported, like our blessed Master, to some mount of universal vision, how should we be confounded at the numberless pollutions

The Protestant missionary imaginary   29 and puerilities of idol worship. A thousand temples would be seen, consecrated to impurity and lust; and the shouts of myriads would be heard, ascending before the shapes of blasphemy and horror, whose very invention must have been infernal; while abominations would be witnessed, hallowed as divine, which, had they been but human, would have scattered pestilence and death around them, and been everywhere shunned and execrated as the destroyers of mankind. (Spence Hardy 1841a: 171) At the micro level, the Wesleyan, William Fox could begin a description of the image house in a typical Buddhist vihāra in an objective, even laudatory, mode but continued: There lies the image of the sleeping Budha, in some places upwards of 30 feet long – on one side stands the sea-­coloured Vishnu – on another is Buddha in a standing posture as if delivering his laws, and in another place sitting. No window enlightens this room – some dismal lamps are always burning on a table before the principal image where the worshipper deposits his offering. He approaches the entrance with his present in his hands held above his head, and while he takes a glance at the idols, half enveloped in darkness, the priest relieves him of his load; and bowing, he receives a benediction and retires. To these buildings mothers in particular regularly repair with their children of all ages, each perhaps initiated into the system by conveying a flower. There they imitate the parents in the ceremonies, and return with imaginations tinctured with terror. (Fox 1841: 57; see also Harris 2006: 58) The missionaries also projected their hopes and fears onto Buddhist space. The vihāra was what had to be overcome and their fear was that its ‘shadow’ would simply prove too strong. As the Wesleyan, John Kilner, for instance, declared in 1837, ‘A Budhist temple stands on a rock, emblematic I fear of its permanency – within a hundred yards of our chapel [Pānadurē], and seems to bid defiance to our efforts to displace this our most formidable foe’ (Kilner 1837: 24). When the ruins of the ancient cities gained prominence in imperialist discourse, these also became a symbol of the missionary hope that Buddhism could be overpowered by Christianity, as the cities had been overpowered by the jungle. As for exorcism or the ‘devil dance’, the earliest description I have found among the missionaries was written by the Wesleyan, Thomas Squance, who says nothing more than that two people paint and dress themselves in ‘hideous forms’ with ‘bells about their legs’ and dance to the beating of ‘tom-­toms’ from sunset to sunrise in an attempt to ‘frighten the devil out of the sick man’ (Squance 1816: 157). Another appeared in the 1819 Wesleyan School Report with a fairly moderate, descriptive tone (Fox and Clough 1819: 7n). The descriptions of Sri Lankan Assistant Missionary and then Wesleyan minister, David de Silva, were also moderate, following the example of his

30   The British colonial period mentor, Daniel Gogerly, who made a point of calling ‘devil dancing’, ‘exorcism’, as if to correct his missionary colleagues (De Silva 1840: 116–119).17 This, however, is Spence Hardy, liberally using the pejorative, in his attempt to capture the horror, as he saw it, of these ‘demonic’ rituals: In nearly all instances, there are idols made for the occasion, of smooth clay, that are afterwards cast aside with the refuse of the dwelling; often with staring eyes, distended mouths dripping with blood, large tusks and hideous features; the lighting of lamps; the use of charmed threads and betel leaves; the cutting of limes; the cleaving of cocoanuts [sic]; the forming of magical diagrams; the incessant chaunting of spells and invocations; putting on different dresses; dancing in various times, and with different modes of gestures; beating of tomtoms; blowing of horns or rude trumpets; waving of torches; trampling on fire, from which strange lights are made suddenly to flash; and movement in an apparent frenzy, sometimes as rapid as the lightening. In some instances ingredients like those that seethe in the witch’s cauldron are boiled in a human skull, and the demon priest professes to receive his power as he lies in an open grave. (Spence Hardy 1864: 49, quoted in Harris 2006: 55) According to the missionaries, with the idolatrous and the demonic hiding in the admittedly beautiful vegetation of Sri Lanka and expressed materially in vihāra and dēvāle, the Buddhist South was Satan’s Kingdom, tinged with the characteristics of hell. They responded with sorrow, compassion and anger. When Nicholson spoke of ‘the crushing sense of sorrow’ he felt when hearing ‘the constant thud of a devil-­priest’s drum’, he spoke for all his colleagues (Nicholson 1874: 246). To preach Christianity in such a context was dangerous but it could, the missionaries believed, make the ‘gates of hell’ tremble.18 These representations were increasingly coupled, throughout the century, with the conviction that they, the missionaries, were the only ones who knew how Buddhism was practised on the ‘ground’, how it permeated the space around it, not only through the vihāra with its related dēvāle system but also through the practice of exorcism. Those from afar, who translated texts and romanticized Buddhism as rational and life-­giving, simply did not know the truth about Buddhism, when it was materially embodied in the space that was Sri Lanka (Harris 2006: 101–109). I have used more than once Wesleyan missionary, Moscrop’s criticism of such westerners: but they do not know what we know [as missionaries], that nine tenths of the Buddhist temples in Colombo have their demon shrines, covered by the same roof and allowed of the priests, even that of the Buddhist High Priest himself – shrines with dark recesses containing demon images which call forth the deepest awe and worship of the people. (Moscrop 1894: 286, quoted in Harris 2006: 108)

The Protestant missionary imaginary   31

Christianized space Wesleyan missionary, Benjamin Clough, in an early response to a request from Kalani for a church close to the Mahā Vihāraya there, a major Buddhist pilgrimage site, declared, ‘What a glorious thought, to think of having a church built in the bowels of idolatry’ (Clough 1816a: 198). He was evidently enticed by the idea of Christianity penetrating and transforming ‘heathen’ space. As the century progressed, however, most missionaries, for reasons to which I will return, preferred the separation of what was Buddhist and Christian. The ‘gates of hell’ trembled when minds and bodies moved right over into a Christianized space that was separate from Buddhist space. Such minds and bodies, according to the missionaries, had the capacity to ‘excel’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 4), to be filled with light and happiness. For the missionaries, therefore, the spatial significance of Christian churches and schools extended beyond the bricks and mortar, and beyond the dogmas of Christianity. It concerned the ethical, psychological and social quality of life that was nurtured there and that permeated the space around it. Seeduwa, a village between Colombo and Negombo, was often held up by Wesleyan missionaries as a model of a Christianized village. According to Spence Hardy, before the arrival of Wesleyan missionaries, the men only wore a cloth around their loins and did little but drink toddy (alcohol from the coconut palm). The women had no ‘change of dress, so that their clothes could only be washed when they bathed’. He continued: There was little domestic comfort. The husband returned home from his boon companions to maltreat his wife, and find fault with his children. The common speech, even in the house, was low beyond mention, and the coarsest words were used without shame. (Spence Hardy 1864: 123) Two years after a Wesleyan missionary, Newstead, arrived, again according to Spence Hardy, there had been a complete transformation. The men were working for wages. The women were making bags and mats: ‘In ways without number, the villagers became more respectable; in dress, in food, in furniture, in house, in language, in parental restraint, in filial obedience, and in domestic purity and peace’ (Spence Hardy 1864: 123). Over 20 years later, Spence Hardy’s words were again quoted to demonstrate pre-­Christianized degradation compared to the ‘clean and neatly dressed men and women wending their way by various paths to the “house of prayer” ’, in the present (Anon 1886a: 211). CMS missionary, William Oakley, working in Kandy, compared the villages within which he worked outside Kandy, such as Gatambe, with the town itself. In 1847, for instance, he stridently declared, ‘The Christian village is quite the “city of refuge” … but how different it is here! [in Kandy]. We have no “cities of refuge” for our people. They live among the heathen and learn their ways’.19 In 1871, Shipstone captured the conviction of each missionary. Whether converts were geographically separate, the preferred option, or living alongside

32   The British colonial period non-­Christians, ‘The difference in the deportment of those who live in the civilising influences of Christianity and the purely heathen is immense, even though each class may dwell within the sound of the other’s voice’ (Shipstone 1871: 118). Orphan ‘asylums’ and other residential homes were particularly attractive to the missionaries and missionary bishops, because ‘heathens’ could be completely separated from their traditional environment, something that could not be achieved in village schools. As early as 1821, CMS missionaries, Lambrick and Browning, in Kandy, declared that they had started a Boy’s School with three destitute native boys, who they provided for, adding, ‘The advantage of their being entirely withdrawn from the pernicious influence of the native customs, habits and superstitions is too obvious to need pointing out to the observation of the Committee.20 Most missionaries found it very difficult when Buddhists, towards the end of the century, gave back what they had received or when Christians converted to Buddhism. CMS missionary Dowbiggin reported, with a sense of outrage, in the early 1880s, that the Buddhist and Theosophist friends of a leading lay person in the Colombo Anglican congregation, J.D. Jayasinha, had reviled his dead body and heaped, ‘abuse upon his religion in the house of mourning’. They had not visited him in illness, Dowbiggin reported, and ‘seemed to regard a Christian and the Christian religion as something altogether vile and unclean’.21 And A.E. Buultjens, a Burgher convert from Christianity to Buddhism – his mother was a Presbyterian and his father an Anglican – tellingly claimed, after he publicly recited the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts, in 1888 that his Christian colleagues saw him as ‘a viper and a scorpion’, namely the serpent that had renounced Christian space (Buultjens 1899: 109).

Missionary responses to the British administration’s attitude to the presence of Buddhism in civic space Most missionaries assumed, at least on their arrival in the island, that their view of space was shared by the British administration. In other words, they expected British civil servants to recognize that, if the country was to be Christianized, public space linked with the British government had to be visibly Christian to avoid sending conflicting messages to Sri Lankans who had actually crossed into Christian space and rejected their former beliefs and practices. They were disappointed, since the ideological underpinning of the British administration was driven by pragmatism rather than evangelical zeal. Two spatial expressions of the British administration’s attitude to Buddhism received missionary condemnation. The first was when British civil servants entered ‘heathen’ space, seeming to condone it by their presence. The second was when British government servants allowed Buddhists or Hindus to bring their rituals into what the missionaries saw as public, Christianized, government-­ controlled space. Polemical interchanges occurred when either of these lines were crossed, since it implied to the missionaries that Christianity and the other religions of Sri Lanka were being placed on an equal playing field.

The Protestant missionary imaginary   33 British civil servants entering ‘heathen’ space Browning’s attitude to the public exhibition of the tooth relic in Kandy in 1828 – a rare occasion, in spite of numerous private showings – illustrates the normative missionary attitude to participation in such an event: I have never gratified my curiosity by looking at it, as I have always been afraid that such curiosity might be understood by the natives as a respect shewn to their Relic, and for the same reason, I now abstain from seeing it.’22 His fear was that his visible presence at the exhibition of a relic so potent to the Sinhala Buddhist psyche would be taken as endorsement, particularly since the schedule of the public exhibition began with a viewing for Europeans (Colebrooke 1836: 164). The early missionaries certainly entered Buddhist vihāras for conversation with members of the monastic Sangha and they witnessed exorcisms. They also had no qualms in entering public and private space that was predominantly Buddhist in order to persuade Buddhists to see themselves as sinful and unworthy. But the line was drawn at anything that might make it appear that they had become a pilgrim within Buddhist space. To illustrate the depth of feeling aroused by this issue, I will examine missionary reaction to government support of Buddhism in Kandy, following the 1815 Kandyan Convention, particularly to an exhibition of the tooth relic in 1843. The Kandyan Convention that sealed the British conquest of the Kandyan Kingdom stated in its English version that ‘Buddhist rites, ministers and places of worship’ would be ‘maintained and protected’ and in its Sinhala version that the Kandyans ‘who have faith in the sāsana of the Buddha and the religion (āgama) of the Devas’ would be able to carry out their religious affairs properly and be protected (Obeyesekere 2017: 226–227).23 It combined ‘paternalistic benevolence and shrewd pragmatism’ (Harris 2006: 12), expressing an imperial ideal that exercised power through avoiding offence to those governed.24 Civil servant, Bennett, for instance, praised the ‘sound policy’ behind British support both for a procession to reinstate the tooth in the Daḷadā Māligāva and for the gift of a musical clock by John D’Oyley to the temple (Bennett 1843: 411–414). The missionary perspective, in contrast, was that eternal truth, as they saw it, and a divinely-­ordained mission to Christianize Asia could not be sacrificed to strategic pragmatism about retaining earthly power (e.g. Spence Hardy 1843: 225, cited in Harris 1993: 422). Spence Hardy was the first British missionary to formally expose what he saw as the evils of the Convention. I touch on the brief Wesleyan mission to Kandy in the late 1830s in the next chapter. Suffice to say here that Spence Hardy was involved and, as a result, wrote a diatribe, replete with spatial images, about the British government’s connection with ‘idolatry’ in the former kingdom. He began by personifying ‘idolatry’ as possessing a ‘proud attitude’ in Kandy (Spence Hardy 1839b: 5) and then described its opposite, Truth:

34   The British colonial period bearing itself in majesty until its work is done, then changing into the gentle stream that cheers and refreshes all it can reach, and having no further hostility to the object of its attack, than to exhibit through its clear waters the fallen monuments it has buried beneath its surface, that other ages may look upon them and learn instruction. Generations to come may dive into the stream, and wonder at the unsightly form of the fragments they discover, but at present, the proud front of the towering edifice [Buddhism], standing in all its strength and solidity is presented to my view – Goliath of gath, with his sword and spear, before David, the shepherd of Bethlehem. (Spence Hardy 1839b: 6) So, in the first part of the pamphlet, Spence Hardy cast Christianity as the ‘flame of benevolence’ and Buddhism as ‘the empire of hell’ (Spence Hardy 1839b: 10). Before listing the ways in which the British government supported this ‘empire’, prolonging its life, he claimed future ages would scarcely credit the fact that ‘a gain was made of its wickedness, and that the price of deathless souls found its way into the treasure chest of the East India Company’ (Spence Hardy 1839b: 11).25 Key to his argument, in line with the general missionary stance, was that ‘interference’ in Buddhism ‘implied approbation’ in the minds of the Sri Lankans (Spence Hardy 1839b: 44). To be fair to Spence Hardy, he insisted that Buddhists should be free to practise their religion but stressed that it must be their religion and not the government’s (Spence Hardy 1839b: 49). As De Silva has shown in his seminal study of the period following Spence Hardy’s publication, the Colonial Office in London, in particular the evangelical, former anti-­slavery campaigner, James Stephen, was influenced by it (De Silva 1965). There is no need to repeat his argument, except to say that ‘interference’ became a key word in the resulting correspondence between London and Colombo: the British administration should not strengthen Buddhism by interfering with it. Conflict arose again in March 1843, when the tooth relic was exhibited during the visit of some members of the Thai monastic Sangha. What incensed the missionaries was not that the tooth was exhibited but that Buller, the new Government Agent (GA) for Kandy, described by Governor Campbell as ‘a gentleman of the best intentions’,26 was present when the Thai visitors viewed it and indeed supervised the whole proceedings, including its exhibition from the veranda of the Daḷadā Māligāva to a mass of people outside. Spence Hardy, using the account of an unnamed ‘other’, who must have accompanied Buller, claimed that Buller, in the presence of the governor and with his permission, handed over the key of the shrine and, when the tooth had been taken out of its seven coverings by members of the different Buddhist fraternities in Kandy, directed the Thai bhikkhus to be invited to enter, whilst distancing the crowd. When the governor and his entourage left, having observed the tooth, Buller stayed. Although he apparently feigned illness in an attempt to prevent the tooth from being shown publicly after the Thai monks had been in its presence for 30 minutes, he eventually agreed. Afterwards, he ordered the tooth to be put back into its coverings

The Protestant missionary imaginary   35 and for the shrine to be locked before the keys were put back into his hands (Spence Hardy 1843: 221–223). Spence Hardy’s comment on this neutral account was almost apocalyptic in tone. The sin of patronizing the relic would be ‘written in God’s book, never to be erased, until a severe penalty has been exacted for the transgression’ (Spence Hardy 1843: 223). Ridiculing the myth that Britain needed to keep control of the tooth because of popular belief that temporal power in Kandy was dependent on its possession, he continued: Oh there rushes past us as we contemplate the scene, the fell form of atheism, hideous as the grave, its fleshless mouth attempting to creak out tones of victory. We gaze again, and spirits without number throng the scene in bitter anguish, wailing with the death-­groan of eternal despair. It is a moment never to be forgotten. The blessings of education, the amenities of literature, the triumphs of philanthropy, the sweet influences of our holy religion, the rich privileges of our common Christianity appear to be regarded as nothing; and in their stead there is open fellowship with a system that denies the existence of God and is the curse of the people.… (Spence Hardy 1843: 227) For Spence Hardy, presence within the sacred space of the temple and respectful engagement with the Thai monks was an act of support, a symbolic condoning of Buddhism, even though the governor had openly said that he doubted whether the tooth was human and jocularly ‘cautioned Mr Buller to be careful that it didn’t fly off to heaven’ (Spence Hardy 1843: 222). Physical presence with a respectful demeanour in the sacred space of the ‘other’ was more important than approbation or condemnation. Spence Hardy’s complaint was not isolated. Governor Campbell, in the face of this opposition, wrote to Stanley in London to explain that the Colonial Secretary himself had agreed that the casket could be opened if the GA was there to prevent theft of the tooth. Buller had simply honoured this requirement, ‘without interfering in any way’.27 Nevertheless, a directive came from the Colonial Office in 1844 that this link with Buddhism should be severed, although officials in Colombo were unwilling to implement it (De Silva 1981: 277–281). No doubt foreseeing this, Spence Hardy wrote a further article in October 1844, screaming that Kandyan Buddhist monks were still supported by government and that the keys of the Daḷadā Māligāva were still kept by the GA, who, even on a Sunday, had to hand them over as ‘the first act he has to perform at the dawn of this holy day’. In other words, the Buddhist hierarchy still saw Britain as ‘protector of the national faith’ (Spence Hardy 1844: 304). He then reiterated his 1839 argument, appealing to England for help and citing a Sri Lankan Christian who was convinced that government interference was contributing to the slow growth of Christianity. He ended, ‘thus may we expect that superstition when left to its own resources, will soon crumble into utter ruin. What, then, must be the guilt of those Christians who lend their aid to the delaying of this desired end’ (Spence Hardy 1844: 309).

36   The British colonial period Buddhists bringing their practices into public, government-­ controlled space It was in the 1880s that criticism of the reverse movement, the inviting of Buddhists into what the missionaries saw as Christianized civic space, came to a head. Two government figures were particular targets for attack: Arthur Hamilton Gordon, governor between 1883 and 1890, and John Frederick Dickson, who was a civil servant from 1859 to 1885 (Harris 2006: 118). The Wesleyan journal, The Ceylon Friend, declared of Gordon as he left the island in 1890 that there were two Gordons – a member of the Church of England and someone, ‘who had a distinct tendency to arouse the enthusiasm of Buddhists and to encourage their religion’. The article judgementally suggested that ordinary Sri Lankans would remember him as ‘ “the Buddhist Governor” ’ (Anon 1890b: 3). The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette was more direct, accusing Gordon of maintaining ‘terms of undue familiarity with native Chiefs’ and grieving the hearts of Christian people by representing Buddhism ‘as the state religion’ (Anon 1890c: 137–178). A relatively early incident in Gordon’s tenure occurred in February 1886, when members of the monastic Sangha were asked to chant at a ceremony to inaugurate the province of Uva. The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette weighed in with righteous anger, declaring that something similar had happened before at a ‘Levée’ of the Governor in Kandy but no protest had been made. This event, the journal declared, was different because of the ‘unusual publicity of the occasion’, which made the chanting a scandal. The journal then reported that the Bishop of Colombo (Copleston) had requested that a question be raised at the Legislative Council, to which the governor had replied that it had not been ‘a religious ceremony, but an address of welcome to himself, and that he was always ready to receive the “good wishes” of any of the Community’. The journal declared this to be ‘neither complete nor satisfactory’. A note of regret would have been in order and, if the words chanted were, as suspected, the ‘Jayamaṅgala Sutta’ (Mahāmaṅgala Sutta), then they were not words of welcome but a religious chant that Buddhists believed could lead people to ‘Nirvana’. The writer continued: The Christian subjects of the Queen have a right to complain that Buddhist ceremonies should be mixed up with public proceedings. Assuming for the moment, that there are sufficient reasons for not beginning with Christian prayers, can it be right that, when Christianity is excluded, Buddhism should be admitted? (Anon 1886b: 67–68)28 Gordon was accused of a ‘false liberality’. A further event that brought an outpouring of missionary consternation was when Buddhist monks chanted the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta at an occasion to mark the Queen’s birthday in 1889. The Ceylon Friend declared that, ‘Any Christian

The Protestant missionary imaginary   37 convert taking part in a ceremony in which this charm is used would be regarded at once as lapsing in to Buddhism’ and that hundreds of thousands of Buddhist villagers would have seen the event as ‘a public profession of Buddhism’. Their judgement was that this went beyond ‘charity and toleration’ and caused grief to many Christians (Anon 1889: 39). The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette’s words on Gordon’s departure implicitly referred to this and the former occasion, when it declared, in similar vein, that, ‘A Christian who gets Jayamangalagatha recited on a gala-­day is expelled from his Church’ (Anon 1890c: 137).29 There were other incidents in Gordon’s tenure. His patronage of Vidyodaya Piriveṇa was attacked by the Anglican Church because of a prize giving in 1890, when, although he declared himself a Christian, he gave 1,000 rupees to the college. This was judged ‘unjust and unlawful’, because the government did ‘not give a cent’ for the training of Roman Catholic or Protestant ministers (Anon 1890d: 126–127). An equal playing field between religions was bad enough; this was worse. The concept of fairness also entered when Gordon’s government was accused by the Ceylon Government Gazette of favouring Buddhism during a Legislative Council debate in 1887 that discussed allocating money for the repair of two dāgäbas in the North Central Province. In spite of the opposition of a Mr Bois, who suggested that Buddhists should subscribe for their repair, the money was granted, partly due to the governor’s contribution. How could this be fair, The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette remonstrated, when the Anglican Church was dis-­ endowed (Anon 1887: 64). I have not found evidence to suggest opposition to the presence of Buddhist symbols at the civic celebrations to mark Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887. However, Buddhism, and indeed Hinduism and Islam, were visibly present in the principal celebration held in Colombo. Among the colleges that erected a ‘pandal’ was the Vidyodaya Piriveṇa, represented by some seventy five Buddhist students, clad in their yellow robes, these being with a few exceptions made of silk; while in front, in a sanctum all by himself, sat Sumangala, the high priest of Adam’s Peak, and president of the College. (Ferguson 1887: 175)30 The visual presence of Buddhist monks, in this context, was not seen as a desecration of Christianized space, because it was a silent, non-­articulated presence. It enabled Ferguson, a committed Baptist, to write that the Buddhist monks in the procession, ‘must have been better than their creed, if they sincerely joined in the thanksgiving to Almighty God’ (Ferguson 1887: 172). The presence of Buddhist monks and a Buddhist institution, silently and courteously supporting a ceremony of thanksgiving that was Christian in nature, was perfectly acceptable to missionary sensibilities. This chapter has demonstrated that the exclusivist theology of the evangelical missionaries had a spatial component. Christian space was indivisible, with no possible compromise between Buddhist and Christian space. The inclusivist

38   The British colonial period subordination beloved of Sinhala Buddhists was anathema to them. However, at a structural level, the missionary demonization of spirit religion bears some similarity to the Sinhala imaginary, when the Other cannot be subordinated and tamed but has to be destroyed.

Notes   1 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1824–1825: 142–162, here p. 148.   2 Concerning Roman Catholicism, even the first Anglican Bishop in Sri Lanka, Chapman could gaze at the Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians flocking to St Anne’s Roman Catholic church for healing at the annual festival and comment, ‘Would that in the cause of truth we could kindle a like zeal’. Chapman to Hawkins, 11 August 1947, CLRC (SPGA).   3 Five missionaries arrived from the London Missionary Society in 1805. Further missionaries arrived in 1812 from the Baptist Missionary Society, in 1814 from the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, in 1816 from the American Mission Board (to work in the North of the island), and in 1818 from the Church Missionary Society (Anglican). In 1812, the Colombo Auxiliary Bible Society was founded and in 1825, the Colombo Auxiliary Religious Tract Society, which enabled cooperation between these societies (Harris 2006: 13).   4 Claughton to Bullock, 1 November 1867: ‘if you saw the attentive faces [when he preached to 1,000 people] you would feel confident that the seed is not all sown in stony places.…’ CLRC 29 (SPGA); Bamforth to SPG Headquarters, 1 October 1850, of Galle, where Bamforth declares that, except for a few Roman Catholic families and a few Wesleyans, ‘I have a wide field before me on for the most part unbroken ground’, CLRC 29 (SPGA); David De Silva (Wesleyan) (1871: 132): ‘The land we have had to pass through shows that the fields are truly white unto harvest and they need more labourers’.   5 See for instance, Chapman to SPG Headquarters, 14 February 1846, where he declared Dondra to be the ‘stronghold’ of Buddhism, CLRC 29 (SPGA).   6 For example, Spence Hardy (1839a: 129): ‘Its outworks [Buddhism’s] are tottering to their foundation, and we hope soon to sap the citadel and raze it to the ground.’   7 Claughton to Hawkins, 17 November 1862, where he states that impulse must be given to ‘occupy new ground’ CLRC 29 (SPGA); Chapman to Hawkins, 22 July 1858. CLRC 29 (SPGA); Nicholson 1874: 245–246: ‘Additional ground was occupied in 1871, by the formation of the Meteramba circuit.’   8 See for instance letter to Brownrigg from the first CMS missionaries (Lambrick, Knight, Wood and Mayor) 17 December 1819 (CMSA); Ceylon Government Gazette, 31 January 1820, which praised Brownrigg because ‘deluded worshippers of false gods were properly left unawed by authority and untouched by violence to the influence of the spiritual weapons of our Christian warfare.’   9 A sample of these instances of spatial imagery was used in Harris (2016: 58–59). 10 For the term ‘rampant’, see Chapman to Hawkins, 15 April 1859, CLRC 29 (SPGA). 11 See also Gogerly to Bunting, 19 February 1835, in which he speaks of Mātara as ‘the stronghold of Buddhism’, quoted in Harris (2010: 180). 12 Editorial comment in The Ceylon Friend (May 1885: 64). 13 See also Anon (1886a), where romance towards the scenery is combined with arrogance towards human society. 14 See Harris (2006: 53–61 and 101–109) for information about the missionary representation of Buddhist doctrine. 15 For instance, the Wesleyan Methodists agreed in 1816 that all possible kindness should be shown to other Protestant denominations of Christianity and added, ‘but let

The Protestant missionary imaginary   39 us not lend our pulpits to those who preach doctrines subversive of our principles’, MSCD 1816–1830: 7 August 1816 (MCAC). 16 The Tamils, in contrast, were sometimes caricatured as haughty and contemptuous. See, for example, Harvard (1823: 298). 17 See Harris (2010: 183). De Silva was admitted on trial as an Assistant Missionary in 1840 and rose to become the main Christian debater at the Pānadurē Debate in 1873. See MSCD 1831–1870:14 December 1840 (MCAC). 18 Report from Kalutara as part of a report on the State of the Work in 1832. MSCD 1831–1870: 15 (MCAC). 19 Oakley to Venn, 4 June 1847, C CE/092/41 (CMSA). 20 Lambrick and Browning to Pratt and Bickersteth, 12 July 1821 (Samuel Lambrick: CMSA), also cited in Harris (2016: 60). See ‘Ceylon Mission’. PCMSAE, 1821–22: 172–193, here p. 173, where there is an appeal to benevolent people … who may wisely judge that the separation of promising Children from the habits and practices of a depraved population, is the most likely method, under the blessing of God, to train up Native Preachers of Truth and Righteousness. See also Chapman to Hawkins, 16 June 1857, when he claims that the 20 boys resident in the ‘Native Orphan Asylum’ had been made secure at a very early age ‘from the corruptions of heathenism’. CLRC (SPGA). 21 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1881–82: 142–163, here p. 156. 22 Browning to CMS Headquarters, 29 May 1828 (Letters from Browning: CMSA). See Colebrooke (1836) for an account of this exhibition. Three pavilions were erected, one ‘adorned with valuable stuffs, embroidered with gold and silver’ to house the relic, one for Europeans and one for Sinhala chiefs. The relic was taken out in procession through richly decorated streets and, when back in its pavilion, was shown to the English first, then to the monastic Sangha and only on the next day to the Sinhala chiefs and the people. It was exhibited for seven days. 23 The English version of the Convention stated, ‘The religion of Boodhoo, professed by the chiefs and inhabitants of these provinces, is declared inviolable, and its rites, ministers and places of worship are to be maintained and protected.’ 24 In my earlier monograph, I illustrated this ideal through the writings of Valentia, who, after visiting Sri Lanka in 1803, recommended that the British, in contrast to the Portuguese and Dutch, should rule Sri Lanka by ‘a just and mild administration, by effectual protection of life and property, and by due respect to their customs and religious prejudices’ (Valentia 1809 I: 29, cited in Harris 2006: 11–12). 25 He lists seven ways in which Buddhism was supported: governor appoints principal Buddhist priests; priests of the ‘palace of Kandy’ [Daḷadā Māligāva] are confirmed in their appointment by the British government and the GA keeps the keys to the room in which the tooth is kept and superintended the exhibition of the tooth in 1828; the lay chiefs of the principal Dēvāles are appointed by the British government; the government grants a monthly allowance for the support of members of the monastic Sangha; the Kandy Perahära happens at the expense and command of the British government; the British government meets the expense of other festivals, Buddhist and Brahminical; the British government pays the expenses for a ceremony that consists of invocations by a ‘demon priest’. 26 Campbell to Colonial Office undated but in August or September 1841 where Buller is recommended as a gentleman with ‘the best intentions, much industry and excellent private character’. He is not considered adequately skilled for the job of being GA for Colombo but is recommended for Kandy, C054/189 Ceylon 1841, Vol. 3, August and September, No. 2616 (NA). 27 Campbell to Stanley, 24 January 1844, CO54/210 Ceylon 1844 Vol.  1 January– March, Governor Sir Colin Campbell (NA).

40   The British colonial period 28 See also Anon (1887: 64–65). 29 For examples of Christians being struck off church lists see, for example, ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1858–9: 154–165, here p.  156; ‘Ceylon Mission’ PCMSAE 1869–70: 190–205, here p. 196, where Dowbiggin reports on a new system of discipline whereby registered members who failed to attend church without sufficient reason would be struck off, after a three-­month warning, and those who contracted ‘heathen marriages’ would likewise not ‘be recognised as church members’. 30 I am grateful to Nira Wickramasinghe for pointing me to Ferguson’s description of the Jubilee.

References Anon, 1886a. ‘Visits to our Mission Stations: Seedua’. The Ceylon Friend. June: 210–211. Anon, 1886b. ‘The Buddhist Address at Badulla’. The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 10.7, March: 67–68. Anon, 1887. ‘The Governor and the Buddhist Religion’. The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 11.6, February: 64–65. Anon, 1889. ‘Notes: Was it the Jayamangalam That Was Chanted by the Buddhist Priests at the Durbar Held by H.E. the Governor at the Levee on the Queen’s Birthday?’ The Ceylon Friend II, New Series, June: 39. Anon, 1890a. ‘Addresses to Sir Arthur Gordon: The Pandits Address’. The Buddhist II: 191–192. Anon, 1890b. ‘Editorial Notes’. The Ceylon Friend 1, Fourth Series, May: 3. Anon, 1890c. ‘Native Opinion on our Late Governor’. The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 14.10, June: 137–138. Anon, 1890d. ‘The “Satyalokaya” on the Vidyodaya College’. The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 14.10, June: 126–127. Anon, 1891. ‘Theosophic Brotherliness’. The Ceylon Friend 13, Fourth Series, May: 244–246. Armour, Andrew, 1817. ‘Extract of a Letter from Mr. Armour to Mr. Buckley’. Colombo, Nov. 16, 1816. The Methodist Magazine XL: 236–237. Bennett, J.W., 1843. Ceylon and its Capabilities: An Account of its Natural Resources, Indigenous Productions, and Commercial Facilities. London: William H. Allen & Co. Buultjens, A.E., 1899. ‘Why I Became a Buddhist: A Lecture Delivered by Mr A.E. Buultjens at the Buddhist Headquarters at the Request of the Colombo YMBA, March 25 1899’. The Buddhist X.7 and 8, March and April: 102–109. Clough, Benjamin, 1816a. ‘Extract of a Letter from Clough to Mr John Barber’. Colombo, Aug. 30, 1815, Methodist Magazine, XXXIX, 1816: 196–199. Clough, Benjamin, 1816b. ‘Extract of a Letter from Mr Clough to Mr Buckley, Point de Galle, 12 February 1816’, Methodist Magazine, XXXIX, 1816: 397–340. Colebrooke, W.M.G., 1836. ‘Account of a Ceremonial Exhibition of the Relic termed “The Tooth of the Buddha” at Kandy, in Ceylon, in May 1828. Translated and Abridged from the Original Singhalese, Drawn Up by a Native Eye-­Witness’. JRASGBI 3: 161–164. Copleston, Reginald, 1900. Report of the Ceylon Missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel from 1876 to 1900. Colombo: H.W. Cave & Co. De Silva, David, 1840. ‘Huniyam Kepeema – Invocation By Cutting Limes’. The Friend IV.VI, December: 116–119.

The Protestant missionary imaginary   41 De Silva, David, 1871. QL, Wellawatte, 11 December. Vol. LXXVII, December and March 1871–1872: 132–134. De Silva, K.M., 1965. Social Policy and Missionary Organisations in Ceylon 1840–1855. London: Longman and Green and Co. De Silva, K. M., 1981. A History of Sri Lanka. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, John, 1887. Ceylon in the Jubilee Year With an Account of the Progress Made Since 1803, and of the Present Condition of its Agricultural and Commercial Enterprises. London: John Haddon; Colombo: A.M.J. Ferguson. Fox, William Buckley, 1841. ‘The Character of the Sinhalese’. The Friend, V.I, July: 54–58. Fox, William Buckley and Clough, Benjamin, 1819. The Third Report of the Ceylon Native Schools, With the Care of the Wesleyan Missionaries with an Appendix. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Gogerly, Daniel J., 1837. QL, Dondra, 30 October. Vol.  XL, October. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 46–51. Harris, Elizabeth J., 1993. Crisis, Competition and Conversion: The British Encounter with Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2006. Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2010. ‘Manipulating Meaning: Daniel John Gogerly’s Nineteenth Century Translations of the Theravāda Texts’. Buddhist Studies Review 27.2: 177–195. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2016. ‘Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism: A Spatial Perspective’. In Elizabeth J. Harris, Paul Hedges, and Shantikumar Hettiarachchi, Twenty-­ First Century Theologies of Religion: Retrospection and Future Prospects. Leiden: Brill: 57–75. Harvard, William M., 1823. A Narrative of the Establishment and Progress of The Mission to Ceylon and India Founded by the Late Rev Thomas Coke under the Direction of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Conference. London: W.M. Harvard. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin, 1817. School Report To the General Committee in London for the Management of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Missions, September 1817. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Kilner, Thomas, 1837. QL, Kalutara, 18 July. Vol. XXXIX, July. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 23–27. Moscrop, Thomas, 1894. ‘Christianity and Buddhism in South Ceylon: A Missionary Speech’. Monthly Literary Register II, New Series 12, December: 285–287. Nicholson, John, 1874. QL, Galle, 3 June. Vol. LXXXV, June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 245–250. Nicholson, John, 1875. QL, Mātara, 19 April. Vol. LXXXVII, March and June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 12–20. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 2017. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Śri Vikrama Rājasinha. Colombo: Sail Fish. Shipstone, John, 1871. QL, Godapitiya, 3 May. Vol. LXXVI, June and September. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 115–121. Shipstone, John, 1872. QL, Galle, 10 September. Vol. LXXIX, September. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 159–165. Squance, William, 1816. ‘From Mr Squance, to the Rev. Mr. Gaulter’. Point-­de-Galle, Island of Ceylon, August 12, 1815. The Methodist Magazine XXXIX: 155–158.

42   The British colonial period Spence Hardy, Robert, 1839a. ‘The Progress and Prospects of Ceylon’. The Friend II.VII, January: 125–133. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1839b. The British Government and the Idolatry of Ceylon. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1841a. ‘Idolatry’. The Friend IV.IX, March: 171–172 (signed ‘McAll’). Spence Hardy, Robert, 1841b. ‘Our Duty’. The Friend IV.XII, June: 221–226. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1842. ‘The Central School Commission’. The Friend II.VI, August: 21–25. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1843. ‘The Dalada Relic’. The Friend VI.XII., June: 221–229. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1844. ‘The Government of Ceylon and Idolatry’. The Friend VII. XVI, October: 301–309. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1864. Jubilee Memorials of the Wesleyan Mission, South Ceylon: 1814–1864. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Valentia, G., 1809. Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, The Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt in the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806, 3 Vols. London: William Miller.

3 The spatial impact of missionary schools

Every School House we build is sacredly set apart as the house of God; every child that attends there looks upon it as upon his entrance into a sacred place. Every School of Children we establish brings a kind of little parish under the direct influence of our Mission. This influence extends not only to the children themselves, but their parents, their families, their friends and neighbours.… (Harvard and Clough 1819: 8)

The last chapter illustrated the exclusivist spatial imaginary that the missionaries brought to Sri Lanka, using written sources. The freedom of expression possible within this medium could have no direct translation into spaces that were peopled, plural and contextualized. The extent to which the missionaries orally and practically expressed their exclusivism, therefore, varied. The translation was indirect and complex, dependent on local conditions, human sensitivities and the character of individual missionaries. At one end of the spectrum, Wesleyan missionary, Bridgenell, poked a toe, a rib and an eye out of an image being used in an exorcism at the house of a person who had ‘been a hearer of the word of God’, because it was an ‘open encroachment on a part of our territory so lately taken from the dreary dreadful dominion of the Prince of darkness’ (Bridgenell 1838: 70). At the other end was the CMS missionary, Browning, who sincerely believed both that he did not ‘revile’ Buddhism and that he sought ‘to root up their religion [Buddhism]’ by his teaching of Christianity: The Budhist priests tell my pupils that I do all I possibly can to root up their religion. I could not desire a better character from them.… I have no discussion with them nor do I revile their religion, but I suppose they discover something in the method of instruction adopted in our schools calculated to undermine their influence over the people.1 In this chapter, I move to the embodiment or spatial expression of the missionary imaginary by examining, first of all, the spatial impact of Christian missionary schools. Schools, not churches, were the first missionary buildings to have an impact on Sri Lanka’s urban and rural spaces in the nineteenth century, although

44   The British colonial period some schools eventually doubled as churches. This, together with the fact that Buddhist responses to schools were qualitatively different from their responses to churches, is my justification for separating schools and churches into two chapters. First, I will examine British educational policy before the missionaries arrived. I will then move to the spatial impact of early missionary educational activity and Buddhist responses to it, before surveying the nineteenth century as a whole. In charting the educational policy of the British administration, I am indebted both to the compilation of colonial correspondence drawn together by Vimalananda in 1963 and the Centenary Volume concerning education in colonial Sri Lanka, published by the Ministry of Educational and Cultural Affairs in what was then Ceylon in 1969.

British educational practice in the early years The British built on the practice of the Dutch. According to James Cordiner, second chaplain to the garrison of Colombo and principal of the schools in the island from 1799, the Dutch erected a Protestant school in each of their ‘parishes’ and this doubled as a church on Sundays (Cordiner 1807 I: 156).2 He added: Although religious knowledge was not very perfectly conveyed to the lower orders of natives, many of the middle and higher ranks became as true believers in the doctrines, and as conscientious performers of the duties of Christianity, as those who adorn more enlightened regions. (Cordiner 1807 I: 156–157) Consequently, Cordiner reported to Frederic North (governor 1798–1805) in 1800 that, in Galle, there were 3,609 Christians, 1,000 Muslims and only 200 Buddhists.3 These numbers were as grossly misleading as Cordiner’s picture of Christianized communities under the Dutch. Dutch legislation had mandated that people within most grades of government service were baptized Christians. Moreover, to inherit property, a relative had to prove that the deceased had had a Christian marriage and, by extension, that they had been baptized. Such requirements had meant that most people in Dutch-­controlled areas underwent baptism as a civic ceremony simply to secure the prosperity of their family life (Harris 2012: 272; Young and Somaratne 1996: 61). When asked by someone with the authority of Cordiner whether they were Christians, they would have undoubtedly replied in the affirmative. After all, the Dutch had not enforced an exclusivist demarcation between Christian space, and Buddhist space. The children who attended Dutch schools learnt to recite catechisms – there was a long and a shorter one – and attended church, sometimes with their parents, but they did not reject former patterns of religious belonging. Christian and Buddhist space simply fulfilled different functions and the boundaries between the two were porous, in a hierarchical pattern that I have shown was characteristic of Sri Lankan devotional

Spatial impact of missionary schools   45 religiosity. And the Dutch turned a blind eye to this. That their statistics implied a Christianizing of the population was enough. For, as de Silva pointed out, ‘religion was a matter of secondary importance’ to the Dutch and only limited financial resources were placed into it’ (De Silva 1981: 196, quoted in Harris 2012: 272). The school/church buildings of the Dutch were not, therefore, seen as a threat to the survival of Buddhism. In fact, the reverse was the case. It enabled Buddhists to re-­enact the pattern of inclusivist subordination that had been present in other periods of Buddhist history (Harris 2013: 91–92). As long as the Buddha remained at the top of the cosmic hierarchy as lord of supramundane truth, the lokuttara, other beliefs and practices, such as Christian baptism, reciting the Ten Commandments and worship of the Christian God, could enter at the mundane level, the lokika (Harris 2012; Harris 2013: 95). The different religious practices could simply be placed in a hierarchy of the sacred. Under the Dutch, education also continued through the vihāra or pansala. In pre-­colonial Sri Lanka, the education of boys in Buddhist villages happened through the vihāra and the education of girls in the home. Throughout the Portuguese and the Dutch periods, Buddhist vihāras continued to offer this, invigorated by an eighteenth century revival of Buddhist textual learning in the Kandyan Kingdom that spread into the Dutch-­dominated provinces (Blackburn 2001: 107–138, cited in Harris 2012: 273). This combination of colonial education and the ongoing work of the vihāras made perfect sense to Buddhists under Dutch rule. The first British governor, North, however, saw it as a ‘horrible perversion of religious sentiments’,4 accusing the Dutch of a ‘scandalous neglect’ in ‘giving religious instruction to those whom they baptized’.5 As for those who professed Christianity but continued to practise Buddhism, he considered them still to be Buddhist in their supposition, ‘that they might profess Christianity with a belief in Budha’.6 Under North, therefore, little encouragement was given to pansala schools (Malalgoda 1976: 176), although they were noted favourably by civil servants and missionaries. John Davy, for instance, stated that ‘reading and writing’ in the Kandyan provinces were ‘far from uncommon acquirements and are almost as general as in England among the male part of the population’ (Davy 1821: 237 quoted in Malalgoda 1976: 176). In the early years of the British administration, some Dutch schools/churches fell into disuse and dis-­repair. After all, many were unpretentious with a thatched roof over brick walls.7 These simply succumbed to the impermanence that Buddhists would have been the first to recognize as a characteristic of existence. The few with tiled roofs fared better and some teachers continued to work with their pupils, in spite of the change in colonial administration. In 1800, North, in an attempt to gain control over the Dutch educational legacy, asked Cordiner to inspect the ‘parish’ schools still operating. Cordiner’s report noted a few places of excellence, in the Tamil east for instance, but presented a general picture of decline. North then decided to continue paying existing school masters and to renovate school buildings, whilst establishing a few

46   The British colonial period elite schools in Colombo and Trincomalee to prepare Sri Lankans for government service and/or higher education in Britain (Ruberu 1969: 362–363). As well as teaching literacy and numeracy, the ‘parish’ schools, more exactly government schools, under North continued to be spaces where Christianity was taught, overseen by preachers and catechists (Ruberu 1969: 362). A letter written by Harvard and Clough in 1815 suggests that some continued to be used for worship on a Sunday, with the probable expectation that pupils would attend: ‘and on a Sunday, in the fore part of the day, we each preach in the government schools’ (Harvard and Clough 1816a: 120). In 1803, however, London reduced the education allowance given to Sri Lanka, which mandated the withdrawal of salaries from schoolmasters and catechists, and a considerable downsizing of the Academy or Seminary, North’s elite set of three schools in Colombo to cater for Sinhala, Tamil and European children (Gratiaen 1922: 143–147; Ruberu 1969: 364–365). Under Thomas Maitland (governor 1805–1812), this austerity was gradually reversed. In 1809, for instance, schoolmasters were assured a salary if they gathered enough pupils8 and government help was given to erect a handful of permanent schools as well as more temporary ones. The intervening years, however, had seen more schools falling into disuse. For instance, according to an inspection in 1809 and 1810, not one of the 22 schools erected by the Dutch in Mātara and Galle was standing. Significantly, Twistleton, a colonial chaplain and then archdeacon until his death in 1824, attributed this not only to the withdrawal of salaries and the age of the buildings but also to anti-­Christian sentiment.9 Some classes continued, however, in temporary buildings of wood and ola leaves.

The spatial impact of evangelical missionaries When independent evangelical Protestant missionaries arrived, therefore, schools teaching Christianity had been part of the space of larger villages for decades. Some had fallen into disuse, whilst others struggled to continue. At the same time, the vihāra or pansala remained at the centre of the majority of Buddhist villages, providing education to some boys. With Twisleton, I surmise that the demise of some school buildings in the predominantly Buddhist South can partly be attributed to opposition to Christianity, most particularly North’s emphasis on the continued use of catechists and Sunday morning services. I judge significant an almost throw-­away remark by Cordiner, in 1800, that the Buddhists of Kalutara had ‘laid the foundation of a temple in front of this school [the former Dutch school in Kalutara], so near that a whisper may be heard from the one place of worship to the other’. He continued, ‘it is said to be placed on Government ground and to be done without permission of any kind and the Christians are very much hurt by it’.10 The missionaries caused a qualitative change within this model of education in Sri Lanka, because of their exclusivist distinction between Christian and ‘heathen’ space, and their explicit wish to displace monastic education, however worthy its teaching of literacy (Malalgoda 1976: 177, quoting from Tennent

Spatial impact of missionary schools   47 1850: 295). The process, however, was gradual. The first missionaries, from the London Missionary Society (LMS), were given no independence by the British administration. It is obvious from the correspondence between North and London that their ‘enthusiasm’ was feared.12 North, after all, believed that the spreading of Christianity should be done by educated Sri Lankans rather than Europeans, and he already supported several European pastors, some of whom were Dutch. He, therefore, gave De Vos, member of the LMS group and a Reformed clergyman, responsibility for existing Reformed Christians in Galle and Mātara, and Erhardt, a Lutheran, responsibility for the Lutherans in the country. Their presence did not, therefore, change the spatial dynamic of the island. The Baptists, who arrived in 1812, attempted to open a school in Colombo but, according to Celestine Fernando, it was not successful (Fernando 2013: 26). By 1919, however, they had opened three schools with 150 pupils outside Colombo (Fernando 2013: 27). It was with the arrival of missionaries from the two largest and most energetic societies that fundamental changes gradually came: the Wesleyan Methodist missionaries, hereafter Wesleyans, in 1814, and personnel from the Anglican, Church Missionary Society (CMS), in 1816. The Wesleyans were welcomed more sincerely by Robert Brownrigg (governor 1812–1822) than the LMS missionaries had been by North, not least because their coming was endorsed by William Wilberforce, a friend of Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice in Sri Lanka from 1811–1818 (Harris 2012: 278).13 Significant also was that Wesleyans and the Church of England had not completely split from one another at this point. Many within the Church of England still saw them as an Order within their own Church. Twisleton was probably one. Spence Hardy described him as one of the missionaries’ ‘best friends’ and a frequent attender at Wesleyan worship, even after he was made archdeacon (Spence Hardy 1864: 87). When the first cohort of Wesleyans arrived in Galle in 1814, they were lodged at the government house there and were visited by the other colonial chaplain, George Bisset, who offered them a monthly allowance to teach English to Sri Lankan children in some of the principal towns. William Harvard, chronicler of this history and member of the first group of Wesleyans, represented this as a kindly act to secure the Wesleyans an income (Harvard 1823: 15), but an element of the supervisory was no doubt present, although not as strong as had been directed towards the LMS (Harris 2012: 285). It is also significant that they were not, at this point, directed towards existing parish schools. Promoting education dovetailed very well with Wesleyan inclinations, although, paradox­ ically, they eventually championed education in the vernacular rather than in English, convinced that a new generation of Christians – their priority after all – would only arise if pupils learnt through the language closest to their emotional heart.14 Once the Wesleyans became known for their commitment to education, requests from local people for the establishment of schools mushroomed, in spite of government-­sponsored ‘parish’ schools. At first, missionary homes were used 11

48   The British colonial period but demand outstripped these domestic spaces. The first Wesleyan School Report of September 1817 described the building process after such a request had been received: The school rooms are not erected on an expensive scale. For a hundred children, the most not above 200 Rds [Rix dollars] or £13 sterling; and in the general one or two thirds of this is subscribed by the inhabitants; and, in one or two cases, the whole expense has been borne by them. (Harvard and Clough 1817: 5–6) It was not new for local people to bear some of the expense of erecting school rooms or indeed other communal buildings. Andrew Armour, one of the school inspectors in 1809–1810, reported to Maitland that the people at ‘Hangwelle’ (Hanwella) had contributed ola leaves to cover the timber supplied by the magistrate of ‘Beagama’ (Biyagama) so that a temporary school house could be erected in Hanwella.15 The practice, in fact, went back much further to the pooling of resources by villagers to erect temporary bana maḍuvas (preaching halls) for the monastic Sangha. Some of the financial donations and support for new schools no doubt came both from those who had been baptized under the Dutch and had retained sympathy with Christianity, and also from Roman Catholics, who, under the British, no longer needed to hide their identity. The petition sent to the Wesleyans from the inhabitants of ‘Galkisse’ (Mount Lavinia), dated 14 July 1817, signed by 100 inhabitants, can be explained both by this and also by their previous experience of a school.16 It asked for a school for 168 children, including 51 girls, the signatories offering to pay for it, using language they knew would have missionary appeal: ‘at Galkissa a great number of ignorant Boys and Girls intend to learn the English and Cingalese languages for the benefit of their immortal souls’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 6). Harvard and Clough added, ‘In addition to this a native Headman offered to make us an unlimited grant of land to build the school on, and a house for the master to live in …’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 6). In the end, the school was not built because of plans to establish a government school there. Requests to the missionaries for the establishing of schools, however, cannot be explained completely by the support of those predisposed to be sympathetic to Christianity. Harvard and Clough wrote on the next page of their first report, ‘even Heathens are under the same impulse and several have brought their Children to be entered as pupils in our mission schools’ (Harvard and Clough 1817: 7). With a note of incredulity, they continued: Our fundamental provision is that the Schools shall be open to Children – of all descriptions – of every Religion and of every Sect. And, as an instance how such a principle is approved and received by all ranks and classes of Natives, one of our Schools erected in a very populous neighbourhood, near

Spatial impact of missionary schools   49 Colombo, stands on a piece of ground, which has been made over to us, without payment, by a respectable Mahometan, or Moorman. (Harvard and Clough 1817: 7–8) This Muslim renounced claim to the land for as long as a school stood on it and entered his son as a scholar.17 The first and second Wesleyan School Reports bent over backwards to note the friendliness of religious leaders in the south of Sri Lanka. For instance, they stressed that, at ‘Panadure’ (Pānadurē), ‘one of the Corle Moodeliars’ attended the opening of a Wesleyan school and that other native ‘chiefs’ were said to be friendly (Harvard and Clough 1817: 21). At ‘Hikkode’ (Hikkaḍuve), the Headman built the school with no expense to the mission (Harvard and Clough 1819: 41). And at ‘Oyanwatte’ (Uyanvatte), the initiative came from the inhabitants, who erected the school at their own expense and presented their children for admission, ‘though they were nearly all professed heathens’, namely Buddhists (Harvard and Clough 1817: 32). Roman Catholic and Muslim patronage was probably a key factor in the Negombo region, where Buddhists were few. ‘Every one of the country Schools on this station [Negombo] have been built by the people of the respective villages and have cost the Mission nothing’, Harvard and Clough declared (Harvard and Clough 1819: 35n). Reports published later in the century gave further information about this early period, for example, that at ‘Morotto’ (Moraṭuva), which had experienced a school under the Dutch, a new school was paid for by the inhabitants and the land was given by a Roman Catholic (Spence Hardy 1864: 25 and 172). One of the most intriguing facts was given by Samuel Langdon in 1890, namely that the first Wesleyan school in Kurunegala, in 1820, was established in a Buddhist pansala ‘of all places in the world’, at the invitation of the Buddhist monk, with two Buddhist monks taking lessons in it for a period (Langdon 1890: 114–115). One possible explanation of this would be that a monk at the vihāra was about to convert but I can find no evidence of this. A similar dynamic was eventually reported by the CMS in Kandy. At first, the British administration was reluctant to allow missionaries into the former Kandyan Kingdom, fearing they would offend the Kandyans and, therefore, undermine British rule. CMS missionary, Samuel Lambrick, however, entered by the back door as chaplain to the forces and Browning, a colleague, was allowed to join him in 1821.18 Education, again, was their first priority but the Kandyan response was unenthusiastic.19 Realizing this was because education in Kandy, pre-­1815, had been principally linked to the monastic Sangha and that the people had ‘strong prejudices … in favour of Buddhism’, they played down Christianization and taught through ‘native books’ in the hope that Christian instruction would be accepted later, when trust had been built.20 Several years after this initially cool welcome, Browning reported that a school had opened at ‘Pollgolla’ (Polgahawela) in a bana maḍuve and that Christian worship was allowed. Apparently for want of a qualified schoolmaster, it was discontinued after nine months.21 I return to the CMS in Kandy in the next chapter.

50   The British colonial period This evidence from the Wesleyan mission in the south and CMS experience in Kandy suggests that the presence of Christian missionary schools was a spatial change that was at first welcomed by many Sri Lankans, in spite of the initial hesitancy in the former Kandyan Kingdom and the intimations of opposition to the former Dutch schools on the southern coastal belt at the beginning of the century. They were not seen as an invasion or an occupation but as a pragmatic benefit that would enable children to succeed in a new political environment, where knowledge of English and even of Christianity was essential, and where some parents might still have believed that attendance at a Christian school was necessary if their children were to inherit property. In some places, Pānadurē for instance, the wish for a new school could have stemmed from experience of a bad one;22 in others, it could have been memory of a good school that had closed. And it is not impossible that some people simply saw the missionaries as trustworthy people, better educated than some of the old schoolmasters, as this missionary description of an event in Kalutara suggests: An aged Moorman brought his two sons to the resident Missionary and begged that they be admitted into the School. He was asked if he felt willing, being a Mahomedan, to send his children to a Christian School. He replied, I can with all my heart commit my children to a good man, because I know they will learn only good. (Fox and Clough 1819: 30–31) Buddhists and Muslims were, of course, aware that Christian missionaries would teach catechisms but might not at first have seen this as particularly dangerous. Some parents would have trusted their children’s strength of character to resist proselytization. Others might have encouraged their children to see Christianity as something that need not contradict Buddhism if kept in subordination.23 And, if this Christian teaching included basic moral education, most Buddhist parents would have welcomed it. Parents, however, were not always correct in their hope that English would be taught. In 1817, the Wesleyans, for instance, decided that their ‘schools for the native children’ should be of two classes. The first would teach both English and ‘native languages’. The second would only teach ‘native languages’.24 In addition, there were Sunday schools, which were more explicitly directed towards Christian formation. Not surprisingly, most missionaries interpreted this pragmatism and apparent trust as a potential ‘yes’ to Christianity. Muslims were permitted some accommodation by the Wesleyans. Muslim pupils in a school near Mātara, for instance, quite early in the century, ‘were not required to kneel at prayer’, could attend the mosque on Friday and could be absent from Sunday morning worship (Spence Hardy 1864: 11), and I have already mentioned the choice of the early CMS missionaries in Kandy to use indigenous books at first rather than Christian texts. Nevertheless, the teaching of English and other subjects was normally wedded, in the early decades, to the teaching of Christianity. Schools came to be considered, by all missionary groups, to be the most important ‘field’ for

Spatial impact of missionary schools   51 communicating Christianity and gaining converts. There were too few ordained Christian ministers for churches to be established across the island; not so for vernacular schools, which could be staffed by trained vernacular teachers. Fox and Clough, writers of the 1819 Wesleyan School Report, for instance, declared in a more triumphalist tone than had been present in the first two reports, ‘The prejudice of the Budhuist is not so strong [as among Hindus], nor does Budhuism offer any formidable barriers, further than ignorance operates, to the introduction of a purer system of doctrine’ (Fox and Clough: 1819: 12). Therefore, although Harvard and Clough spoke of their Colombo day school as a ‘secularizing’ of themselves (Harvard and Clough 1816b: 199), and the 1818 Wesleyan School Report could declare that, ‘our simple aim is to give them [the children] the means of instruction’ without coercion or ‘incorporation’ (Harvard and Clough 1819: 3), it is obvious from the teaching subjects listed in these School Reports that the principal content was Christianity.25 The first report claimed that, within ‘native schools of the First Class’, the pupils concentrated on ‘native arithmetic’, and moral and religious subjects, adding: The most of them can repeat the Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, and the Apostles Creed, in English, in Cingalese, and in Tamul; besides reciting largely from Mr Wood’s and other Catechisms which have been given them in their own tongue. (Harvard and Clough 1817: 10–11) Languages, in fact, were taught through the recitation and discussion of Christian texts. No pupils were exempt from this. All had to read the scriptures and recite ‘the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer’ (Spence Hardy 1864: 11). This was similar to the religious component of the curriculum taught by the Dutch, but the missionaries went further. ‘Exhortation on the nature of good and evil: the heinous nature of sin; the sufferings of the impenitent sinners in a future state; the … way of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ’, was added daily (Harvard and Clough 1819: 3). In other words, rote learning was supplemented with teaching that sought to convey, implicitly if not explicitly, the impossibility of union or even porous boundaries between Buddhist and Christian, and indeed Christian and Muslim, spiritual space. What was attempted was no less than a colonization of the emotive space within a child’s mind, accompanied by manipulation of physical space to reinforce the superiority of Christianity. School rooms were stripped of images that might remind children of Buddhist vihāras. If children brought Buddhist books with them, they risked having these taken away.26 And, if the location of the school was distant from the bustle of the market or the local pansala, this was exploited. Of a school at ‘Minuangodde’ (Minuwangoda), the Wesleyans could, therefore, write: [It] stands upon the top of a beautiful hill about a mile from the Fort of Galle, and though it is but a short distance from the public Bazaar, yet its

52   The British colonial period situation is very retired, so that the boys can run from the crowd and noise to this comfortable retreat, to learn the path to happiness and heaven. (Harvard and Clough 1819: 39, quoted in Harris 2016: 60) This attempted colonization of the child’s mind, as Spence Hardy in retrospect realized, was not as effective as the missionaries hoped, partly because they used indigenous Sri Lankan teachers, for instance those educated at the Colombo Academy or Seminary. These declared they were Christians but some nevertheless slipped Buddhist books into the curriculum (Spence Hardy 1864: 268) and turned a blind eye when pupils stopped attending worship immediately after they left the school. In other words, some of the teachers preferred inclusivism to exclusivism. In the early decades, missionaries became the victims of their own ambition to expand schools into as many neighbourhoods as possible, even though they did not have enough resources to supervise them. Spence Hardy later declared, ‘It would have been better if they had sought to cultivate a small portion well, rather than so large an area imperfectly’ (Spence Hardy 1864: 267). Whether this would have affected Buddhist responses, however, is debatable.

Early Buddhist opposition to missionary schools Although there was some opposition to schools teaching Christianity when the British arrived, the expansion of the traditional space of a village to include a Christian missionary school moved from being a door to advancement for Buddhists to being a threat to and a rupture with previous practice, when three consequences of missionary ideology became apparent: (1) when children internalized missionary teaching and condemned village practices;27 (2) when Sri Lankan teachers realized the extent to which they were expected to reject their former religious culture for an exclusivism largely alien to them; (3) when the dividing line between church and school became blurred through the erection of multi-­purpose buildings. Archival evidence suggests that parents were not unduly worried if their children could recite the Ten Commandments, the ethics of which were unproblematic to Buddhists,28 or even catechisms. Tension arose when children showed contempt for indigenous religious practices, when Sri Lankan teachers could no longer manipulate the missionary system, and when school and church became spatially fused. In other words, tension arose because of the intensity with which the missionaries, together with some of their Sri Lankan schoolmasters, overlaid biblical teaching with an exclusivist soteriology that scorned spirit religion and devotion to the Buddha. And this was experienced not only by Buddhists but also by Roman Catholics. Once it became additionally clear that Christian schooling was not necessary for the inheritance of property and that not all missionary schools taught English, Buddhist opposition became inevitable. As early as 1818, the Wesleyans were forced to admit that ‘many [pupils] have become indifferent and have withdrawn’ from the ‘Circular Road School’

Spatial impact of missionary schools   53 two miles from Galle (Harvard and Clough 1819: 38). At Doḍanḍūva, not far from Galle, 200 children had first attended the Wesleyan school. By 1818, there were only 30, Harvard and Clough attributing this to the ‘headman being an ignorant and strongly bigoted Buddhist who has steadily and perseveringly set his face against the institution from the very first’ (Harvard and Clough 1819: 40). Evidence of Buddhist resistance is even more marked by 1819, when Fox and Clough declared of Kalutara that ‘the attempts of Budhuism to re-­establish itself are very great’ (Fox and Clough 1819: 31) and, of Colombo, that ‘capoas [kapurālas] had been zealously at work to undermine our schools and prevent the children of our villages from attending them’ (Fox and Clough 1819: 24). By this time, the Doḍanḍūva school and one at nearby Unawatuna had been closed due to local opposition. The Hikkaḍuvē school had not been closed but numbers had dropped. In Galle itself, numbers had decreased from 95 to 20. At Ambalaṃgoḍa, numbers had also decreased to 20 (Fox and Clough 1819: 32, Appendix xxx). It was not, however, only in the predominantly Buddhist South that opposition arose. Roman Catholic resistance was present in Negombo and Colombo, almost forcing the closure of the Grand Street School in Negombo (Fox and Clough 1819: Appendix xiv). Of the Sea Street School in Negombo, a local contact of the Wesleyans declared, ‘I am informed the priests [Roman Catholic] have gone so far as to beat the parents for allowing their children to come to school, and they dare not come to public worship’ (Fox and Clough 1819: Appendix xiv). By 1919, Roman Catholics had destroyed two Wesleyan schools in Negombo and two more in other parts of the country (Fox and Clough 1819: 25). Nevertheless, the missionary educational project did not collapse. Continuing to take the Wesleyans as my main example, in 1819, they were still running 12 schools in and around Galle and 11 schools in Mātara (Fox and Clough 1819: 20). In 1840, the number of ‘Sunday and other schools’ in the circuits of the ‘Singhalese District’ were: Colombo ten; Negombo 21; Kalutara 16; Kandy two; Galle 13; Mātara 11; Dondra four; Godapitiya one.29 A further dynamic, however, entered in the 1840s, namely competition within the Christian community, which, in turn, fuelled new Buddhist responses. In the early decades of the century, a colonial chaplain such as Twisleton encouraged missionary educational activity, supported by governors such as North. Later chaplains, the high church Owen Glenie for instance, neither encouraged missionary activity nor saw their own task as proselytization. ‘Queries’, for instance, were sent from the Colonial Office to the archdeacon and five colonial chaplains in 1838, the responses to which suggested that none saw the conversion of Sri Lankans to Christianity as important.30 These chaplains, however, did not interfere with missionary activity. With the arrival of personnel from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in 1840, the creation of a Diocese of Colombo in 1845 and the activities of a missionary bishop, the situation changed.31 Before examining this, however, I return to the British administration and its oversight of education.

54   The British colonial period

Oversight of education by the British administration Until 1841, the Church of England was, in effect, the ‘government department of education’ (Ruberu 1969: 369), since oversight of government schools, the successors to the Dutch parish schools, was the responsibility of one of the colonial chaplains and then, from 1817, the archdeacon, albeit under the governor’s eye (Vimalananda 1963: lxx). In 1832, a school commission was established for the oversight of government schools as a result of the Colebrooke Commission reforms. It was a failure, mainly because Archdeacon Glenie, who had opposed the commission from the start (Godage 1969a: 399), did not want to share responsibility with non-­Anglican Christians. A second attempt at oversight occurred when a Central School Commission was formed in 1841. Significantly, its remit mandated missionary involvement, since it was recognized that missionary schools were not only more numerous – in 1840, there were 39 government schools and over 280 missionary schools32 – but maintained better standards than those under the government. Chaired by the colonial secretary until 1844 and then the new Bishop of Colombo (Godage 1969a: 402), the new commission consisted of up to nine members, including Christian clergy, potentially from all churches. It had, for instance, to include a Roman Catholic priest. According to Spence Hardy, the governor directed it ‘to be particularly careful to introduce into the schools no books or system of instruction which might have the effect of excluding scholars of any religious belief whatsoever’, whilst making the instruction of Christian children in the Christian faith a priority (Spence Hardy 1841a: 68). Significantly, the commission also passed a resolution ‘that the first hour daily in every Government school be devoted to religious instruction, and that the masters are particularly enjoined not to require the attendance of those boys whose parents object to their attending during that hour’ (Spence Hardy 1841a: 64). Something close to a conscience clause was, therefore, introduced but only for government schools. Missionary schools were not mandated to do this until later in the century. As with the first commission, however, intra-­ Christian tensions arose.

Intra-­Christian competition The first bishop of the new diocese, James Chapman, was not willing to delegate responsibility to ‘dissenters’, namely Baptist and Wesleyan missionaries. Believing that the Sri Lankan population had been ‘heathenized’ under British rule,33 he sought to extend the power of the Established Church throughout the island at the expense of ‘dissenters’. He was, therefore, deeply opposed to their influence in the Central School Commission and resigned as its chair in 1847 (Godage 1969a: 402), even though his rhetoric was similar to the ‘dissenters’, in that he believed the education of children embodied the best hope for evangelization.34 On the ground, this intra-­Christian competition had spatial implications. In 1858, for instance, Chapman placed an SPG missionary in Mātale because he

Spatial impact of missionary schools   55 ‘found that the activities of others rendered the prompt occupation of the ground necessary’.35 The ‘other’ is not named but it was obviously a ‘dissenting’ group. When Chapman described the work of SPG missionary, Thurston, in Mahara, near Kälaṇi, it is as though the locality in which he worked had no other Christian presence, although there was, for instance, a significant Baptist mission in Gonawala, Kälaṇi: The mission embraces about 70 native villages, clustering in a population of about 37,000 souls, one third of who profess a nominal Christianity, having been baptized many years ago, but long since neglected. There is one dilapidated church, which I have visited, near the principal Buddhist temple of this district at Calany [Kälaṇi]. Among this population we have already opened nine schools, attended by nearly 400 children. Temporary buildings have been erected by the natives at 12 different places, where Divine Service is celebrated by Catechists on every alternate Sunday, and subscriptions are in progress for four small Churches to be raised at advantageous points along the line of the high road from Colombo to Kandy. For these the natives themselves have given land, and offer material and labour with much good will. Education is their want they say, and we might open up more schools, if we could maintain them.…36 In the 1840s, therefore, Buddhists began to witness intra-­Christian competition in education, in rural and urban areas, particularly between the SPG and its sponsor, the Diocese of Colombo, and the evangelical missionary societies. Spence Hardy’s history of the Wesleyan mission gave several oblique examples of this. He claimed, for instance, of the area south of the fort of Colombo, that the period after the diocese was founded was ‘the most mournful period in the history of the mission, as to this [Milāgiriya] and the other stations immediately south’ of Kollupitiya, because of Anglican attempts to supplant Wesleyan congregations and schools (Spence Hardy 1864: 99).37 He was not speaking about the CMS, since the Wesleyans and the CMS generally did not compete spatially for influence. More vehement were these words from Scott, another Wesleyan, over a decade later: Early in April I visited Galle and Belligam [Weligama], as Bishop Coplestone has sent to the latter station a missionary who is actively engaged in opening opposition schools to ours. It is lamentable for a Christian society to act in this divisive way in the presence of the heathen. I found Mr Lyle [the SPG missionary] had caused a bungalow for a new girl’s school to be erected within a few feet of the buildings in which our girls’ school has been taught for several years past. As both buildings have half walls it would be impossible for the two schools to be carried on, and it was evident that ours must be removed, as we were powerless against the aggressor. (Scott 1878: 105)

56   The British colonial period Small, historian of the Sri Lankan Methodist Church, confirms this (Small 1968: 249). By this time, the second school commission had imploded, as the first had done, through Christian sectarianism, to be replaced in 1869 by a Department of Public Instruction. This brought missionary schools under the oversight of a Director of Public Instruction, through a grant-­in-aid system, with rigorous conditions. The result was that a secular curriculum for ‘a given number of hours a day, irrespective of religious instruction given at other times’ (Godage 1969b: 421), as well as new building standards were imposed on missionary schools that applied for grants-­in-aid. A ‘conscience clause’ was also gradually introduced, which enabled pupils to be withdrawn by their parents from any ‘religious observance’ or ‘instruction in religious subjects’. These conditions, particularly the latter, enabled the government, which could not openly admit to a missionary agenda, to hand more of the education sector to non-­governmental operators. As the Director of Public Instruction wrote in 1894: In the absence of such a clause [conscience clause], I cannot always consider myself justified in handing over a Government School to any Missionary body, having regard to the fact that at present the Department is precluded from placing any restriction on the hours during which religious instruction may be imparted: and it is now obviously unfair to those children who have been in attendance at the Government school, and who for the most part profess the Buddhist faith, to force them, as it were, into a Mission school, in which I have no guarantee that instruction in religious subjects will be confined to any particular hours of the school session. (Cull 1894: D19) To be fair to missionary schools, however, they had, by 1894, changed considerably in their provision for non-­Christian pupils. In the mid-­1880s, Buddhist pupils at Trinity College, Kandy (CMS) were having a ‘special address’ when the Christian students went into the chapel for prayer.38 The SPG in London devised principles for schools in India that were then offered to Sri Lanka. Although these stated that ‘schools supported by the S.P.G. should be carried on for the conversion of the Unbaptized, as well as for the education of the Baptized in the Christian faith’, they suggested that the unbaptized should not be present ‘while Christians are at prayer, save on their own request, and with the express permission of the Missionary’, that Bible classes should not be given to mixed classes of baptized and unbaptized, that the Bible should not be used ‘as a Class Book’ for the unbaptized and that the ‘Church Catechism be reserved for the teaching of the Baptized’. The unbaptized were to be given selected portions from the Bible and ‘special catechisms’. Copleston agreed, suggesting that new schools should have a ‘classroom on each side of the entrance, so that for the first lesson, which is the religious one and for the opening prayers Christians may turn to one side and non-­Christians to the other.’39 One of the criticisms of the second Central School Commission had been that it had neither emphasized excellence in secondary education nor adequately

Spatial impact of missionary schools   57 prioritized the vernacular. With the new system, therefore, came another layer of competition: the provision of elite secondary education as a doorway to influence with the more affluent classes (Rajaindran 1969: 438). For instance, in 1875, the Wesleyan, George Baugh, writing from Galle, lamented that the Wesleyans did not have a high school in the town and therefore that pupils were going to Buddhist and Roman Catholic schools for higher studies. He claimed this was a ‘disgrace’, writing in capital letters that it was ‘A DRAINING AWAY OF OUR STRENGTH AND HOPE of the future’. Why, he rhetorically asked, should Methodists be a ‘feeder’ ‘FOR ROMANISM AND BUDDHISM’ (Baugh 1875: 10–11). Wesleyan high schools for boys and girls were then established: Richmond College for boys in 1876 and Richmond Hill Girls’ School (Small 1969: 247). In Colombo, the competition, expressed visually through the appropriation of space, was even fiercer. Bishop Copleston could write in 1900: In 1876 St. Thomas’ College [SPG-­supported secondary school in Colombo] had no serious rival except Royal College [successor to the Colombo Academy]; now besides our own Church College at Kandy (Trinity College, C.M.S.), which has even larger numbers than St Thomas’, and leaving out of sight the many good but cheaper schools, our own and others, in Colombo, there are Wesley College, and St Joseph’s College (Roman Catholic) both of which compete with us on equal terms, while the Royal College has immensely advanced in efficiency and numbers. Such is the increase of competition. (Copleston 1900: 7)

The late-­nineteenth century Buddhist response to missionary schools Before the third quarter of the nineteenth century, some members of the monastic Sangha lobbied parents not to send their children to Christian schools. They also consolidated or expanded pansala provision, in response to pressure from lay people.40 Isolated instances of violence against Christian schools also occurred. CMS missionary, Unwin, for instance, reported in the 1870s that, in a village called ‘Diwela’, people were so indignant that some villagers intended to convert to Christianity that they ‘held opposition meetings’ and applied ‘a lighted torch’ to the roof of a school which they themselves had erected.41 Individual stories of parental pain at what was happening to children also emerge from contemporary records. Selkirk records a child proving the existence of God and causing a Kandyan Buddhist to weep (Selkirk 1844: 209). Later in the century, CMS missionary, Dibben, reports that, at Kolonnawa, a young girl of 12 had been shut up in her room by her parents for ‘some days, until her health began to give way’ because she had refused to worship ‘in the village temple on a festival day, saying that she could not worship a dumb idol’.42 The preferred method of opposition to missionary schools after the 1870s, however, was to build Buddhist schools. The process has been well-­documented

58   The British colonial period (Bond 1988: 48–52; Malalgoda 1976: 232–255), particularly with reference to the Buddhist revival and theosophist involvement. However, the spatial choices made by Buddhists have not been given equal attention, namely that when Buddhists started their own non-­pansala schools, they prioritized locations where there was already a Christian school and sought to build as close as they could to that school, perhaps taking their cue from SPG strategy. So Goonewardene, indigenous Wesleyan minister, lamented in 1872 that, in Galle, one of the three Buddhist schools there had ‘been opened with the avowed object of preventing the attendance of children at Mission Schools’ (Goonewardene 1872: 145). And Copleston wrote of a village near Galle where ‘a very handsome’ Anglican school building had been erected: There the Buddhists have been very active, and have set up rival schools on either side of our school, and at one time our numbers were reduced: I feared we may have to abandon the school. But we have been fortunate in securing a really good master, and the superiority of our teaching and our building is having its effect on the villagers: we seem to be now holding our own, and even gaining ground. (Copleston 1900: 31) The lament of missionaries was that Buddhists did not build schools where there was no existing educational provision, but only where they could compete with Christian schools. Wesleyan missionary, Triggs’s comment on the area around Tissamahārāma, a place of traditional Buddhist pilgrimage in the south, can be used to illustrate what most missionaries thought they were witnessing: We heard that the Buddhists intended wasting a great deal of money in building on the top of the largest dagoba, where, one would have thought enough money had already been thrown away; but there seems to be no intention on the part of the same persons to spend a trifling sum in providing a school where the little ones may learn to read. And here I may mention one thing that impressed itself upon me during our tour. I have nowhere seen a Buddhist school where there was not a Christian school before. Where education is already provided, they thrust themselves and mar the good that has been done; but where their fellow-­countrymen and co-­ religionists are living in densest ignorance, they do nothing to enlighten their darkness. (Triggs 1890: 36–37) Similarly in 1891, The Ceylon Friend exhorted Buddhists to ‘spend some of their new-­born energies’ in establishing schools in the southern province, namely in areas untouched by missionaries. The anonymous writer continued, Every right-­thinking Christian man would bid them “God-­speed” in such an enterprise; and they would be doing far more by this to win the esteem even

Spatial impact of missionary schools   59 of many of their co-­religionists than they were doing now by attacking long­established Christian schools. (Anon 1891: 214) To attack ‘long-­established Christian schools’, of course, was exactly what Buddhist revivalists wanted to do at this point in the century in order to wrest children from what they saw as ‘the contamination of Christian ideas’ (Anon 1889c: 376). Gone was an inclusivism that tolerated spatial co-­existence with Christian educational initiatives. Buddhists, aided by western theosophists such as Charles Leadbeater (1854–1934), whose primary aim was to undermine the religion he had left (Harris 2006: 141; Tillett 1982: 19–26), sought to close down Christian schools. In 1889, for instance, Leadbeater, at a Buddhist school in Kehelwatte near Pānadurē, declared, ‘The attendance at this school now numbers over a hundred, and it is considered probable that the Christian school of the village will very shortly be closed’ (Anon 1889a: 288). It was no coincidence that Mahinda College, founded in 1892, and Sanghamitta College, founded in 1919, were in Galle, where the missionary presence was strong, or that Ananda College, opened in 1895, was in Maradana, a religiously plural area of Colombo with a Wesleyan presence. As for the southern province, Buddhist revivalists did go there. The 1992 Report of the Director of Public Instruction lauds Buddhists for finding, particularly in girls’ education, ‘new spheres of occupation and energy’, citing the registering of a girls’ school in ‘distant Passara’ in the province of Uva (Cull 1893: D9). However, the motive behind this was not as disinterested as the director presumed. ‘The Uva Buddhist Mission’, as The Buddhist described it (Anon 1895a: 18), was a direct response to the Wesleyan Methodist Mission in Uva, described so vividly in The Ceylon Friend in 1885, through the spatial metaphors of war.43 This is how The Buddhist made its case, echoing the spatial vocabulary of the missionaries: But it is in the Southern Province, the stronghold of Buddhism, which contains a population of wealthy and intelligent Sinhalese that organised work needs most to be carried on. 20,000 Buddhist boys and girls now attend Christian schools, and the missionary agencies are as active as ever in their mistaken attempts at stamping out Buddhism in Ceylon. The Wesleyan Methodist mission is active in the Southern and Uva Provinces and it is here that the attention of Buddhists should be concentrated. (Anon 1895a: 18) Revivalist Buddhists believed they were involved in a battle, played out in space, against Christian colonization of the Buddhist mind, in a context where the balance of power was massively tilted towards Christianity. Just how great the tilt was, is shown in the statistics given in the reports of the Director of Public Instruction. In 1888, only 12 Buddhist schools had received grants-­in-aid, whereas 214 Roman Catholic schools, 232 Wesleyan schools, 190 Church

60   The British colonial period Missionary Society schools and 66 Diocese of Colombo schools had received them (Green 1888: D97). By 1890, the number of Buddhist schools receiving grants-­in-aid had increased to 18, but all the other main players had also increased their numbers (Cull 1890: D15). The Buddhist claimed in 1899 that they had ‘134 schools on their list’ (Anon 1899: 15) and, at the census of 1901, the number of Buddhist schools altogether was recorded as 142 (Arunachalam 1902: 128). It must be remembered, however, that schools based in pansalas, although not eligible for grants-­in-aid, filed returns to the department. In 1886, 1,684 pansala schools sent in returns as well as 442 unaided private schools (Green 1886: D69). Given this asymmetry and limited resources, every action had to be strategic for Buddhist educationalists. Progress on the ground, however, was often slow and sustainability difficult (Malalgoda 1976: 235). In April 1872, for instance, Scott claimed of Ambalaṃgoda that 100 families had committed themselves to a monthly contribution to support the Buddhist school ‘in order to rival and if possible destroy the excellent Anglo-­Vernacular School connected with our mission’ (Scott 1872: 135). When he returned in May, however, the Buddhist school had closed, suggesting that Buddhists there found it extremely difficult to find the financial resources necessary to sustain the school. The Buddhist School in Anuradhapura, founded in 1901 by the Anuradhapura Maha-­Bodhi Society, is one example of a school that was driven by more than the wish to compete with Christian schools. As Chapter 4 demonstrates, it also entered a discourse about whether the British administration or Buddhists owned the space that was Anuradhapura. Interestingly, its first annual report stated that a few of their 89 children were ‘learning Tamil under Mr. P. Vellupillai’ (Anon 1902: 125). The asymmetry of power that I have outlined made Buddhists fear that the Department of Public Instruction was inherently sympathetic to the missionaries, especially since the department was handing over government schools to missionary bodies, in an attempt to place more resources into tertiary education (Arunachalam 1902: 128). It is doubtful whether Buddhist revivalists appreciated the conditions imposed by the department to protect students who were not Christian or the attempts of missionary bodies to respect Buddhist sentiments. When, for instance, Indibetta Government School in Galle, containing 65 Buddhists, 41 Wesleyans, 13 Anglicans, 19 Roman Catholics and one Salva­ tionist, was told it was being handed over to the Wesleyans in the mid-­1890s, before the ‘conscience clause’ became law, the Buddhists and non-­Wesleyans sent a petition to the director of public instruction and the governor, and were not satisfied when the former explained that the school would be subject to the anticipated conscience clause. A.E. Buultjens, the Burgher convert to Buddhism previously mentioned, made a formal application for the school to be transferred to Buddhists but, again, this was not heeded (Anon 1895b). The existence of another, spatially determined restriction, which seemed to benefit only the missionaries, added to Buddhist unease: ‘the Quarter-­mile Clause’. Introduced in 1892, it prevented the registration and building of a Buddhist school within quarter of a mile from a Christian one, thus challenging

Spatial impact of missionary schools   61 one of the planks of Buddhist spatial competition with Christians. It meant that a couple of Buddhist schools actually had to be pulled down. Buultjens blamed missionary influence, writing indignantly: [I]t is a crying shame that we should now be compelled to break down the buildings and remove the schools to a quarter-­mile plus 2 yards from a miserable little shaky Christian school of not more than 30 children, when our schools contain large numbers. The injustice is so palpable, so gross, so shameless that every Buddhist will feel great indignation at the attempt to bring rules to bear on schools opened before 1892 simply to aid Christians. (Buultjens 1893: 188)44 Buddhist revivalists also had to contend with the fact that Buddhists continued to patronize Christian schools and to offer land for schools. Chapman, in 1853, noted that, ‘The Kandyan chief, who has charge of the Dalāda (or sacred relic, i.e. Buddoo’s tooth in Kandy) has just applied for the admission of his son into College [St Thomas’ College], as a resident Student, not objecting to his receiving fullest Christian instruction’.45 Later still, in 1889, when Buddhist schools were in existence, The Ceylon Friend reported that at ‘Dampella’ (Dampelessa?), two Buddhist priests came to the Methodist school with parents and children to welcome the missionaries (Anon 1889c: 72). In 1893, an anonymous writer in The Ceylon Diocesan Gazette claimed that, in the Buddhist village of ‘Udamwitta’ (Udanviṭa), a church school for girls had been started on land given by a Buddhist, Sinaris Silva. Silva, the writer continued, helped in the building up of the school and sent his children there ‘to be taught to read and to write their language by a Christian, the wife of the Catechist’ (Anon 1893: 134). Another scenario is reported by SPG missionary, Philip Marks. In the Buddhist village of Malalagama, there had been opposition to an SPG-­supported Anglo-­vernacular school because Christianity was taught there. The parents, however, keen their children should learn English, eventually backed down. Marks continued, ‘Not so the priests. They have made a desperate, but GOD be thanked, an ineffectual effort to put an immediate stop to our influence’, by attempting to pressurize the wealthy Buddhist who had built the schoolroom and given it rent free to the missionaries. A legal battle ensued, which was won when the people themselves undertook to repay the cost of the building, in effect opposing their own religious leaders so that their children could learn English (Marks 1871: 266). As late as 1937, A.P. Goonetilleke continued to lament that Buddhists in their thousands allowed their children ‘to attend non-­Buddhist schools’, pointing to the percentage of children who were not Christian in assisted Christian vernacular schools, for instance 93.1 per cent in Methodist schools and 60.1 per cent in Roman Catholic schools (Goonetilleke 1937: 478–479). The spatial battle that developed between Buddhists and the missionaries over education was conditioned by asymmetries of power, and became characterized by an exclusivist attitude towards the Other, not only on the missionary side but

62   The British colonial period also, eventually, on the Buddhist side as a direct defensive response to missionary attitudes. Throughout the century, however, the spatial field on which this was played was complex. On the one hand, space was used as a tool by revivalist Buddhists in inter-­religious competition. On the other, revivalist strategies were subverted when pragmatic decision-­making by Buddhists in the context of colonialism, allowed a more inclusive attitude towards missionary education to survive, as a means to the end of social advancement. That it was only a means was realized by Bishop Copleston, for instance, when he wryly reported, at the end of the century, that some apparent converts at SPG schools in Mātara had returned to Buddhism or ‘become indifferent to religion, in some cases expressly saying that while it was right for them to become Christian at school, there was no reason to go on with it when they were neither pupils nor teachers!’ (Copleston 1900: 33).46 His experience was, in fact, a further example of inclusivist subordination. Christianity could be included within a Buddhist’s identity to create harmony for as long as it was needed, without betraying an underlying indigenous framework that placed the Buddha at the top. When no longer needed, Christianity could simply be jettisoned.

Notes   1 Annual Report from Browning for 1833 (Annual Reports of Browning, CMSA).   2 The Dutch had four ‘provinces’ – Colombo, Galle, Trincomalee and Jaffna – and split these into counties and parishes.   3 James Cordiner to Frederic North, 7 July 1800, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 24).   4 Frederic North, ‘To the Hon’ble the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors for Affairs of the Hon’ble United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies’, Dispatch No. 26, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 11).   5 Frederic North, ‘Report to the Court of Directors dated Tangalle 30th August, 1800’ (C.O.S. 4/10), reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 39).   6 A judgement by North on some people who declared before the Supreme Court of Galle and Mātara that they were Christians, who believed in the Buddha. Dispatch No. 26, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 11).   7 See the illustrations in Baldaeus 1960 (1672) of Dutch school buildings, particularly those accompanying Chapter 43.   8 ‘Extract from the Minutes of a Council held in Colombo this 12th day of October, 1809’, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 96–97).   9 ‘Report from the Honourable the Reverend Mr Twistleton on the subject of the state of the schools in the Districts of Matura and Galle submitted to the Governor’, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 98–108), here p. 99. 10 ‘Report from James Cordiner to the Hon’ble Frederic North dated 7 July 1800’, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 15–25), here p. 18. 11 Some missionaries commented favourably on this, for example: ‘In most of the Schools that have been opened in the Galle District, from six to ten boys have been admitted who are very clever in Singhalese; and these, with few exceptions, have been taught by Priests of Budh’ (Harvard and Clough 1819: 44). Spence Hardy later claimed that literacy was higher in Sri Lanka than in Europe before ‘the invention of printing’ because of the pansala schools (Spence Hardy 1864: 261). In the 1890s, there was a dialogue about pansala education in the English media following a Legislative Council speech by Panabokke that lauded pansala education above mission and

Spatial impact of missionary schools   63 government schools for its excellent teaching of Pāli and Sinhala. See Woodhouse (1884: 89–92) and The Ceylon Friend (November 1890: 139) for more negative responses. 12 North to Earl Camden, 27 February 1805, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: lv–lvii). 13 During Maitland’s governorship, North, Cordiner and other clergy such as Claudius Buchanan had lobbied in Britain concerning Christianity and education in Sri Lanka (Harris 2012: 278; Ruberu 1969: 366). 14 See Spence Hardy (1841b), where he argued that the teaching of English led to scepticism not conversions, since the motive to learn English concerned respectability not religion and Spence Hardy (1843), which argued for Sinhala translations of literary and scientific works, and advertised an English grammar written in Sinhalese. 15 Report from Armour to Twistleton 1809, reproduced in Vimalananda (1963: 116). Armour (1769–1828), a Wesleyan and a linguist, arrived in Colombo from Madras in 1800 to be interpreter to the Supreme Court and Head of the Academy established by North. He also became a licensed catechist. See Spence Hardy (1864: 66–68) for an account of his Christian commitment and Blazé (1941). 16 When Cordiner visited Mount Lavinia in 1800, 72 boys and 21 girls were studying but not in the unsafe school building (Cordiner to North, 7 July 1800, reproduced in Vimalananda 1963: 15). When Armour visited in 1809, he could locate neither teacher nor pupils and found that the school community was divided by caste. He noted that the Protestants there were contributing to the building of a bana maḍuva (Armour to Twisleton, 1810, reproduced in Vimalananda 1963: 121). 17 A very different response from a Muslim is reported by Clough in 1815: that the Wesleyans had to ‘set a guard’ over one Muslim convert to Christianity in case he was killed by other Muslims (Clough 1816: 196). 18 Lambrick and Browning to Pratt and Bickersteth, 12 July 1821 (Letters from Lambrick: CMSA). 19 Lambrick to Pratt and Bickersteth, 23 February 1820 (Letters from Lambrick: CMSA). 20 Lambrick and Browning to Pratt and Bickersteth, 31 January 1821 (Letters from Lambrick: CMSA); ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1822–1823: 166–180, here p. 171. Similarly, when Wesleyans attempted a school at Riligala in the Kandyan region, the villagers feared Newstead would steal their children. They agreed to a six-­month trial when it was made clear that a school master would stay with them (Spence Hardy 1864: 141–142). 21 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1824–1825: 142–162, here p. 150. 22 Armour reports of the three masters and about 70 boys and 3 girls at Pānadurē: ‘the most advanced of the boys can say the short catechism but none of them can read, and the masters themselves read very badly’ (Armour to Twistleton 1809, reproduced in Vimalananda 1963: 121). 23 See Harris (2006: 193) for two early-­nineteenth century conversations that suggest Buddhists saw Jesus and the Buddha as complementary figures. 24 MSCD 1816–1830: 21 August 1817 (MCAC). 25 MSCD 1816–1830: 21 August 1817 (MCAC). 26 See Spence Hardy (1864: 98): children brought ‘heathen’ books to a new Wesleyan school in Bambalapitiya (just outside Colombo). When they hear these cannot be tolerated, they hand them over, with parental consent, and are given a Christian book. 27 See for instance MSCD 1831–1871: 15, which praises a boy who caused disturbance at Pānadurē Buddhist vihāra through condemning ‘idolatry’, cited in Harris (1993: 594) (MCAC). 28 See Harvard and Clough (1819: 47), where Buddhists, on hearing children recite the Ten Commandments, are reported as saying that whoever kept them would be reborn in heaven, quoted in Harris (2012: 275). 29 MSCD 1831–1871: report for 1840 (MCAC).

64   The British colonial period 30 Duplicates of Dispatches on the Ecclesiastical State of Ceylon 1837–1849. CO54/195 (NA). See de Silva (1965) for an examination of the Colonial Office reaction. 31 Rev C. Mooyart arrived in 1840 (Colombo and then Mātara) to be followed by Rev H. Von Dadelszen (Nuwara Eliya) and Rev S.D.J. Ondaatjee (Kalutara). The SPG also funded Sri Lankan church workers (Pascoe 1901: 661). 32 In addition there were ‘private schools’, 64 in Colombo, including English-­medium and Roman Catholic schools (Spence Hardy 1841a: 62). 33 Chapman to Hawkins, 13 January 1848: Mahara is described as having ‘a large population of whom have been baptized, but suffered under our own rule to be heath­ enized’, CLRC (SPGA). 34 Chapman to Hawkins, 10 February 1848: ‘This [the school] must be our seed-­plot – to this alone under God’s blessing can we look for an abundant harvest’; Chapman to Hawkins, 11 October 1849: ‘it is in this way [the establishment of schools] that Buddhism will be best opposed’, CLRC (SPGA). 35 Chapman to Hawkins, 22 July 1858. CLRC (SPGA). 36 Chapman to Hawkins, 10 February 1848. CLRC (SPGA). 37 See also Spence Hardy (1864: 177–178) where a Sri Lankan’s Wesleyan ordination is challenged by a Sri Lankan ordained by the Anglican Church, causing 25 Wesleyan members to leave. 38 ‘Ceylon Mission’, quoting Mr Hodges, Head of Trinity College. PCMSAE 1886–1887: 179–192, here p. 185. 39 Copleston to Tucker, 11 January 1879, CLRC (SPGA). 40 Spence Hardy wrote of Weligama in the 1860s, But the pansala exercises a widespread influence; and though the priests, from the fear of losing it, have sometimes gone from house to house to warn the people against sending their children to the mission schools, the numbers who attend at the temples to learn to read their religious books are proof of the great power they still possess over the general mind. (Spence Hardy 1864: 221) 41 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1876–1877: 144–167, here p. 160. 42 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1894–1995: 226–240, here p. 229. 43 An Editorial comment in The Ceylon Friend (May 1885: 64). See p. 26 of this book. 44 An appeal was made and had no effect, although the Colonial Office in London was more sympathetic. See (Anon 1895b). 45 Chapman to Hawkins, 10 May 1853, CLRC (SPGA). 46 See also the 1852 report from SPG missionary Ondaatje: The Singhalese will often listen with attention, nay with apparent emotion to the preaching of God’s word – appear to be convinced of the truth of what they hear – seek Baptism and continue to make profession of Christianity for perhaps years together – and when the object for which all this has been done, has been attained, they will go back to Buddhism and attach themselves more? than before, to make amends, as they say, for their past unfaithfulness to the creed of their fathers … . (O/IND/COL 2 Reports from USPG Missionaries (SPGA))

References Anon, 1889a. ‘Theosophical Activities’. The Buddhist I.36, 23 August: 288. Anon, 1889b. ‘News from Stations’, The Ceylon Friend 11.59, August: 72. Anon, 1889c. ‘The Buddhist English School’. The Buddhist I.47, 8 November: 376. Anon, 1891. ‘An Educational Wilderness’, The Ceylon Friend 11, 4th Series, March: 213–214.

Spatial impact of missionary schools   65 Anon, 1893. ‘A Church School in a Buddhist Village’ (signed ‘ONE INTERESTED’), Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 17.11, 30 November: 134. Anon, 1895a. ‘Education Among the Buddhists’. The Buddhist VII.8, 25 January: 18–19. Anon, 1895b. ‘The Director of Public Instruction in League with the Christians against the Buddhists’. The Buddhist VII.2, August: 228–232. Anon, 1899. ‘Buddhist Activities’. The Buddhist XI.1, November: 15. Anon, 1902. ‘Prize Distribution of Anuradhapura Maha-­Bodhi School and The First Annual Report of the Anuradhapura Maha-­Bodhi School’. The Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society XI.7, November: 125–127. Arunachalam, P., 1902. The Census of Ceylon, 1901 Vol. I containing The Review of the Census Operations and Results. Colombo: H.C. Cottle. Baldaeus, Philippus, 1960 (1672). ‘A True and Exact Description of the Great Island of Ceylon’. The Ceylon Historical Journal VIII.1–4, July 1958‒April 1959. Maharagama: Saman Press. Baugh, George, 1875. QL, Galle, 15 March. Vol. LXXXVII, December. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 8–12. Blackburn, Anne M., 2001. Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth Century Lankan Monastic Culture. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Bond, G.D., 1988. The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpreta­ tion and Response. Columbia, SC: University of Carolina Press. Blazé, L.E., 1941. ‘Andrew Armour’. Offprint from the Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union, April: 9 pp. Bridgenell, William, 1838. QL, Negombo, 10 April. Vol. XLII, April: 70–76. Buultjens, A.E., 1893. ‘The Quarter-­Mile Clause: An Appeal to Buddhists’. The Buddhist V.24, 30 June: 188. Clough, Benjamin, 1816. ‘Extract of a Letter from Clough to Mr John Barber, Dated Colombo, Aug. 30, 1815, Methodist Magazine, XXXIX, 1816: 196–199. Copleston, Reginald, 1900. Report of the Ceylon Missions of the Society for the Propaga­ tion of the Gospel from 1876 to 1900. Colombo: H.W. Cave & Co. Cordiner, James, 1807. A Description of Ceylon, 2 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme. Cull, J.B., 1890. ‘Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1890’. Ceylon Adminis­ tration Reports, 1890. Part IV: D1–31. Cull, J.B., 1893. ‘Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1892’. Ceylon Administra­ tion Reports, 1893. Part IV: D1–52. Cull, J.B., 1894. ‘Report of the Acting Director of Public Instruction for 1894’. Admin­ istration Reports, 1894. Part IV: D1–36. Davy, John, 1821. An Account of the Interior of Ceylon and of its Inhabitants with Travels in that Island. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown. De Silva, K.M., 1965. Social Policy and Missionary Organisations in Ceylon 1840–1855. London: Longman and Green and Co. De Silva, K.M., 1981. A History of Sri Lanka. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fernando, Celestine (Marshal Fernando ed.), 2013. History of Christianity in Ceylon (1796–1903). Colombo: Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue. Fox, William Buckley and Clough, Benjamin, 1819. The Third Report of the Ceylon Native Schools, With the Care of the Wesleyan Missionaries with an Appendix. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.

66   The British colonial period Godage, Charles, 1969a. ‘The School Commission’. In Education in Ceylon (From the Sixth Century B.C. to the Present Day). Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs: 399–414. Godage, Charles, 1969b. ‘The Last Days of the School Commission’. In Education in Ceylon (From the Sixth Century b.c. to the Present Day). Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs: 415–424. Goonetilleke, A.P., 1937. ‘A Buddhist Schools’ Endowment Fund’. The Buddhist VII.11, March: 478–480. Goonewardene, G.E. QL from Galle, 20 May. Vol. LXXVIII, June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 144–146. Gratiaen, L.J., 1922. ‘The First English School in Ceylon’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Lit­ erary Register VII.III, January: 141–147. Green, H.W., 1886. ‘Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1886’. Ceylon Administration Reports, 1886. Part IV: D69–97. Green, H.W., 1888. ‘Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1886’. Ceylon Administration Reports, 1888. Part IV: D83–110. Harris, Elizabeth J., 1993. Crisis, Competition and Conversion: The British Encounter with Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2006. Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2012. ‘Memory, Experience and the Clash of Cosmologies: The Encounter between British Protestant Missionaries and Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka’. Social Sciences and Missions 25.3: 265–303. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2013. ‘Buddhism and the Religious Other’. In David Cheetham, Douglas Pratt and David Thomas (eds), Understanding Interreligious Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 88–117. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2016. ‘Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism: A Spatial Perspective’. In Elizabeth J. Harris, Paul Hedges and Shantikumar Hettiarachchi (eds), Twenty-­First Century Theologies of Religion: Retrospection and Future Prospects. Leiden: Brill: 57–75. Harvard, William, M., 1823. A Narrative of the Establishment and Progress of The Mission to Ceylon and India Founded by the Late Rev Thomas Coke under the Direc­ tion of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Conference. London: W.M. Harvard. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin, 1816a. ‘Extract of a Letter from the Missionaries, Messrs. HARVARD and CLOUGH, to the MISSIONARY COMMITTEE, Colombo, Aug. 26, 1815’. The Methodist Magazine XXXIX: 115–120. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin, 1816b. ‘Extract of a Letter from Messrs Harvard and Clough, to the Missionary Committee, Colombo, Nov.  3, 1815’. The Methodist Magazine XXXIX: 199–200. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin, 1817. School Report To the General Com­ mittee in London for the Management of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Missions, September 1817. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin 1819. The Ceylon Wesleyan-­Mission Native School Report for 1818: To the Executive Committee for the Management of the Wes­ leyan Methodist Missionaries throughout the World. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Langdon, Samuel, 1890. ‘Visits to Mission Stations No.  VII’, The Ceylon Friend 6 4th Series, October: 114–116.

Spatial impact of missionary schools   67 Malalgoda, Kitsiri, 1976. Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Marks, Philip, 1871. Report from Philip Marks. The Mission Field: 266. Pascoe, C.F., 1901. Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G.: An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1900. London: SPG. Rajaindran, A., 1969. ‘Dual Control in Education’. In Education in Ceylon (From the Sixth Century B.C. to the Present Day). Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs: 437–446. Ruberu, Ranjit T., 1969. ‘Early British Educational Activities’. In Education in Ceylon (From the Sixth Century b.c. to the Present Day). Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs: 359–374. Scott, John, 1872. QL, Kollupitiya, 6 June. Vol. LXXVIII, June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 133–138. Scott, John, 1878. QL, Kollupitiya, 11 May. Vol. XCII, June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 105–106. Selkirk, J., 1844. Recollections of Ceylon after a Residence of Nearly Thirteen Years with an Account of The Church Missionary Society’s Operations in the Island and Extracts from a Journal. London: J. Hatchard & Sons. Small, Walter (ed.), 1968. A History of the Methodist Church in Ceylon 1814–1964. Colombo: The Wesley Press. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1841a. ‘Report of the Central School Commission’. The Friend V.IV, October: 61–68. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1841b. ‘Education in the Native Language – II’. The Friend, V.VI, December: 101–109. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1843. ‘Native Education’. The Friend VI.IX., March: 161–168. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1864. Jubilee Memorials of the Wesleyan Mission, South Ceylon: 1814–1864. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Tennent, James E., 1850. Christianity in Ceylon with an Historical Sketch of the Brah­ minical and Buddhist Superstitions. London: John Murray. Tillett, G., 1982. The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Triggs, A. 1890. ‘A Missionary Tour in the Galle District’. The Ceylon Friend 2, 4th Series, June: 34–38. Vimalananda, Tennakoon, 1963. Buddhism in Ceylon under the Christian Powers and The Educational and Religious Policy of the British Government of Ceylon 1797–1832. Colombo: M.D. Gunasena. Woodhouse, Edmund, 1884. ‘State Interference with Pansala Education’. The Orientalist 1.1, April: 89–92. Young, Richard F. and Somaratne, G.P.V., 1996. Vain Debates: The Buddhist-­Christian Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon. Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Vol. 23. Vienna: University of Vienna.

4 The spatial impact of church building

As Buddhism has its shrine (a mere shed) on the summit of Adam’s Peak, 7,800 feet above the sea level, Christianity has built its noble sanctuary on the elevated Plains of Newara Eliya, direct from which rises Pedro Tragalla, the apex of Ceylon, to the height of 8,200. The Plain, the centre of which is so appropriately occupied by our Church, being the highest habitable point of the island.…1

In the last chapter, I examined the spatial impact of the establishing of Christian missionary schools in Sri Lanka and argued that the establishing of day and Sunday schools generally came first for the missionaries. After all, when they arrived, Dutch churches still existed, however dilapidated, and the colonial government itself was committed to church building in Colombo.2 Yet, schools and churches became intimately connected. In this chapter, I examine the spatial impact of church building in the predominantly Buddhist South of the country, culminating with a case study of the building of St Paul’s church, Kandy, on ‘crown’ land that was close to the Daḷadā Māligāva (the Temple or Palace of the Tooth). For the missionaries, although schools came first, the imperative to preach was equally if not more important and this inevitably led to the forming of congregations. At first, however, these did not encroach on ‘Buddhist’ space. James and Ann Chater, the first Baptist missionaries, gathered a congregation in a warehouse in the multi-­religious Pettah, outside Colombo Fort, which, by 1815, was known as the ‘Baptist Mission Chapel’ (Harvard 1823: 256), but their congregation consisted mainly of ‘young Europeans and a few Burghers who understood English’ plus soldiers (Fernando 2013: 25). Some open-­air preaching in villages outside Colombo followed, including Biyagama (Fernando 2013: 27). The Wesleyans at first preached to existing English-­speaking congregations, using former Dutch or garrison churches, for instance to worshippers in the Dutch church in Galle (Harvard 1823: 150 and 153). Then, when the decision to use interpreters was taken in late 1814 or early 1815, open-­air preaching became important, a development that drew large numbers of the curious (Harris 2012: 285; Harvard 1823: 223–242). Whether open-­air preaching was seen by Buddhists as an encroachment into their space depended on its location. Where the ground on which it happened was neutral, the spatial change was impermanent. People could listen, observe,

Spatial impact of church building   69 laugh, ask questions, respond to exhortations3 and move on, perhaps to the vihāra. For, in a neutral public space, curiosity and amusement could be indulged without obligation or commitment. If the preaching took place close to a Buddhist vihāra, however, the impact was different and the early Wesleyan mission saw several examples of this, particularly through the methods of Benjamin Clough, a member of the initial Wesleyan group. There was no problem when Clough entered Buddhist space to observe, to learn or to converse about religion. Clough recorded being guided up a hill with blazing torches, together with the Mahā Mudeliyar and his son, to witness the opening of a new ‘preaching temple’. Remaining quietly for several hours, he was amazed that ‘neither preacher nor interpreter left their pulpits’ (Spence Hardy 1864: 44–46). And in 1816, Clough recorded that he and Harvard had spent time, ‘conversing, in a quiet way, with the most learned priests we could meet with’ to learn about Buddhism (Clough 1816b: 398; Harris 2006: 21). When, however, Clough started to condemn Buddhism in sermons preached close to a vihāra, he caused the first formal protests against Christians that I have found, after 1796. For instance, at Vesak 1815, Clough combined a sermon on John 3:164 with a refutation of ‘transmigration’, outside a magistrate’s bungalow close but not inside Kälani Mahā Viharāya, since Clough thought they had ‘no right to interrupt them [monastic Sangha] on their own ground’. According to Clough’s account, however when the monks at the Mahā Viharāya heard that Clough’s audience had asked him to return, one declared that he would hold ‘a public dispute’ with Clough to prove the superiority of ‘the religion of Budhu’. When Clough returned, together with a convert from the monastic Sangha, still in orange robes, the monk concerned could not be found, causing consternation among the people. He, therefore, preached again. After this, according to Clough, the monks, ‘drew up a petition, and presented it to his excellency the Governor, stating how they had been disturbed and abused by us’ (Clough 1816a: 198; Harris 2006: 197, 2012: 291), thereby demonstrating that Buddhist ‘ground’ extended beyond the vihāra precincts. It is significant, however, that his lay listeners, again according to Clough, began a subscription fund for a church, evoking the statement I have already quoted about Christianity present in ‘the bowels of idolatry’ (Clough 1816a: 198). Another instance of encroachment into Buddhist space, recalled later by Spence Hardy, occurred in 1826, when ‘slips’ condemning ‘idolatry’ were distributed to pilgrims on their way to a festival at Kälani. In defence, Buddhists affixed parodies of the ‘slips’ to a tree on the same road, alongside the flyers themselves, subtly changing the message so that the existence of God was denied, the Buddha’s compassion was promoted and rebirth was affirmed. Clough then wrote, ‘Why I am not a Buddhist,’ ‘in the form of a posting bill’ and displayed it conspicuously in space (Spence Hardy 1864: 286–287; Young and Somaratne 1996: 61–62). Preaching in the open, as early as the third decade of the century, therefore, could lead to polemical exchange, if the space in which it took place was considered Buddhist, creating tension and hurt for both Buddhists and those who were genuinely interested in Christianity.

70   The British colonial period It was inevitable, however, that specifically designed chapels would eventually be built. I will again take the Wesleyans as my prime example, beginning with their first church in Colombo. On arrival in Colombo in 1815, Harvard, co-­ operating with Chater, the colonial chaplains, and the governor, preached in Chater’s ‘pulpit’ in the Pettah and the Dutch church in Wolfendahl. He also led worship for Tamil Christians in his own house in the Pettah, whilst St Thomas’ was being built for them at Gintupitiya (Harvard 1823: 260). When St Thomas’ was finished, Twisleton and the Wesleyans shared responsibility for the services. Spence Hardy claimed that Harvard also ‘held divine service in government schools’ and, when the Dutch church was found too expensive to light, in a workshop, a theatre and a Dutch orphan house (Spence Hardy 1864: 72). Much of this activity ministered to those who already considered themselves Christian. Only after it became obvious that a specifically Wesleyan congregation was forming, that Harvard’s veranda was too small to accommodate it and that no alternative existed was the decision taken to build a chapel. Thomas Coke (1747–1814), founder of the Wesleyan mission to Asia who died at sea on the way (Vickers 1969), had anticipated the building of chapels, bringing with him a plan of Liverpool’s Brunswick chapel, convinced that it was appropriate for ‘a hot climate’ (Harvard 1823: 261). It was this plan that was used for the first Wesleyan chapel in Sri Lanka, built in the Pettah. Money was raised by subscription. Harvard claimed this was a ‘novelty’ in Sri Lanka (Harvard 1823: 261).5 It was not, of course, a novelty within Sri Lankan culture, and it was being experienced in the construction of schools, but it may well have been within the expatriate British community, from whom the majority of donations came, although St Paul’s, the new Anglican church in Colombo, built at much the same time, also experimented with this (Anon 1895: 61). Harvard first approached the governor, who generously donated, as did Sir Alexander Johnston and ‘each member of His Majesty’s Council’ (Harvard 1823: 262). Harvard particularly noted the help of Twisleton and J.D. Palm, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. (Harvard 1823: 262). The donor list Harvard submitted to the Ceylon Government Gazette, in July 1815, contained in addition a number of Sinhala and Tamil donors, particularly Sinhala Modeliyars (Harvard 182: 368–369). In today’s terms, it was an ecumenical venture that demonstrated solidarity not only between different nonconformist Protestant groups but between the Established Anglican Church and Wesleyans, in contrast to the conflict that occurred later in the century. I would surmise that this was due mainly to the personal friendships that had developed between the Wesleyans, and both Twisleton and Andrew Armour, the first chaplain at St Paul’s. Harvard’s strategy, in fact, was a resounding success. The chapel was opened in 1816 in Dam Street, two years after the Wesleyans had arrived and in the same year as St Paul’s. It was known at first as ‘The Wesleyan Mission House’ (Harvard and Clough 1816: 119), and would have catered for a multi-­ethnic congregation, given the diversity of the Pettah. When this ‘Mission House’ was opened, small worshipping Wesleyan groups were already in existence in other parts of the South, because of schools. When new locations were entered, after 1816, the buildings erected were often intended

Spatial impact of church building   71 from the start, to double as church and school. As with the Pettah church, neither the Wesleyan Methodist Conference nor what would become the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society funded these (Pritchard 2013: 27), although there was a ‘Missionary Fund’ which could make small grants to building projects. The land had to be gained or subscriptions ensured through local negotiation and fund-­raising. Sometimes the subscriptions came first and sometimes the gift of land. Here my narrative intertwines with that of the last chapter. Risking generalization, the first donations of land were given either by British civil servants or by local people sympathetic to Christianity or to the idea of education, some of whom were Buddhists. For instance, the original Wesleyan school chapel in Dehiwela, south of Colombo, ‘stood on property belonging to a Buddhist’ (Mendis 1887). It must be assumed that this was with the agreement of the Buddhist concerned. A new chapel was built only in the 1880s. The result of this negotiation and fund-­raising, for the Wesleyans, Baptists and the CMS, was often a functional, modest, multi-­purpose building. In some locations, this eventually gave way to a larger building, for instance those built by the Wesleyans in the 1830s in Colombo Fort and Seedua, 56 by 42 feet for the former and 65 by 40 feet for the latter.6 I have found only one example before 1844, when a new government grant system was introduced, of a Wesleyan Methodist chapel being given a formal grant from the British administration, as opposed to an individual donation by a member of the administration. The grant was of £50.00 and it was given in November 1838 to a church in the predominantly Tamil area of Batticaloa by Governor Mackenzie, governor between 1837 and 1841, who was sympathetic to the missionary societies, in line with directives from the Colonial Office (De Silva 1965). Mackenzie claimed that it was the largest sum given … out of the colonial revenues, since the Government of Sir Robert Brownrigg, by any British Governor, towards the erection of an English Church, wherein the Liturgy of the Church of England is on every Sabbath day used.7 He described it ‘as the neatest Church I have ever seen on the island’ and mentioned the ‘Wesleyan Minister’ as ‘one of the most zealous in his calling’. Its Wesleyan provenance is obvious when he added that Archdeacon Glenie had condemned the grant in his newspaper.8 Small mentions three ordained Wesleyan ministers who were linked with Batticaloa at this time, Ralph Stott, John Hunter, who arranged for the purchase of land for a church, and George Hole, but does not mention the grant, presumably because it was not recorded in Minute Books (Small 1969: 202). By the 1830s, therefore, the missionaries in Sri Lanka had erected a limited number of buildings that were specifically built as churches and a larger number of day and Sunday schools that doubled as churches, as examined in the last chapter. Some Buddhist support for this, in grants of money and land, was still noticeable, although there had been some opposition.

72   The British colonial period

The middle years of the century The entry of the SPG in 1840 and the creation of the Diocese of Colombo in 1845 brought a further element of competition into the building of churches as it did in the building of schools. To take a snapshot of the Wesleyans in South Ceylon in 1840, just before Bishop Chapman’s arrival, a chapel was planned for ‘Nagalgam’ (Nagalagamuwa) in the Colombo circuit. In Batapola, near Ambalaṃgoda, a 40 by 20 feet chapel was almost complete, funded by subscriptions. A much more substantial chapel, for Europeans and Sri Lankans, was being planned for Kollupitiya, not far from Colombo Fort, ‘capable of seating 250 or 300 persons with a burial ground attached to it,’ again funded by subscriptions and a grant of £100 from the home committee.9 At the same time, CMS missionary, Oakley was attempting to build a church near Kandy, at Getambe. The school room was being used for worship but the people wanted a church. Ground was donated by the British administration. The villagers donated £100.00 and funds were taken from CMS’s ‘new Native Church Building Society’s Fund’. In 1847, the foundation stone was laid,10 by which time Chapman had arrived and a Church Ordinance had been passed by the British administration allowing government grants for church building.11 However, Oakley’s experience from this point onwards is most significant. Oakley had intended to build a church of 40ft by 18ft to provide for 60–70 people. By October 1847, however, he had appealed to his home committee for more funds. He had spent £290.00 and was already £80.00 in debt to a member of the congregation, but had not purchased glass for the east window, a bell, a pulpit, a reading desk, a porch or a portico for the west end. Another 100 pounds were needed for this. Of the £290.00, about £114.00 had been raised by subscription from the ‘natives’. Europeans had given just £11.00 and the Bishop of Colombo, a mere £10.00. An unfinished church was opened on New Year’s Day, 1848.12 In the end it cost about £500.00.13 That a mere £10.00 had been given by Chapman betrayed his priorities. After his first journey around his diocese in 1947, he wrote with disappointment and anger, ‘Only in one place, Trincomalie, did I find the Church holding its proper position in influence and activity. In all our seven weeks’ absence, we crossed the threshold of one consecrated Church’ (Beven 1946: 74). The other Anglican churches had only been dedicated and were unpretentious.14 The Getambe chapel would have fallen into this category. Chapman did not seek to rebuild unpretentious churches. Rather he worked towards larger statements and more substantial buildings, keenly aware of spatial positioning, in line with his view, mentioned in the last chapter, that there had been an almost criminal neglect of the spiritual welfare of Sri Lankans (Pascoe 1901: 661–662). That his Anglican Church in Nuwara Eliya could vie, in spatial positioning, with the Buddhist shrine at the top of Śrī Pāda gave him great joy and was significant enough to mention to SPG, as the quote at the beginning of this chapter demonstrates. In 1852, he wrote exuberantly about three new churches built in Sinhala villages near Colombo overseen by SPG missionary, Thurston:

Spatial impact of church building   73 They are better than anything to which we have hitherto been accustomed in Ceylon; and it is cheering to see the interest taken by the native Singhalese in their progress.… May each be as a light set upon a hill amid the thick darkness around.15 Central to his imagination was the establishing of a prestigious school in Colombo, with a cathedral in its grounds. The school, St Thomas’, has already been mentioned, built on elevated land overlooking the harbour. The ‘corner stone’ of the cathedral was laid in June 185216 and consecrated in September 1854, Chapman claiming that: [I]t is so far in point of solidity of material, and architectural taste, beyond every other Building in the Colony, as at once to commend itself to all who see it, both externally and internally, though nothing more than would beseem a good parish church in your [SPG Headquarters in London] more ecclesiastical temperature.17 He continued to describe the ‘solid granite’ outside and ‘elaborate native workmanship’ inside, ‘satin wood’ for the ‘nave, stalls, pulpit and throne’, and ebony for ‘the chancel, rails, sedelia, credence, altar table and chairs’.18 He was proud both that it surpassed missionary edifices and also that it engaged indigenous talent. Other large churches were attempted by Chapman and his successors. Bishop Claughton, in 1862, described the church in Moratuva, south of Colombo, where the Wesleyans were also strong, as being, ‘of more architectural pretension than any in the island, the Cathedral alone excepted’.19 Later, he said more: The Church is the finest or nearly so in the Island and its lofty tower strikes you when you see it with the cheering thought that the population are worshippers of the True God, brought to the saving knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are so in the main though divided into Roman Catholics, Wesleyans and the Church of England and by no means free from the taint of Buddhism.…20 Intra-­Christian competition, expressed spatially, is implicit here. Negombo and Mātara also experienced this. In 1881, the District Court and a relatively new Anglican Church stood on two hillocks in Negombo. William Bestall, the Wesleyan missionary there, lamented this, explaining that a Wesleyan chapel had been opened as early as 1820 south of the ‘esplanade or “village green” ’ on the site of the old Dutch church. It had begun as a Sunday school, an offshoot of the one in the Pettah. Until the Anglican church had been built, the Wesleyan chapel had been the only place of worship besides the Roman Catholic church, and Presbyterians and Episcopalians had attended. With the Anglican church, competition entered. Bestall wrote:

74   The British colonial period Pitiful as such an ungrateful and illiberal course must appear in the presence of the heathen, and insulting to ordinary intelligence, it has had the effect of thinning the little English congregation in the old mission church. It is, however, a good congregation to preach to, sympathetic and thoroughly Protestant, which is a matter of great importance in witnessing against the abounding idolatries of Romanism. (Bestall 1886: 14–15) I would suggest that his ire was not only because an Anglican Church had been built but also because it held an elevated position equal to the court house. As for Mātara, an Anglican church there was first proposed in 1858 by SPG missionary, S.D.J. Ondaatje, son of the Tamil colonial chaplain, J.J. Ondaatje. Chapman recorded that ‘a small plot of land in an advantageous position was given to him [Mr Ondaatje] as sole Trustee’.21 Mātara, however, was one of the first Wesleyan mission stations in 1814, the Wesleyan chapel eventually serving Portuguese Burghers and Sinhala converts. It declined after Gogerly left in 1839. However, at the point when Ondaatje was requesting an Anglican Church, the work was picking up again, but members were eventually lost to both Anglicans and Baptists (Small 1969: 144). It reached its lowest point in 1872, with 23 full members and 20 on trial, although a new church was opened that year (Small 1968: 250). In 1893, however, it was the Anglicans who were lamenting loss of members to ‘Dissenting Chapels’ in Mātara, surmising it was due to the Anglican clergyman being ‘Ceylonese’ and not European (Anon 1893: 134–135). Spatially-­expressed competition, therefore, occurred not only between the Anglican diocese and nonconformists but also, occasionally, between evangelical missionary societies, in spite of an early, unwritten code of conduct that they would not compete with each other. Oakley (CMS) reported at the beginning of 1841 that the Baptists had opened a ‘station’ in Kandy and, by offering higher salaries, had taken away two CMS assistants.22 His next letter claimed they were drawing members of his congregation away by not insisting on monogamy.23 Two years later, he noted that some had left the Baptists because they were not receiving attention.24 In 1852, when struggling to build the new church, he lamented that ‘Methodists … are also very desirous of increasing their numbers at our expense’ and that the Presbyterians, who were about to build a church, would ‘’ere long, offer another inducement to the people to forsake us’.25 By about 1870, therefore, the modest churches erected by missionary personnel had been supplemented by larger Anglican churches in Colombo and elsewhere, including Kandy, which I will return to later as a case study. Furthermore, different evangelical and nonconformist societies were abandoning earlier patterns of coexistence in favour of competition, all of which was witnessed by Buddhists with interest and perhaps amusement as they saw converts weighing up which church would serve their material interests best.

Spatial impact of church building   75

The later years of the nineteenth century The competitive ethos I have outlined and the modesty of many of the CMS and nonconformist churches/schools erected in the 1820s and 1830s meant that by the 1870s and 1880s, replacement or restoration was necessary. Finding resources for this was more difficult than it had been at the beginning of the century, mainly due to Buddhist revivalism predicated on anti-­Christian sentiment, although there were exceptions to this. As late as 1874, the Wesleyan missionary, Baugh, could report from Galle, ‘A nominal Buddhist has given us a first rate site for a school-­chapel, where we trust to see a good work of God’ (Baugh 1874: 263). Baugh’s experience of trying to erect a new Wesleyan chapel at Ampitiya, a small Sinhala village near Kandy, however, was different and illustrates the difficulties missionaries faced: Up to about three weeks ago, we were much cramped and hindered by the accommodation, for school and services, which we were obliged to put up with, first a miserable wattle and daub shed and then two more miserable under rooms, of a native house. But, after prayer and a good deal of anxious thought, I determined to get out of, and be free from, such hindrances. I had saved all the old material from the site of our Kandy chapel where some old store room existed, and by begging a few doors and windows from Mr Walker – a good Presbyterian friend near us – I got together timber sufficient; and then secured a contract for bricks, tiles and labour to complete the building, which was begun and finished in about two months. It is of course, an unpretending edifice, but is durably built, and will seat 140 or more people. (Baugh 1872: 178) From his next station, Galle, he wrote passionately about the need for church buildings in outlying villages – at least four or five buildings – lamenting that there were simply no funds for this (Baugh 1875: 39). At Weligama also, a completely new Wesleyan Methodist church became necessary. In April 1891, it was hoped that ‘a strong, substantial building with half-­walls, verandas all around, a moderate sized class-­room at the back’ could be built (Anon 1891a: 236). By July 1891, the old church had been pulled down to make way for this. In the same year, in the Meterembe Circuit, adjacent to the Galle Fort Circuit, ‘a shed’, opened just 11 years earlier in a Buddhist village had been pulled down to make way for a school-­chapel that was still quite unpretentious, just 56 by 22 feet with a small room at the back (Anon 1891b: 299). It is also important to add that Roman Catholic church building also increased towards the end of the century and this was perceived as a threat by the Anglicans, Bishop Copleston stating that ‘the Roman opposition … aims at conversions from our church by fair or unfair means’ (Copleston 1900: 11).

76   The British colonial period

Buddhist responses What effect did these churches and intra-­Christian competition have on urban and rural space? Could small, functional buildings, perhaps doubling as a school, be seen as threat by other religious communities? Could the larger churches in Colombo and Moratuva, or those that seemed purposely built on elevated ground, be seen as a threat? The last chapter offered some answers for those buildings that doubled as a school. As long as a school could be judged of pragmatic use, as a means to an end under British imperialism, or as an institution that could be subordinated to the Buddha in their cosmological imaginary, Buddhists did not see it as a threat. The same was true of churches. If Buddhists could move unhindered between church and vihāra, patronizing both, or between church and an exorcism, acts of remarkable generosity towards Christianity were possible. For instance, Bishop Chapman, soon after arriving, was amazed to find that Buddhists in Badulla wanted to build a church by subscription to commemorate the memory of Major Roberts, who had been tragically killed by lightening in June 1845.26 This was so distant from Chapman’s preconceptions about religious identity that he could only construe it as the first fruits of ‘an abounding harvest’, namely the conversion of Badulla Buddhists. Later, he accepted his mistake, claiming that the town was still ‘ground to be occupied’.27 Thomas Skinner, soldier and then civil servant, in contrast, interpreted the gesture as Buddhists overcoming ‘their religious scruples’ because of their regard for Roberts (Skinner 1891: 79–80). Neither saw the gesture for what it was: a demonstration of the ability of Buddhists to respect the Christianity of a government servant who had shown them courtesy. Buddhist respect towards Christianity was always possible if respect was shown to Buddhism. As in the case of schools, Buddhists experienced threat when they realized just how rigidly the missionaries drew a spatial and conceptual line between what was Christian and what was ‘heathen’. This was not only perceived as a denial of courtesy but as an expression of contempt, and bewilderment sometimes resulted (Harris 2006: 189; Harris 2012: 294). In 1858–1859, for instance, CMS missionary, Wood reported from Kōṭṭe that 11 members had been struck off his list for attending a ‘heathen’ ceremony for the recovery of a sick relative. The hurt and bewilderment this caused is implicit in his description: When this was announced to them they endeavoured to prove that there was nothing in the ceremony derogatory to their profession of Christianity. The fact is, that, like the majority of the people in the immediate neighbourhood of the compound, they thought that some of their heathenish practices might be well grafted upon their Christianity. The prevailing opinion in and around Cotta is, that the being half Christian and half Buddhist is far better than being decidedly Christian or Buddhist.28 As I have argued, Buddhists had no problem in accepting Christianity, even practising it, if they could subordinate it to Buddhism. When this world view

Spatial impact of church building   77 was attacked, churches became a threat to the dhamma, as the spatial expression of the wider threat to the dhamma cited by historians of the nineteenth-­century Buddhist Revival (Bond 1988: 45–74; Harris 2006: 186–204; Malalgoda 1976: 191–255; Young and Somaratne 1996: 79–154). And the response of Buddhists was to adopt, in defence and in rupture with former practices, the same spatial imaginary as the missionaries, namely the drawing of non-­negotiable distinctions between Buddhist and Christian space, in a pattern similar to their opposition to Christian schooling. As CMS missionary, Higgins, declared in the mid-­1860s, ‘the late Buddhist controversy’ had impressed upon people that there was ‘a great distinction’ between the two religions so that they could not ‘profess one without denying the other’.29 In some locations, Buddhists simply built a vihāra or renovated an existing one – a strategy that Muslims also adopted with respect to their mosques. For instance, a Wesleyan minister in Hambantota declared that ‘Having no rival the Buddhists were quiet, but now they are building a temple; and the long neglected Mahomedan mosque has been white-­washed. They all seem to act against their common foe, Christianity  …’ (Wikramasinha 1876: 101). In others, what happened was more vigorously defensive and confrontational. The Wesleyan mission at Godapitiya can be used as an example. The mission ‘station’ there was started in 1838, with an indigenous missionary, Peter Gerard de Sylva, using the veranda of his house for worship. A chapel opened in January 1839, with 150 people present (Small 1969: 65), and a school in 1840, reversing the model of the early decades of the century (Small 1969: 145). By 1840, the 150 present at the opening of the church had translated into just 18 adult members, suggesting that the opening had been supported by many Buddhists in a spirit of inclusive hospitality.30 A new chapel was opened in 1850, spatially located in an eminent position (Small 1969: 145). In the 1850s, the number of members fluctuated between 15 and 25. The situation changed again with the appointment of a Christian mudeliyar called Wijesinghe (Small 1969: 249). With his patronage, a more substantial church was planned on a different plot of land. Opened in March 1865, when the era of Buddhist–Christian debates was beginning, Baugh described it as ‘a plain oblong building of about 40 feet long by 25 feet wide’ with a tiled roof and a simple gothic style (Baugh 1865: 20). He continued: It is situated in the ‘garden’ of the Gangabadapattoo Modliar [Wijesinghe] which, being on a hill, the chapel has quite a commanding position. Being seen from a distance it becomes a striking object for the traveller, and especially if he be from ‘Briton’s Isles,’ for it reminds him strongly of the land of his fathers as well as, it may be, of the ‘House of God’ in which his fathers worshipped. It is quite away from all the large towns in the island, with but one or two Europeans anywhere near it; but it is just where it should be, right among the heathen, and close beside a (Pansala) – Priest’s House. (Baugh 1865: 20)

78   The British colonial period A church that was separated spatially from the vihāra was not for Baugh; he delighted in the proximity. Yet, it caused difficulties to both Christians and Buddhists. The first chapel was probably not seen as an outright threat by Buddhists. Even the second one, although it was in ‘an eminent position’ might not have been seen as threatening. However, in the more charged atmosphere of the 1860s and 1870s, the third church, visible from the road, was a more direct threat, since it changed the traditional spatial domination of vihāras in the southern villages of Sri Lanka. There was also no doubt that some villagers were changing their religion; in 1873 there were 36 church members. Wesleyan missionary, Shipstone, recorded the defensive measures taken. In 1871, for instance, a lay Buddhist, egged on by a monk who was smiling at the missionaries’ backs, declared, ‘You may cut my throat but you will not induce me to change my religion’ (Shipstone 1871: 118). By 1875, the Buddhists had brought in a revivalist, ‘a man of the stamp of Migettuwatte priest’ [Mohoṭṭivatté Guṇānanda] to preach against Christianity, according to indigenous Wesleyan, Pereira. Pereira claimed that he defused this by speaking gently to the people and opening a school, to which Buddhists were willing to send their children (Pereira 1875: 42). By 1884, therefore, the membership had only dropped by a little to 30. By 1885, however, there had been a dramatic drop to 13 and, by 1889, to nine (Small 1969: 249). The conflict in Godapitiya, I would suggest, was predominantly spatial and it concerned which building should dominate both the horizon, and the psychological and emotive world of the villagers. Poulier, another Wesleyan missionary, did not share Baugh’s initial optimism about the benefits of church and vihāra being close together in the polarized atmosphere of Buddhist revivalism. Based in Weligama, he wrote in 1872 that the: Chapel stands solitary between two Buddhist temples, one at a distance of about 500 yards and the other about 200 yards, to the annoyance of the worshippers in the Chapel; especially when it so happens that the gatherings of the Buddhists fall on Sundays, as they are guided by the changes of the moon. Often I had occasion to send for a Police Constable to stand at the Chapel door for the sake of tranquillity. (Poulier 1872: 1670) Poulier, I am convinced, would have preferred his church to have been situated at a distance from the vihāras. For it is obvious in his writings that Buddhists were using Poya Days (Full Moon Days) to exhibit the strength of their presence. Although Tennent could write, in the 1850s, that, ‘nothing can be less obtrusive than the Buddhist worship, or less ostentatious than the demeanour of its priesthood’ (Tennent 1977 (1859) II: 705), this was not the case as revivalism strengthened. Noise was used as a tool of inter-­religious competition, giving missionaries a reason beyond the separation of ‘heathen’ and Christianized space to avoid obtaining land near a Buddhist vihāra. In the 1850s, Wesleyan missionary, Joseph Rippon, reported that, in Mātara, there had been no

Spatial impact of church building   79 Portuguese Burgher congregation for three weeks because of Buddhist ceremonies (Small 1969: 144). Nicholson, when trying to exchange a plot of land in an ‘unacceptable back street’ in Dondra for a more central and accessible site, searched for 13 months. Each of seven suggested sites was rejected for different reasons, two because they were, ‘in sight of the temple and monastery, where fierce offence and constant drumming would make our services impossible’. Eventually a person offered to buy the old premises and purchase any plot of land the mission desired, which led to an enclosure ‘exactly suited for our operations’ (Nicholson 1876: 91). Similarly, indigenous Wesleyan minister, David de Silva, prayed for strength as he left Wellawatte for Pānadurē, declaring, ‘The Buddhists there are very numerous, very influential, and very zealous – a great Buddhist festival is just now being carried out in the temple, which is near our chapel. The festival is to continue several weeks’ (De Silva 1873: 186). By this point in the century, sound, a non-­material dimension of space, had become an instrument of revival and inter-­religious competition. An ordinance to outlaw noise that would disturb the peace, unless a special licence was obtained, came into law in 1865 (Roberts 1990: 241–242). If a licence was obtained – and many were given – noise had to stop ‘within one hundred yards of any place of public worship’ (Roberts 1990: 250). Roberts charted some of the inter-­religious disturbances that resulted from this, drawing on police reports. Significantly, he stressed the difficulties Buddhists faced in judging which of their traditional, identity-­forming practices were acceptable within this hardening colonial environment. Roberts, however, did not adequately recognize that, in the hardening revivalist atmosphere, Buddhists, by the 1870s and 1880s, were choosing to utilize sound as an instrument of the inter-­religious competition they were seeking to provoke. Missionary records cite many examples of the ordinance being challenged. For instance, according to CMS missionaries in Kōṭṭe, the Buddhist vihāra there in July 1870 held a ‘grand and pompous’ ceremony to mark the cremation of a ‘Chief Priest’, using ‘all sorts of musical instruments’ in the procession and erecting ‘some triumphal arches’ decorated ‘richly with silk’. Missionary, Kannangar, asserted that none of his congregation went, adding, ‘Such a thing as that was never witnessed in connexion with Buddhism in Ceylon, at least not since the extinction of the Kandian dynasty in Ceylon.’31 The Koṭahēna Riots on Easter Day, 1883, however, were provoked by a Buddhist procession that had received permission under the ordinance. The revivalist organiser, Mohoṭṭivatté Guṇānanda, no doubt knew that processing in front of St Lucia’s Roman Catholic cathedral on Easter Day, even if it was to reach the nearby Buddhist temple, Dīpaduttamārāmaya, where a new Buddha image had been installed, would be provocative. I doubt, however, whether he could have anticipated the attack that Catholics at the cathedral launched on the Buddhist procession, leaving two dead, a Catholic and a Buddhist, and many injured (Somaratne 1991; Young and Somaratne 1996:191–192). Sound was not the only spatial strategy employed by Buddhists in their conflict with Christians. Temporary buildings of wood and palm leaves were also used provocatively, drawing on the traditional practice of constructing temporary

80   The British colonial period bana maḍuvas, or preaching halls. According to De Silva, Mohoṭṭivatté Guṇānanda was particularly fond of this method: The Buddhist Champion [Guṇānanda] since entered Colpetty [Kollupiṭiya] and continued to deliver his blasphemous lectures there in a spacious building erected for that purpose.… The benighted and mischief-­making people at Wellewatte following the example of their neighbours erected a poor temporary shed between our Chapel and my residence and invited the priest there too. A placard was put up a few days previous to the effect ‘that Gunananda Priest of Mohottywatte will deliver a lecture showing the fallacy of Christianity and the truth of Buddhism.’ (De Silva 1871: 132) There than followed an exchange of placards, with the Methodists replying that ‘proper persons were prepared to prove the fallacy of Buddhism and the truth of Christianity’, to which the Buddhists responded that they would welcome such a discussion. A day was appointed but Guṇānanda, at this point, refused to debate (De Silva 1871: 133).32 Paul Rodrigo, also writing in December 1871, further south from Colombo, claimed that, ‘The Budhhists [correct spelling] have erected a large temporary banna madowa or bungalow not very far from our substantial large Chapel at Angulana, and have continually read Pirit, a Budhhist exorcism for eight days’ (Rodrigo 1871: 136). Here, the Buddhist monk concerned, ‘Waligama’ (Veligama) came to Rodrigo the day after the ceremony commenced to say that they would not do anything to offend Christians and to ask that the Christians should not oppose them. This, in turn, offended some Buddhists who believed, according to Rodrigo, that the monk had dishonoured Buddhism through being conciliatory. Veligama’s stance was not reciprocated. Rodrigo and other Christians went from house to house to exhort the villagers not to attend (Rodrigo 1871: 136). It is obvious from De Silva’s account that Buddhists had consciously placed their temporary preaching hall in Wellawatte in a location they knew would be provocative, to force Christians to see that their univocal Christian spaces could be challenged. The smallness of the space between the Wellawatte Methodist church and the manse can still be seen today. In the case of Angulana, the level of intentional provocation is not as easy to assess. In other contexts, new preaching halls were not so provocatively placed but nevertheless caused consternation to the missionaries because of the number of people who went to them and the length of time the preaching continued.33 Buddhists also engaged in direct harassment. For instance, CMS missionary, Dibben reported in the early 1890s from Colombo that, ‘Opposition to the street preaching was more pronounced than usual, nine preachers being employed to interrupt the Christian evangelist, and attacks on Christianity in the shape of tracts were freely distributed, even among patients in hospitals.’34 This was not an isolated incident.

Spatial impact of church building   81 The competitive use of space that I have outlined at Godapiṭiya, Welligama, Koṭahēna, Kollupitiya, Wellawatte and Kōṭṭe were not isolated incidents either. The generosity of Buddhists in Badulla was not replicated in other parts of the country as the century progressed, because Buddhists were aware that, even if British administrators could be courteous to Buddhism, the missionary presence within Buddhist villages was far from courteous and represented a threat. By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, this presence was being challenged provocatively through the use of sound and temporary structures to invade space that the missionaries considered Christianized. Buddhists could do little to challenge the presence of larger churches, except through processions. However, the smaller churches and chapels were more vulnerable to attack. One of the larger churches built was St Paul’s in Kandy. After independence, Buddhists considered the location of the building to have been purposely provocative from the start. Were they right? The last part of this chapter uses St Paul’s church as a case study that brings into focus key spatial themes within nineteenth-­century Sri Lanka.

St Paul’s church, Kandy St Paul’s church today is located adjacent to the Buddhist complex within which the Daḷadā Māligāva stands. It is immediately next to the ‘Vel Bodiya’, a large, well-­frequented bodhi tree. Worshippers in the church pews can look outwards through open shutters and see pilgrims mounting steps to circumambulate the tree and pour water into its roots. Noise travels easily between the two sites. Adjacent to the ‘Vel Bodiya’ is the Dēvāle to the goddess, Pattini, and behind both is the Dēvāle to the god Nātha. On the other side of the church is the Dēvāle to Viṣṇu. The Daḷadā Māligāva (lit. Palace of the Tooth Relic) now rises higher than the squat tower of St Paul’s, due to substantial expansion and rebuilding. However, the church can clearly be seen from the broad walkway to the Daḷadā Māligāva and, when one is standing at the church, the church seems to dominate rather than the Daḷadā Māligāva. In the nineteenth century, photographs taken of Kandy by the British represented St Paul’s as dominant. Cave’s guide to Kandy and Peradeniya, for instance, contains two photographs in which the tower of the church dominates the landscape. In ‘Kandy, from Upper Lake Road’, it appears to be higher than the Daḷadā Māligāva. In ‘Kandy, from Lady Horton’s Walk’, only the church tower is visible above deep foliage – the Daḷadā Māligāva is invisible (Cave 1894: 58–59). The photos seem to make an intentional spatial statement affirming Christian dominance. If archival evidence is examined, however, what happened was more complex, as was the Buddhist response, the story beginning in 1815, when the British took control of Kandy. In the years after the British take-­over, the town had two main streets and a grid of smaller streets. According to Davy, who saw it in 1817, the houses lining these roads were one storied, mainly of clay, with thatched roofs, except for the houses of the chiefs, which were tiled (Davy 1821: 365). As Peiris points out,

82   The British colonial period

Figure 4.1  Kandy from Lady Horton’s Walk in Cave’s guidebook.

Davy’s map ‘depicts an urbanized area of no more than half a square mile’ (Peiris 2017: 371). The inhabitants were neither mono-­ethnic nor mono-­ religious. One street, which the British called ‘Malabar Street’ (Sivasundaram 2013: 33), formerly kumaruppē vidiya (Obeyesekere 2017: 132), housed royal relations of the South Indian dynasty that held power before the British (Davy 1821: 365), although Davy skirts over the violence which took place to this street in 1815, when Ähälēpola’s men plundered and wiped out many of the residences of the previous royal family (Obeyesekere 2017: 300). Others from South India, traders for instance, lived elsewhere in the city. There were also Roman Catholics, many of whom were descendants of those who had fled Dutch persecution. Karunaratne notes that the first Roman Catholic church in the Kandyan Kingdom was erected in 1547 and more followed after the 1650s (Karunaratne 1999: 154). Muslims were also present. The only Protestants were the British – the military, their chaplain and the civil servants who followed them. As for Sinhala Buddhists, many based themselves in surrounding villages, cultivating crops, coming to Kandy for limited periods. In 1815, therefore, Kandy was a multi-­ethnic town, although it was spatially structured to affirm the dominance of the Buddha. The urban area was bounded by twin lakes and the complex containing the Hall of Audience, the palace, the Dēvāles and the Daḷadā Māligāva, which Davy wrongly described as ‘the domestic temple of the King’ (Davy 1821: 366). It was rather the legitimation of his kingship, the royal palace being within the ‘sacred premises that houses the relic’ (Obeyesekere 2017: 28). Adjacent to

Spatial impact of church building   83

Figure 4.2  Kandy from Upper Lake Road in Cave’s guidebook.

these were the three Dēvāles to Viṣṇu, Nātha and Pattini. Here, wealth was visibly present and Davy went overboard in orientalist description, as well as giving detailed drawings (Davy 1821: 366–368). The inner sanctum of the Daḷadā Māligāva had walls lined with gold brocade and was filled with gold, gems and flowers. The palace was similarly adorned. Kandy was a town of temples for him, containing, in addition, the Malvatta and Asgiriya Buddhist fraternities, and the Kataragama Dēvāle in the centre of the town.

84   The British colonial period Much of this, however, was relatively new, including the artificial lake bordering the palace. It had been created by the last king of Kandy, Śri Vikrama Rājasinha, to replace and embellish what had been burnt down in the attempted British conquest of 1803–1804. Probably completed by 1812, the king had aimed to create a cosmic, celestial city fed by creative irrigation schemes (Obeyesekere 2017: 31, 42–43, 52, 126–133) and ‘modelled on the abode of the gods of Indian mythology’ (Peiris 2017: 369), a further embellishment of the landscaping analysed by Duncan (Duncan 1990). And the king had made maximum use of this. According to Obeyesekere, when he appeared in the glorious attire worn at his investiture, he became divinity, Sakra or Indra, guardian of Buddhism (Obeyesekere 2017: 137–138). The emotional and physical scars of British violence were, nevertheless, present – the violence of the first take-­over attempt, the scars of the second conquest, when Ähälēpola took vengeance on supporters of the king after John D’Oyley, the ‘master spy’, brought the kingdom to Britain (Obeyesekere 2017: 54 and 57–62), and the violent suppression of the 1818 uprising against the British, which was concentrated in ‘Uva, Dumbara, Hevaheta, Matale, Nuvarakalaviya, Sabaragamuve … and Udunuvara and Yatinuvara (near Kandy)’ (Jayawardena 2010: 78). During the upheaval of 1815, some of the Buddhists who were in Kandy fled to their rural villages (Davy 1821: 371). Other Sinhalas entered from the maritime provinces, some of whom would have received Christian baptism. At first, the British were keen to convey that they were fulfilling the role of the former Nayakkar kings as protectors of the Daḷadā Māligāva, in accordance with the Kandyan Convention. They made the palace the seat of British administration, enforced through the presence of the military. The relatively unadorned Audience Hall became the courthouse, doubling as a church for the military and civil servants. Although Buddhism retained a presence at the heart of this complex through the Daḷadā Māligāva and its satellite Dēvāles, and some civil servants, John D’Oyley for instance, visibly demonstrated support for Buddhism, the balance of power radically changed. After 1815, for instance, land in the town that belonged to the Kandyan king was deemed Crown land by the British, able to be used for anything from a military hospital to the church that is the subject of this cameo (Peiris 2017: 372). As the nineteenth century continued, these experiences were to sap the artistic energy of the town (Obeyesekere 2017: 322–323). I have already mentioned that Lambrick and Browning were the first missionaries to arrive in Kandy. The two eventually found the only rentable accommodation in the city.35 In 1821, they applied to the British administration for land to ‘erect a Missionary establishment’, hoping to build, with help from London, a house capable of accommodating two families, a school room and a printing office.36 In a familiar pattern, a school rather than a church was their first priority, as described in the last chapter. After some false starts, land was granted to Browning in 1822, Lambrick having lost his post as chaplain and returned south. Browning described it as ‘a very eligible piece of land in the midst of the town’, given on the condition that permanent buildings were erected on it.37 It had, in

Spatial impact of church building   85 fact, been taken from Rāma Vihāra lands from Uḍavattākale (Karunaratne 1999: 241), a wooded area close to the centre of the town. A temporary building was erected first. A permanent school room, also used for Sunday worship, was completed in January 1826 (Selkirk 1844: 202). By 1825, the school had between 30–40 children38 and this gradually increased, until a government school that taught English was opened in the early 1830s, lessening attendance at school and the Sunday congregation.39 In 1835, William Oakley joined the CMS team in Kandy, staying in Sri Lanka until his death on 18 July 1886, not once returning to England in 51 years.40 In 1839, Oakley wrote that the Sunday morning congregation had improved so much that he was thinking of asking the home committee to permit the building of what would have been quite a substantial church on the mission premises, costing about £1,000–£1,200.41 His justification was that the school room could only accommodate 180. When 120 children had been accommodated, there was only ‘a small space for adults’.42 This was, of course, a different project from the Getambe church mentioned earlier. By 1840, therefore, when plans for St Paul’s had already begun, Kandy had a CMS mission with a Christian school room that doubled as a church, with a congregation that was almost entirely Sri Lankan, although many of the Sinhala people would have come from the South. In spite of the initial reluctance of Kandyans to send children to school, Buddhists were by then offering hospitality to CMS personnel. In 1837, Oakley claimed he had free access to the vihāras in Kandy, that priests had invited him to come as often as he found convenient and that some had come to his house, although, not unsurprisingly, his hope that this might lead to conversions was disappointed.43 Outside Kandy, in neighbouring villages, there were more CMS mission congregations and schools. According to Selkirk, in 1840, there were 18 Sri Lankan teachers (two of whom were women), 22 communicants, and 13 schools, containing 313 boys and 56 girls (Selkirk 1844: 227). Some of the buildings were covered with thatched straw; others were larger with tiled roofs. Six years later an SPG missionary, Wenham, appealing for funds for work in Kandy could, however, condemn the CMS missionaries for having ‘very little success’,44 but this could say more about intra-­Christian competition than facts on the ground. Apart from the CMS mission, there had been a brief Wesleyan mission from 1836–1839. In January 1836, the South Ceylon Wesleyans appointed Spence Hardy to Kandy.45 He stayed one year. By January 1837, only assistant missionary, Poulier, was actually in Kandy but a small congregation was forming.46 By January 1839, Spence Hardy had re-joined him but by December 1840, he was back in Colombo and Poulier had moved to Mātara. They left 39 Wesleyans in Kandy47 but, by the beginning of 1842, this had dropped to six.48 No church was built. By 1840, a Baptist station in Kandy was about to be opened. A Presbyterian church, or Scot’s kirk, was also at the planning stage, to cater for the Scottish Regiment, Presbyterian planters and members of the Dutch Reformed Church who had come from the South. In 1843, one of the sites that had been mooted for St Paul’s was given for this by the government, who also undertook to grant an amount equal to that gained by private subscription

86   The British colonial period (£750).49 In 1844, a committee was appointed but the church would not be complete until 1856 (Stephen 1995: 14). There was not, however, a church for the colonial chaplain in Kandy to minister to his Protestant congregation consisting mainly of ‘Civil and Military Servants’.50 Only the Audience Hall was available. Proposals for a church to meet this lacuna were first voiced in the 1830s, in the same decade as the government was also discussing the restoration or replacement of St Paul’s in Colombo, which was mainly patronized by Portuguese Burghers,51 and the building of a new church in Trincomalee. For the CMS missionaries, what was being proposed was a ‘garrison church’.52 At first the Colonial Office favoured the Audience Hall being converted into a church, believing it would be cheaper than a new building. Explorations on the ground, however, found that the cost of conversion would all but equal the cost of a new church without the convenience.53 A surveyor general’s report, however, argued otherwise. This meant that the Colonial Office was hesitant to move from its original position, citing the small number of English residents in Kandy and the fact that only a few Sri Lankans, ‘might be desirous of attending Divine Worship’.54 The debate continued with a new governor, MacKenzie, insisting to the Colonial Office, as late as October 1839, that a divided and renovated Audience Hall would be inappropriate.55 All this does not suggest that the proposed church was seen by the Colonial Office in Britain as a tool to eclipse or dominate Buddhism. It was to serve those already Christianized and was not to be too costly. Yet, the decision to build a new church was eventually taken. A precedent was being set in connection with St Paul’s, Colombo, namely that a government grant would match pound for pound that raised by local subscription, as was also agreed for the Presbyterian church, with the implication that this would be from affluent citizens. Eventually this principle crystallized in the Church Ordinance of 1844. In an impassioned letter, however, the colonial chaplain in Kandy, Norman Garstin, contested a subscription system, citing the straitened circumstances of Protestants in Kandy and suggesting that ‘Societies at home’ might help, as well a system of payment for church seats.56 MacKenzie then asked Lord Glenelg at the Colonial Office whether the colonial revenues could possibly meet the ‘entire expense’ of building churches in Kandy and Trincomalee, since it would be ‘in vain to look for any considerable amount being contributed by those who attend divine worship’.57 He did not win, in spite of further pleas about the relative poverty of the Kandyans and military intinerancy.58 Local subscriptions had to be forthcoming. A committee was appointed in 1841 at a meeting presided over by McKenzie (Karunaratne 1999: 242–243), the names of whom were inscribed on a plaque still present in the church, including members of the military, Garstin, Mooyart, Oakley and Sri Lankans such as H. de Alwis. By the end of 1841, £500.00 had been raised.59 In November 1842, Campbell, who became governor in 1841, was able to send to the Colonial Office, an ordinance to provide for a Church in Kandy.60 It affirmed that ‘several persons’ had subscribed ‘certain sums of money’ and that the governor of Ceylon had consented to match this, ‘provided

Spatial impact of church building   87 that such a sum shall not exceed the sum of £1,500’. It also set out arrangements for the appointment of trustees with the colonial chaplain as ex-­officio chairman. Garstin’s proposal concerning the renting of pews also appeared. With the nomination of trustees in December 1842, the original committee was dissolved. On 30 May 1843, ‘a block of crown land one acre and one rood in extent’ was granted by deed to the church (De Lanerolle 1993: 1) and the cornerstone was laid in the same year. In 1846, the church was opened for worship. The SPG, was by this time providing clergy for the church, namely H.H. Dadelszen (Abeyratne 1993: 50). On 25 January 1853, Chapman consecrated the church, dedicating it to St Paul, ‘the Chief Apostle to the Gentiles’ (Abeyratne 1993: 51), bringing in, for the first time in the history of the church, a missionary perspective. In the end, it was much more expensive than originally planned, Oakley claiming in 1852 that it had ‘already cost upwards of £7,000’.61 The church was about 120 feet by 80 feet, built in a cruciform structure with neo-­gothic features and a squat tower, which, at this point, was higher than the Daḷadā Māligāva. Sirr, a British resident, described it as ‘a very handsome church’ (Sirr 1850 I: 91). Other contemporary comments were less favourable. The Ceylon Times, on 21 August 1846, described it as ‘an ignoble monument of bad taste and a preposterous example of ignorance of design and of architectural principle’ (Abeyratne 1993: 35; Karunaratne 1999: 246). Significant for this study is that the architecture contained few indigenous elements. It was built on what was by then Crown land adjacent to the Audience Hall and the Daḷadā Māligāva, on space taken from the Dēvālāyas, particularly the Pattini Dēvālāya (Karunaratne 1999: 241). The booklet published to mark the 150th anniversary of the church claimed that, ‘Three sites were visited’ before the final site was confirmed (De Lanerolle 1993: 1). Karunaratne’s research throws light on this. The locations discussed included a site on what is now D.S Senanayake Vidiya (in the British period, Trincomalee Street, eventually used for the Presbyterian church), one at or close to the court house, built in 1828 at the top of Colombo Street, and one either near the gates of the King’s Pavilion or between the court house and the pavilion (Karunaratne 1999: 243–245). The first was a fair distance from the Daḷadā Māligāva. The second was closer to it but not adjacent. It was the last option that was chosen, on a road that, in the British period, was called Pavilion Street, now, Deva Veediya. In all the archival letters I have examined – from the governors to the Colonial Office, from Bishop Chapman to SPG Headquarters, from CMS missionaries to their headquarters – I have not found one that linked the church’s location with dominance over Buddhism, save for the words of Bishop Chapman himself at the consecration, when he named the church with the words: Surrounded as it is on almost every side by Buddhist temples, two of which adjoin its enclosure, I fixed the conversion of St Paul, the chief Apostle to the Gentiles, for the ceremony to give both the dedication and the name to the Church. (Beven 1946: 271)

88   The British colonial period In the choice of site, more important than the presence of the Daḷadā Māligāva was the level of noise from commercial activity (Karunaratne 1999: 244) and proximity to the centre of the British administration, namely the palace and the Audience Hall. I would argue that the location of the Daḷadā Māligāva was almost the last factor in the mind of the British when the site was chosen. It should also be remembered that, during the nineteenth century, other buildings lay between the proposed site of the church and the Daḷadā Māligāva. As late as 1962, St Paul’s was separated from the Daḷadā Māligāva by the Police Courts and the Land Registry (Perera 1962: 121). Far more important than the Daḷadā Māligāva was the location of the British administrative centre in the former palace complex. The British, in the early years of their occupation of Kandy, recognized that their presence within this complex reinforced their wish to be seen as successors to the Kandyan Kkings but, by the 1840s, this would have faded into memory, particularly after the death of John D’Oyley in 1824. The buildings were simply the most functional. For the church to be built reasonably close to them was a logical convenience, a reinforcement of imperial power perhaps but not over Buddhism specifically – over the whole province. However, there was one aspect that the British overlooked. Although the British were no doubt aware of the kingly narrative that the palace embodied, I doubt whether they were aware of the symbolic religious narrative that was also present, one that subordinated the gods to the king and the Buddha. For, by default, St Paul’s unwittingly became part of this symbolic narrative. This is perhaps why the Buddhist response to the church was, at first, muted. As I have already mentioned, St Paul’s was located closer to the Viṣṇu, Pattini and Nātha Dēvāles than the Daḷadā Māligāva. The hierarchy that the landscape of Kandy encoded placed the gods of the Dēvāles in a subordinate position to the Buddha, since their ‘kingdom’ was the mundane. Only the Buddha embodied the supramundane. Buddhists in Sri Lanka, then and now, tend to equate the Christian God with the gods of Hinduism. Therefore, in spite of the impressive mass of St Paul’s church, Buddhists in the nineteenth century might have seen the god worshipped there as similar to the gods of the Dēvāles, reinforced by the landscaping of the church. It could then be tolerated, as the British were tolerated. Its ‘kingdom’ belonged to the mundane. Pragmatism combined with what I have termed inclusivist subordination reduced indignation. It is significant also that the consecration of the church came when inclusivist subordination was still possible, before the most energetic and exclusivist stages of the nineteenth-­century Buddhist Revival. This would suggest that the anger that arose in 1970 and again in 1985 (Karunaratne 1999: 251), expressed in a call for the church’s removal, was a post-­colonial phenomenon rather than a colonial one. This is not, however, to argue that anger against Christianity’s domination of space was absent in the nineteenth century, but rather that this did not happen in Kandy, although the message of Cave’s photographs from the Upper Lake Road and Lady Horton’s

Spatial impact of church building   89 Walk would not have been lost on English-­speaking Sri Lankans. It was Anuradhapura, however, that became the focus of Buddhist anger at the desecration of Buddhist sacred space at a later point in the century. Although it could be argued that there was simply no energy for activism over Kandy as well as Anuradhapura, I am inclined to argue that the sacred geography I have outlined was also responsible. To conclude this cameo, the founders of the church chose, out of several alternatives, a piece of land that was close to the centre of British power in Kandy, a power that now visibly eclipsed that of the last kings of Kandy. The principal aim at its foundation was to provide a place of worship for the military and government servants rather than to convert the Buddhist and Hindu population in the city. It is interesting that a letter sent to SPG Headquarters in 1846 by Chapman after a visit to Kandy did not mention the new government-­sponsored church. Rather he explored the possibility of an SPG church there, claiming that Europeans had welcomed the idea and that a Presbyterian had offered him ‘a site of 6–7 acres for a church and parsonage, not to be surpassed for beauty’.62 As late as this, the ‘garrison church’ was not seen by the bishop as a replacement for an SPG church. However, after it had opened for worship, before Chapman’s consecration speech, the chaplains in Kandy began to see the church as more than this, no doubt in conversation with Chapman, as he gave up the idea of a separate SPG church. So Oakley reported in 1852 that, ‘The Chaplain of this Town is not backward to invite the English-­speaking natives to attend his Congregation (a handsome Church and a military band in attendance)’63 It is also obvious from the letters of Oakley to his home committee that ‘the garrison church’ took precedence in the British colonial imagination over his own plans for what he eventually had to admit would only be a ‘plain church capable of accommodating about 150 adults’.64 The 150th anniversary publication of St Paul’s explained the location of the church with words that projected the present onto the past: The proximity of this church to the very heartland of Buddhism, a subject of controversy, is sometimes misunderstood. Perhaps its founders envisaged the need for closer relationship with people of other faiths and only now we realise how true this is. (Gunawardana 1993: 95) I do not agree with this anachronistic liberal assessment. The founders of the church were not seeking a closer relationship with Buddhism. They simply selected a location near the centre of British administrative power. The site, however, inadvertently played into a cosmology that subordinated Christianity to Buddhism. Only in the post-­independence period, when the ground surrounding the Daḷadā Māligāva was re-­landscaped and the Daḷadā Māligāva itself became a symbol of an independent country did the British choice to build a church close to it, with a typically English design, become a point of political controversy.

90   The British colonial period

Notes   1 Chapman to Hawkins, 8 March 1852 (CLRC; SPGA). Yet, Henry Cave’s illustrated guide to Nuwara Eliya and Adam’s Peak does not feature it in his 20-year-­old photographs, although a church is mentioned (Cave 1895: 26 and 34).   2 In the British period, the Portuguese church of St Lawrence had decayed. The Wolfendahl Dutch Church was the garrison church. From 1804, ‘Government House’ in the fort became the garrison church, consecrated as St Peter’s. In 1815, St Thomas’s was opened in Gintupituya, intended for Tamil Christians. In 1816, St Paul’s in the Pettah was opened for worship and consecrated in 1821, holding services in English, Portuguese and Sinhala, intended for Christians who had worshipped at Wolfendahl (Anon 1895: 63). See Beven (1946: 21–31).   3 The Wesleyan missionary, Squance, records an open-­air preaching event when his listeners cried, ‘We will have heaven’, when he asked whether they would choose heaven and hell, and ‘We will forsake our sins and take Christ as our Saviour’, when he exhorted them towards this (Squance 1816: 154). Squance’s use of a translator could have affected the authenticity of this.   4 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (New Revised Standard Version).   5 Clough also appeals to the novelty of subscriptions when describing the request from Kälani and four other villages for churches, also in 1815 (Clough 1816a: 198).   6 MSCD 1831–1870: entry for 13 January 1836 (MCAC). When a Wesleyan chapel was opened at Kollupitiya in 1854, services at the fort were stopped, although renewed again in 1859 and 1860 (Small 1969: 128–129).   7 Mackenzie to Glenelg, 3 May 1839, Ceylon 1839, CO54/170 Vol. 2 (NA).   8 Mackenzie to Glenelg, 3 May 1839, Ceylon 1839, CO54/170 Vol. 2 (NA). This letter also itemizes other grants given to non-­Church of England societies.   9 MSCD 1831–1871: entry for 14 December 1840 (MCAC). 10 Oakley to Venn, 11 March 1847 (C CE/092/48 CMSA). 11 Church Ordinance No. 9 1844 affirmed that the government would give an amount equal to that gained by subscription up to £1,000 and a parsonage of £400; Ceylon Index to Governors’ Correspondence 1834–1846 No.  131 Governor Sir Colin Campbell, 8 August 1844 (NASL). Protests came from Anglicans because other denominations were given equal treatment: Ceylon Index to Governors’ Correspondence 1834–1846 No. 133, 10 August 1844 (NASL). Its implementation seems to have been inconsistent. 12 Oakley to Venn, 13 October 1847, C CE/092/47 (CMSA); Oakley to Venn, 5 August 1848, C CE/092/54 (CMSA). 13 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852, C CE/092/93 (CMSA). 14 Chapman to Hawkins 11 August 1847, CLRC (SPGA). 15 Chapman to Hawkins, 4 June 1852, CLRC (SPGA). 16 Chapman to Hawkins, 4 June 1852, CLRC (SPGA). 17 Chapman to Hawkins, 25 September 1854, CLRC (SPGA). 18 Chapman to Hawkins, 25 September 1854, CLRC (SPGA). 19 Claughton to Hawkins, 17 November 1862, CLRC (SPGA). 20 Claughton to Hawkins, 14 October 1863, CLRC (SPGA). 21 Chapman to Hawkins, 16 November 1858, CLRC (SPGA). The church took two years to build. Claughton favoured Mātara ‘being in the midst of a large Buddhist population’ over the SPG Buona Vista centre in Galle, See Claughton to Hawkins, 14 October 1863. See also Claughton to Hawkins, 19 June 1863 and 8 January 1864, CLRC (SPGA). Buona Vista was not closed but the argument reappeared under Bishop Reginald Copleston. See Copleston to Tucker, 13 June 1900, CLRC (SPGA). 22 Oakley to Thomas Jones, 8 February, 1841, C CE/092/17 (CMSA). 23 Oakley to Thomas Jones, 28 June 1841, C CE/092/18 (CMSA).

Spatial impact of church building   91 24 Oakley to Venn, 14 July 1843, C CE/092/128 (CMSA). 25 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852, C CE 092/93 (CMSA). 26 Chapman to Hawkins, 11 November 1845, CLRC (SPGA). 27 Chapman to Hawkins, 14 February 1846; see also letter of 8 May 1846 (CLRC; SPGA). 28 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1858–1859: 154–165, here p.  156. Numerous other examples of this form of exclusivism are present in missionary records, e.g. ‘Ceylon Mission’ PCMSAE 1846–1847: 92–101, here p. 96: a report from Oakley in Kandy about rules of discipline to recognize none as members or as entitled to marriage or funeral rites who do not separate themselves from ‘idolatry’. 29 ‘Ceylon Mission’. PCMSAE 1863–1864: 175–188, here p. 176. 30 MSCD 1831–1871: entry for 14 December 1840 (MCAC). 31 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1872–1873: 128–146, here p. 134. 32 Later in the letter de Silva records delivering a lecture on Buddhism at Pānadurē with a large number of Buddhists listening at the windows (De Silva 1871: 133). This foreshadows the Pānadurē Debate of 1873. 33 See for example Shipstone 1873: 206: Buddhism has been quickened of late by the erection of a number of Banamaduwas, large temporary pagoda-­like buildings in which a body of priests read bana for weeks together. To these buildings the people flock from far and near and when the festival is at its height thousands are to be seen going and returning. That Shipstone explains ‘Banamaduwa’ underscores the newness of the experience. 34 ‘Ceylon Mission’, PCMSAE 1894–1895: 226–240, here p. 228. 35 Lambrick and Browning to Pratt and Bickersteth, 12 July 1821 (Samuel Lambrick: CMSA). 36 Lambrick and Browning to Pratt and Bickersteth, 12 July 1821 and 20 May 1822 (Samuel Lambrick: CMSA). 37 Browning to CMS Headquarters, 25 September 1822. This land forms part of Trinity College today (Abeyratne 1993: 50). 38 Browning to CMS Headquarters, 1 January 1825 (Browning: CMSA). Selkirk claims that in 1823, ‘the children attending the five schools which Mr. B. had been enabled to establish in and around Kandy were one hundred and twenty-­seven; in July 1826, they had amounted to two hundred and forty-­three’ (Selkirk 1844: 201). 39 Browning to CMS Headquarters, Report from Kandy for 1833 (Browning: CMSA). 40 ‘Ceylon Mission’. PCMSAE 1886–1887: 179–192, here p. 179. 41 Oakley to Jowett, 5 February 1839, C CE/092/10 (CMSA). 42 Oakley to Jowett, 5 February 1839, C CE/092/10 (CMSA). 43 Oakley to CMS Headquarters, 4 March 1837, C CE/092/5 (CMSA). 44 Wenham to SPG Headquarters, 27 August 1846, CLRC (SPGA). 45 MSCD 1831–1871: January 1836 (MCAC). 46 MSCD 1831–1871: January 1837 (MCAC). 47 MSCD 1831–1871: 4 December 1840 (MCAC). 48 MSCD 1831–1871: 5 December 1842 (MCAC). 49 Campbell to Colonial Office, No. 59, 15 March 1843: Ceylon Index to Governor’s Correspondence 1834–1846, Vol. I. Sir Colin Campbell (SLNA). 50 Garstin to Mackenzie, 2 February 1939, Ceylon 1939: CO54/169 Vol. 1. (NA). 51 McKenzie to Colonial Office, 3 May 1839, which speaks of the repairing and enlarging of St Paul’s, Ceylon 1939: CO54/170 Vol. 2 (NA), and McKenzie to Colonial Office, 14 September 1839, which suggests that St Paul’s should be repaired for Portuguese Burghers and a new church built for English Protestants to hold 600, half of the cost funded by subscriptions, Ceylon Index to Governors’ Correspondence 1834–1846 Vol. III No. 52 (SLNA). 52 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852. C CE/092/93 (CMSA).

92   The British colonial period 53 See Horton to Glenelg, 14 December 1836, cited in Karunaratne (1999: 242). 54 Glenelg to Horton 1839 (date not clear), Ceylon 1839 CO54/169 Vol. I (NA). 55 Mackenzie to Normanby, 24 October 1839, Ceylon 1839 CO54/172 Vol. 4 (NA). 56 Garstin to Mackenzie, 2 February 1839, which argued that of 320 Protestant Christians in Kandy, 255 were military. The balance were mainly ‘persons in very poor circumstances’ – clerks with low government salaries and other Europeans who could not afford extras, Ceylon 1839 CO54/169 Vol. I (NA). 57 Mackenzie to Glenelg, 11 February 1839, Ceylon 1839 CO54/169 Vol. 1 (NA). 58 See for instance: Colonial Office to Mackenzie, 3 May 1839, in which the principle of public subscriptions is reinforced, Ceylon 1839 CO54/170 Vol. 2 (NA); Mackenzie to Normanby 24 October 1839, Ceylon 1839 CO54/172 Vol. 4 (NA). 59 Campbell to Colonial Office, 18 December 1841, Ceylon Index to Governor’s Correspondence 1834–1846 Vol. IV No. 20 (SLNA). 60 Ordinance enacted by the governor of Ceylon, with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council, No. 11: An Ordinance to provide for a Church in Kandy. 61 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852, C CE/092/93 (CMSA). 62 Chapman to Hawkins, 14 February 1846 (CLRC: SPGA). 63 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852, C CE 092/93 (CMSA). 64 Oakley to Venn, 7 May 1852. C CE/092/93 (CMSA). Oakley first mentioned this to his headquarters in 1839 estimating a cost of £1,000–£1,200. By 1843, no reply had been received (Oakley to Venn, 14 July 1843, C CE/092.28 (CMSA)). In 1845, he forwarded a plan to convert the school room into a church and to build a new school room (C CE.092/33). This was found to be unfeasible. In February 1846, CMS agreed to a grant of £500 for a new church on mission premises. By 1851, this money had not been received, the small school room was in disrepair and moving furniture each week was inconvenient but Oakley had the promise of £150.00 in subscriptions (Oakley to Venn, 8 November 1851, C CE/092/89). By 1852, his plan had changed to a ‘plain church’ costing £600 to £700 and he was asking for £200–£300 (C CE/092/93). CMS insisted that £250.00 had to come from local subscriptions before this was possible. Eventually, Oakley raised this amount. The church was opened on Easter Tuesday, 1855, as Trinity Chapel, after the bishop insisted on its subordination to St Paul’s (Oakley to Venn, 13 March 1855. C CE/092/115; Oakley to Venn 28 April 1855. C CE/092/117).

References Abeyratne, Malcolm, 1993. ‘Know Your Church: St Paul’s Kandy’. In Kenneth M. de Lanerolle (ed.), One Hundred and Fifty Years 1843–1993: The 150th Anniversary of The Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Kandy: St. Paul’s Church. Anon, 1889. ‘News from the Stations: Trincomalee’. The Ceylon Friend, June: 48. Anon, 1891a. ‘News from Stations: Weligama’. The Ceylon Friend, April: 236. Anon, 1891b. ‘News from Stations’. The Ceylon Friend, July: 299. Anon, 1893. Anonymous letter. Ceylon Diocesan Gazette 17.11, 30 November: 134–135. Anon, 1895. ‘A Brief Sketch of the History of S. Paul’s Church, Pettah, Colombo’. The Ceylon Diocesan Churchman II.8, August: 62–65. Baugh, George, 1865. QL, Galle, 17 April. Vol. LVI, April. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 17–22. Baugh, George, 1872. QL, Kandy, 21 November. Vol. LXXX, December. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 174–180. Baugh, George, 1874. QL, Galle, 27 November. Vol. LXXXVI, December. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 263–264.

Spatial impact of church building   93 Baugh, George, 1875. QL, Galle, 9 July. Vol. LXXXVIII, September. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 34–40. Bestall, W.J.G., 1886. ‘Visits to Mission Stations: An Old Village Mission’. The Ceylon Friend 25, October: 258–261. Beven, F. Lorenz, 1946. A History of the Diocese of Colombo: A Centenary Volume. Colombo: Times of Ceylon. Bond, G.D., 1988. The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response. Columbia, SC: University of Carolina Press. Cave, Henry, 1894. Picturesque Ceylon: Kandy and Peradeniya. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd. Cave, Henry, 1895, Picturesque Ceylon: Nuwara Eliya and Adam’s Peak. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Clough, Benjamin, 1816a. ‘Extract of a Letter from Clough to Mr John Barber, Dated Colombo, Aug. 30, 1815’, Methodist Magazine XXXIX, 1816: 196–199. Clough, Benjamin, 1816b. ‘Extract of a Letter from Mr Clough to Mr Buckley, Point de Galle, 12 February 1816’, Methodist Magazine XXXIX, 1816: 397–340. Copleston, Reginald, 1900. Report of the Ceylon Missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel from 1876 to 1900. Colombo: H.W. Cave & Co. Davy, John, 1821. An Account of the Interior of Ceylon and of its Inhabitants with Travels in that Island. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown. De Lanerolle, Kenneth (ed.), 1993. One Hundred and Fifty Years 1843–1993: The 150th Anniversary of The Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Kandy: St. Paul’s Church. De Silva, David, 1871. QL, Wellawatte, 11 December. Vol. LXXVII, December and March 1871–1872. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 132–134. De Silva, David, 1873. QL, Wellawatte, 27 February. Vol. LXXXI, March and June. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 184–187. De Silva, K.M., 1965. Social Policy and Missionary Organisations in Ceylon 1840–1855. London: Longman and Green and Co. Duncan, James, 1990. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape in the Kandyan Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fernando, Celestine, 2013. History of Christianity in Ceylon (1796–1903). Colombo: Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue. Gunawardana, Sam, 1993. ‘Afterword’. In Kenneth M. de Lanerolle (ed.), One Hundred and Fifty Years 1843–1993: The 150th Anniversary of The Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Kandy: St. Paul’s Church: 95–96. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2006. Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2012. ‘Memory, Experience and the Clash of Cosmologies: The Encounter between British Protestant Missionaries and Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka’. Social Sciences and Missions 25.3: 265–303. Harvard, William, M., 1823. A Narrative of the Establishment and Progress of The Mission to Ceylon and India Founded by the Late Rev Thomas Coke under the Direction of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Conference. London: W.M. Harvard. Harvard, William M. and Clough, Benjamin, 1816. ‘Extract of a Letter from the Missionaries, Messrs. HARVARD and CLOUGH, to the MISSIONARY COMMITTEE, Colombo, Aug. 26, 1815’. The Methodist Magazine XXXIX: 115–120. Jayawardena, Kumari, 2010. Perpetual Ferment: Popular Revolts in Sri Lanka in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Colombo: Social Scientists Association.

94   The British colonial period Karunaratne, Nihal, 1999. Kandy Past and Present (1474–1998 a.d.). Colombo: Central Cultural Fund, Ministry of Religious and Cultural Affairs. Malalgoda, Kitsiri, 1976. Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Mendis, B. Anthony, 1887 (1971). Dehiwela Chapel and How It Was Built. Privately Published Pamphlet. Nicholson, John, 1876. QL, Mātara, 14 November. Vol. XCI. Colombo, December. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 91–98. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 2017. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Śri Vikrama Rājasinha. Colombo: Sailfish. Pascoe, C.F., 1901. Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G.: An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1900. London: SPG. Peiris, Gerald, 2017. ‘The Māligāva Complex in 1815 and Early British Times’. In Obeyesekere 2017: 369–372. Pereira, H., 1875. QL, Godapitiya, 20 March. Vol. LXXXVIII. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 41–42. Perera, S.G., 1962. Historical Sketches (Ceylon Church History). Colombo: Literature Committee Colombo Catholic Diocesan Union. Poulier, J.A., 1872. QL, Weligama, 22 August. Vol. LXXIX. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 167–168. Pritchard, John, 2013. Methodists and their Missionary Societies 1760–1900. Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate. Roberts, Michael, 1990. ‘Noise as Cultural Struggle: Tom-­Tom Beating, the British and Communal Disturbances in Sri Lanka, 1880s‒1930s’. In Veena Das (ed.), Mirrors of Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 241–285. Rodrigo, Paul, 1871. QL, Angulana Circuit, 22 December. Vol. LXXVII, December and March 1871–1872. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 135–138. Selkirk, J., 1844. Recollections of Ceylon after a Residence of Nearly Thirteen Years with An Account of The Church Missionary Society’s Operations in the Island and Extracts from a Journal. London: Hatchard and Sons. Shipstone, John, 1871. QL, Godapitiya, 3 May. Vol. LXXVI, June and September. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 115–121. Shipstone, John, 1873. QL, Galle, 8 August. Vol. LXXXII, September. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 205–208. Sirr, H.C., 1850. Ceylon and the Cingalese 2 vols. London: William Shoberi. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Territory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, Thomas (ed. Annie Skinner), 1891. Fifty Years in Ceylon. London: W.H. Allen & Co. Small, Walter J.T. (ed.), 1969. A History of the Methodist Church in Ceylon 1814–1964. Colombo: The Wesley Press. Somaratne, G.P.V., 1991. Kotahena Riot 1883: A Religious Riot in Sri Lanka. Nugegoda: Deepanee. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1864. Jubilee Memorials of the Wesleyan Mission, South Ceylon: 1814–1864. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press. Squance, William, 1816. ‘Extract of a Letter from Mr. Squance, to his Sister and Friends, Communicated by Mr. Dermott, Point de Galle, Island of Ceylon, July 29, 1815’. The Methodist Magazine XXXIX: 153–155. Stephen, George, S., 1995. ‘Historical Sketch’. In Presbyterian Church Scots’ Kirk Kandy: Souvenir 150th Anniversary. Kandy: Presbyterian Church: 14–30.

Spatial impact of church building   95 Tennent, James Emerson., 1977 (1859). Ceylon: An Account of the Island Physical, Historical and Topographical Vol. II, 6th edn. Dehiwela: Tisara Prakasakayo. Vickers, John, 1969. Thomas Coke: Apostle of Methodism. London: Epworth. Wikramasinha, C. 1876. QL, Hambantota, 30 August. Vol. XCI. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press: 101–104. Young, Richard F. and Somaratne, G.P.V. 1996. Vain Debates: The Buddhist-­Christian Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon. Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Vol. 23. Vienna: University of Vienna.

5 British and Buddhist imaginaries The sacred cities, the Aryan debate and the Tamil Other

In this chapter, I continue to examine the imaginary of the British, moving wider than the evangelical Protestant missionaries. I focus on two themes that fascinated the British in Sri Lanka: the history of Buddhism in the country, particularly as found in the historical chronicles and the ruins of the ancient cities; the origins of the Sinhalas and the Tamils, and their relationship in time and space. The latter evolved into a discourse on race and nation, through two stereotypical judgements: Tamils as invaders and Dravidians, and the Sinhalas as Aryan. Each theme was used by the British to justify imperial rule and their archaeological project, as described in the next chapter. Each also evoked responses from English-­educated Sri Lankans, which I survey at the end.

The British imaginary and the ancient Buddhist cities The first British people to visit the ruined city of Anuradhapura from 1815 onwards were members of the military. An exception was civil servant, Thomas Ralph Backhouse, who visited Anuradhapura in 1823, when he was collector in Mannar, accompanied by a Buddhist monk from Mantota (Bennett 1843: 202; Sivasundaram 2013: 149). Bennett, a civil servant in Sri Lanka from 1816 to 1827 (Harris 2006: 44–52), used what Backhouse told him, when writing his own memoirs. According to Bennett, Backhouse typified the early nineteenth century in that he loved to measure and label, finding, for instance, that the bases of two temples were ‘geometrically correct as to the positions of the angles at the cardinal points’. He concluded that the city was once peopled by ‘a nation pre-­eminent in architecture and civilization’ and interestingly claimed that pilgrims came from South India to visit the city (Bennett 1843: 202). The other major ruined city, Polonnaruva was visited in 1820 by a Captain Fagan to whom I will return. Here it is enough to say that he adopted the same methods as Backhouse to make sense of what he saw (Fagan 1820). Measuring and labelling, however, was not a method that caught the imagination of a wider British readership. It was the Mahāvaṃsa and other historical chronicles, the vaṃsa tradition, which did this. European ‘discovery’ of the vaṃsa tradition is usually linked with George Turnour and 1833, but nothing could be further from the truth, as Roberts has trenchantly argued (Roberts 2004: 155).

British and Buddhist imaginaries   97 Anuradhapura and the vaṃsas were known both to the Portuguese and the Dutch, and this knowledge passed to the British. My own lineage of European encounter with the vaṃsas begins with the Portuguese and the research of Sri Lankan historian, S.G. Perera, who stated, ‘The first Europeans to investigate into our antiquities, to measure the ruins of forest-­clad Anuradhapura, the first to consult Sinhalese chronicles for historical purposes … were Franciscan friars and Jesuits’ in the Portuguese period (Perera 1962: 59–60). Particularly significant was the Italian-­Indian Franciscan, Francis Negrão, who, according to Perera, lived nine years in Kandy as tutor to Rājasimha in the early seventeenth century. He also visited Anuradhapura and measured the ruins, procuring translations of the vaṃsas, through which he constructed a list of Sri Lankan kings (Perera’s Introduction to De Queyroz 1930: 13–14). Negrão’s works were lost but his expertise on Sri Lankan history up to 1612 and Anuradhapura was used by Fernao de Queyroz (1617–1688), when he wrote, The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, which was sent to Lisbon in 1688 but not published in English until the twentieth century (Perera’s Introduction to De Queyroz 1930: 20).1 Perera also states that another Portuguese writer, Diogo Do Couto, who charted the early years of Portuguese control in Sri Lanka, was ‘the first to give a translated summary of the Rajavaliya’. It was knowledge of the Rājāvalī in particular that was passed to the Dutch. Francois Valentijn (1666–1727) was the most significant chronicler of Dutch power in the East. Without visiting Sri Lanka, he attempted a comprehensive history of its kings, beginning with ‘Vigea Raja’ (Vijaya), who, according to Valentijn, came from lower Myanmar (Arasaratnam 1978: 198).2 Valentijn gained his data from Dutch East India Company documents, acquaintances who had visited Sri Lanka, Portuguese records, including do Couto, Robert Knox and possibly a version of the Rājāvalī (Arasaratnam 1978: 28–38). Valentijn’s list of Sri Lankan kings is closer to the Rājāvalī than the Mahāvaṃsa, suggesting that this was the chronicle he accessed, either directly or through do Couto, although an exact chronological equivalence is not present, Arasaratnam arguing in the light of this that he seems to have drawn on ‘independent traditions then extant in Ceylon’ (Arasaratnam 1978: 35). Evidence that the content of the vaṃsa tradition was known by the Dutch is also suggested by the questionnaires that Imam Willem Falck, governor of Dutch-­ruled Sri Lanka between 1765 and 1785, addressed to members of the monastic Sangha (Harris 2006: 171). These were predominantly about doctrine and cosmology but the occasional question betrays awareness of the tradition, such as ‘Is it true that in the Singhalese books there are accounts of many other Budhas, in addition to the Gowtama Budha who visited Ceylon?’ (Harris 2006: 173). At the beginning of the British period, two published works demonstrate that the British built on this European knowledge and accessed manuscripts of chronicles such as the Rājāvalī. The first, by Captain Mahony, was submitted to Asiatick Researches in the 1790s and published in 1803 (Mahony 1803). It claimed to be compiled ‘from the books of the Singhalais’, which included the

98   The British colonial period vaṃsa tradition, although there is internal evidence that some of his information was gained from conversations with members of the monastic Sangha and Falck’s questionnaires (Harris 2006: 171). Towards the end of his article, Mahony included what he labelled an extract from Chapter 6 of the ‘Maha Raja Wallieh: A Singhalais History’ (Mahony 1803: 45–52). It contained paraphrase and Mahony’s comments, and concentrated on Vijaya, the Buddha’s three visits to Sri Lanka and the coming of Mahinda. The second was by a Frenchman in the British civil service, Joseph or Eudelin de Joinville. Also published in 1803 (Joinville 1803), it demonstrates that vaṃsas other than the Rājāvalī were known. Estève and Fabry praised Joinville’s ability, ‘to analyse the chronicles of the Mahavamsa’ and ‘compare the chronologies of ancient dynasties’, with the help of a member of the monastic Sangha (Estève and Fabry 2012: 39). His published article, however, spent more time on cosmology and Buddhahood than history, although Vijaya is mentioned.3 Nevertheless, he stated within the article that he had before him, ‘seven or eight lists of their [Sinhala] kings, not one of which agree’: the Mahāvaṃsa, the Rājāvalī, the Sassanavaṃsa, two Dutch manuscripts, Valentijn’s manuscript and an account by Rajapakse Mudeliyar (Joinville 1803: 419).4 At the end, he listed 17 books used in his article, which included the Rājaratnākarī and the Pūjāvalī but not the Mahāvaṃsa or the Rājāvalī, probably because the inconsistencies in their historical accounts convinced him that they were unreliable. The person who wrote as ‘Philalethes’, the colonial chaplain George Bisset according to Ievers (Ievers 1899: 16),5 is the next link in this lineage. Although he claimed that the ‘early annals’ of Sri Lanka were ‘barren of events, and little susceptible of interest’ (Philalethes 1817: viii), he nevertheless attempted to craft a history of Sri Lanka using these sources, with a recognized debt to Valentijn, in the conviction that ‘fables will often be found to be only a veil thrown over real facts’ (Philalethes 1817: 13). It is obvious from internal evidence that Bisset/ Philalethes considered himself a pioneer in bringing Valentijn to an English audience (1817: 17), claiming that a list of Sinhalese kings ‘from the ancient writings … had never been seen in any European publication’ (1817: 17) before this. Through Bisset/Philalethes, the European appropriation of the Rājāvalī, which had begun in the Portuguese period, continued. Bissett/Philalethes demonstrated knowledge of Dutch but could also have used Andrew Armour’s translation of Valentijn’s account of Ceylon, which was probably submitted to Alexander Johnston (Arasaratnam 1978: 20),6 who was the next pioneer in this area. Johnston presented two handwritten volumes of material about the laws, customs and religion of the island, gained in dialogue with Headmen (Mudeliyars),7 to the Colonial Office in 1832, after many years of compilation. These included manuscripts ‘from the interior of the island’ of several chronicles, including the Mahāvaṃsa, the Rājaratnākaraya and the Rājāvalī, which Johnston declared were ‘perfect’ copies resulting from the work of ‘the most intelligent priests’, who had compared and collated ‘all the different copies which were to be found of each of the histories in all the different Buddhist temples in Ceylon’.8 Johnston arranged for translations to be made and

British and Buddhist imaginaries   99 forwarded them to Edward Upham for publication (Upham 1833). However, the documents Johnston procured from the former Kandyan Kingdom were not those that later orientalists worked with. Turnour, for instance, was scathing of Upham’s edited publication (Turnour 1836: xviii), perhaps unfairly (Sivasun­ daram 2013: 111–116). Before Upham’s and Turnour’s work was published, however, the vaṃsa tradition was generally dismissed by the British as fable, with the exception of those who knew Upham or Turnour before they published, such as Chapman and Forbes, to whom I will return. A typical response came from Harvard, who judged the accounts of Sinhala historians at ‘best exaggerated narratives intermingled with fable’ (Harvard 1823: xlvii–xlviii). The importance of Upham and Turnour was that their work co-­inhered with a moment in British control of the island when the ancient cities were gaining prominence and ‘history’ was an emer­ging element in the imperial imaginary. After 1833, therefore, what was known by a few Europeans could be accessed by many more. Turnour’s translations from the Pāli and Sinhala vaṃsas – the Mahāvamsa, the Pūjāvaliya, the Rājāvalī and the Rājaratnākariya – appeared in three publications, the most significant of which was his translation of the first 20 chapters of the Mahāvaṃsa in 1836 (Turnour 1833, 1836, 1837). Turnour’s translations were definitive until Geiger’s Mahāvamsa, in the first decade of the twentieth century, and they inspired amateur British historians in Sri Lanka, with William Knighton among the first (Harris 2006: 76–85; Knighton 1845). Broadly speaking, there were two interlinked British responses to Turnour’s work, both of which were underpinned by the conviction that had been present among Dutch and Portuguese scholars, namely that the vaṃsas represented history accurately. The first was characterized by the urge to visit, label, measure and verify the geographical locations mentioned in vaṃsas, in line with earlier imperial method. The second utilized European romanticism to re-­imagine sublime landscapes from the ‘golden’ past, a familiar power-­driven imperial motif. The first opened a further door through which the archaeologist as guru stepped. Charles Pridham’s 1849 account of Ceylon combined both approaches. At one level it could factually describe the bodhi tree at Anuradhapura (Pridham 1849 II: 631) and, at another, could become lyrical about Mihintale, the site near Anuradhapura linked to the advent of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, ‘On the consecrated pinnacles of this mountain lingers the faint twilight of an earlier history, which connects the records of another race, and their forgotten prophets with the dawn of Singhalese literature … (Pridham 1849 II: 536). Samuel Baker’s (1821–1893) lyricism went much further. He combined entrepreneurial skills and ruthless arrogance with fascination with Sri Lanka’s past. So, of Polannuruva, he wrote: Let us return in imagination to Pollanarua as it once stood. Having arrived upon the causeway in the approach to the city, the scene must have been beautiful in the extreme; the silvery lake, like a broad mirror, in the midst of

100   The British colonial period a tropical park; the flowering trees shadowing its water; the groves of tamarinds sheltering its many nooks and bays; the gorgeous blossoms of pink lotus, resting on its glassy surface; and the carpet-­like glades of verdant pasturage, stretching far away upon the opposite shores.… (Baker 1855: 72) For the present, however, he had nothing but contempt: But what remains of its grandeur? It has vanished like ‘a tale that is told;’ it is passed away like a dream; the palaces are dust; the grassy sod has grown in mounds over the ruins of the streets and fallen houses … the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain.… There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed at multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin and rank weeds, and utter desolation. (Baker 1855: 75–6; Harris 2006: 44–52) This was reason enough, according to Baker, for the ‘civilizing’ mission of the British. As Pridham, Baker assumed that the ‘race’ that had populated the ancient cities at their height was different from the Sinhala people in the present. Even Fyers, the first president of the CBRAS could speak in the 1870s of the population of the ancient cities ‘having gone out altogether – so utterly, so entirely’ (Fyers 1873: xviii). In the same decade, Smither, who charted the ruins of Anuradhapura, evoked past ‘Buddhist festal-­days’ in lavish vocabulary but then compared them to the ‘half-­famished villager’ of the present, ‘the poor descendant’ of the previous race (Smither 1894: i–ii). By the end of the century, romanticism became enshrined in guidebooks, for example Henry Cave’s. The aim of Cave’s numerous, well-­illustrated guides was to attract the adventurous rich to Sri Lanka. Lived religion was, therefore, employed to boost the romantic attraction of the island. Cave claimed that the only comparison to Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva was the ancient civilization of the Nile (Cave 1907: 1) and, like Baker, he created imaginary landscapes of the past. Anuradhapura, for instance, with ‘monastery and temple, palace and shrine, spaced with fine lawns and extensive beds of sweet-­smelling flowers’ would have witnessed, ‘thousands of yellow-­robed monks’ passing, ‘in stately procession, headed by princes and nobles upon gaily caparisoned elephants’ (Cave 1907: 8).9 Cave did not, as Baker, declare contemporary Sinhala people to be degraded or, as Smither, ‘half-­famished’. They were reduced. The visitor was encouraged to observe, ‘the quaint manners and methods of the natives, which are so foreign to those of our western civilisation’ (Cave 1907: 15). The space surrounding them became quaint-­exotic and the comparison between the past and the present was described as ‘weird’ (Cave 1908: 565).10

British and Buddhist imaginaries   101 Chapman and Jonathan Forbes, to whom I will return in the next chapter, can be used to illustrate the second response to Turnour’s and, in the case of Chapman, Upham’s translations. Chapman visited Anuradhapura in 1828 whilst ‘quartered in Colombo’ (Chapman 1834: 463). His encounter with the chronicles occurred on return to Britain, when he found that his ‘sketches and memoranda’ were confirmed by Upham’s work, although his article demonstrates that he also corresponded with Forbes (Chapman 1834: 463). It was the excitement of this, I surmise, that prompted him to present a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society (RASGBI) in 1832. Forbes met Turnour in 1827 when travelling to Śrī Pāda, a year after arriving in Sri Lanka with the 78th Highlanders. Enthused, he was determined to learn Sinhala and travel to the locations mentioned in the vaṃsas, to prove their credibility and to contest those who were unwilling to recognize that Sri Lanka possessed a recorded pre-­colonial history.11 At this point in the century, those who represented the Mahāvamsa, as history actually saw themselves as the pioneers of a more liberal and respectful relationship with the country. For, if Sri Lanka possessed a recorded history, it could sit at the table of ‘civilized’ nations, even if the current culture of the country left much to be desired. The result for Forbes was a book that represented the ancient cities through the Mahāvaṃsa, rather than through the living tradition, for which he had a similar disdain as Baker, referring to contemporary residents of Anuradhapura as ‘the remnants of a perished race’ (Forbes 1841 I: 241). Generally speaking, therefore, the British imaginary concerning the history and the presence of Buddhism in Sri Lanka moved in the course of the nineteenth century from dismissal of the vaṃsa tradition as either inconsistent or replete with fable, with the exception of Bisset/Philalethes, to an almost uncritical acceptance of it as accurate history. This was combined with a denigration of the contemporary bearers of that history that was used to justify British rule. Linked to this was a narrative concerning Tamil presence in the island, which was eventually informed by the Aryan/Dravidan debate.

Tamils as invaders: Sinhala as Aryan Civil Servant S.M. Burrows was criticized for his argument, presented to the CBRAS in 1885, to which I will return, that the design of the architecture and the carving at both Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva came from and, in some cases, were executed by Tamils (Burrows 1886a: 18), because this seemed to contest another element within the British imaginary: that the Tamils were brutal invaders and the Sinhala people were Aryan and, therefore, linked with European civilization. Marisa Angell has rightly argued that the ‘place of the Aryan theory in the structure of Empire has been overlooked’ (Angell 1998: 42). In the pre-­colonial Sinhala Buddhist imaginary, the term ‘Aryan’ was not used to separate Sinhala from Tamil but rather denoted the noble of spirit (Coomaraswamy 2000: 27), in accordance with its use in the Pāli Canon to describe the morally noble – the ariya dhamma (the noble dhamma), the Ariya Sacca (the Noble Truths or Truths for the Noble Ones), the ariya puggala (noble person) and the

102   The British colonial period Ariya Saṅgha (the noble community of those who have reached one of the four paths of attainment). This changed as the term was foregrounded in British imperial discourse, such that Paul Goldschmidt, a European employed to work on the inscriptions in Anuradhapura in the 1870s, could undertake his work hoping that the inscriptions would throw light on ‘the Aryan origins of the Singhalese’ (Bell and Bell 1993: 33–34). Angell’s survey of the transition from the view that the Sinhala language was a linguistic descendant of Sanskrit and therefore ‘the ancient Aryan language’ – held, for instance, by William Jones (Angell 1998: 45) and Benjamin Clough – to the view that the Sinhala ‘race’ was an Aryan race implicated the CBRAS. Angell focused on two articles in Volume IX (1885–1886) of the JCBRAS (Angell 1998: 49–50). The first argued on the basis of physical anthropology that the Sinhala race was superior to the Tamil and that Tamils were superior to the Veddahs (Sarasin and Sarasin 1887). The second similarly used physical anthropology to divide Sinhala from Tamil but argued that, although the Sinhalas were of Aryan origin because of their language, they had become ‘a mixed race in the highest degree’ (Virchow 1887: 286). Angell argued that the society chose to have this article translated from German but omitted material that argued differently, for instance that the Sinhala language was in fact Dravidian (Angell 1998: 50–51). Angell was right to argue that the Aryan theory gained ground in Sri Lanka only after the middle of the nineteenth century through the work of Müller, who began to conflate language and race (Angell 1998: 47). The Aryan debate, however, predated the above JCBRAS articles. James Fergusson used the term Aryan with absolute confidence in the 1870s, presenting Buddhists as Aryans and Tamils as of ‘a lower intellectual status’ (Fergusson 1899 (1876): 9–11). An equivalent to ‘Aryan’ was ‘Caucasian’. Eugène de Ransonnet published from Vienna, in 1867, a collection of sketches of Sri Lankans. De Ransonnet evidently saw beauty in both Sinhalas and Tamils but of the Sinhalas, he wrote, ‘The Sinhalese especially must be called a fine people and their features distinctly show their descent from the Caucasian race’ (De Ransonnet 1867: description of Plate IV). As for the Tamil as ‘invader’ motif, this began well before the Sinhala/Aryan equation took hold. It is, therefore, worth illustrating its emotive feel among the British, although I am not the first to stress its importance to colonial and post-­ colonial historiography (e.g. Gunawardana 1995). It not only entered through British awareness of the chronicles but also through the conquest of the Kandyan Kingdom, which was indebted to D’Oyley’s masterful manufacturing and manipulating of anti-­Tamil sentiment against Vikrama Rājasinha. D’Oyley would have known Kitalagama Devamitta, the probable author of the previously mentioned anti-­Tamil poem, Kirala Sandēśaya (Obeyesekere 2017: 95). Indeed, he was well known to British administrators in general. In 1826, Devamitta completed for Simon Sawers, then judicial commissioner, a sophisticated Sinhala treatise on Buddhism that drew on Abhidhamma and the Pāli commentarial tradition (Harris 2006: 181–185).

British and Buddhist imaginaries   103 Among those who drew on the vaṃsa tradition, Bisset/Philalethes used Valentijn to assert that ‘Dutugeinunu Maha-­Raja’ killed 129,000 ‘Malabars’ in his first battle, conquered ‘Anuraje Pure’, and killed ‘Ellala the king of the Malabars, and cleared the island from the whole race of these invaders’ (Philalethes 1817: 27). In his account, tranquillity reigns when the Sinhalas are in control and violence, when ‘Malabars’ broke the peace (Philalethes 1817: 12–41). Chapman quoted the Rājāvalī to describe the desecration of Anuradhapura by ‘Malabars’: ‘The holy temples were not only broken down, but also made into seats of defilement; and the images of Budhu were utterly destroyed, and the wicked ravagers were like no other than ravenous brute beasts’ (Chapman 1834: 477). Knighton’s History of Ceylon, which used Turnour’s vaṃsa translations, continued in the same vein. The ‘Malabars’ were presented as ‘unbelieving’, having ‘obstinate valour’ in the face of Dutugemunu, and as invaders (Knighton 1845: 34–36). As for Spence Hardy, he added a theme that will become important to my narrative – the Sinhala people as besieged victims: It is without parallel that so small a people should have retained, for more than two thousand years, their country, their language, and their religion, though constantly assailed by invaders from the continent, one race of whom, the Tamils, have a population of ten millions. (Spence Hardy 1864: 7) Moving chronologically, Ievers, in the 1870s, cast the Sinhala people of Anuradhapura as ‘unwarlike’ and the destroyers of the city as ‘rude warriors’ (Ievers 1899: 24). A German scholar, Kühn, read a paper in Munich in 1885 that stridently asserted that Tamils sought the ‘extirpation’ of Buddhism and achieved the separation of the north from the ‘national kingdom’, a significant phrase (Kühn 1886: 117). As for Burrows, early in his guidebook, he claimed that the Sinhalas were expelled from the north by ‘Malabars’ (Burrows 1905: 5), whom he labelled ‘obnoxious invaders’ (Burrows 1905: 14). To be fair, he also pointed out that these ‘Malabars’ ‘were not precisely the people now known by that name’ (Burrows 1905: 5), namely Tamils. Nevertheless, on several pages, the term ‘Tamil’ took the place of ‘Malabar’ (e.g. Burrows 1905: 20). Cave was responsible for one of the most vituperative representations of Tamils as invaders. He wrote with comparative restraint that when the Tamils overran Anuradhapura, ‘its debasement and ruin were assured’, adding that they ‘encouraged and abetted every lawless effort at destruction’ (Cave 1908: 581–582). When recounting the destruction of Polonnaruva, however, restraint evaporated. Cave represented the Tamil destroyers as rapacious, as ‘wicked disturbers of the peace’, who robbed the inhabitants of their jewels and possessions, and ‘cut off ’ their hands and their feet and ‘despoiled their dwellings’ (Cave 1908: 595). In contrast, he represented the Sinhalas as having ‘splendid qualities’, expressed at Anuradhapura in ‘almost superhuman energy’ so that ‘only the very

104   The British colonial period hills themselves would compare with the buildings which were the outward expression of their devotion’ (Cave 1908: 550). In Polonnaruva, he pointed to their ability to ‘build and maintain a city of such unrivalled wealth, beauty and power’, in the face of ‘constant disquiet’ because of the Tamil threat (Cave 1908: 582). Such rhetoric continued well into the twentieth century, for example in Clare Rettie’s memoir (Rettie 1930: 54). An associated motif was the Tamil as contaminator. For instance, John Abeykon, civil servant, argued in 1884 that ‘the original Sinhalese race from the North began gradually to be depraved in their morals’, because of contact with ‘Tamils from Southern India’, particularly with reference to caste (Abeykon March 1884: 56), adding later that it had also ‘retarded’ their progress ‘in literature, arts and sciences’ (April 1884: 83). Significantly, this paradigm appeared in the report of the 1901 Census, which offered a remarkable fusion of myth, stereotype and fact. Although edited by a Tamil, Arunachalam, its ethos was orientalist. The history offered began with Greek and Roman knowledge of the island, the visits of four Buddhas, the Skanda Purāna and its link with Kataragama, and the Rāmāyaṇa, passing only then to the Mahāvaṃsa’s record of the arrival of Vijaya (Arunachalam I 1902: 7). The advent of Tamils in Sri Lanka was linked with the Vijaya narrative in two sections, in the above-­mentioned history section and in one on ‘Nationality’ (Arunachalam 1902 I: 80). A vocabulary of adjectival excess was used to describe Sri Lanka’s prosperity in the early centuries, perceived to be Sinhala dominated: ‘lavish’, ‘bounteous’, ‘noblest’ and ‘extensive’. The Tamils who arrived centuries after Vijaya were presented as harassers rather than vicious invaders, making ‘incursions’ and ‘inroads’ into Sri Lanka, although cruelty was attributed to them (Arunachalam 1902 I: 10–11). In spite of positive references to Hindu texts such as the Rāmāyaṇa, therefore, and in spite of the report itself being attributed to a Tamil, Tamils were nevertheless represented in this section as outsiders. The section on ‘Nationality’, however, qualified Tamil Otherness by claiming that Sinhala and Tamil had lived in Sri Lanka for over 2,000 years ‘whether in friendly intercourse and the harmonious development of the country or in the fierce conflict of war and devastation’ (Arunachalam 1902 I: 73) but then continued to racially classify them. The ‘progenitors’ of the Sinhala race were Aryans from modern Bihar with an ‘Indo-­Aryan’ language (Arunachalam 1902 I: 75). Sinhala words similar to English were offered as proof. ‘Progenitors’, however, was carefully chosen, because the narrative then subjected Sinhalas to physical anthropology, to conclude that they were probably ‘a mixed race, combining Aryan, Dravidian Tamils, Vedda, Mongolian and Malay elements’, evidently drawing on Virchow (Arunachalam 1902 I: 76). There was then a problematizing of the Sinhala language. Was it a language with an Aryan structure and Dravidian glossary or vice versa, an Aryan glossary and Dravidian structure (Arunachalam 1902 I: 77)?12 The report entered a discourse among the British that sought to divide Sinhala and Tamil in time and in space, whilst nevertheless recognizing that Sinhalas had intermarried with Tamils and South Indians had become Sinhala. It also

British and Buddhist imaginaries   105 echoed Spence Hardy’s representation – that Sinhala history was one of decline in the face of external threat. Before Portuguese ascendancy, for instance, the Sinhala king in Koṭṭē ‘was reduced to impotence’ because of Arab influence over the seaports, the rule of Tamil kings in the North and ‘petty chieftains’ holding ‘mimic courts in different parts of the west and south’ (Arunachalam 1902 I: 11). Neither the Aryan debate nor the Tamil as invader paradigm was uncontested. The Monthly Literary Register, for instance, in 1895, published a satirical article by a Charles Johnston. A few years ago, Johnston argued, all Aryans were eulogized, with their ‘inherent rights to dominate all “non-­Aryan” peoples’ (Johnston 1895: 115). Their brains could grow; those of non-­Aryans could not. All the world was divided between Aryans and non-­Aryans. But, he continued, recently there had been disquiet because no one seemed to know who the Aryans were. He argued that a unified Aryan language did not imply the unity of a race (Johnston 1895). Contesting the ‘Tamil invader’ discourse was also the above-­mentioned argument, namely that Indian architects contributed to Anuradhapura and other ancient cities. Chapman suggested in the 1830s that the Lovamahāpaya at Anuradhapura was so similar to temples in India that it could be of Hindu origin (Chapman 1834) but his remark passed unnoticed, since the discourse on Anuradhapura was not yet informed by the Aryan debate. When Burrows asserted something similar to the CBRAS in 1885, the ideological atmosphere was completely different. He claimed, I cannot help thinking it is just possible that the Tamil invader, who is generally looked upon as a mere iconoclast, was both the artist who designed and the workman who carried out the patterns and mouldings of the Great City. (Burrows 1886a: cxxxiii) He added, ‘Of course one would like to believe that these delicate and chaste designs were the spontaneous outcome of the Aryan invaders in Ceylon’, but felt compelled to argue otherwise, namely that ‘artistic ideas’ ‘were imported into the island from the extremity of the continent (India) and not vice versa’ (Burrows 1886a: cxxxiii). The reaction he received was polite but negative. Cull, who became Director of Public Instruction, understood him as saying that Tamil ‘invaders’ and ‘not the original Aryan inhabitants of the island’ were the architects of Anuradhapura. Bishop Copleston, supporting Cull, expressed sorrow that the credit for Anuradhapura ‘should be lost to the Aryan family’ and argued that art from North India could have influenced the south (Burrows 1886a: cxxxv). John Dickson, in the chair as president for the last time before he left for Britain, stated diplomatically that further evidence would be needed before, ‘they abandoned their belief that those works are Aryan, and that we owed almost all we have in Ceylon of the kind to the Aryan origin of the people’ (Burrows 1886a: cxxxv).

106   The British colonial period The Orientalist published a slightly different set of ‘Notes’ by Burrows in the same year (Burrows 1886b: 132), in which Burrows denied that Sri Lankan architecture was ‘a slavish copy’ of Indian precedents (Burrows 1886b:132) and added nuance, by recognizing that the Mahāvaṃsa placed the erection of the Abhayagiri prior to the sculptures at Amarāvati, one of the Indian sites he had used for comparison. His stance, nevertheless, was that India was the giver and Sri Lanka the receiver, even in the case of the moonstone. Bell argued similarly about the frescoes at Sigiriya. Anyone who compared them with the frescoes at Ajanta, he declared, could not fail to ‘be convinced that artists trained in the same school, if not the very same hands, must have executed both Indian and Ceylon frescoes’. The evidence, he felt, was ‘irresistible’ (Bell 1897: 115), his surmise being that the frescoes were the ‘production of exotic talent specially imported by King Kásyapa (Bell 1897: 120). According to Bell and Bell, there was so much opposition to these statements that he never repeated them (Bell and Bell 1993: 97). ‘Race’ rather than ‘nation’ was usually used to divide Tamil and Sinhala in most nineteenth-­century colonial reports. The concept of ‘nation’, however, had long been present in the European imaginary (Roberts 2004: 97–102) and had influenced Sri Lankan self-­understanding from the Portuguese period (Roberts 2004: 98–105). When the British, however, used it to distinguish Sinhala and Tamil, the result was confusion. For instance, Denham’s report of the 2011 census stated that ‘race’ was better than ‘nationality’ to describe Sri Lanka’s peoples. He gave priority to the Sinhala ‘race’ but added, in a magnificent conflation of race and nation, ‘But of the races which are most numerous in Ceylon – Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, Malays, Burghers, and the British – only one race can regard Ceylon as the home of the nation and the shrine of its national traditions’, namely the Sinhala ‘race’ (Denham 1912: 194). Nevertheless, he also cited Brito to repeat Virchow’s argument, that the ‘Sinhalese are a mixed race’ (Denham 1912: 210). Christopher Brito was a Tamil and a Roman Catholic, who campaigned to become the Tamil ‘unofficial representative’ on the Legislative Council (Gunasingam 2016: 379–381). In 1879, he published a translation of ‘The Yalpana-­ Vaipava-Malai’, a Tamil history of Jaffna probably written in the Dutch period, and, in an appendix, argued that, although the distinction between Tamil and ‘Singhalese’ was now real, it had not always been so. He rejected the vaṃsa account about Sinhala origins to argue that ‘ “Singhalese” had meant an inhabitant of Ceylon, irrespective of race but added that the early Singhalese people had generally been Tamils, with a scarcely appreciable mixture of Magadhi blood’ (Brito 1879: liii). To defend these ‘rather bold’ assertions, he used the Rājaratnākarī and the Rājāvalī to argue that even Sinhala history stressed that Vijaya and his followers married Tamils, swelling the ‘the number of Tamil colonists to at least twenty times that of the Magadhi settlers’ (Brito 1879: lv). A question that was not addressed either by the 1901 or the 1911 census reports was whether Sinhalas once controlled the whole island, although

British and Buddhist imaginaries   107 Denham’s citing of Brito, and articles such as Abeykon’s, implied British interest. The topic arose, however, in the second issue of The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register, when a B. Horsburgh argued, using place names, that a Sinhala occupation of the Jaffna Peninsula preceded a Tamil occupation (Horsburg 1916). J.P. Lewis then supported this, drawing on experience of the Northern Province in 1903–1904, when a Buddha image was discovered among the ruins of Vallipuram (Lewis 1916) and another at Chunnakam, both of which were placed in the Old Park in Jaffna, before the former was presented to the King of ‘Siam’. He concluded that this proved ‘that the Peninsula was at one time a Sinhalese district’ (Lewis 1916: 97). The following year, Paul Pieris added further weight to the argument on the basis of his ‘discovery’ of ‘Kantaródai’ near Jaffna, arguing additionally that Nāgadīpa once referred to the whole of the peninsula and islands (Pieris 1917: 14). Gnana Prakasar, a Roman Catholic priest in Jaffna, then intervened to add more names that he argued were originally Sinhala (Gana Prakasar 1917: 167). These perspectives, however, were contested. A Mudeliyar, named Sabaratna, questioned both Gnana Prakasar and Horsburg. He admitted that some names in Jaffna had a Sinhala origin but others, claimed to be Sinhala, were probably not, for instance names ending ‘Palai’, ‘pitti’ or ‘kollai’ (Sabaratna 1917: 170). There were Tamils in Jaffna, he argued, before the advent of Buddhism and, although the Sinhalas occupied Jaffna from ‘time to time’, they were not the original settlers there. South Indians were (Sabaratna 1917: 171). Pieris’s iteration of the argument was contested by a Tamil government official, C. Rasanayagam, who argued for geographical continuity between the Tamil Buddhist epic, the Manimekhalai, and Kantaródai (Pieris 1917: 31), thus drawing attention to Tamil Buddhism in the North. He evoked a time when Buddhist pilgrims from India knew ‘Nágádīpa’ as Manipallavam, when ‘Tamils and Sinhalese lived side by side in peace and harmony for several centuries, as is evident from names of villages still found in the peninsula’ and when ‘the majority of the Tamils too were Buddhists’ (Pieris 1917: 35–36).

Further Sri Lankan responses As can be seen from this account, Sri Lankans also entered these essentially British orientalist debates concerning occupation, origins and racial provenance. The Sinhala elite, familiar with the term ariya in Pāli literature, responded warmly to the Aryan/Dravidian debate. In Nissan’s words, an ‘idea of the great Aryan Sinhala race’ (Nissan 1989: 69), morally equal if not superior to the British, arose within Sinhala consciousness. Some Sinhalas were happy enough to see themselves as the moral equal of the British. Buddhist revivalists, however, used the debate to stress the superiority of Buddhism and the Sinhalas above their Christian rulers. Anagārika Dharmapāla’s writings illustrate this most effectively.13 He published this, for instance, in 1902:

108   The British colonial period This bright, beautiful island [Sri Lanka] was made into a Paradise by the Aryan Sinhalese before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandal [the British]. Its people did not know irreligion. The pagan beliefs of monotheism and diabolic polytheism were unknown to the people. Christianity and polytheism are responsible for the vulgar practices of killing animals, stealing, prostitution, licentiousness, lying and drunkenness.… For the student of ethnology, the Sinhalese stand as the representatives of Aryan civilization and the Veddah as the product of primitive savagery.… The sweet, tender, gentle, Aryan children of an ancient, historic race are sacrificed at the altar of the whisky-­drinking, beef-­eating belly-­god of heathenism. (Guruge 1991: 482–484)14 Dharmapāla holds an honoured place in the contemporary Sinhala imaginary as the first Sri Lankan Buddhist to promote Buddhism internationally. His idealism, integrity and sheer energy are incontrovertible (Piyadasa 2014). However, his promotion of Buddhism was often predicated on exclusivist distinctions between the Sinhala Buddhist and other communities. Sinhala Buddhists were civilized because of their moral nobility, their Aryan-­ness, and the Other, most particularly the Christian missionary, was violent and destructive. In 1917, he surveyed the history of religion and divided religions into the ‘Destructive and the non-­ Destructive’ (Guruge 1991: 158). Within the first category were ‘Vedic Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, Muhammedanism, Judaism, Christianity, Confucianism and Saiva Vedantism’. Only Buddhism, Jainism and the bhakti Vedantism of the Caitanya movement were placed in the second (Guruge 1991: 160). The religion of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, therefore, stood condemned. Significant also is that Dharmapāla could appeal to biology alone to justify the Aryan nature of the Sinhala people: The descendants of the Aryan colonists were called Sinhala.… The lion-­ armed descendants are the present Sinhalese, whose ancestors had never been conquered, and in whose veins no savage blood is found. Ethnolo­ gically, the Sinhalese are a unique race, inasmuch as they can boast that they have no slave blood in them, and never were conquered by either the pagan Tamils or European vandals. (Guruge 1991: 479) His personal diaries had a different tone. For instance, returning from the USA on ‘The Oceanic’ after participating in the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, he gave a talk on ‘All Religions’ and was asked ‘whether X’tianity is sufficient for the people of Europe and America’. He answered, ‘if people live up to the teachings of Jesus Christ no other religion was necessary’ (25 October 1893).15 The next chapter demonstrates how these attitudes were expressed by Anagārika Dharmapāla and his ally, Välasinha Harischandra, in Anuradhapura.

British and Buddhist imaginaries   109 As for anti-­Tamil sentiment among the Sinhalas, I evidenced in Chapter 1 that anti-Tamil sentiment was present among Sinhalas in pre-­colonial Sri Lanka, if the Tamil Other could not be ‘tamed’, and I have already referred to Obeysekere’s research into Sinhala texts that demonized Śrī Vickrama Rājasimha, to which could be added Purāna Ähälēpola Haṭana, dated to 1838, and Perali Haṭana (Obeyesekere 2017: 278–287).16 British colonial correspondence also suggests that anti-­Tamil sentiment was woven into the South, well before the Aryan/Dravidan debate emerged. Bishop Chapman, for instance, in 1849, regretted sending a ‘Malabar’, albeit Sinhala speaking, to Mātara, because, ‘national prejudices of race and caste and language’ were ‘so strong’ there.17 The colonial debate reinforced such sentiments and encouraged Sinhalas to assign truth to ethnically-­essentialized histories of the island that privileged motifs connected with victimhood and ignored interventions such Rasanayagam’s, in the above-­ mentioned debate. The Aryan ‘myth’ thus became linked with the hierarchical and subordinating cosmology that lay at the heart of Sinhala consciousness. Neloufer de Mel offers an excellent window onto the way in which this consciousness was concretized in theatre at the Tower Hall, which was opened in 1911 and waned in the 1940s, to inform a nationalistic Sinhala Buddhist consciousness (De Mel 1993). Through the plays of John de Silva – teacher, lawyer, journalist, temperance activist, nationalist playwright and theatre company founder (Amunugama 2016: 482–493; see also an obituary: Anon 1922: 2) – the Tower Hall ridiculed the decadence of the British, elevated the Aryan Sinhala woman, and promoted the perceived grandeur of the Vijaya legend, and a sovereign and heroic Sinhala past (De Mel 1993: 13–22). Covert within it, according to De Mel, was also anti-­Tamil sentiment (De Mel 1993: 16–17). In such theatre, nothing was allowed to question the innocence or the moral nobility of the Sinhalas, in direct lineage with the historical representation of the Sinhalas in Cave’s guidebooks and the 2001 Census Report. Before independence, indigenous archaeologists were reinforcing this imaginaire. Foremost was Senarat Paranavitana (1896–1972), Commissioner of Archaeology between 1940 and 1956. In 1943, he analysed the inscription on a second century ce gold plate found at Vallipuram. Taking inspiration from Paul Pieris’s work (Pieris 1917), he argued that the inscription was written in old Sinhala and proved that Sinhala Buddhist civilization ‘flourished in this extreme northern district of Ceylon during the earlier periods of its history, as it did in the rest of the island’ (Paranavitana 1943: 229). He concluded and I quote in full: This inscription also proves that Nāgadīpa [the whole of the Jaffna Peninsula] was governed in the second century by a minister of the Anurādhapura king, that Sinhalese was the prevailing language, and that Buddhist shrines were then being built there. In such references as there are to the Nāgadīpa of the chronicles, as well as in other Pāli writings of Ceylon, there is no indication that in early times this area differed, as it does to-­day, from the rest of the island in the nationality of its inhabitants and their language and religion. In fact there are indications that the extreme North of

110   The British colonial period the island played a very important part in the political, religious, and cultural history of the ancient Sinhalese people. (Paranavitana 1943: 235) He glossed over the fact that one name within the inscription had a Tamil ring to it (Paranavitana 1943: 233). Before the end of the British period, Buddhist monks were also reclaiming the North and East for Buddhism, by moving their communities to Buddhist sites in non-­Buddhist areas. Kemper describes how the site of a ruined dāgäba at Sēruvila in the East, traditionally home to a forehead bone relic of the Buddha, was re-­occupied by Dambagasāre Sumedhaṅkara some years after the British first inspected the ruins. Fully aware of the relic tradition as given in the Dhātuvaṃsa, he was supported by southern revivalist Buddhists and built up a community of monks and eventually Sinhala settlers in a predominantly Muslim area. The rebuilding of the dāgäba stretched from 1922 to 1977, the development becoming mired in settlement/colonization controversies in post-­ independent Sri Lanka (Kemper 1991: 148–160). Godakumbure Revatha, motivated similarly, built a temple near some Buddhist ruins at Dighavapi, also in the East, and claimed that they represented the Dighavapi mentioned in the Mahāvaṃsa. To prevent the ‘theft’ of stones from a ruined dāgäba by Muslim villagers, he took up residence, resisting attempts by the British administration to find him an alternative site (Spencer, Goodland et al. 2015: 74). His work, though, was low key. In 1922, Amarasekera, in The Buddhist, wrote, ‘It is regrettable that the Buddhist public have not thought seriously of repairing this holy but neglected spot and making it easily accessible’ (Amarasekera 1922: 3). The topics, therefore, that fascinated the imagination of the British, as they sought to categorize the country over which they exerted power, gave permission for some brave attempts at restoration and influenced Sinhala consciousness, particularly among a growing middle class that sought an identity-­sustaining ideology that embraced the whole country as holy to the Buddha. Towards the end of the British colonial period, a further voice that built on the concept of victimhood entered, accusing the British administration of oppression in a more sophisticated way than Dharmapāla. Speaking in 1939 and 1946, Albert Godumune argued that Buddhism had been betrayed and dethroned ‘from its original status of being the Sovereign religion of the Sinhalese people to one of many competing religious-­faiths’ (Godumune 1939: 1) and he blamed the missionaries. The Kandyan Convention, he argued, had been an agreement between equals but ‘British Honour’ had committed ‘suicide at the feet of militant missionary Christianity’ (Godumune 1939: 5), when state patronage was withdrawn from Buddhism. For him, land lay at the heart of this. Most heinous was the British appropriation of temple lands after 1856 under Ordinance 10, to which I return in the next chapter, and their judgement in the 1840 Waste Land Ordinance that chena and forest lands attached to villages in the Kandyan areas were waste lands, which led to dispossession, disruption of local economies and poverty (Godumune 1946: 10). He called for a commission to examine and

British and Buddhist imaginaries   111 redress these harms (Godumune 1939: 14–15). Implicit within this narrative was an additional accusation: that the opening up of a plantation economy in the Kandyan highlands was as much about preventing further insurrections as about economic profit (Obeysekere 2017: 324). Each of the debates in this chapter, in both the British and the Sinhala imaginaries, were underpinned by narratives connected with inclusion, exclusion, purity, impurity and authenticity. Each had a spatial expression within the island and pre-­figured post-­colonial debates. In the next chapter, I examine how these imaginaries found expression within the sacred cities, most particularly Anuradhapura.

Notes   1 It was published in Portugal as Conquista temporal e espiritual de Ceylaõ. P.E. Pieris purchased an 1844 copy from the Instituto Historico of Rio de Janeiro and used it to write a history that he passed off as his own: Pieris (1913). Ceylon: The Portuguese Era, Being a History of the Island for the Period 1505–1568. 1913. Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries.   2 Arasaratnam’s work is an extraction of the section on Ceylon ( part of Vol.  5) of Valentyn’s 5 volume Oud en Nieuw Oost-­Indien, the first volume of which was published in 1724 (Arasaratnam 1978: 13).   3 See Harris (2006: 20–34) for an analysis of Joinville’s representation of Buddhist doctrine.   4 Rajapakse was an informant used by the British. A questionnaire answered by monks in Kandy appears in Upham’s 1833 publication, mediated by Rajapakse (Harris 2006: 171; Upham 1833 III: 107–163).   5 The Preface is signed H.W.B. Nov 13, 1816 (Philalethes 1817: ix).   6 See also Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon LXI, 1983: 10.   7 CO54/123 (NA).   8 CO54/123 Preface to Vol. II. (NA).   9 See also Cave (1893) where he illustrates his description of the dāgäba with reference to Anuradhapura, referring to ‘the ancient chronicles’ in his description of golden pillars, walls inlaid with gems and thrones of ivory at a monastery, but adding ‘Oriental exaggeration may to some extent pervade these chronicles …’ (1893: 42); Mitton (1916). 10 For a further late-­century example of a romantic, orientalist re-­creation of Anuradhapura, which presents the people of the city as ‘full of a huckstering feverish energy’, see Anon (1895: 192). 11 For an account of Forbes’s representation of Buddhist doctrine, see Harris (2006: 76–85). 12 A discourse on the extent of Dravidian influence on the Sinhala language re-­appears in The Ceylon Antiquary in the early 1920s. See Kantalawa (1921). 13 For an account of his life, see Guruge (1991), Piyadasa (2014), Kemper (2015), Amunugama (2016). 14 See also ‘By religion, by race, by traditions, by our literature we [Sinhala people] are allied to the Aryan races of the Gangetic Valley’ (Guruge 1991: 518). 15 ‘Diary of the Late Anagarika Dharmapala 1893’. Typed from the original diary. Colombo: Mahabodhi Society. 16 Obeyesekere (2017): 368 gives 26 derogative names and adjectives used for Tamils in Ähälēpola Varnanāva. 17 Chapman to Hawkins, 3 September 1949, CLRC (SPGA).

112   The British colonial period

References Abeykon, John, 1884. ‘The Progress of the Sinhalese in Literature, Arts and Sciences’. The Orientalist I, March: 55–56; April: 82–86; July: 163–165; December: 271–273. Amarasekera, A.B.M., 1922. ‘The Sixteen Great Places of Worship in Sri Lanka’. The Buddhist 8, 25 February: 5; 9, 4 March: 3–4; 10, 11 March: 3; 11, 18 March: 4. Amunugama, Sarath, 2016. The Lion’s Roar: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Making of Modern Buddhism. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Angell, Marisa, 1998. ‘Understanding the Aryan Theory’. In Mithran Tiruchelvam and C.S. Dattathreya. Culture and Politics of Identity in Sri Lanka. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies: 41–71. Anon, 1895. ‘The Place of the Sacred Bo Tree’ (From ‘Cornhill Magazine’). Monthly Literary Register III New Series: 192–193. Anon, 1922. ‘Obituary. Mr John de Silva – Sinhalese Playwright’. The Buddhist 5, 4 February: 2. Arasaratnam, S. (trans. and ed.), 1978. Francois Valentijn’s Description of Ceylon. London: The Hakluyt Society. Arunachalam, P., 1902. The Census of Ceylon, 1901 Vol. I Containing The Review of the Census Operations and Results. Colombo: H.C. Cottle. Baker, Samuel, 1855. Eight Years’ Wanderings in Ceylon. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman. Bell, Berthia N. and Bell, Heather M., 1993. H.C.P. Bell: Archaeologist of Ceylon and the Maldives. Colombo: Archetype Publications. Bell, H.C.P., 1897. ‘Interim Report on the Operations of the Archaeological Survey at Sigiriya 1897’. JCBRAS XV.48: 93–122. Bennett, J.W., 1843. Ceylon and its Capabilities: An Account of its Natural Resources, Indigenous Productions, and Commercial Facilities. London: William H. Allen & Co. Brito, C., 1879. The Yalpana-­Vaipava-Malai or The History of the Kingdom of Jaffna, Translated from the Tamil with an Appendix and a Glossary. Colombo. Burrows, S.M., 1886a. ‘Jottings from a Jungle Diary’. Proceedings of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 1885. Colombo: George J.A. Skeen: cxxxi–cxxxv. Burrows, S.M., 1886b. ‘Stray Notes on Anurādhapuran Archaeology’. The Orientalist II 1885–1886: 133–136. Burrows, S.M., 1905. The Buried Cities of Ceylon: A Guide Book to Anuradhapura and Polonaruwa with Chapters on Dambulla, Kalavewa, Mihintale and Sigiri. Colombo: A.M. and J. Ferguson; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Cave, Henry W., 1893. Picturesque Ceylon: Colombo and the Kelani Valley. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Cave, Henry, 1907. The Ruined Cities of Ceylon. London: Hutchinson and Co. Cave, Henry, 1908. The Book of Ceylon. London, Paris, New York, Toronto & Melbourne: Cassell. Chapman, I.J., 1834. ‘Some Remarks upon the Ancient City of Anarájapura or Anarádhepura and the Hill Temple of Mehentélé in the Island of Ceylon’. JCBRAS 3.3: 463–495. Coomaraswamy Radhika, 2000. ‘Of Vijaya and Maruta: Reflections on Nationalist Discourses of Race and Diversity’. Nēthrā 4. 1–2: 23–53. De Mel, Neloufer, 1993. ‘Tropes of Nationalism in the Modern Sinhala Theatre’. The Thatched Patio 6.2: 8–28. Denham, E.B., 1912. Ceylon at the Census of 1911; Being a Review of the Results of the Census of 1911. Colombo: H.C. Cottle.

British and Buddhist imaginaries   113 De Queyroz, Fernao, 1930. The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, trans. S.G. Perera. Colombo: Government Printer. De Ransonnet, Eugène, 1867. Sketches of the Inhabitants, Animal Life and Vegetation in the Lowlands and High Mountains of Ceylon as well as of the Submarine Scenery near the Coast, Taken in a Diving Bell. Vienna: Gerald and Sold. Estève, Marie-­Hélène and Fabry, Philippe, 2012. Eudelin de Jonville: Quelques Notions sur L’Isle de Ceylon: Some Notions about the Island of Ceylon: Late 18th Century, a French Naturalist Discovers Ceylon. Colombo: Viator Publications. Fagan, Lieutenant. 1820. ‘Description of Some Ancient Ruins and Colossal Figures Discovered at Topary near Minery, on 29th June 1820 by Lieutenant Fagan, of H.M. 2nd Ceylon Regiment, and Contained in a Journal Kept by That Officer During his March with a Detachment from Batticaloa to the Latter Place’. Supplement to the Ceylon Government Gazette: Government Press, August 1st, 1820. Fergusson, James, 1899 (1876). History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. London: John Murray. Forbes, J., 1841. Eleven Years in Ceylon, 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley. Fyers, A.B., 1873. Address Given at the ‘Anniversary Meeting [RASCB] held at the Office of the Surveyor General, November 7, 1872’. JRASCB 1871–1872: xv–xxvii. Godumune, Albert, 1939. The Dis-­Establishment of Buddhism and its Temporalities. Kandy: Kandy Literary Association. Godumune, Albert, 1946. ‘The Plight of the Kandyan Peasantry: with Particular Reference to How a Peasant Land Economy Was Changed into a Capitalistic Plantation-­ economy and the Consequent Results on the Life of the People’. Address delivered to the Rotary Club, 1946. Colombo: Union Printing Works. Gunawardana, R.A.L.H., 1995. Historiography in a Time of Ethnic Conflict: Construction of the Past in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Gnana Prakasar, S., 1917. ‘Sinhalese Place Names in the Jaffna Peninsula’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register II.III, January: 167–169. Gunasingam, Murugar, 2016. Tamils in Sri Lanka: A Comprehensive History (c.300 b.c.–c.2000 a.d.). Sydney: South Asian Studies Centre. Guruge Ananda, 1991. Return to Righteousness: A Collection of the Speeches, Essays and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala. Colombo: Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Information. Harris, Elizabeth, J., 2006. Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harvard, William, M., 1823. A Narrative of the Establishment and Progress of The Mission to Ceylon and India Founded by the Late Rev Thomas Coke under the Direction of the Wesleyan-­Methodist Conference. London: W.M. Harvard. Horsburg, B., 1916. ‘Sinhalese Place Names in the Jaffna Peninsula’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register II.II, July: 54–58. Ievers, R.W., 1899. Manual of the North-­Central Province, Ceylon. Colombo: George Skeen. Johnston, Charles, 1895. ‘The Aryans’. Monthly Literary Register III New Series 5, May: 115–116 (re-­printed from ‘M. Mail’). Joinville, J., 1803. ‘On the Religion and Manners of the People of Ceylon’. Asiatick Researches VII: 397–444. Kantalawa, M.H., 1921. ‘Sinhalese and the Aryan Languages’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register VII.II, October: 105–107; continued in VII.III, January 1922: 137–140.

114   The British colonial period Kemper, Steven, 1991. The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Kemper, Steven, 2015. Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Knighton, William, 1845. The History of Ceylon. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Kühn, Ernst, 1886 (trans. Donald Ferguson). ‘Origin and Language of the Inhabitants of Ceylon’. The Orientalist II: 112–117 (paper given in Munich on 2 May 1885). Lewis, J.P., 1916. ‘Some Notes on Archaeological Matters in the Northern Province’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register II.II, October: 94–99. Mahony, Captain, 1803. ‘On Singhala, or Ceylon, and the Doctrines of Bhoodha; From the Books of the Singhalais’. Asiatick Researches VII: 32–56. Mitton, G.E., 1916. The Lost Cities of Ceylon. London: John Murray. Nissan, Elizabeth, 1989. ‘History in the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation’. Social Analysis 25, September: 64–77. Obeyesekere, Gananath, 2017. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Śri Vikrama Rājasinha. Colombo: Sailfish. Paranavitana, S., 1943. ‘Vallipuram Gold-­Plate Inscription of the Reign of Vasabha’. Archaeological Survey of Ceylon. Epigraphia Zeylanica being Lithic and Other Inscriptions of Ceylon IV 1934–1941. London: Humphrey Milford: 228–237. Perera, S.G., 1962. Historical Sketches (Ceylon Church History). Colombo: Literature Committee Colombo Catholic Diocesan Union. Philalethes, 1817. A History of Ceylon from the Earliest Period to the Year MDCCCXV. London: Joseph Mawman. Pieris, P.E., 1917. ‘Nāgādipa and Buddhist Remains of Jaffna’. JCBRAS XXV 70, Part 1: 11–30. Discussion on the Paper: 31–44. Piyadasa, Rohana Luxman, 2014. A Pictorial Biography of Anagarika Dharmapala. Colombo: Anagarika Dharmapala Trust. Pridham, Charles, 1849. An Historical Political and Statistical Account of Ceylon and its Dependencies, 2 vols. London: T & W Boone. Rettie, Clare, 1930. Things Seen in Ceylon. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Roberts, Michael, 2004. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Sabaratna, S., 1917. ‘Sinhala Place Names in the Jaffna Peninsula’. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register II.III, January: 169–171. Sarasin, C.F. and Sarasin, P.B., 1887. ‘Outline of Two Years’ Scientific Researches in Ceylon’. JCBRAS IX.32, 1886: 289–305. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Territory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Spencer, Jonathan, Goodland, Jonathan, Hasbullah, Shahul, Klem, Bart, Korf, Benedikt and Tudor Silva, Kalinga, 2015. Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace. London: Pluto. Smither, James G., 1894. Architectural Remains: Anuradhapura, Ceylon; Comprising The Dágabas and Certain Other Ancient Structures, Measured, Drawn and Described by James G. Smither, Later Architect to the Government of Ceylon. London: Cooper and Budd. Spence Hardy, Robert, 1864. Jubilee Memorials of the Wesleyan Mission, South Ceylon: 1814–1864. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.

British and Buddhist imaginaries   115 Turnour, George, 1833. ‘Epitome of the History of Ceylon from Pali and Singhalese Records with Notes’. Ceylon Almanac 1833. Colombo: Government Printer: 219–285. Turnour, George, 1836. The First Twenty Chapters of the Mahawanso and a Prefatory Essay on Pali and Buddhistical Literature. Colombo: Cotta Mission Press. Turnour, George, 1837. ‘An Examination of the Pali Buddhistical Annals’. The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal VI.67, July: 501–29; VI.69, September: 713–737. Upham, Edward, 1833. The Mahavansi, The Raja Ratnacari and The Raja-­Vali Forming the Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon. Also a Collection of Tracts Illustrative of the Doctrine and Literature of Buddhism Translated from the Singhalese, 3 vols. London: Parbury Allen & Co. Virchow, 1887 (W.R. Kynsey trans.). ‘Professor Virchow’s Ethnological Studies on the Sinhalese Race, Read before the Anthropological Society of Berlin, January 17, 1885’. JCBRAS IX.32, 1886: 267–288.

6 Ancient cities and narratives of power

In 1882, these words were written of Anuradhapura, probably by a government servant in the city: [T]he park-­like scenery, the pleasant walks, thanks to Mr Dickson, the ponds and tanks, and public buildings which attract opinion on all sides, are indeed interesting objects, by their mixture of ancient and human aspirations and tastes, whilst the mind dwells on the past grandeur or present neglect or future greatness of this first truly noble region of the north, worthy of the visits of more ardent admirers of both nature and art alike. (Unsigned, a provincial column on Anuradhapura, The Ceylon News, 21 August 1882) By 1882, Anuradhapura was a European and Asian visitor destination. It was accessible by road but not yet by rail – that opened in 1904 or 1905 – and had been the capital of a newly created North West Province since 1873. Drawing on a visit in 1828, Forbes described the same location in this way: All the ruins of Anurádhapoora, even the lofty monuments which contain the relics of the Buddha, are either entirely covered with jungle, or partly obscured by forests.… The only place clear of jungle was in front of the Maha-­wiharé (great temple), where a shady tree occupied the centre of a square, and a stone pillar, fourteen foot high, stood beside the figure of a bull cut in granite, and revolving on a pivot. In the entrance from this square into the Maha-­wiharé are a few steps admirably carved with laborious devices, and still in perfect preservation. Ascending these, and passing through a mean building of modern construction, you enter an enclosure three hundred and forty-­five feet in length, by two hundred and sixteen in breadth, which surrounds the Court of the Bo-­tree, designated by Buddhists as Jaya-­Sri-maha-­Bodinwahansae (the great, famous, and triumphant fig-­tree). (Forbes 1841 1: 212–214) Forbes gives the impression here that, in the first decades of British rule, the inhabitants and pilgrims had kept the strongest field for merit-­making, from a

Ancient cities and narratives of power   117 Buddhist perspective, clear of jungle, namely the area surrounding the sacred bodhi tree, and had allowed vegetation to overcome the rest. This would be to distort Forbes’s words, however, since it is obvious from the rest of his description that other parts of Anuradhapura, such as the Thūpārāma, were accessible (Forbes 1841 I: 226) and that pilgrims also visited the Isurumūniya (Forbes 1841 I: 232), the Sela Cetiya and the Dakkhina Dāgäba or Elara’s tomb (Forbes 1841 I: 323; Nissan 1985: 42). He also offered a significant conversation that affirmed that protection and repair of the monuments were considered important (Forbes 1841 I: 228–229).1 Chapman’s description of his visit, also in 1828, mentioned in the last chapter, largely corroborated Forbes’s account but contained important additions. Published eight years before Forbes, it was pivotal in informing the British about Anuradhapura (Sivasundaram 2007: 132; Sivasundaram 2013: 150). Striking about Chapman’s account was his claim that all of the nine ‘temples’ he identified at Anuradhapura were ‘still held in great reverence’, and were ‘visited periodically by the Budd’hists’ (Chapman 1834: 464). Nevertheless, as Forbes, he devoted most of his narrative to the area surrounding the bodhi tree and the adjacent Lovamahāpaya – Brazen Palace, referring to flowers on an ‘altar’ near the sacred ‘Bo Malloa’, to ‘priests’ officiating in a nearby ‘Vihára’ and to lights being placed there (Chapman 1834: 465). He visited seven other sites, the ‘dagobas or mounds’, with a member of the monastic Sangha. Finding that the ‘altars’ were not tended and that the winding paths to them seemed little frequented, he surmised that, beyond the offering of a few flowers at the ‘altars’ of these sites, religious ceremonies were not performed (Chapman 1834: 482). There was one exception, the ‘Ruanwelli Sai’ (Ruvanvälisäya). Although the dāgäba itself was covered with ‘long grass and creeping plants’, the avenue leading to it from the bodhi tree enclosure was ‘kept carefully cleared’ and appeared ‘to be held in much estimation’ (Chapman 1834: 476). He also mentioned one example of attempted restoration. Seventy years before, he claimed, the ‘Lanca-­ráma’ (Lankārāma) had been repaired ‘by a powerful chieftain who resided in the neighbourhood’, making it nearly modern (Chapman 1834: 473). Capper would later to call this a plastering up (1888: 177) and Smither would point, in addition, to a ‘comparatively modern’ retaining wall, which had been constructed ‘to sustain an enlargement of the earlier platform’ (Smither 1894: 14–15). With reference to the Lovamahāpaya, Chapman noted that it was only because the site had once contained a relic that the ‘natives’ attached importance to it (Chapman 1834: 471). The accounts of both Forbes and Chapman indicate, accurately, that Anuradhapura was a place of pilgrimage in the 1820s, although only a limited part of the site that is known now as Anuradhapura was visited for religious purposes. This would accord with John Davy’s 1821 note about Anuradhapura, gleaned from ‘an officer who visited it during the rebellion’ and ‘natives’: Anooradapoora … is now a small mean village, in the midst of a desert. A large tank, numerous stone pillars, two or three immense tumuli, (probably

118   The British colonial period old dagobas) are its principal remains. It is still considered a sacred spot; and is a place of pilgrimage. (Davy 1821: 302) Similarities can be drawn with Polonnaruva. The earliest British account of the city that I have found is Fagan’s in 1820 (Fagan 1820). Perhaps there was no earlier one, since Fagan was told by his native informants that he was the only European to have visited the site since the Portuguese! As I indicated in the last chapter, Fagan’s account was similar to Chapman’s and indeed other early nineteenth-­century British representations of Sri Lanka in its almost obsessive wish to record, label, dissect, divide and measure, in a context where the word and the sketch pad were the only means of recording the space over which the British now exerted power. Fagan had travelled to Polonnaruva with some Kandyans, who, he noted, prostrated in front of a ruined dāgäba. At dusk, he reached the Galvihāra (rock monastery), where three magisterial images are carved into rock. It was rubbish-­ free and still used for worship. His conclusion, nevertheless, was, ‘Whatever was the state of this part of the country in former times, it is now a sterile wilderness covered with impenetrable thorny jungle.’ As with Anuradhapura, however, it is clear from Fagan’s account that the encroachment of the jungle had been held at bay around at least one sacred space. Before Chapman’s account of Anuradhapura, the ancient cities were of little interest to the British administration. Skinner, for instance, was ordered to open a road from Arippu on the west coast to Anuradhapura in 1832. He was evidently not given Davy’s map or indeed Baldeus’s, mentioned by Chapman at the beginning of his account (Chapman 1834: 464),2 since he asserted that maps described it ‘as a mountainous unknown country’3 and that, when he had sought information, he could find no one who had travelled there, ‘not even a Government Agent …’ (Skinner 1891: 162). He was astonished, therefore, on reaching Anuradhapura, to find ‘extensive ruins, large dagobas, magnificent tanks of colossal dimensions’ and a district ‘thickly populated … with evidence of its having been, at some remote date, the granary of the country’ (Skinner 1891: 162), although he admitted that the district was ‘rapidly becoming depopulated by disease and drought’ (Skinner 1891: 165). He stressed that the road he cleared ‘frequently crossed the tortuous old native jungle paths’ (Skinner 1891: 162), the only access routes to the city from the western coast. His conclusion was that the Kandyans had purposely kept ‘this sacred retreat’ as inaccessible as possible (Skinner 1891: 162). Scholarly opinion in the last 50 years has been divided on the significance of these ancient cities to the Sri Lankan imagination in the early nineteenth century, in line with the rupture/continuity debate or what Rogers called the tension between ‘primordialist’ and ‘modernist’ approaches (Rogers 1994). Daniel argued that ‘Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya, like Anuradhapura, were nineteenth century phenomena, subjects of “discovery”, first by British troops, then by British colonial officers and amateur archaeologists’ (Daniel 1996: 58). His

Ancient cities and narratives of power   119 implication was that they were all but irrelevant to local people, until the European gaze fell on them. He was not the first. Elizabeth Nissan, in the 1980s, argued that Anuradhapura, as we know it now, was a creation of the nineteenth century and the early post-­independence years (Nissan 1989). After the move to Polonnaruva, she stated, it ‘fell into decay and was overgrown by jungle’, although she added, ‘it seems to have retained significance as a remote shrine’ (Nissan 1988: 261; see also Nissan 1985: 35). The area around the bodhi tree, she states, was all but deserted for centuries until it was reclaimed in the British colonial period (Nissan 1985: 131). Her position was affirmed and expanded by Jeganathan, who argued that, ‘the authoritative epistemology of Anuradhapura, that is the field of power and knowledge it is located in today, was created in a radical rupture in the nineteenth century. And hence, Anuradhapura is as old as that rupture’ (Jeganathan 1995: 107). As evidence that Anuradhapura was unimportant for the Kandyan kings, he explained that, in 1803, Prince Muttusami, a British sponsored claimant to the throne of Kandy, was ‘asked to cede a province of the Kandyan Kingdom in exchange for assistance’ and proposed Nuvarakalāviya, the area within which Anuradhapura was situated, in preference to the province that contained Śrī Pāda (Jeganathan 1995: 117). Other endorsers of this position include Tarik Jazeel: Anuradhapura’s own ‘ancientness is a modern – that is to say, colonial – production’ (Jazeel 2009: 130) and Gordon Weiss (Weiss 2011: 18). The contesters of these arguments point to continuity rather than rupture. Kemper argued that the narratives of the Mahāvaṃsa, and by extension of Anuradhapura, were deeply ingrained in Sinhala consciousness well before the European ‘discovery’ of it. He pointed out that Davy, in 1821, dismissed Sinhala perceptions of history whilst retelling ‘major parts of that history’, demonstrating that his informants knew Mahāvaṃsa narrative (Kemper 1991: 85). This narrative, he additionally argued, endorsed the practice in Sinhala society of making merit through restoring and building tanks and dāgäbas (Kemper 1991: 136). Roberts argued similarly and stressed the oral tradition, through which any text or story could be made into a chant, scathingly criticizing scholars who took Turnour’s comment that the monastic Sangha lacked knowledge of the vaṃsa tradition to mean such knowledge was a colonial production (Roberts 2004: 155–156). Roberts provided inspiration for Sivasundaram, who, in a seminal article, used narrative, oral history, local legends, ritual, ballads and traditional chants to argue that Anuradhapura was central to the imagination of the Kandyan Kingdom in the eighteenth century and before. He cited Nevill’s collection of palm-­leaf manuscripts, which include vandanā kavi, poems ‘supposed to be chanted by pilgrims on their way to sacred sites, such as Anuradhapura’ (Sivasundaram 2007: 126), the symbolic structure of the äsala perahära, in which representatives of ‘each of the districts paying tribute to the king [including Anuradhapura] processed around the city’, and Kandyan paintings that recorded ‘how Nāyakkar kings had reconstituted Anurādhapura, by reviving monastic communities and restoring paths to the old capital’ (Sivasundaram

120   The British colonial period 2007: 117). He accused Nissan and Jeganathan of falling into the trap of taking 1833, when the British established an AGA in the town, as the key date for Anuradhapura’s modern history. In contrast, he argued that the Nāyakkar kings of Kandy believed that pilgrimages to Anuradhapura could ‘bolster their positions as monarchs by connecting their rule to the distant past’ and that there was ‘a thriving sense of identity’ in Nuvarakalāviya, ‘fed by ancient ruins, the vegetation and legends from the past’ (Sivasundaram 2007: 114). In addition, he pointed out that the rebellion of 1817–1818 sought ‘to enthrone a pretender to the crown’ at Anuradhapura (Sivasundaram 2007: 114). His implied question was: if Anuradhapura had no meaning in the Sinhala imagination, why was all this done? Neither Nissan nor Jeganathan would deny that Anuradhapura or indeed Polonnaruva, continued to have some religious significance after they ceased to be capitals. However, Nissan’s reduction of the emotive significance of the town to a ‘sentimental association’ (Nissan 1985) relied too much on British assessments of the town’s de-­population (Ievers 1899: 65; Nissan 1985: 35). Both Nissan and Jeganathan were also right to point to a re-­creation of Anuradhapura in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that conditioned and was conditioned by Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. However, their argument must be balanced by awareness that Anuradhapura never left the Sinhala imaginary, fed by an oral and ritual culture that kept the capital alive as a focus for Buddhist piety. In 1834, the same year as Chapman’s account was published, Skinner returned to Anuradhapura with Governor Horton and found that the road from Kandy ‘was crowded with pilgrims on their way to the sacred Bo-­tree’ and that the town was ‘perfectly alive with people’ (Skinner 1891:188). It was not, therefore, due to British interest in the history of Anuradhapura following Turnour’s translation of the Mahāvaṃsa, as Nissan implies, that led the district headman in Anuradhapura to resist any change to the location of the AGA in the 1850s with the words, ‘Anuradhapura is a place built as the residence of kings and Rajas’ (Nissan 1989: 70). This chapter builds on the work of Nissan, Jeganathan, Kemper, Roberts and Sivasundaram to argue that the British colonial period did not immediately rupture older Buddhist patterns of engagement with Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva. There was a process of cumulative and incremental change from British ‘partnership’ with or patronage of indigenous players in the restoration of the Anuradhapura ruins – and this is the location I will concentrate on – to imperial control of archaeological excavations that was an expression of power (Angell 1998). Elements of rupture, however, arose, triggered by two factors. The first was the appointment of an archaeological commissioner. The second was the emergence of Protestant Buddhism or Buddhist modernism in the South of the country and its transposition to Anuradhapura. My focus is the spatial element within these and the link between them and the British and indigenous imaginaries examined in the last chapter, with a particular focus on inclusion or exclusion of the Other. First I will examine what we know of the spatial and material changes that took place in Anuradhapura in the British colonial period. I will

Ancient cities and narratives of power   121 then pass to restoration of the ruins and archaeological excavation. Lastly, I will examine the eruption into this of a Buddhist modernism that insisted on spatial exclusivity.

Anuradhapura in the early years of British rule When Anuradhapura came to the attention of the British from 1818 onwards, it had a small resident population, Tamil and Sinhala, in the town and the surrounding villages. Even as late as 1871, the town itself had only 704 people (Nissan 1985: 38), mainly because of the absence of a reliable water supply (Ievers 1899: 54). In addition, at least one member of the Buddhist monastic community was normally resident there to cater for the needs of pilgrims, especially during the May and June pilgrimage season, when pilgrims camped out in the open, sharing the same space as elephants and other animals. The first certificate of appointment under the British for a chief monk at the Bodhi Tree Temple was issued in 1828, according to Nissan (Nissan 1985: 143). After 1833, British administrators arrived but, in the early years, moved away from October to mid-­ February or 1 March (Ievers 1899: 67). In their wake came more Sinhalas, Muslims and Tamils. Ievers claimed that there were no permanent buildings in 1837 and that the first Assistant Government Agent, Mylius, collected revenue in a tent until a Court-­house and Kachcheri (town hall) were built in 1838–1839 (Ievers 1899: 68). However, I surmise that Ievers was using European rather than indigenous criteria. Forbes, for instance, mentions the existence of a few small modern ‘temples erected on the foundations, and from the materials of former structures’, with walls of clay (Forbes 1841 I: 238). As for the ruins, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, many were mired in vegetation and massive amounts of debris. However, they betrayed continuous attempts at repair and restoration, in line with Kemper’s argument, often using stones from other ruins. Forbes and Chapman, as I have shown, pointed to these, as did Ievers, later in the century, mentioning, for instance, a wall erected around the bodhi tree enclosure ‘almost entirely constructed of ancient stone pillars taken from the surrounding ruins’ (Ievers 1899: 50). The record of Smither, who worked in Anuradhapura in the 1870s, gives the best testimony to it. He noted that the stone platform around the Thūpārāma had ‘been taken up and re-­laid, perhaps many times’ and had ‘been frequently repaired with stones’, which had ‘been previously used for other purposes, such as portions of pillars and steps, thresholds of doorways, etc.’ (Smither 1894: 4) and I have already mentioned his description of the Lankārāma. Cave recorded that to renovate the platform around the Ruvanvälisäya, ‘doorsteps, altar slabs, carved stones, of all shapes and sizes, some incised with curious devices of evident antiquity, and even huge monoliths from the thresholds of other buildings’ had been dragged from other parts of the ruins (Cave 1907: 553). I consider most of this to have pre-­dated restorations under British patronage. After Forbes’s first visit, there were further attempts at restoration and, according to Ievers, abandoned vihāras

122   The British colonial period were re-­occupied (Ievers 1899: 213). When Forbes returned in 1832, for instance, he found that the ruins had deteriorated further because of heavy rain but also that a Buddhist priest had cleared the jungle around the dāgäba Forbes calls the Abhayagiri, almost losing his life from a falling fragment from the ‘spire’ (Forbes 1841 I: 241; Sivasundaram 2013: 151). Ievers suggests that this work had been accompanied by an appeal to the British, in 1831, for the restoration of the ruins, long before the British sought this (Ievers 1899: 242, cited in Nissan 1989: 71). I will diverge from my narrative to reflect on why this monk suddenly decided to resume restoration. Sivasundaram suggests that Britishers who combined an interest in the ruins with hunting could have been seen ‘as inheritors of the tradition of Buddhist kingship’, because their interests ‘fitted perfectly with the expected preoccupations of representatives of the Buddhist monarchy’ (Sivasundaram 2007: 118). I concur but would want to combine this argument with Kemper’s. Kemper pointed out that the Mahāvaṃsa centres on three warrior heroes, Vijaya, Duṭugämunu and Parākramabāhu I. Each brought ‘the island under a single, sovereign authority’ and was capable of violence (Kemper 1991: 53), the last two being praised for their patronage of the monastic Sangha and their building of stūpas and monasteries (Kemper 1991: 63). Combining Sivasundaram with Kemper, it is likely that the British, who had conquered and violently subdued rebellion in the country, were seen as making merit at Anuradhapura, when they showed interest in the ruins. In the light of this, it is not surprising that members of the monastic Sangha gave themselves permission to restore, protect and repair, in harmony with traditional narratives. I would argue, therefore, that Anuradhapura remained under the jungle not only because the monastic community there privileged the location that was the greatest field of merit or because of fear of ‘unholy phantoms’ (Forbes 1841 I: 213) or because the area was de-­populated, although all of these factors were significant, but because of a lack of patronage and safety. The trigger for restoration in the British period was, therefore, not imperial ideology. Restoration was driven by Buddhist perceptions of the British as potential patrons of a long established indigenous practice.

The geography of Anuradhapura from 1833 to 1908 In the 1830s, colonial buildings grew up around and amongst the ruins. A market developed. Outlets for alcohol appeared. In the late 1840s, Tennant could still condescendingly describe the town as ‘a few scattered huts that scarcely merit the designation of a village’, with little more than the house of the AGA, a monastery, a ‘wretched bazaar’ and ‘houses of the native headmen’ (Tennant 1977 (1860): 1043–1044) but change was happening. In the 1850s, a Roman Catholic church was erected, although it was removed in the 1870s (Ievers 1899: 55), and pilgrimage increased, aided by the completion of roads and a telegraph line (Ievers 1899: 202–205 and 72). According to Nissan, ‘between 2,000 and 5,000 pilgrims were estimated to have attended the June pilgrimages in the 1850s’

Ancient cities and narratives of power   123 (Nissan 1988: 256). By 1870, according to Ievers’, citing Liesching, 20,000 were coming (Ievers 1899: 43). If Ievers was correct, the numbers remained fairly steady in the next decades but were touching 25,000 by June 1897, by which time water was reaching the town from the restored Tissaweva tank (Nissan 1988: 256). Governor Gregory, governor between 1872 and 1877, visited Anuradhapura soon after arriving in the island, probably in 1873 (Gregory 1894: 267–308), taking two days to travel from Dambulla. He was struck by ‘its picturesque appearance’ and described the ruins vividly, impressed that ‘its former magnificence was apparent’ (Gregory 1894: 306). Significantly for my narrative, he concluded that ‘the village was much improved since 1848, when Sir E. Tennent wrote his description of it’, but he nevertheless saw considerable problems with water supply, ‘a wretched hospital’ and a population that was falling ill. He was told by medical officer Kynsey that this illness was caused by lack of clean water and good food (Gregory 1894: 307). Gregory’s attempt to address this by restoring the tanks brought further developments, such that, by 1890, he claimed that the illness was all but past (Gregory 1894: 308). At times other than June and July, however, the number of visitors to Anuradhapura were few for much of the nineteenth century. Carpenter, who visited in 1890, probably over-­emphasized the solitude but should not be ignored: Here, to this sacred enclosure [bodhi tree enclosure], and to deposit flowers and offerings within it, come at certain festivals thousands of Buddhist pilgrims. Trudging on foot or driving by bullock-­cart, they camp out in the park-­like grounds in the immediate neighbourhood of the present village.… For the rest of the year these places are left almost unvisited. There are no guides to importune the rare tourist or traveller, and one wanders alone through the woods for a whole day, and sees no one, except it be a troop of monkeys with tails erect, playing leap-­frog over the stumps of fallen columns.… (Carpenter 1910: 100) On this evidence, it is probable that, right up to the 1890s, the growth of Anuradhapura was ad hoc and low key, although, as I demonstrate below, considerable work had been done to clear, restore and document the ruins, and also to create a park-­like atmosphere around those most visited, witnessed by the very fact that Carpenter could ‘wander alone’. Water supply, however, had been improved and there was also a ‘native resthouse’ (Bell 1907: 4). Key to the narrative of the developing town was the completion of the railway from Kurunegala to Anuradhapura in 1903 or 1904 (Perera 1925: 279). In 1907, a hotel targeted at Europeans was opened – the Grand Hotel – superseding ‘the little rest house, now the post office’ (Mitton 1916: 50). In 1914, about 60,000 pilgrims, according to Meegama, were in Anuradhapura for Poson (Meegama 2012: 113). Some of these pilgrims were from other parts of Asia, seeing the city as ‘an island reliquary’ (Blackburn 2010a: 133).

124   The British colonial period Mitton offers a snapshot of what had grown up near the bodhi tree, by the second decade of the twentieth century: Close by the bo-­tree is the bazaar with its long straggling street. These ‘bazaars’ are getting more and more given up to the display of cheap European goods, and increasingly difficult is it to pick up home-­made wares.… The ‘cab-­stand’, where bullock hackries congregate, is in the middle of the bazaar.… Between the bazaar and the hotel [in the other direction from the Ruvanvälisäya] are three large ponds kept strictly ‘by order’ for drinking, bathing and washing purposes respectively. … Not far from these ponds, between them and the bazaar, is the English Church.… (Mitton 1916: 59–60) Mitton gave the impression, however, that, due to the work of key GAs, there was little building beyond the Lovamahāpaya, going north towards the Ruvanvälisäya. It was a ‘sacred road’, ‘overshadowed by spreading “rain trees,” bordered by green spaces …’ (Mitton 1916: 64). Reports written by British civil servants also confirm just how intermingled the ruins and the buildings of the town were at this time. Bell, the first archaeological commissioner, claimed in 1890 that ‘the native resthouse’ had been built in the middle of ruins (Bell 1907b: 4). In the same report, he claimed that much of the land around the Abhayagiri (in fact the Jētavana)4 was in private hands and that ‘boundary stones, pillars, steps’ had been broken up and carted away to be used for other purposes (Bell 1907b: 4). At the turn of the century, he remarked that the ‘north-­west corner of the existing Anuradhapura jail’ had absorbed a vihāra, at what Bell called Monastery D, ‘except for a little of its stonework …, which had been dug out, and now lies close to the Jail wall’ (Bell 1907f: 5), and that the ruins east of the Ruvanvälisäya, ‘are dotted about the Residency and the Court-­house grounds to the south of the Dágaba, in the premises of the Government Clerks, and on reserved open space contiguous to the so-­called “Sacred road” east and south-­east’ (Bell 1907f: 1).5 I will let Burrows have the last word in this section, describing Anuradhapura in 1905: The town … has a present population of 2,508, comprising a large number of Moormen, who are the chief “boutique-­keepers” and traders of the place.… It is the headquarters of the only two Revenue Officers in the Province – the Government Agent and the Assistant Government Agent; who also combine judicial duties.… The amount of new land which, thanks to an enlightened irrigation policy, is being cleared and planted on all sides in the neighbourhood of the town, will strike the most casual observer. The newly-­opened railway now spares the visitor the tedious coach drive from Matale.… The Anuradhapura rest-­house is newly built and decidedly comfortable and well-­found. (Burrows 1905: 46)

Ancient cities and narratives of power   125 According to Burrows, the ethos of Anuradhapura, at the turn of the century, was informed by religious plurality and the colonial administration. And that administration was right in the middle of the ruins.

The archaeological project In the early nineteenth century, the British attempted to discover through a process of registration which lands belonged to the British Crown and which belonged to the Buddhist community as ‘temple lands’, which, under legislation enacted for the Kandyan Provinces, were exempt from taxation (Bergman 1822: 26: Proclamation No. 21, November 1818, clause 21). In 1840, the controversial Encroachment Ordinance No. 12 (Waste Lands Ordinance) was enacted – the object of Godamune’s criticism – which stated that ‘All forest, waste, unoccupied, or uncultivated lands are presumed to be the property of the Crown until the contrary is proved’, meaning that the burden of proving ownership lay on ‘any one claiming the land, whether as plaintiff, defendant or intervenient’ (Thomson 1866: 24–25; see also Korf 2009: 115). In 1856, therefore, the Temple Lands Commission issued guidelines under Government Ordinance No.  10 (Anon 1894: 192–200), which determined what could and could not be seen as temple lands and registers were compiled. In the 1860s, the commission visited Anuradhapura and ceded responsibility for eight sites, registered as temple lands, to the Atamasthāna Committee (Nissan 1985: 213; Bell and Bell 1993: 106).6 The surveyor general then issued a title plan dated 20 November 1872, which listed these sites as the Jētavana; the Lankārāma; the Thūpārāma; the Abhayagiri, the Lovamahāpaya; the Sacred Bodhi Tree Enclosure; the Mirisavätiya; and the Ruvanvälisäya. In addition, two pansala, one attached to the Bo-­tree and one attached to the Ruvanvälisäya, were also recognized as temple lands. All these became inalienable temple property, the government ceding their right to oversee or restore them without consultation. Only the land immediately occupied by the stūpas, however, were so recognized (Nissan 1988: 263). The rest, unless it demonstrably belonged to an individual Tamil or Sinhala, belonged to the Crown and could technically be sold.7 Parallel with this, after 1833, was a project of restoration and repair of the ruins within which indigenous and British interests worked interdependently, evoking the model of patronage previously mentioned. In 1840, £40.00 was allocated by the British administration for clearing the main ruins (Bell and Bell 1993: 35). In 1841, a Buddhist monk raised money for the further restoration of the Thūpārāma and carried it out in 1842 (Capper 1888: 166; Smither 1894: 3; Sivasundaram 2007: 133). In 1870, the Isurumūniya was re-­settled by a monk from Kurunegala, Sangharakkhita, and renovations were gradually begun (Nissan 1985: 184). The pokuna or pond in front of it was restored and a modern entrance with a tiled roof, and a dāgäba, erected. In the early 1870s, Gregory gave personal financial support to work initiated by another monk, Naranvita Sumanasara, for the Ruvanvälisäya Dāgäba and further money was raised from pilgrims (Burrows 1905: 51). Smither claimed

126   The British colonial period that a ‘metal finial’ was erected at the top in 1867 ‘together with the circular brick base in to which it has been built, which is plastered over and whitewashed’ (Smither 1894: 27). With Gregory’s help, according to a disdainful Smither, ‘a small, handsome, stone-­built temple’ near the ‘frontispiece’ of the Ruvanvälisäya was replaced by ‘a most unsightly building in brick, without a plinth, cornice, or single moulding anywhere to relieve its monotonous baldness’ (Smither 1894: 32), adding that sitting figures of the Buddha ‘composed of fragments of ancient figures’ had been placed in the two side chambers of this building (Smither 1894: 33). These renovations represented a period of interdependence between the colonial administration and indigenous efforts. A series of GAs, including Rhys Davids, Dickson and Ievers, worked alongside indigenous initiatives to clear vegetation and initiate restorations beyond the sites controlled by Buddhists. Ievers, for instance, ‘excellently restored’ the old stone work of the twin ponds (Burrows 1905: 66). This interdependence, however, eventually soured, paving the way for open confrontation between the British and Buddhists. There were three main reasons for this: a clash of world views between the British and some Buddhist restorers; a shift in emphasis among the British from clearing the ground and restoration, to excavation and removal of artefacts; the influence of Buddhist revivalists from the South. To begin with the clash of world views, one Buddhist response to British interest in the ancient ruins was driven by a traditional concern for the preservation of Anuradhapura as a sacred field of merit, and as a location where kingship and heroic acts could be brought to consciousness. It was this that the indigenous restorers at first believed the British were patronizing. Buddhists, initially at least, did not internalize either the British romanticizing of the ruins or their almost obsessive wish to verify the history they embodied. In line with Berkwitz’s argument, more important was ‘what the past does or at least was thought to do’ (Berkwitz 2004: 1). On one hand, therefore, Buddhists saw the ruins as simply another indication of the impermanence of all things in saṃsāra, the realm of birth and rebirth. On the other, restoring them where possible was seen as a wholesome action, because it would encourage devotion and merit-­making in the present, and would mould Sinhala self-­awareness. Within this imaginary, members of the monastic Sangha could take stones from other parts of the ruins with impunity to improve the sites that held the most potency in nurturing a contemporary sense of Buddhist identity. Indeed, the emergence of the Atamasthāna Committee for the management of the eight sites, as Nissan pointed out, had as much to do with who should collect the offerings of pilgrims than preservation of the sites (Nissan 1985). That the restorations set in motion were themselves impermanent or changed the contours of the original was not as important as the effect of the restoration on contemporary Buddhist consciousness. The British mindset was completely different. British writings became peppered with negative comments on indigenous restorations to the ruins. Cave

Ancient cities and narratives of power   127 considered the new entrance of the Isurumūniya to be ‘in shocking contrast to the rock-­building’ (Cave 1908: 547) and Mitton judged that the lower part of the ‘Ruanweli’ had been ‘rendered hideous by a huge new bind wall’ (Mitton 1916: 65).8 This drove the British to exert more control over what was being done to better align it with western archaeological norms. Buddhist and British world views, as a result, diverged. The model of the British as patrons waned, replaced by the British as a potentially threatening Other. And the divergence became greater when the British made it obvious that they wished to remove sacred objects from the sites or penetrate brickwork that might contain relics. Bethia and Heather Bell have charted the growth of systematized ‘archaeology’ at Anuradhapura, building on the work of Godakumbura (1969). In 1868, under Governor Hercules Robinson, four years after the founding of what would become the Atamasthāna Committee and seven years after the creation of the Archaeological Survey of India, an archaeological commission in Sri Lanka was established (Bell and Bell 1993: 30). From 1870, a close relationship between the commission and the CBRAS emerged, demonstrated by the fact that Fyers, surveyor general of Ceylon and chairman of the commission, was made CBRAS president in 1870. The first tasks of the commission were to find, photograph and decipher inscriptions at the different ancient sites and to explore the history behind them (Bell and Bell 1993: 31). In the early 1870s, three commission appointees worked on this at Anuradhapura: the already-­mentioned James Smither, commission secretary, who first travelled to Anuradhapura in 1870 (Smither 1894: 32) and retired in 1883 (Anon 1895a: 122); Swaminathan Kanakaretnam Lawton, a Sri Lankan Tamil who accompanied Smither but who died in 1872 (Godakumbura 1969: 13); George Capper of the Survey Department, who also died prematurely, at ‘the hands of a villager whilst on his work’ (Godakumbura 1969: 14). The first priority of the British archaeological project, therefore, was a mapping of time and space. Gregory was an enthusiastic supporter (Gregory 1894; Bastianpillai 1968), his commitment to archaeology driven as much by aesthetics – a sense of beauty and place – as by the emerging western scholarly discipline of archaeology (Blackburn 2010b). He directed Rhys Davids, when AGA at Anuradhapura, to clear the areas ‘around Buddhist relic monuments’ and ‘to remove trees and roots liable to ruin existing structures’ (Blackburn 2010b: 191), and also sought inscriptions and stone carvings that could be removed and transferred to his anticipated museum in Colombo, an activity that would alienate Buddhists. The commission added a Captain Hogg to the photographers and, after consultation with scholars such as Robert Childers (Harris 2006: 117–124), hired the afore-­mentioned Goldschmidt in the mid-­1870s to study inscriptions at the ancient cities (Bell and Bell 1993: 33; Godakumbura 1969: 14). Goldschmidt wrote two sessional papers for the Indian Antiquary but also failed to complete his work, dying in Galle in 1877 (Bell and Bell 1993: 34) of malaria (Godakumbura 1969: 14). Edward Müller took over from him and in 1883, for instance, produced a volume of handwritten copies and photographs of inscriptions (Müller 1883; Godakumbura 1969: 14–15).

128   The British colonial period The greatest change to the physical space of Anuradhapura, however, must be attributed to Dickson, Indologist and scholar of Buddhism, who became GA of the new North Central Province in 1873. He arranged for the restoration of village tanks – 900 were being worked on within his first year through the setting up of village councils (Gregory 1894: 310–311) – cleared ground around the main ruins, and carried forward excavations and restorations at the Thūpārāma, the Mirisavätiya, the Jētavana and the Abhayagiri (Bell and Bell 1993: 37), with the agreement of the Atamasthāna Committee. At the Mirisavätiya, for instance, together with Smither, he uncovered a shrine on the western side (Ievers 1899: 55–56). More controversial, however, was his suggestion in 1884 that the Abhayagiri dāgäba should be entered, in case there were texts inside (Haris­chandra 1908: 55), a work implemented by Ievers, after Dickson’s departure in 1885. Although the Atamasthāna Committee agreed to this, the revivalist scholar, Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala, lodged a formal complaint against the action, after which it was stopped by order of the Colonial Secretary, only to be resumed again, even after further monastic opposition (Bell and Bell 1993: 40; Blackburn 2010a: 128; Nissan 1985, 260). Gordon, successor to Gregory and object of the already examined missionary attack, backed Dickson’s work and also facilitated the appointment of S.M. Burrows in 1884 to undertake further explorations at Anuradhapura, particularly relating to inscriptions. In the same year, a subscription fund was established through the CBRAS to enable work on the eastern side of the Mirisavätiya (Bell and Bell 1993: 8; Burrows 1905: 56–57), an initiative that Burrows later judged fruitless, since no shrine on the east of the dāgäba was found to match the one on the western side (Bell 1907a: 1; Ievers 1899: 227). Dickson also prevented the land between his own residence and the Thūpārāma from being divided into private plots and made it into parkland, to which the quote at the beginning of this chapter refers. Significantly, he also, in 1873, arranged for the Roman Catholic church to be relocated from the centre of the city to a plot on the ‘north side of the Mihintale Road’, although this had more to do with the extension of the market/bazaar than excluding Christian buildings from the ruins (Ievers 1899: 55–56). In this process, the steering wheel for restoration and excavation at Anuradhapura gradually passed from Sri Lankan Buddhists to the British, in spite of the Atamasthāna Committee, even though Dickson, for instance, maintained an excellent relationship with Sri Lankan Buddhists and openly sided with them against the missionaries (Harris 2006: 117–124). By 1885, the British believed they had a ground plan of what the ancient city was in its prime. Nevertheless, the compilation of archaeological ‘Remains and other Antiquities’ that the commission compiled for January 1887 took the reader to secondary sources on Anuradhapura, the commission citing the impossibility of furnishing ‘an adequate list of antiquities’ there (Anon 1890c: 66). Smither’s account of the state of the ruins as he left them in the early 1880s, ground plan notwithstanding, demonstrates why – his narrative was still one of mounds of debris, broken artefacts and sites pillaged by ‘treasure seekers’ (Smither 1894: 16).

Ancient cities and narratives of power   129 The next key moment came in 1889, when H.C.P. Bell was appointed as the first archaeological commissioner, under the direction of Gordon, although formal confirmation took several years (Bell and Bell 1993: 49), serving until 1912. The current Archaeological Department regard Bell with fondness (Wijesekere 1990: xvi), because of his painstaking work on the ground and his encouragement of Epigraphia Zeylanica, a journal on Sri Lankan inscriptions, founded in 1903. During Bell’s time as archaeological commissioner, however, the nascent fault-­line between the British administration and Buddhists deepened so much that an Anuradhapura Buddhist Defence Committee was formed in 1902 (Nissan 1985: 268) by Colombo-­based Buddhist revivalists. Ievers, for instance, remarked in 1894 that, ‘Mr Bell’s policy seems almost to be to see how much offence he can possibly give the Buddhist public’ (Nissan 1985: 263; Blackburn 2010a: 129). Why did it all go so wrong? The first task undertaken by Bell was to survey the ruins at Anuradhapura and other parts of the country. He built on the work of Burrows and Ievers, often surveying the same ground and using the same workers, adding meticulous measurements and description (Bell 1907a). His first report stated that he decided: ‘to work outwards from ground already cleared, partially excavated, and possibly surveyed’, namely the land that covered, the bazaar, the public offices, and residences, with “the park”, stretching north from the Ruvanweli dágaba to the Thupáráma and is bounded west by Basawakkuḷam tank and Miriswẹṭiya dágoba and east by the portion of the Outer Circular road between Abhayagiri dágoba and its junction with the base road – in other words, the space within the Inner Circular road and beyond eastwards as far as the Abhayagiri. (Bell 1907a: 1) He, therefore, started work in areas away from the most important pilgrimage centres and away from sites under the Atamasthāna Committee. He ran parallel lines through the undergrowth with the help of his group of ‘coolies’ and, then, if ruins were found, felled, stacked and burnt the undergrowth to open up the area for ‘closer examination, measurement, and, if desirable, of their being photographed and excavated’ (Bell 1907a: 1). His second report showed that he had started similar work adjacent to the Mirisavätiya Dāgäba, re-­clearing some land that had earlier been cleared by Dickson and then by Burrows in 1885. He was not, however, working, at this point, on the Mirisavätiya, mentioning that it was ‘being elaborately restored by prison labour at the expense of a Siamese prince’ (Bell 1907b: 1). A similar process happened during the months covered in his fourth report, January to March 1891, when Bell was working along a road cut by Burrows to what he calls the Vijayarama Monastery, which was north from what he called the Jētavana (Bell 1903: 1). At this point, excavations were also happening near what Bell called the Abhayagiri Dāgäba. In April to June 1891, he was working in addition at Pankuliya, three miles north of the bodhi tree, an

130   The British colonial period area visited by Ievers but not cleared until Bell’s teams reached it (Bell 1907d: 3–4). Up until this point, Bell followed in the steps of his predecessors, clearing, identifying, measuring and comparing. It is unlikely that any of this would have angered Buddhists. Throughout his time as archaeological commissioner, some of his work was very routine, as this portion of his 1902 report demonstrates: The yearly sum (Rs3,000) entrusted to the Archaeological Commissioner for clearing ruins and jungle at Anuradhapura was very profitably expended last year, owing to the droughts during 1901 and the first nine months of 1902. Outside the town limits (for which the Government Agent retains Rs1,000) between five and six hundred acres were cleared and weeded at Rs3.54 per acre. Packing was carried out in the Abhayagiriya and Mirisavetiya areas, at Paliyankulum, and on the Outer Circular Road. Some rooting out of large trees was also done; but such eradicaton, however desirable, is necessarily slow work, and so expensive as to be prohibitive, unless very limited. The yearly grant for clearing purposes is proving of inestimable benefit to Anuradhapura.… Jungle is being gradually cut away, allowing of a regular supply of fresh air reaching the Town still unable to shake off the strong grip of malaria. (Bell 1907f: 1) One weakness, however, lay in the impression he gave that the ruins were ‘his’. Bell’s biographers state, accurately, that he was, ‘Morbidly sensitive perhaps [concerning criticism], certainly extremely proprietorial. The ruins were his ruins and only he knew what should be done’ (Bell and Bell 1993: 108). They note, for instance, that he resented the increase in pilgrimage whilst he was there, because it detracted from the town’s antiquarian ethos (1993: 107). Evidence of this attitude is found in his fifth report (April–June 1991), which mentions his discovery that the Vijayarama Dāgäba had already been broken into, by driving a ‘shaft sunk from the level of the platform into the heart of the dágaba’ (Bell 1907d: 8). Bell did not then make good what had been gutted to preserve the dāgäba. He ordered the shaft to be sunk further, ‘carrying it down some feet below the level of the ground outside the platform’. He added, It is some consolation to be able to record that by the very thorough work of the spoiler a valuable addition has been gained at comparative little labour to our exceedingly slight knowledge of the construction of these smaller ancient stúpas. (Bell 1907d: 8) Bell was not, of course, the first to be proprietorial. Fyers could speak of ‘our ancient cities’ in front of the predominantly European membership of the CBRAS (Fyers 1873: xviii) and the whole imperial project in Sri Lanka was predicted on ownership. Nevertheless, Bell went further than Fyers or his

Ancient cities and narratives of power   131 predecessors at Anuradhapura. His resentment, for instance, towards Anuradhapura as a living pilgrimage centre differentiated him from Dickson, who was particularly sensitive to lived religion, and was as far removed from the world of the Atamasthāna Committee as Anuradhapura from London. Another reason that he alienated some Buddhists was his irreverent wit, which was construed, at least by Colombo-­based revivalists, as an intentional undermining of Buddhism. In his first report, for instance, he described one sitting Buddha image, discovered east of what is now known to be the Jētavana, as having a ‘burly back and shoulders’, although he later referred to ‘the wonderful sharpness and depth of the features, the softness of expression, the symmetry and repose of the body’ (Bell 1907a: 4). In the fifth report of work at Pankuliya, however, he went further, writing: In the centre of one of these vihárés, showing well above the ground, are the ‘hind quarters’ of a large sedent Buddha, fallen, like Dagon of old, headlong, in an attitude possibly befitting his worshippers, but that ill becomes the Thathágata! (Bell 1907d: 4) This prompted an attack in The Buddhist (Buultjens 1894: 19, quoting from The Buddhist 1894: 348). In 1895¸ he faced a hostile crowd when excavating the Sela Caitya and, again, an attack appeared in The Buddhist, in the form of a letter from Anuradhapura (Anon 1895b: 151–152; Bell and Bell 1993: 106), in which Bell was accused of replying to Buddhists ‘in his usual complacent tone’ and agreeing to stop excavations only to begin them again. Bell’s defence, according to the letter, was that he had received permission from the ‘Anunāyake Priest of the Atamasthāna’ and that the ‘priest’ had been present when he started. The letter writer, evidently someone connected with the Colombo-­based journal, argued that it was not enough to consult one Buddhist (Anon 1895b: 151–152). A section of his 1903 Archaeological Survey Report, by which time Bell sought full-­scale restoration of dāgäbas, can be used to illustrate an additional fault in the eyes of Buddhists: the contradictory messages he gave. Under the section on ‘Restoration’ (Section 3), he wrote of the Mirisavätiya Dāgäba that the ‘stone-­flagged maluwa of the Dágaba has been carefully re-­set, as far as practicable, along the entire north face of the quadrangle’ (Bell 1908: 5), stating in a footnote, The Archaeological Survey Department has set up this side (less its coping) as a guide for future work. It is for the Buddhist Committee of the Aṭamasthána, or ‘Eight Sacred Sites,’ to see to the erection of the other three sides. (1908: 5) A partnership with local Buddhists was envisaged but with the Archaeological Survey giving the template, a subtle judgement on previous indigenous restoration

132   The British colonial period attempts. Work on a vihāra south of the Thūpārāma, not under the oversight of the Atamasthāna Committee, however, was carried out with a heavier hand: The viháré was excavated in 1897. In 1901 it was taken in hand for restoration, gutted to its foundations, and slabs and broken pillars laid outside ready to be replaced. Last year (1902) the basement of the ruin was partially re-­set on the old lines. But further work must be suspended until the Department is supplied with requisite lifting gear. (Bell 1908: 5) Bell, therefore, did not insist on doing all the work himself. He continued to work with the Aṭamasthāna Committee and insisted that it should have control over the eight sites. And he eventually came to the position that antiquities should be left where they were rather than placed in a museum (Bell and Bell 1993: 105). Nevertheless, he was far less willing than his predecessors to allow local Buddhists a free hand in restoration. He was the one who had to offer the template for others to copy. In June 1909, for instance, the Atamasthāna Committee issued a conditional permit to a monk, ‘Kumbuké Dhammáráma’, for the restoration of the Jētavana. Three conditions were laid down, including that no trees growing on the dāgäba should be felled. The monk then broke every rule and Bell stepped in because a ‘beautiful stele’ was destroyed. He was at pains to state that this was with the ‘tacit consent’ of the Committee (Bell 1914b: 10n). That local Buddhists were becoming uneasy about Bell’s actions can be seen in a request in March 1908 from a newly elected Atamasthāna Committee for control over 16 sites, including one at Mihintale. They were refused by the governor but were granted further land at the Abhayagiri, the Mirisavätiya and the Thūpārāma for the erection of a ‘pansal’ (monastery) at each place (Bell 1914a: 25). There could also have been another reason for the alienation of Buddhists, a racial one. Although Bell’s reports showed that he worked with Tamil and Sinhala workers, his numerical returns indicate that the majority of his labourers were Tamil. In an annexure to his third report, he stated that, of the 30 ‘coolies’ he employed, the ten who were Sinhala were exploring new ground and clearing jungle around any ruins found, and the 20 who were Tamil were excavating a site near what he thought was the Abhayagiri (Bell 1907c: 9). By his fifth report, he has a labour force of 60, 45 of whom were Tamil. The division of work was similar (Bell 1907d: 11). Even though there were more Tamils than Sinhala people in Anuradhapura in 1891 (Nissan 1985: 38), it is possible that some Buddhist revivalists could have been offended by this, particularly those aware, because of their knowledge of English, of the ‘Aryan’ debates and the increasingly aggressive representation of Tamils as ‘invaders’. These aspects of Bell’s work were ripe for exploitation by Buddhist revivalists based in the South, who, as I have shown, watched Bell’s work in the light of their conviction that the nobility of the Sinhala Buddhist ‘nation’ or ‘race’,9 was inextricably linked to the city. For these, the main questions became, ‘Who

Ancient cities and narratives of power   133 should own Anuradhapura?’ and ‘Should the secular and the non-­Buddhist be allowed into the sacred area?’ Western theosophists gave moral support to this, seen, for example, in a visit to the city in 1889, probably by Leadbeater (Harris 2006: 139–147), in which he lamented the paucity of information about the cities and their histories, and implied that more should settle there (Leadbeater 1889: 276, 278). Before this revivalist influence, the concerns of the Atamasthāna Committee were fundamentally local: the collection of donations to the temples; the line of succession to the position of chief monk; and the preservation of sites for pilgrimage (Nissan 1985: 133–178). An important expression of Buddhist revivalist pressure on Anuradhapura was the delegation that met Bishop Copleston in 1894 to request revision of his plans to build an Anglican church near the Ruvanvälisäya and the Bodhi tree. The incident has been examined by both Nissan and Blackburn and I noted it in 1993, as an example of willingness by a missionary bishop to listen to the Buddhist perspective (Nissan 1985: 263–264; Harris 1993: 277; Blackburn 2010a: 129–130). Copleston considered himself a scholar of Buddhism, claiming that his understanding had been guided, ‘by the living commentary’ (Copleston 1953 (1888): 113–115, quoted in Harris 2006: 126). He was a complex character, a high churchman who clashed with the more evangelical CMS and a writer of a book on Buddhism (Copleston 1892), which, in the words of one Buddhist, admired the foliage ‘only to deliberately lay the axe at the very root of the tree’ (Anon 1893: 81–83, cited in Harris 2006: 127). As I have shown, he was also influenced by the ‘Aryan Theory’, which convinced him that, although Sinhala Buddhists had a mistaken sense of religion, their basic emotive and psychological structure was the same as his own. The delegation, which included the scholar monk, Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala, met Copleston in the CBRAS library in July 1894. Copleston listened and empathized. If the report of the meeting can be trusted, the Buddhist delegation was diplomatic to a fault, appealing to Copleston’s ‘religious courtesy’ and explaining that a location near the sacred tree would be ‘inconvenient to both parties’ (Blackburn 2010a: 129–130). The land designated for the church was, technically, Crown land and, legally, could have been used by the diocese. The church, however, was built elsewhere but, as Nissan has shown, controversy re-­appeared in 1905, when Buddhist revivalists complained that the new church was still too close to Buddhist sacred space, in this case, the Mirisavätiya. This time the complaint was not accepted, since a mosque and a Hindu temple shared the same space (Nissan 1985: 277). Towards the end of the century, two revivalist Buddhist voices became central to change in Anuradhapura: Anagārika Dharmapāla and Välasinha Harischandra. From 1891, Dharmapāla devoted himself to re-­establishing Buddhist possession of Bodh Gaya, in India. During this time, he realized that possession issues also surrounded Anuradhapura. On 13 July 1893,10 he wrote in his diary that he went to Skeen’s Photo Studio in Colombo to borrow ‘a few copies of the Photos of the Anuradhapura Ruins’ and, on 19 July, that he was being urged to give more time to ‘the Ceylon work’. His next diary reference to

134   The British colonial period Anuradhapura came on 14 January 1894, when he declared that Bell should be asked to retract his ‘shameless remarks’ about the Buddha, no doubt referring to Bell’s Fifth Progress Report, cited earlier. On 12 May 1894, he recorded that ‘Rt. Revd. H. Toki’, a visitor from Japan, had told him that Anuradhapura was ‘the first place in the world; and therefore should be restored’, confirming that Anuradhapura was a pan-­Asian destination. Dharmapāla replied that ‘if he [Toki] would take up B. Gaya work’ then he ‘would go to Ceylon and rescue Anuradhapura’. He actually started for Anuradhapura in 17 September 1894 with a Mr Weerasekera, stopping in Kandy to discuss the exhibition of the tooth relic. Apart from praise for ‘Naranwita’ and his work on the Ruvanvälisäya on 19 September 1894, however, his diaries, contained no further comments, in the mid-­1890s, on restoration in the city. Dharmapāla’s work, in fact, continued to focus on Bodh Gaya. However, he knew he had an ally in Sri Lanka, Harischandra, to take forward the Anuradhapura struggle. In 1898, Harischandra was elected assistant secretary of the Lanka Maha-­Bodhi Society and, in 1899, visited Anuradhapura to form a branch there (Blackburn 2010a: 130; Nissan 1985: 263). In August 1901, the Anuradhapura Maha-­Bodhi School was founded with just five pupils, the number rising to 89 in a year, although attendance was poor (Anon 1902: 125–127). According to Nissan, his influence changed the focus of Buddhist activism from agitation over particular sites to agitation for the city as a whole (Nissan 1985: 264, cited in Blackburn 2010a: 131). For instance, he organized systematized local protests, such as squats on Crown land (Nissan 1985: 266) in locations where the GA did not want pilgrims to camp, complained about some of Bell’s work and instigated protests about non-­Buddhist practices on ‘Buddhist land’ such as the slaughter of cattle. In 1902, the Anuradhapura Buddhist Defence Committee was formed in Colombo as his mouthpiece. In 1908, Harischandra published The Sacred City of Anuradhapura, a guide book with a difference in that it demanded a commission of inquiry to address the ‘desecration’ of the city through archaeological excavations and its pollution through the presence of non-­Buddhist elements. Pilgrim readers, therefore, were not only guided around the city but also alerted to a spectrum of affronts by the British. It also included a collection of letters concerning these and the 1903 disturbances in the city. The Preface set out Harischandra’s foundational premise: [T]here is no other City upon the universe that has maintained its position as a Sacred City, replete with sacred objects of diverse kind, for a period of 2,200 years, except this City, the property of the Buddhasasana, built and maintained by the Sinhalese nation. (Harischandra 1908: i) Internalizing the British appropriation of the historical chronicles in his assertion that the Mahāvaṃsa should be ‘if not the sole, at least the principal guide’ to the archaeology of Anuradhapura (Harischandra 1908: 69), he argued that

Ancient cities and narratives of power   135 Anuradhapura had an unbroken sacred history, was globally unique and was the property of a ‘nation’, the Sinhala nation. It was, therefore, superior to anything connected with Christianity. After all, the marking out of the sima at its heart was completed 300 years before Christ’s birth (Harischandra 1908: 18). Harischandra, however, distinguished, between ‘two distinct cities; viz: – Anuradhapura the political Capital and Anuradhapura the Sacred City’ (Harischandra 1908: 1). He had no problem with the British excavating the former. Utilizing Chapter 15 of the Mahāvaṃsa, the sacred city was the ‘Mahamégha Pleasure Garden’, given to the monastic Sangha by Devanampiyatissa in 308 bce. He defined this as the land within which stood the ‘Thuparama Dagoba, Sacred Bo-­tree, Isurumuni Vihara, Mirisaweti Dagoba, Ruwanweli Dagoba and Abhagiri Dagoba’ (Harischandra 1908: 15), adding the ‘Jetawarana’ and Lankārāma Dāgäbas, because they had also been dedicated to the monastic Sangha. These spatial components of Anuradhapura, he argued, had been desecrated by butchers’ shops, liquor salons and foreign places of worship (Harischandra 1908: 79). A market had been built on the remains of the ‘Ransimalakaya’ (Harischandra 1908: 110), and a bungalow on the cremation ground of the Buddhist priesthood (Harischandra 1908: 113–114). Harischandra, therefore, argued for an exclusivist demarcation of space between the political and the monastic, between Buddhist and non-­Buddhist. He projected this demarcation back to the establishment of Buddhism in the island, stressing, for instance, that, in the reign of Elara, leader of ‘Tamils’, ‘it was deemed most dangerous to allow non-­Buddhists to interfere with religious matters’, even though Elara actively assisted the monastic Sangha (Harischandra 1908: 34). In Harischandra’s work, Tamils are cast as invaders (Harischandra 1908: 53) and the British as occupiers, guilty of ejecting Buddhists from their legitimate possessions. He cited, for example, the ejection by GA, Booth, of two Thai monks from the precincts of the Lankārāma Dāgäba (Harischandra 1908: 72). As for the Atamasthāna Committee, Harishchandra judged it to be a ‘bastard’, manufactured by the British administration after 1870. It mistook the eight sites mentioned in the Mahāvaṃsa and was staffed by minor government servants who uncritically accepted government policy (Harischandra 1908: 68–70). In connection with archaeological excavation, Harischandra could praise Gregory and Gordon for their support of restoration but others were criticized because they abused their brief. A letter to the governor signed by Harischandra and Medhankara, president of the Anuradhapura Buddhist Defence Committee, complained of, ‘several acts of vandalism committed by officers of the Archaeological Department in the destruction of Shrines which are objects of worship by a living Buddhist nation and of a living religion’ (Harischandra 1908: 73). Bell was particularly criticized for removing stone relics to the Colombo Museum (Harischandra 1908: 78). The heart of Harischandra’s and Dharmapāla’s argument, therefore, was that the sacred city should be the exclusive possession of Buddhists and should be ‘set apart’ (Harischandra 1908: 15) for the Sinhala Buddhist ‘nation’, as a centre of living Sinhala Buddhist consciousness. All ‘foreign’ elements should be

136   The British colonial period removed from its space. No part of it should be called ‘crown property’ (Harischandra 1908: 113 and 115). A plea had been made by the chief monk at the Bodhi Tree Vihāra in 1850, when it was confirmed that an AGA would remain at Anuradhapura, that houses should not be built close to the Vihāra and the request was granted (Nissan 1985: 258), but Harischandra’s rhetoric was completely different. He included in his ‘guide’ a 1904 letter from Dharmapāla to the king of England, pointing out that ‘subordinate officers of Your Majesty’s Government’ were persecuting ‘the Sinhalese Aryans’, adding, It is not wise neither is it just to satisfy a few hundred Muhamedan immigrants and Jesuitical Christians, that the imperishable associations of the holy City hallowed for 2,200 years should be violated and disturbed. The removal of the liquor saloons and butcher shops and foreign churches from the sacred precincts of this historic City is what the Buddhists demand. (Harischandra 1908: 79–80) The demand was for a purity that was exclusivist; not even inclusivist subordination was possible within the boundaries of the sacred part of the city. Harischandra’s ‘guide’ also gave a blow-­by-blow account of a disturbance on 9 June 1903 at Poson, when a Buddhist woman was accidently knocked over by the horse of a Christian Mudeliyar, triggering disturbances that included the burning down of a Roman Catholic church and school, and an attack on a meat market, resulting in the arrest of several people, including Harischandra (Harischandra 1908: 82–104; Nissan 1985: 273–276). According to Nissan, most of the rioters were revivalists from the south (Nissan 1985: 273). The GA, nevertheless, suspended negotiations on granting more land to Buddhists. The agitation continued for several more years with protest against the locations of a meat and a fish market, signifying a widening of the space considered to be Buddhist (Nissan 1985: 278–279). By the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, Anuradhapura was carrying the weight of several nineteenth-­century assertions and discourses: the historical credibility of the Mahāvaṃsa; Sinhalas as Aryan and therefore pure; Tamils as invaders; non-­Buddhist religions as impure; tension between Colombo Buddhist revivalists and non-­revivalist Buddhists; and a movement away from inclusivist subordination of the religious Other by Buddhists towards exclusion of the religious Other. When expressed spatially through the writings of Dharmapāla and Harischandra, this exclusivism had a greater affinity to the position of the evangelical Christian missionaries than the ‘galactic polity’ of inclusion through subordination present in the Kandyan Kingdom before 1815 (Tambiah 1992: 175), representing a rupture with the dominant pre-­colonial pattern but continuity with the Sinhala Buddhist motif of demonizing forces that could not be subordinated. The ethos that developed amongst Buddhist activists in Anuradhapura also emerged elsewhere, for instance in Horana, where Buddhists claimed that an

Ancient cities and narratives of power   137 ancient ‘Pansala’, linked with royalty, had been vandalized through the building of a ‘rest house or public inn’, surrounded by ancient pillars, directly opposite, on ‘Temple property’. The writer added that the officials responsible seemed to take ‘an especial delight in commingling the sound of corks flying from soda bottles, and the gingling of whisky glasses in open disrespect to the sacred music of the Temple’ (Anon 1890b: 285). He continued that these grievances had to be ‘redressed’ and that a petition from the villagers had brought no response. And, in Kalutara, a grassroots opposition movement developed in the 1890s to the insensitive actions of an AGA, who sought to destroy a previously permitted shrine at the base of one of the bodhi trees inside the old Dutch fort, used by the British administration, and to uproot the tree. The agitation spiralled when the AGA partially destroyed two other Bodhi trees in the fort. An illegal assembly led to judicial procedures and the involvement of the Under-­Secretary of State for the Colonies in London (Rogers 1986: 35; Wickremasinghe 2014: 122–123).

Notes   1 A woman appealed to Forbes for her son’s release from detention, after the 1817–1818 rebellion, adding, for want of his superintendence, the tanks for irrigation were neglected, and cultivation was rapidly decreasing; moreover, he was the hereditary guardian of the sacred edifices of this sacred capital, and that in his absence the buildings and temples were neither protected nor repaired, the revenues being either misapplied by the priests, or appropriated to their own use. Nissan places this in the context of nineteenth-­century conflicts over the management of the Bo Tree Vihāra (Nissan 1985: 133–178).   2 Davy’s map of 1821 (Davy 1821) located ‘Anarajapoora’ in an unpopulated and flat area with pathways leading to Trincomalee in the east, the west coast and Kandy. Baldeus’s map presents ‘Anarad’ within a forested non-­mountainous region (Baldaeus 1960 (1672)) in a similar map to that of Robert Knox (Knox 1681 edn, 1989).   3 I know of two maps that describe Anuradhapura as in a mountainous region: Cordiner (1807); Captain Schneider’s referred to in Ievers (1899: 11).   4 See Bell (1914: 10), which gives in a note the history of the realization, some 20 years before, that the Abhayagiri and the Jētavana monasteries had been mistakenly transposed. See also Nissan (1985: 5).   5 See also Jones-­Bateman (1932: 20) Anachronisms of the 20th century such as modern bungalows and Government offices detract somewhat from the ancient atmosphere, but they have a utilitarian value much appreciated by the residents. The ruins are everywhere, and a king’s bath sits in juxtaposition to the bazaar. From the hotel with its comforts of fans and electric light a short drive through the main street brings the traveller to a mass of sixteen hundred stone monoliths….   6 The Atamasthāna Committee arose in 1862 among parties connected with the Bodhi Tree Vihāra, which claimed oversight of the eight main temples in Anuradhapura (Nissan 1985: 159).   7 In 1889, there was a further attempt to regulate temple lands with the first Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance, which established provincial and district committees to oversee temple properties. In 1905, a further ordinance abolished the provincial committees.

138   The British colonial period   8 Interestingly, Mitton still transposes the Jētavana and the Abhayagiri: Mitton (1916: 72).   9 For instance, see the farewell address given by Sri Lankan scholars of Buddhism including Sumaṅgala to Arthur Gordon, where ‘preserving the noble ruins, the interesting inscriptions and the ancient literature’ is stressed in the context of their witness to ‘the grandeur of our past’ and ‘the capabilities of our race in the future’ (Anon 1890a: 191). 10 References to Dharmapāla’s diaries are taken from the copy held by the Anagārika Dharmapāla Trust, Maha-­Bodhi Society, Colombo.

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Ancient cities and narratives of power   141 Nissan, Elizabeth, 1989. ‘History in the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation’. Social Analysis 25, September: 64–77. Perera, G.F., 1925. The Ceylon Railway: the Story of its Inception and Progress. Colombo: The Ceylon Observer. Rettie, Clare, 1930. Things Seen in Ceylon. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Roberts, Michael, 2004. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Rogers, John D., 1986. ‘The Assertion of Sacred Space and the Imperial Response: the Kalutara Bo-­Tree Agitation in Sri Lanka, 1891–97’. South Asia Research 6: 27–37. Rogers John D., 1994. ‘Post-­Orientalism and the Interpretation of Premodern and Modern Political Identities: The Case of Sri Lanka’. The Journal of Asian Studies 53.1: 10–23. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2007. ‘Buddhist Kingship, British Archaeology and Historical Narratives in Sri Lanka c.1750–1850’. Past and Present 197, November: 111–142. Sivasundaram, Sujit, 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Territory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, Thomas (ed. Annie Skinner), 1891. Fifty Years in Ceylon. London: W.H. Allen & Co. Smither, James G., 1894. Architectural Remains: Anuradhapura, Ceylon; Comprising The Dágabas and Certain Other Ancient Structures, Measured, Drawn and Described by James G. Smither, Later Architect to the Government of Ceylon. London: Cooper and Budd. Tennent, James Emerson, 1977 (1859). Ceylon: An Account of the Island Physical, Historical and Topographical Vol. II. Reprint of 6th Edition. Dehiwela: Tisara Prakasakayo. Tambiah, Stanley J., 1992. Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, politics and violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thomson, Henry Byerley, 1866. Institutes of the Laws of Ceylon Vol. I. London: Trubner and Co. Weiss, Gordon, 2011. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. London: The Bodley Head. Wickremasinghe, Nira, 2014. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wijesekere, Nandadeva (ed.), 1990. History of the Department of Archaeology (Archaeological Department Centenary 1890–1990: Commemorative Series Vol. 1) Colombo: State Printing Corporation.

Part II

The post-colonial period

7 Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-­1948 and during the ethnic war

I demonstrated in Part I that both continuity and rupture marked Sinhala responses to the Other during the British colonial period. Models of inclusivist subordination and exclusivity were present before the period but the balance between the two shifted as British power became more entrenched and the spatial exclusivism of the missionaries, more apparent. I aim in this chapter to examine how these models developed in the post-­independence period, focussing particularly on the growth of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and spatial articulations of what Coomaraswamy has termed a sense of injured innocence or injured nobility among Sinhalas (Coomaraswamy 2000: 31), both of which were linked to what Rāghavan called, ‘an ontological insecurity’ (2016: 13) in the face of threat. I begin with those who developed Godumune’s pre-­independence argument, before looking at the popular nationalism of the 1950s and spatial models suggested by key articulators of this nationalism. Lastly, I turn to the contesters of this nationalism – Buddhist monks and lay people who sought to challenge what I have termed inclusivist subordination and its harder sibling, exclusivism. I have chosen not to cover in detail the consciousness that was informed by the twentieth-­century Sri Lankan encounter with Marxism, which led to the formation of the Ceylon Communist Party (CCP), and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1935, mainly by young people radicalized politically through study overseas It is worth mentioning, though, that when the LSSP championed ‘Swabasha’, namely the use of indigenous languages rather than English, in the 1930s, they considered both Sinhala and Tamil to be national languages (Chandrasekera 1995: 2–3) and took this forward into the 1950s, when they opposed Sinhala nationalism and defended the rights of minorities (Vaitheespara 2007: i), although they later compromised this position. Pre- and post-­independence, Paul Pieris evoked the concept of Sinhalē in two historical narratives about the defeat of the Kandyan Kingdom (Pieris 1939: Pieris 1950). Pieris ‘studiously’ avoided using the westernized term, ‘Kingdom of Kandy’ and assumed that Sinhalē referred to the whole country (Roberts 2004 54–55). His linguistic choices fed into the sentiments of an educated, largely middle-­class Buddhist group, which united in the view that Buddhism and the Sinhalas had suffered under colonialism. Three reports resulted, each

146   The post-colonial period commissioned to analyse the state of Buddhism in the post-­colonial polity; each voiced a sense of victimhood in the face of threat. The first was convened in April 1954, following a resolution at the 1953 conference of the All-­Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC). Its task was to ‘inquire into the present state of Buddhism in Ceylon and to report on the conditions necessary to improve and strengthen the position of Buddhism and the means whereby those conditions may be fulfilled’ (Buddhist Committee of Inquiry 1956: Foreword). The English abridgement of the report represented the island as ‘the oldest living Buddhist nation in the world’, which had prevented ‘confused and conflicting accounts of the Master’s teaching dominating the world’ (1956: iii). It stressed suffering at the hands of ‘Indian hords’ and under the Portuguese, Dutch and British (1956: vii) and, significantly, developed Godumune’s argument concerning the impoverishment of vihāras under the British through colonial land policy (1956: 6–11). Speaking of the present, the report stated: Most strange of all it has become possible to build Christian Churches on land dedicated to temples. One recent case is the proposed Roman Catholic Church at Yayamulla in the Kurunegala District on land dedicated to the Kataragama Dewale in Kandy. (1956: 7) Running through this part of the report was an awareness that Christian bodies, which held incorporated status, had influence and privileges that made them ‘a serious threat to the State’ (1956: 16). ‘Catholic Action’ was infiltrating political structures (1956: 21) and the Roman Catholic Church was starting colonization schemes (1956: 22). The report’s recommendations sought to reverse this ‘Church Dictatorship’. The threat here – to Buddhism’s spatial superiority and to the state – was Christianity. The second was a Commission of Inquiry, a Sinhala Commission, appointed in December 1996 to examine Sinhala grievances in the previous two centuries, including the appropriation of Buddhist ancestral lands (Anon 2000; Thilakaratne 1996: 2). The Interim Report, released in September 1997, however, focussed entirely on the devolution proposals of the then government of Chandrika Kumaratunge, presenting them as ‘the biggest threat faced by Sri Lanka in its entire history of more than 2500 years’ (National Joint Committee 1997: 1), in that they accepted the ‘Northern and Eastern Provinces’ as ‘the “traditional homelands” of the Tamils’ (National Joint Committee 1997: 24) and rendered the central government almost impotent. The final report, in addition, presented the Sinhala people as victims of vicious colonial policies that had robbed them of their livelihoods, their environment and their land, and also brought in ‘alien people (South Indian labour) to the lands expropriated’ (Dissanayake 1998: 7). The threat here, in addition to oppression by British colonizers, was the state itself, because it was about to sacrifice the unity of the land. The third report was commissioned after the 2004 tsunami and focussed particularly on whether Buddhists affected by the tsunami had become victims of unethical conversions.

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   147 To move back to the time of the first report, 1953 saw the publication of The Revolt in the Temple, designed to commemorate the 1956 Buddha Jayanti celebrations, which marked, within Sinhala Buddhist consciousness, the Buddha’s death, 2,500 years of Buddhism and 2,500 years of the Sinhala ‘race’ (Anon 1953: 3). To my knowledge, there was little recognition that the Madras Museum was also marking Buddha Jayanti, by publishing an account of Buddhism in South India (Aiyappan and Srinivasan 1960). The Revolt in the Temple offered a history of Sri Lanka, an account of Buddhist practice and principles, remarks on ‘Sinhalese Nationalism’, and a chapter on ‘Christianity and Civilization’. The theme of victimhood was again apparent. Continuing the motif of Tamils as vicious destroyers of Buddhism, it claimed that, in 1215, ‘They [Tamils] killed man and beast, broke images, destroyed temples and books and libraries, made dwelling-­places of vihāras, and tortured the rich for their wealth’ (Anon 1953: 72). As for the British, their administration had been a ‘yoke’. The 1840 Crown Lands Ordinance was again mentioned as the dispossessor of Sinhalas from their lands (Anon 1953: 98 and 106), condemning them to serfhood. In response to this, the writers had no hesitation in speaking of a Sinhala nation: Just as in the spring-­time of life the same message bursts from the unconscious to the conscious self and becomes objective, so to the Sinhalese there had come a reawakening, a desire to create a State which should be Sinhalese, reared up by Sinhalese hands, and breathing a Sinhalese atmosphere in the land of Sinhalese tradition. (Anon 1953: 438) Implicit within this part of the book was the conviction that the Sinhalas and the whole island were one and that realization of this ideal would lead to the flourishing of education, arts, music and literature (Anon 1953: 444). Awareness of early Tamil demands, however, was present, in response to which a strong case was made for a united country able to respect the languages and culture of each ethnic group (Anon 1953: 448). Significantly, minority voices were included but only those who recognized the majority status of the Sinhalas, for instance Akbar of the Malay community, who was quoted as saying in 1930, ‘Please remember that the other members of other races who are allowed to live here [Sri Lanka] through your bounty [of the Sinhala] know that it is their duty to help the main partner to be strong and powerful’ (Anon 1953: 449). In this, a return to the concept of ‘tributary overlordship’ can be glimpsed, akin to what I have termed inclusivist subordination. The Revolt in the Temple gave voice to the popular nationalism that linked nation, religion, language and land, which moved centre stage in the 1950s. The history of this, particularly its exploitation by key Sinhala politicians such as S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, has been well documented (K.M. de Silva 1981: 510–524; Richardson 2005: 144–187) and I touch on the consequences in the next chapter. Here it is important to note the double-­sided lineage of the consciousness that informed it. On the one hand, there was a motif, refined in the

148   The post-colonial period colonial period, of the Sinhalas besieged and victimized by the British. On the other hand, as Arasaratnam argues, there was a yearning for continuity with the perceived polity of ‘the pre-­colonial Sinhalese kingdoms’ (Arasaratnam 1998: 44), when the whole island was claimed for Sinhala Buddhism. One refrain that appeared again and again in the post-­colonial period, which was linked with the motifs of victimhood, and an ethnic and religious hierarchy, was ‘We [the Sinhala] only have one country. All other ethnic groups can look to other countries’. These words from a member of the monastic Sangha encapsulate it: Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country, although non-­Sinhalese and non­Buddhists have lived here for a long time.… For the non-­Sinhalese even if they do not have Sri Lanka as their home, their races have other countries of their own. Hence these races will never get annihilated. But the Sinhalese have one and only one country and that is Sri Lanka. (Schonthal 2016: 106) I could give numerous spatial representations of this idea. D.B. Wijetunge, UNP president after the assassination of Premadasa in 1993, reportedly commented that the majority community was the tree and the minorities, creepers (Anon 1998: 11). Harischandra Wijayatunge, who stood for president unsuccessfully in 1994 and 1999 as leader of a small Sinhala nationalist party, claimed, ‘There are no Sri Lankans.… It is a Sinhala nation. There is nothing wrong with others living here, but they must integrate and accept that it is a Sinhala nation.’ He added, ‘All races will be at peace once it is a Buddhist country. The minorities will be better off only under a Sinhala Buddhist leadership and not otherwise’ (Fernando 1999: 4). And A.S. Amarasekera, in 2003, listed six ‘national rights’ held by the majority community but not minorities, including ‘the right to call their country the national motherland’ and ‘the right to the territory of that national motherland’ (Amarasekera 2003: 4).1 Some went as far to say that those who spoke of an historic Tamil homeland and wished to break up the country were ‘savages’ (Amunugama 1991: 18, quoting Vinivida 14, June 1988: 1). In the face of the possible fragmentation of this idealized hierarchical model at the hands of the Tamil separatist Other from the 1970s onwards, several further spatial models emerged within Sinhala consciousness. I will examine two, one geographical and one cultural: re-­ordering demography and geography to assert Sinhala dominance; asserting that there was an underlying and unifying cultural ethos throughout the country, Jāthika Chintanaya, and that this extended to minorities.

Re-­ordering demography to assert Sinhala dominance The proposed re-­ordering lay in direct lineage with the inclusivist subordination present in the Kandyan Kingdom. Its demand was that Sinhalas and Tamils should live throughout the island in numbers proportionate to their national ratio. It was passionately articulated by Malinga Gunaratne, who was involved with a colonization project in Madura Oya, south of Trincomalee, from 1983 to 1988,

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   149 when 40,000 Sinhala people led by a Buddhist monk, Matāra Kitālagama Seelalankara (the ‘Dimbulugala priest’), who believed he had government support, penetrated into an area populated by Tamils, causing a political crisis, since only 500 colonists had originally been anticipated (Gunaratne 1998).2 Gunaratne’s argument was rooted in the conviction that the ethnic conflict was land-­based, that the unity of the country must be maintained and that separatism must be defeated. His solution was for Tamils to live alongside Sinhalas, as ‘brothers and sisters’, in the South and the North, in the overall national ratio, to short-­circuit the possibility of a separate state. He planned to make this happen in the Yan Oya basin, on the borders between the North and the South, and then in Maduru Oya (Gunaratne 1998: 80–90). Neither reached a successful outcome. The imaginary behind the project was voiced by Seelalankara, when, according to Gunaratne, he told the ‘colonizers’: You are assembled here today, not only to get a piece of land for you to live on, but for a more lofty purpose. This country is going through her worst period in history. We are being threatened from all sides by separatists. What the separatist wants is land. A contiguous block of land which they propose to call Eelam. You are going to break that contiguity. You are going to live among the innocent Tamil people as brothers and sisters. Not as enemies. Please remember that. That is my first lesson. We go into the midst of the peace loving Tamils and we live with them. We will protect them. It is only then that there can be a united Sri Lanka. We cannot allow anyone to draw a line across this country and say this is Sinhala land, this is Tamil land. The land of this country belongs to everybody – Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Malay, Burgher. This is our heritage, every inch of it has to be looked after jealously. Anyone has a right to live wherever he wants. We cannot allow separatist terrorists to carve out a part of this country for a different state in Sri Lanka.… United Sri Lanka should be defended to the last drop of blood of her people. (Gunaratne 1998: 80–81) According to Jayawardena, the national ratio model had also been advocated by the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP – People’s Liberation Front) before their failed insurrection of 1971, namely ‘the reallocation of the country’s population so that Sinhalese and Tamils would be dispersed all over the island’ (Jayawardena 2003: 66). C.M. Madduma Bandara proposed another version of this model: that Sinhalas should control the riverbanks and rivers, and that each province should have access to the sea (Korf 2009). Addressing Peradeniya University in 2001, he proposed a re-­drawing of provincial territorial boundaries to accord with ‘the hydraulic logic of river basins’ (Korf 2009: 101). The Northern Province would be smaller and the East would be split into three provinces, each with a Sinhala majority. Korf termed it ‘cartographic violence’ or a ‘Sinhala kind of geography’ (Korf 2009: 101), a nationalist solution ‘to exert spatial control over the

150   The post-colonial period island-­space’ (Korf 2009: 113). Liyanage, on the other hand, termed it ‘racism disguised in space’ (Liyanage 1998: 22), accusing Madduma Bandara of having an ‘abstract, narrow and empty’ notion of space that ignored its socio-­cultural elements (Liyanage 1998: 27). I would not disagree with either Korf or Liyanage but would argue that both the national ratio model and Madduma Bandara’s must be seen in the light of a Sinhala imaginary that pre-­dated the arising of full-­ blown nationalism and made perfect sense to the authors. Both attempted, in line with the conceptual framework of inclusivist subordination, to integrate a potentially threatening Other into the ethos of the majority.

Jāthika Chintanaya In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the assertion that there was an underlying and unifying cultural ethos throughout the country became embodied in the concept of Jāthika Chintanaya, theorized by Gunadasa Amarasekera and Nalin de Silva, Professor of Mathematics at Colombo University. Amarasekera defined it as ‘a culture based national ethos, and all-­pervading national psyche peculiar to each nation’ – ‘a transcendent culture’, which, in the case of Sri Lanka, was ‘primarily a product of the humane, civilised way of life of the Sinhala Buddhists of this country over the centuries’ (Amarasekera 1990: 6). He did not deny that Sri Lankan minorities had their own culture but argued that, if they ‘went back to their own cultural roots and moorings’, they would be led to ‘this transcendent culture’ (Amarasekera 1990: 6), namely they would find that they were, in their hearts, in tune with Sinhala Buddhist culture. This culture, according to de Silva, could be contrasted with ‘Yudev Chintanaya’ (Jewish Chintanaya), which was conditioned by rationalism, and an inability to live in harmony with nature or to see that phenomena were interconnected (Isaac 1991: 11). Idealistically advocated as a solution to ethnic division and racism, it was nevertheless a further attempt at subordination through ideological assimilation. It meant that S.L. Gunasekera could accuse Tamils of racism for wishing to divide the island, violating its Jāthika Chintanaya (Gunasekera 2000: 7).

The Other as threat or object of ridicule: Sinhalas as beyond ridicule The models outlined above represented the Other as friend on condition that it was subordinate to Sinhala consciousness. There was, however, an element in the early post-­independence polity that represented the Tamil and indeed the Christian Other as outright threat. Jayawardena has demonstrated that, in the 1960s, Sri Lanka’s left parties, which had supported minority rights, played a communal card, through appealing to the Sinhala perception that they were victims surrounded by aliens (Jayawardena 2003: 51). She focussed on the exploitation of two perceptions: that ‘foreign or minority-­owned business ventures’ had adversely affected Sinhala traders; that non-­Sinhala people had ‘an unfair share of government jobs and university places’ (Jayawardena 2003: 50).

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   151 In the mid-­1960s, leftist newspapers carried anti-­Christian articles, raised antipathy towards plantation Tamils and also opposed the Dudley/Chelvanayakam Pact, to which I return in the next chapter, on the grounds that it ‘betrayed the birthright of the Sinhalese’ (Jayawardena 2003: 60). She also stressed the archaeological component of this, namely the whipping up of fear that archaeological remains in the North and East linked to Sinhala Buddhism were being destroyed. Sasanka Perera has demonstrated that art and comedy played into this by stereotyping Tamils, this time as the Other that could be ridiculed. Arguing that Sinhalas, in the mid-­twentieth century, were largely ignorant of Tamil cultural production or indeed of Tamil concerns, he drew attention to a buffoon-­like Tamil character, beloved of Sinhala theatre goers – Sergeant Nallathambi, created in the 1980s by the comedian, Nihal Silva (Perera 2005: 206–211). In the wider context of Tamils represented as threat, this reduction of the Tamil people was, in effect, another method of subordinating the Other. What could not, however, be ridiculed by the 1980s were Buddhism or the Sinhala nation. Perera examined this with reference to the ‘mass hysteria’ (Perera 1995: 26) that arose in reaction to Stanley Tambiah’s book, Buddhism Betrayed? (Tambiah 1992), which demonstrated, according to Perera, both that non-­Sinhalas writing about Buddhism would not be tolerated and that criticism, or even a questioning of actions undertaken on behalf of the Sinhala nation, was analogous to ‘blasphemy’ (Perera 1995: 27–28).

Creating historiographies to affirm or contest the concept of Sinhala Buddhist hegemony Historiography was used in independent Sri Lanka, as it was in the colonial period, to support the imaginaries I have outlined. In 1961, Paranavitana argued from inscriptional and literary evidence, including the Tamil work, the Maṇimēkalai, that the ‘final abandonment’ of the Jaffna peninsula, by the Sinhala ‘seems to have taken place in comparatively recent times’ (Paranavitana 1961: 190). A separate kingdom in the North only emerged in the thirteenth century, he argued, under the name Jāvaka, because of a Malay lineage (Paranavitana 1961: 193–204). Significantly, he used the term ‘traditional homeland’ to describe the relationship between Sinhalas and the North (Paranavitana 1961: 217). To use the words of Serena Tennekoon, however, it was following the anti-­ Tamil pogrom of July 1983, to which I return in the next chapter, that historical discussions of this kind ‘assumed the proportions of a national obsession’ with political and religious leaders ‘reconstructing the Sinhala past’ in newsprint media (Tennekoon 1987: 1). Tennekoon examined three debates in the Sinhala newspaper, the Divayina, one of which directly relates to the theme of this study: whether an independent Tamil kingdom existed in the North. The debate began with Gamini Iriyagolla, who judged the idea a ‘blatant lie concocted by Tamil politicians’ (Tennekoon 1987: 3). He was challenged by Carlo Fonseka, who argued that historical evidence suggested that an independent Tamil kingdom

152   The post-colonial period existed in the North in the thirteenth century, in line with Paranavitana. A heated and long debate ensued with multiple participants. Eventually, it changed into one that echoed a colonial debate: the antiquity of Sinhala presence in the North and whether the ‘Dravidians’ had always been invaders of an essentially Sinhala island. An attempt by one debater to turn attention to whether Tamils in the present had rights, failed. The side that seemed to win was the one stressing that it was the Sinhalas, with an unbroken culture now under threat, which had historical priority. And in 1991, the Vallipuram gold plate re-­emerged in the media, Malini Dias of the Department of Archaeology claiming that it proved that by about the second century ce the whole of Sri Lanka was Sinhala dominated (Dias 1991; see also Dias 2001). Anuradha Seneviratna emerged as one historian whose historiography justified this discourse. Echoing Brito, he argued that Sinhala and Sri Lanka were coterminous in history; Sri Lanka was the land of the Sinhala. Appealing to the Vijaya myth, he stressed that the princess whom Vijaya married might not have been Tamil but Pandyan and, therefore, Aryan (Seneviratna 1999: 12). Nevertheless, when Buddhism was strong in South India, he insisted, Tamil was taught in Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic schools and South Indian Tamils were used as mercenaries, only later becoming invaders. Drawing on Indrapala’s doctoral study (Indrapala 1965), he argued that Tamil settlements in Sri Lanka were not numerous until the tenth century ce and that, before the thirteenth century, there were only pockets of Tamil habitation (Seneviratna 1999: 54–55). As Horsburgh had done, he pointed to the changing of place names in the North from Sinhala to Tamil and the eclipsing of Buddhist devotional centres because of Tamil migration after the thirteenth century (Seneviratna 1999: 60). His solution for peace in Sri Lanka was assimilation: ‘The people who migrated to Sri Lanka from South India over thousands of years must assimilate into the majority community by sharing each others’ cultural features and living together making the whole of Sri Lanka their only home (Seneviratna 1999: 68–69). He lamented the lack of this, particularly that Sinhalas could not live in ‘Tamil areas’, and pleaded for Sinhalas to respect the language and culture of the Tamils, and for Tamils to respect the majority culture in order for ‘harmonious living’ to be established (Seneviratna 1999: 69). In the light of the Divayina debates and its reinforcement in academic works by Paranavitana and Seneviratne, the use by Tamil nationalists of the phrase ‘traditional homelands of the Tamil people’ to denote the North and the East of the island became a particular Sinhala grievance. It was seen as a falsification of history and a violation of the ideal ordering of the country, namely inclusivism rather than exclusivism. So, on the eve of the 1994 elections, a letter, signed by monastic and lay Buddhists, stated as an ‘inviolable’ principle that the Northern and Eastern Provinces should not ‘be accepted as the traditional homelands of the Tamils’ (Anon 1994) and, in 1999, the person who wrote as Kumbakarna lambasted with moral indignation the possibility that ‘not even a footprint of a Sinhalese’ would be allowed on the ‘sacred soil of the Tamil homeland’ (Kumbakarna 1999: 7).

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   153 Within Sinhala consciousness, the term ‘federalism’ carried the same connotation as ‘traditional homelands’. Gunadheera cited a linguistic reason. ‘Federalism’ has no equivalent in Sinhala, he argued, a notable Sinhala-­English Dictionary stating that it was the joining together of ‘two separate entities’ (Gunadheera 2011: 67). ‘Federalism’ for many Sinhalas, therefore, implied that a separate state in the North and East would precede federalism – an idea that was anathema to the imaginary I have described. Ellawala Mēdhānanda Thera, a leader within the Jāthika Häla Urumaya (JHU), a political party formed in 2004 as a successor to the Sinhala Urumaya, became a spokesperson for this historiography, through archaeological researches into what he saw as the Sinhala Buddhist heritage of the North and East. In the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-­first, he travelled to the North and the East to ‘prove’ that Sri Lanka ‘from its early history’ was a unitary state (Mēdhānanda 2005: 9 and 373), administered justly by Sinhala Buddhist kings (Mēdhānanda 2005: 25) and ‘Aryan’ in nature (Mēdhānanda 2005: 30). Early Tamil inscriptions in the North were explained through the need to cater for South Indian traders (Mēdhānanda 2005: 26). In the Jaffna peninsula alone, he claimed, there were 45 sites with Sinhala Buddhist ruins (Fernando 2016: 268) and, in the East, Hindu temples had been built over 100 Buddhist vihāras (Fernando 2016: 267; see also Mēdhānanda 2005: 26, 42, 48). Contesting the Archaeological Department’s figure of 276 Buddhist sites in these areas, he posited at least 500 (Mēdhānanda 2005: 10, cited in Fernando 2016: 268). This heritage, Mēdhānanda insisted, was under threat, not only from Tamils but, in the East, from ‘a future Muslim Fundamentalist rule’ (Mēdhānanda 2005: 30). And the LTTE were doing further damage, for instance taking bricks from stūpas to build huts (Mēdhānanda 2005: 40). Mēdhānanda, nevertheless, could speak enthusiastically of friendship with a Hindu priest in ‘Kadurugoda’. His caption under a photograph of them both stated, ‘He wanted to pose with me. Then who wants to separate?’ (Mēdhānanda 2005: 391). Inter-­religious harmony was possible and necessary, according to Mēdhānanda, but on condition that this Sinhala Buddhist heritage was recognized. After the tsunami of December 2004, the vociferous opposition mounted by the monastic Sangha, particularly from members of the JHU and the JVP, to any form of agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to enable co-­operative delivery of aid to the victims (a Post-­Tsunami Operations Management Structure or P-­TOMS) should be seen in the light of this, since it appeared to recognize these ‘homelands’ and the LTTE as a legitimate ruler of them (Fuard 2005: 4; Seneviratne 2005: 1).3 One fear was that it might have enabled the LTTE to convince the international community that it was capable of administering a separate state.

Contesters of the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist imaginary This representation of history, however, was not uncontested. To take academic perspectives first, R.A.L.H. Gunawardana, in a classic study of historiography,

154   The post-colonial period contested the two historical imaginaries that he believed underpinned the ethnic conflict – that there had been a golden age of Tamil culture in Jaffna, and that Sinhala language and ethnicity had existed in Sri Lanka from the beginnings of its history – by arguing that Sri Lankan Buddhism between the fifth and ninth centuries ce was pan-­Asian and cosmopolitan. Buddhists from many Asian countries, including India, lived in the island or visited pilgrimage sites (Gunawardana 1995: 27). It was a false equation, therefore, to define Buddhist remains in the North and East as proof of Sinhala dominance. Roberts, in an article evocatively entitled, ‘History as Dynamite’, similarly condemned the ‘retrospective romanticism’ present in both Sinhala and Tamil reconstructions of the past, for instance those connected with the Vijaya narrative and the defensive Tamil reclamation of Rāvana. He pointed to the dangers of equating the ‘history of Sri Lanka with the history of the Sinhala (that is those who became Sinhala)’ (Roberts 2000: 11) and dared to suggest that ancient history was of little contemporary use, by arguing that Vijaya was a symbolic idea not a person, and that Elara, if he had existed at all, was not a Tamil. Nevertheless, he continued to argue that proto-­Sinhala was the dominant language in the North in the first millennium ce and that, if Tamils were present, they became Sinhala (Roberts 2000: 12). Obeyesekere also called for a deconstruction of myths of racial purity in Sri Lanka, ‘the freezing of categories’, citing numerous examples of porous boundaries between Sinhala and Tamil (Obeyesekere 1994: 33–34), as did Sasanka Perera (Perera 2005: 98). Pivotal in contesting fixed, non-­porous racial boundaries in Sri Lanka’s history were two edited collections published by the Social Scientists Association (SSA) in 1984 and 1987, some of the papers within which I have already cited (Abeysekera and Gunasinghe 1987; Social Scientists’ Association 1984). In the media, in 1998, an article first written by James Rutnam in 1957 arguing for Tamil and European ‘blood’ within the ruling Bandaranaike family was published (Rutnam 1998: 11) again contesting essentialized ethnic categories. As for Jatika Chintanaya, the views of Amarasekera and de Silva did not go unchallenged. Reggie Siriwardena directly contested them in January and February 1990 to argue for a multi-­ethnic consciousness rooted in ‘tolerance, openness and pluralism’ (Siriwardena 1990a: 10), qualities he argued had been present in the borrowings that Sinhala culture had made throughout its history (Siriwardena 1990b: 5). He was joined by Richard de Soysa (De Soysa 1990) and Eymard de Silva Wijeratne (De Silva Wijeratne 1990). And H.L. de Silva, in 1991, called for a ‘higher nationalism’, which rose above group nationalism to embody ‘a concept of co-­existence and solidarity among all the different groups’ (De Silva 1991: 6). Within my fieldwork interviews, the Sinhala Buddhist I will call Nimal, stated, ‘What they [Sinhala Buddhists] have learnt is that we have protected Buddhism by holding on – not by letting go’. Personally, he criticized this. For him, this was not truly a Buddhist way. I would do a grave injustice to the Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic Sangha if I did not also stress that, just as historiographies differed during the war, so opinions within the Sangha differed, although the media tended to focus on Sinhala nationalist voices. Throughout the last 30 years, I have met many monks who

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   155 contested the nationalist imaginary that has been my focus in this chapter. In 1998, I interviewed for a BBC series on Buddhism, two monks who had worked in the North, Delgalle Padumasiri and Vavuniya Wimalasara, both of whom had risked their lives in defence of Tamils. Padumasiri, for instance, stated and I use his real name: The solutions are crystal clear in Buddhism. The first step is to ask what caused the war in the North and East. Why did the young people take up arms? The same thing happened in the South. The key to the solution is rooted in this basic question. We must tackle the causes. (Harris 1998: 113) In 2001, I cited monks in the Inter-­Religious Alliance for Peace and the Humanist Association of Bhikkhus and quoted the words of Kumburugamuve Vajira, after he led a delegation to Jaffna in 1999 that included over 20 Buddhist monks: The Sangha, as an intellectual and inspirational community must enable the Sinhalese to rid themselves of avijja [ignorance] – of misconceptions that they are the superior race on the island and that other ethnic groups have to be subordinate. (Harris 2001: 208) Then, in 2007, I referred to the work of Kadurugamuve Nagitha, of the Linguistics Department, Kelaniya University, who encouraged Sinhala students to learn Tamil and staged Tamil Days, in which these students performed in Tamil (Harris 2007: 157). Other monks came out on the side of a negotiated settlement, for instance Palipane Chandananda, the Asgiriya Mahānayake, in 1999 (Anon 1999b: 10) and Baddegama Samitha, the first Buddhist monk to enter Parliament in 2001, as a member of the LSSP, consistently spoke in favour of devolution, even federalism, and a negotiated settlement, particularly during the 2002–2006 peace process (e.g. Gnanadass 2002a: 5; Gnanadass 2002b: 13). These are but a fraction of the monks who diverged from the dominant discourse represented in the Sinhala and English press. Nevertheless, the Sinhala imaginary that I have described demonstrates, albeit with its Sinhala contesters, a ‘holding on’ to a historiography that can tolerate the non-­Sinhala and non-­Buddhist Other only if it is subordinated within a united whole. If subordination of the Other is threatened within this imaginary, then the Sinhala people are seen as in danger of extinction and it was to this that movements such as the Movement for the Defence of the Motherland (Maubima Surakeeme Viyaparaya), formed in the 1986, the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT), formed in the late 1990s and the Sinhala Veera Vidhana (SVV), formed in 1995, appealed. Their consistent position was that there was no ethnic problem in the country, only a problem of ‘Tamil racist terrorism’ that had to be defeated militarily, if the Sinhala nation was to be saved (Anon 1999a: 10; De Silva 1999: 6; Nadarajah 2000).

156   The post-colonial period

Notes 1 In the same article Amarasekera explains that, on visits to remote villages, he asked people what the name of the country was. When they replied ‘Sri Lanka’ he corrected them. It was Sinhale to denote ‘the indigenous population’. He would speak of England, Japan and Germany and add, The indigenous population in any such country will not agree to change the name of their country for the purpose of fostering a pluralistic or multi-­ethnic society. If they do so, the rights of the indigenous population will be diluted and with time their population will become extinct. (Amarasekera 2003: 4) 2 Seelalankara was killed by the LTTE in June 1995. 3 Dambara Amila and Omalpe Sobitha fasted. Tear gas was used by police on demonstrations. See interview with JHU MP, Athuraliya Rathana (Gnanadass 2005: 7), and interview with Somawansa Amarasinghe, leader of the JVP, who claims the agreement would give ‘illegal powers to the LTTE’ (Anon 2005: 5).

References Abeysekera, Charles and Gunasinghe, Newton 1987. Facets of Ethnicity in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Aiyappan, A. and Srinivasan, P.R., 1960. Story of Buddhism with Special Reference to South India. Madras: Department of Information and Publicity. Amarasekera, A.S., 2003. ‘Original Land of Sinhale’. The Sunday Times Plus, 23 November: 4. Amarasekera, Gunadasa, 1990. ‘Jathika Chintanaya: What Does it Mean?’ The Island, 28 January: 6. Amunugama, Sarath, 1991. ‘Buddhaputra and Bhumiputra? Dilemmas of Modern Sinhala Buddhist Monks in Relation to Ethnic and Political Conflict’. Religion 21: 115–139. Anon, 1953. The Revolt in the Temple: Composed to Commemorate 2500 Years of the Land, the Race and the Faith. Colombo: Sinha Publications. Anon, 1994. ‘Monks Warn Against Horse Deals with Minority’. The Sunday Times, 10 July. Anon, 1998. ‘CBK’s Remark Riles Tamils’. The Sunday Leader, November 15: 11. Anon, 1999a. ‘Annihilate Tiger Terrorism’. The Sunday Times Plus, 17 January: 10. Anon, 1999b. ‘New Life for Peace Moves’. The Sunday Times, 16 May: 10. Anon, 2000. ‘News and Comments’. Pravāda 6.9–10: 3–5. Anon, 2005. ‘Country Sacrificed in Secrecy: Somawansa’. The Sunday Times, 12 June: 3. Arasaratnam, S., 1998. ‘Nationalism, Communalism, and National Unity in Ceylon’. Pravāda. 5.10–11: 43–50. Buddhist Committee of Inquiry, 1956. The Betrayal of Buddhism: An Abridged Version of the Report of the Buddhist Committee of Inquiry. Balangoda: Dharmavijaya Press. Chandrasekera, Ranjith, 1995. Some Reflections on the Language Question (1931–1956). Kurunegala: Nawinne Printers. Coomaraswamy, Radhika, 2000. ‘Of Vijaya and Maruta: Reflections on Nationalist Discourses of Race and Diversity’. Nēthrā 4.1 and 2: 7–53. De Silva, H.L., 1991. An Appraisal of the Federal Alternative for Sri Lanka. Dehiwela: Sridevi Printers. De Silva, K.M., 1981. A History of Sri Lanka. Delhi: Oxford University Press. De Silva, Nilika, 1999. ‘Sinhalese Are Not Racists – NMAT’ (Interview with Champika Ranawaka). The Sunday Times, 20 June: 6.

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   157 De Silva Wijeratne, Eymard, 1990. ‘Jathika Chintanaya – An Escapist Trail?’ The Island, 18 February: 6. De Soysa, Richard, 1990. ‘Manifesto for an Alternative Society’, The Island, 11 February: 4. Dias, Malini, 1991. ‘Sri Lankans Must Locate Vallipuram Gold Plate Inscription and Preserve it for Posterity’. Sunday Observer, 27 January. Dias, Malini, 2001. The Growth of Buddhist Monastic Institutions in Sri Lanka from Brāhmī Inscriptions (Epigraphia Zeylanica Vol. VIII). Colombo: Department of Archaeology Survey. Dissanayake, Piyasena, 1998. ‘Guilty’. The Sunday Times, 16 August: 11. Continued as ‘Apologise to the People’, 23 August: 7. Fernando, Jude Lal, 2016. ‘Liberating the Conflicts from ‘History’ in the island of Lanka: Buddhist Perspectives’. In Elizabeth J Harris & John O’Grady (eds), History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity. Sankt Ottilien: EOS. Fernando, Tania, 1999. ‘Harischandra Wants Sinhala-­Buddhist State’. The Sunday Times, 14 November: 4. Fuard, Asif, 2005. ‘JVP Protesters say no to P-­TOMS’. The Sunday Times, 26 June: 4. Gnanadass, Wilson, 2002a. ‘The Country Must Support the MoU’. The Sunday Leader, 10 March: 5. Gnanadass, Wilson, 2002b. ‘Federal Govt. Would Solve Country’s Problems’. The Sunday Leader, 22 December: 13. Gnanadass, Wilson, 2005. ‘No Support to Govt. if JM Signed’. The Sunday Leader, 29 May: 7. Gunadheera, Somapala, 2011. Some Marginal Comments: Ethnic Confrontation and National Integration in Sri Lanka. Pannipitiya: Stamford Lake. Gunaratne, Malinga H., 1998 (1988). For a Sovereign State: A True Story on Sri Lanka’s Separatist War. Ratmalana: Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha. Gunasekera, S.L., 2000. ‘Some Salient Features of the Proposed Constitution’. The Sunday Times, 6 August: 6–7. Gunawardana, R.A.L.H., 1995. Historiography in a Time of Ethnic Conflict: Construction of the Past in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Harris, Elizabeth J., 1998. What Buddhists Believe. Oxford: Oneworld. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2001. ‘Buddhism in War: A Study of Cause and Effect in Sri Lanka’. Culture and Religion 2.2: 197–222. Harris, Elizabeth J., 2007. ‘The Cost of Peace: Buddhists and Conflict Transformation in Sri Lanka’. In Philip Broadhead and Damien Keown (eds), Can Faiths Make Peace? Holy Wars and the Resolution of Religious Conflicts. London and New York: I.B. Tauris: 149–161. Indrapala, Kartigesu, 1965. The Dravidian Settlement in Early Sri Lanka. Doctoral Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Isaac, Kalpana, 1991. ‘Jathika Chintanaya Threatens Colombo Campus.’ The Sunday Observer, 30 June: 11. Jayawardena, Kumari, 2003. ‘Ethnicity and Sinhala Consciousness’. In Nimanthi Perera-­ Rajasingham (ed.), July ’83 and After, Nēthra Special Issue. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies: 47–86. Korf, Benedikt, 2009. ‘Cartographic Violence: Engaging a Sinhala Kind of Geography’. In Catherine Brun and Tariq Jazeel (eds), Spatializing Politics in Postcolonial Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Sage: 100–121. Kumbakarna, 1999. ‘What About “Demographic Balance” for Sinhalese?’ The Sunday Times, 24 April: 7.

158   The post-colonial period Liyanage, Sumanasiri, 1998. Interventions in the Devolution Debate. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Mēdhānanda, Ellāwala, 2005.The Sinhala Buddhist Heritage in The East and The North of Shri Lanka. Colombo: Jayakody and Co. Nadarajah, S., 2000 ‘Economic Vision Conceals Message of Racist Hate’. Tamil Guardian, 22 April: 5. National Joint Committee, 1997. Sinhala Commission Interim Report, Presented to the Nation at the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress Hall, Colombo on 17 September 1997. Colombo: National Joint Committee. Obeyesekere, G., 1994. ‘Ethnicity and Pluralism in Sri Lanka’. The Thatched Patio 7.2: 30–35. Paranavitana, S., 1961. ‘The Arya Kingdom of North Ceylon. JCBRAS New Series VII.2: 174–224. Perera, Sasanka, 1995. Living with Torturers and Other Essays of Intervention: Sri Lankan Society, Culture and Politics in Perspective. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Perera, Sasanka, 2005. Alternate Space: Trivial Writings of an Academic. Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture. Pieris, Paul, E., 1939. Tri Sinhala: The Last Phase 1796–1815. Colombo: The Colombo Apothecaries. Pieris, Paul, E., 1950. Sinhalē and the Patriots 1815–1818. Colombo: The Colombo Apothecaries. Rāghavan, Suren, 2016. Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka’s Civil War: Ethnoreligious Nationalism of the Sinhala Saṅgha and Peacemaking in Sri Lanka 1995–2010. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox. Richardson, John, 2005. Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars. Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Roberts Michael, 2000. ‘History as Dynamite’. Pravāda 6.6: 11–13, reprinted from The Island, 1 January 2000. Roberts, Michael, 2004. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Rutnam, James T., 1998. ‘Bandaranaike Family Tree’. The Sunday Leader, 18 October: 11. Schonthal, Benjamin, 2016. ‘Configurations of Buddhist Nationalism in Modern Sri Lanka’. In John Clifford Holt (ed.), Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 97–118. Seneviratna, Anuradha, 1999. The Lions and Tigers: Religious and Cultural Background of the Sinhala-­Tamil Relations. London: Self-­published. Seneviratne, Shane, 2005. ‘Sobitha Thera Calls of Fast: Police Ready for Eviction’. The Sunday Times, 12 June: 1. Siriwardena, Reggie, 1990a. ‘The Choice Before the Intelligentsia – Jathika Chintanaya or Multi-­culturalism. The Island, 14 January: 10. Siriwardena, Reggie, 1990b. ‘Behind the Mists of Jathika Chintanaya’. The Island, 11 February: 5. Social Scientists’ Association, 1984. Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Tambiah, Stanley J., 1992. Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries post-1948   159 Tennekoon, Serena, 1987. ‘Symbolic Refractions of the Ethnic Crisis’. In Charles Abeysekera and Newton Gunasinghe (eds), Facets of Ethnicity. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Thilakaratne, Chamintha, 1996. ‘Sinhala Commission to Cover 200 Years of Grievances’. The Sunday Times, 22 December: 2. Vaitheespara, Ravi, 2007. Theorizing the National Crisis: Shanmugaratnam, the Left and the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists Association.

8 Ethnic conflict, internal war and the spatial 1912–2009

In this chapter I first reflect on the origin and escalation of the ethnic conflict until 1979, with a particular emphasis on how the different agents in the conflict sought to realize their vision for the land of Sri Lanka. It was a process that destroyed another space – the space for democratic dissent. I then move to the period of armed conflict, when two nationalisms fought over space. Within this section, I attempt to convey the pro-­active, reactive and retaliatory violence that affected all religious and ethnic communities, including attacks on places of worship and other expressions of religious identity. I also touch on actions that suggested to minorities that the majority community sought to claim the whole island for Sinhala Buddhism. I then move to political process, taking as examples peace proposals that were seen by some within the majority community as desecrating the unity of the land. I will continue to use narrative as a methodological tool, through contemporary memoirs and diaries, newsprint evidence and voices from my fieldwork interviews. The chapter will demonstrate the significance of the spatial dimension within the ethnic conflict and also lines of continuity with the imaginaries analysed in the last chapter.

The origin and escalation of the ethnic conflict Part I demonstrated that communal patterns of thought were present during the colonial period. Even actions that changed the demography of the island began before 1948, for instance the movement of Muslims and Sinhalas into the Puttalam region during the Dutch and British periods (Gunasingam 2016: 372) and the attempted restoration of the area around the Minneriya tank near Polonnaruva in the 1930s, which drew many Sinhalas to the region (De Silva 1981: 405 and 469). Within Parliamentary space, before independence, these patterns took the form of confrontation over the visual strength of the minorities. The key question concerned whether the legislature should confer preferential ‘weightage for the minorities to compensate for the numerical superiority of the Sinhalese’ (De Silva 1981: 427) and to ensure minorities had agency within central governance. Before 1920, there was almost equal representation between Tamil and Sinhala in the nevertheless British-­dominated Legislative Council, through the ‘unofficial members’ selected largely on a communal basis (De Silva 1981: 392; Gunasingam 2016:

Ethnic conflict and internal war   161 374–375 and 401). Limited agency, therefore, was granted to both communities at the centre of governance, with both, according to Gunasingam seen as ‘founding races’ (Gunasingam 2016: 401). This communal balance of power, however, did not last. When the Council was reformed in the early 1920s, territorial replaced communal criteria for the election and nomination of members, which resulted in more Sinhala representatives than Tamil (De Silva 1981: 392; Gunasingam 2016: 420). Sinhala-­Tamil negotiation at this time came to be seen by Tamils as a betrayal. In December 1918, James Peiris and E.J. Samarawickrema, as presidents of the Ceylon National Association and the Ceylon Reform League, were perceived by Tamils as promising to the Jaffna Association that Sinhala leaders would support a seat in the reformed Council for Tamils in the Western Province, thus increasing Tamil representation in a compensatory way within the new system (Gunasingam 2016: 420–421). This had enabled Tamil politicians such as Ponnambalam Arunachalam to support the formation of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) in 1919. However, this ‘promise’ was then rescinded by Sinhala members of the Congress, resulting in the resignation from the CNC of Arunachalam and other Tamil members (Abhayavardhana 1999: 5), although the manipulative hand of Manning, governor between 1919 and 1925, cannot be discounted. Manning then proceeded to reform the Council, again mixing communal and territorial criteria, with Sinhala members outweighing Tamil (Gunasingam 2016: 423–424, 427–428). A refusal by the Sinhala majority, therefore, to accommodate compensatory Tamil representation at the level of central governance made the CNC an entirely Sinhala body. In 1927, the Donoughmore Commission proposed further constitutional changes, namely a semi-­responsible form of government that included universal suffrage and the abolition of communal representation in the legislature, in favour of a purely territorial system that would, in the commissioners’ eyes, hinder communalism, although several measures were recommended to ensure the protection of minorities, including provincial councils and nominated members in the State Council (Mendis 1967: 13–17). Both Tamil and Muslim politicians opposed the proposals, mainly because a territorial system ‘would guarantee the permanent Sinhalese domination of politics’ (De Silva 1981: 423) and preclude the possibility of preferential or compensatory weightage, although caste factors also contributed, in that universal suffrage threatened the dominance of the English-­speaking caste elite in Jaffna (Abhayavardhana 1999: 7). Nevertheless, the proposals were adopted with a slim margin by the Sinhala-­ dominated Legislative Council (De Silva 1981: 424; Mendis 1967: 17). Opposition came from the Students’ or Youth Congress, formed in Jaffna in 1924 as an anti-­colonial and anti-­caste movement – ‘the first manifestation of genuine nationalism in the country’, according to Abhayavardhana (1999: 6) – because the self-­determination offered was limited. It, therefore, boycotted the 1931 election, laying down a model of Tamil youth activism that would re-­ emerge later in the century. The weaknesses of the Donoughmore constitution soon became apparent to others. In 1936, for instance, the ending of communal representation led to an 1

162   The post-colonial period entirely Sinhala Board of Ministers connected with the State Council (Abhayavardhana 199: 9), with the State Council as a whole consisting of 38 Sinhalas, seven Tamils, two Indian Tamils, two Europeans and one Muslim (Gunasingam 2016: 432). Further reform became inevitable (De Silva 1981: 432–439). It was at this point, in 1938, that Tamil politician, G.G. Ponnambalam proposed that 50 per cent of the seats in the State Council should be set aside for minorities (Tamil, Muslim, Malay and Burgher). Ponnambalam campaigned vigorously, implicitly and significantly supporting the concept of centralized, unitary governance, albeit with parity between Sinhala and Tamil, in contrast to representations that the Tamil North should be governed separately from the South, from a body that termed itself the ‘All Ceylon Aboriginal Inhabitants’ Association, Jaffna’ (Gunasingam 2016: 442–454). During this process, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) was formed in 1944 by G.G. Ponnambalam. In the South, a Sinhala party, the Sinhala Maha Sabha (SMS), had already been founded, in 1937, by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (Russell 1982; Wickramasinghe 2014: 150). When Ponnambalam, on behalf of the ACTC, formally submitted proposals, including 50 : 50 representation, to the Soulbury Commission, which was in Sri Lanka in 1944–1945 to prepare a new constitution, they were rejected. D.S. Senanayaka’s Board of Ministers was later to offer ‘a relationship of 57 per cent to 43 per cent as between Sinhalese and others in the future legislature’ at independence, but this was turned down by the Tamil leadership who trusted the Soulbury Commission settlement (Abhayavardhana 1999: 11), with the exception of Ponnambalam (Gunasingam 2016: 461). The ACTC and the SMS, therefore, supported the United National Party (UNP) under D.S. Senanayake in the elections of 1947 that granted Dominion status under the Soulbury Constitution. One reason for Tamil support was that the constitution contained a clause that should have prevented legislation discriminatory to the minorities.2 Arasaratnam suggests another: that ‘communalism’ was seen as dirty politics by most within the minority of English-­educated Sri Lankans from whom the parliamentarians came (Arasaratnam 1998: 44). The clause protective of minorities, however, proved powerless against majority Sinhala opinion in Parliament. Given that the House of Representatives contained 68 Sinhalas, 13 Sri Lankan Tamils, seven Indian (hill country) Tamils, six Muslims and one Burgher (Gunasingam 2016: 461), unless Tamil representatives were supported by Sinhala parliamentarians, held the balance of power or possessed a power of veto, the centralized system guaranteed that their voice would be defeated, a scenario anticipated by G.G. Ponnambalam. In effect, minorities were included in central governance but subordinated, unless they supported the majority. In the pan-­ethnic, reasonably liberal, English-­speaking Parliament of D.S. Senanayake, where abundant commonalities united Sinhala and Tamil, the true consequences of this were masked. This was true even after the Ceylon Citizenship Act was passed in 1948, which made about 700,000 Indian Tamils stateless. Fear of the voting power of Indian Tamils had long been present. On the Tamil side, it threatened caste privilege. On the Sinhala side, it fed into grievances concerning land theft in the colonial period. Many Tamils in

Ethnic conflict and internal war   163 the new government, therefore, supported the Act, although, according to Abhayavardhana, it was an act of ‘impermissible political blindness’ (Abhayavardhana 1999: 11).3 At least one Tamil leader, however, S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, realized the Act’s implications and broke away from the ACTC to form the Tamil Federal Party (TFP lit. Tamil State Party, although a separate state was not mentioned) in 1949 (Jeyaratnam Wilson 1994: 8). In 1949, the first major post-­independence government-­sponsored colonization scheme began – the Gal Oya Valley irrigation project in the Eastern Province. Intended to bring into cultivation land that had been productive in the pre-­colonial period, it moved mainly Sinhala villagers, nominees of politicians (Ludowyk 1966: 212), from the south-­west wet zone to this dry zone, where Muslims and Tamils were in the majority. This was the beginning of the new Ampara District, which was demographically manipulated in the decades following so that it was Sinhala rather than Muslim dominated. It was after the victory in 1956 of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who gave promises to Sinhala nationalists, that the full implications of the imbalance of power in parliamentary space became apparent, with Tamil parliamentarians finding that they had no democratic means to resist legislation they judged discriminatory (Veluppillai 2006: 101). First came the Official Language Act No.  33, dubbed the Sinhala Only Act. It went further than Bandaranaike originally planned, since clauses that accepted the reasonable use of Tamil were deleted. The Act made Sinhala the national language, linguistically crippling almost 25 per cent of the population, since the first language of many Sri Lankan Muslims is Tamil. From a Sinhala perspective, in line with the consciousness outlined in the last chapter, the Act righted wrongs inflicted on the majority community in the colonial period, through the privileging of English and an English-­speaking elite. Its fruit, however, was the further alienation of the Tamil minority. Members of the TFP demonstrated peacefully on Galle Face Green, in the centre of Colombo, close to the parliament, on the day the parliamentary debate began. Police protection, however, was withheld. In effect, the police were asked to be onlookers and therefore, gave implicit support when a Sinhala mob violently broke up the protest, encouraging other mobs to attack Tamils in Colombo and beyond, for instance in Gal Oya Valley (Ludowyk 1966: 245). Eventually the police did act, in a pattern of delayed intervention that would be repeated in future years (K.M. de Silva 1998: 122). The message given to the non-­violent Tamil protesters was that space for non-­violent dissent was being eliminated. Soon after the passing of the Act, nevertheless, the TFP, at a convention in Trincomalee, openly favoured non-­violent struggle, this time to achieve a federal constitution with a Tamil linguistic region, equality between the Tamil and Sinhala languages, the cessation of colonization schemes in Tamil-­majority areas, the repeal of citizenship laws and the granting of citizenship to all those made stateless (Tiruchelvam 1992: 7–8). The prospect of a campaign of civil disobedience forced Bandaranaike to act. A pact between Chelvanayakam and Bandaranaike resulted. It anticipated a Draft Regional Council Bill, with the councils having wide-­ranging, named powers, including responsibility for

164   The post-colonial period colonization (Tiruchelvam 1992: 8–9), and legislation to recognize Tamil as both the ‘language of the national minority’ and the ‘language of administration in the Northern and Eastern Provinces’ (Keethaponcalan 2009: 23–25). The TFP almost immediately ratified it, suspending their programme of direct action, and support seemed to be present in Sinhala areas, demonstrating that many of those who had supported Bandaranaike were not opposed to limited devolution (Tiruchelvam 1992: 9). In 1958, however, it was unilaterally abrogated by the government, in response to intense hostility from opposition parties – J.R. Jayawardene of the UNP led a Pada Yatra to Kandy in protest – and some members of the monastic Sangha, who saw the powers offered to regional councils as a fracturing of Sri Lanka’s territorial unity. At the same time, the government replaced English lettering on vehicle registration plates with Sinhala lettering for ‘Sri’, demonstrating their commitment to Sinhala Only. Violent clashes, fiercer than any since the 1817 Kandyan Rebellion (Ludowyk 1966: 250) resulted, leaving between 500 and 600 dead (De Silva, 1998: 122), and triggering ‘displacement of Tamils from the Sinhalese regions’ to the North and East (Gunasingam 2016: 510). By the end of 1958, therefore, the foundations of the ethnic conflict had been laid with the spatial at its heart, namely Tamil representation in central parliamentary space, the devolution of power to regions, the unity of the island and the presence of Tamils in the South. On the Tamil side, distrust verging on hostility existed because of the Sinhala Only Act and the abrogation of the 1957 pact but there was not yet a formal call for an independent state. On the Sinhala side, there was a continued sense of being besieged, because of English-­speaking Tamil influence in the professional sphere of government employment. Between the 1870s and the 1920s, Burgher and Tamil representation in administrative services had always been in excess of their ratio within the population (Abeysekera 1984: 180). From the 1930s onwards, more Sinhala people entered these professional spaces but, by 1955, there was still an imbalance, if viewed through the lens of ethnic ratios in the country: 46.1 per cent of the engineers recorded within the Irrigation Department, 35.3 per cent of doctors and 59.9 per cent of government accountants were Tamil (Nithiyanandan 1987: 119). A window on the mood in Jaffna in the years after the abrogation of the 1957 pact is found in the memoirs of Neville Jayaweera, GA in Jaffna between 1963 and 1966. He arrived, fired up by his Colombo mentors to use uncompromising techniques to enforce Sinhala Only and the dominance of Colombo. In Jaffna, however, he found a ‘wall of hostility’ and silence. Tamil officers boycotted his arrival and, when he called together the District Coordinating Committee, one MP stated, Mr G.A. you are here as a ruler and as an oppressor. We don’t want you here and you can go back to wherever you came from. If you proceed with this conference any further I shall brain you with this paperweight. (Jayaweera 2014: 88)

Ethnic conflict and internal war   165 Jayaweera then changed, with the eventual agreement of the prime minister, opting for consultation, compromise and conciliation, rather than the enforcement of Sinhala linguistic and ethnic supremacy. Jayaweera claimed that it was this policy that enabled Tamil leaders to engage sincerely with Dudley Senanayake of the UNP, after he gained power in 1965, with the TFP holding the balance of power. A further pact resulted, partly to ensure the support of the TFP. The Dudley Senanayake-­Chelvanayakam Pact of 1965 promised a system of district councils ‘vested with powers over subjects to be mutually agreed upon between the two leaders’, and action on the language question and colonization (Keethaponcalan 2009: 36–37). In a replay of the previous decade, however, the pact was abrogated three years later, because of resistance to the draft District Council Bill from opposition parties and some members of the monastic Sangha, for familiar reasons: the threat to the unity of the country. The TFP, consequently, left the government and watched as Senanayake furthered colonization schemes that implanted Sinhala villagers in Tamil and Muslim-­majority areas, particularly in the East (MIRJE 1983: 24). A telling example of the Sinhala nationalism that opposed the limited devolution of power in the 1956 and 1965 pacts is found in the reminiscences of Somapala Gunadheera, GA in Trincomalee from the late 1960s. In 1970, he invited the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) to hold a meeting in the town, hoping it would promote inter-­communal harmony. It was very nearly a disaster. Some of the young Buddhists who came were more interested in a Sinhala-­Buddhist take-­over than in meeting people from other communities. Gunadheera came to know that they were planning, without the knowledge of the ACBC leaders, ‘to march to the Koneswaram Kovil [the most important Hindu temple in the town] in a procession beating tom toms and carrying sectarian flags, to lay claims to that place of worship’ (Gunadheera 2011: 5). When Gunadheera appealed to the government, it offered no help, even suggesting that he was staging the situation to embarrass them. So he attempted persuasion, inviting the leaders of the young Buddhists for a meal, where he appealed to the impossibility of a successful take-­over of the temple and the possibility of extensive violence. The group desisted and even went peacefully to the kovil to receive a blessing from the priest. Gunadheera added ‘so ended two of the toughest days in my life’ (Gunadheera 2011: 6–7). The nascent ethnic conflict deepened after the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), under Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike, came to power in 1970, in a united front with the LSSP and the CCP (De Silva 1998; Richardson 2005: 271). Two ‘moments’ were particularly significant, the youth uprising of 1971 and the new republican constitution of 1972. The 1971 uprising, led by the idealistic Marxist group, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP – the People’s Liberation Front), was driven by rural, non-­English-speaking middle-­class youth, who saw themselves as a potential new elite (Chandraprema 1989: 8). It was violently crushed by state power, demonstrating that the army, which up to that point had been largely ceremonial, could be used retributively against its own people (Gunaratna 1990; Devananda 1977). The new republican constitution, in de Silva’s insightful

166   The post-colonial period words, was ‘in many ways the consolidation of the linguistic nationalism that had dominated Sri Lankan politics since 1956’ (De Silva, 1998: 126). Sri Lanka was declared a unitary state with more power vested in central government, where there was no parity between the majority and minority communities. Buddhism was given ‘the foremost place’, with the state having a duty to protect it. Sinhala became the official language with Tamil recognized, but subordinate. In the terminology of this monograph, it continued the inclusivist subordination of the Tamil community in the political and religious space of the island. Few Tamils supported the constitution. After all, the TFP had submitted a federal proposal at the planning stage, which had proposed dividing Sri Lanka into five constituent regions as a way of restoring ‘Tamil sovereignty’. That it was ignored played no small part in the formation of the Tamil United Front (TUF ) in 1972, consisting of the TFP, the ACTC and the Ceylon Workers’ Congress. Chelvanayakam resigned his National Assembly seat to demonstrate his opposition to the constitution. During these developments, colonization of Muslim and Tamil areas with Sinhala settlers continued with the ‘national ratio’ argument being widely canvassed by the 1980s to justify this (Sivathamby 1987: 193–194). As Nuhman demonstrates, in the East and in Puttalam, this colonization affected Muslims as well as Hindus, for instance when some Muslims lost their land in the 1970s through land reform acts, only to see it taken over by state-­sponsored Sinhala colonists (Nuhman 2016: 48–49). In the 1980s, in the Mullaitivu and Vavuniya divisions of the North, as part of the Weli Oya Project, entire villages were evacuated to make way for Sinhala colonists, settled by the armed forces, many of them convicted prisoners (UTHR 1994: 10). According to Hoole, Tamil officials were kept in the dark about what was happening (Hoole 2001: 199–200). As for expansionism in the East, an insightful account is given by Spencer and Goodland (Spencer and Goodland 2015: 20–44). In addition, for educated Tamil youth, there was another threat: the reversal of a policy that allowed university entrance through competitive examinations that placed Tamil and Sinhala on an equal footing. The trigger for the change was the perception among Sinhala leaders that competitive exams had privileged the Tamil minority to create a higher education system dominated by Tamils, particularly those from Jaffna, where educational standards were high and many depended on professional civil service employment. In an attempt to offer more opportunities to less privileged Sinhala areas, the governing parties from 1970 onwards made university entrance harder for Tamils. In 1970, a scheme of marks was imposed whereby the minimum entry requirements for Tamil language students was higher than for Sinhala language students (Bastian 1984: 166). This was followed, in the 1970s, by a progressive standardization programme that introduced a district quota system. By 1979, the programme meant that 30 per cent of students were admitted on an all-­island merit basis, 55 per cent through district quotas and 15 per cent for the ‘backward districts’ (Bastian 1984: 166). The Sinhala middle class saw this as the righting of an injustice. Tamil young people saw it as direct discrimination. According to MIRJE, it ‘pushed the Tamil

Ethnic conflict and internal war   167 youth to the brink of despair’ (MIRJE 1980: 6–7). By 1978, any proportional imbalance of Tamils versus Sinhalas had been reversed. Although the Sinhalas were 71.9 per cent of the population, ‘they secured 83.4 per cent of the places in engineering and 78.9 per cent of the places in medical studies’ (Nithiyanandan 1987: 127–128). When heavy-­handed and sometimes cruel police tactics were added to these largely economic factors concerning employment, education and settlements (Nithiyanandan 1987) – those shown towards the 1974 Tamil Research Conference mentioned below, for instance – it is hardly surprising that some Tamil young people became disillusioned with the conciliatory, non-­violent approaches of the vellalar (highest caste) leaders of the Tamil parties and turned towards militancy. According to Veluppillai, what they saw was a Sinhala state treating Tamils as a foreign enemy (Veluppillai, 2006: 97). A caste element also cannot be ruled out, since those who made this turn were generally non-­vellalar (Jayaweera 2014: 139–150). As with popular Sinhala nationalism in the South, so in the North a class of people who considered themselves unheard pushed forward to create change. A number of youth groups demanding a separate Tamil-­majority state and willing to use violence to achieve it, therefore, emerged along both caste and ideological lines (Roberts 2009: 84–86). Among their first targets were Tamils who supported the state. In July 1975, for instance, Alfred Duraiappah, mayor of Jaffna, was killed by the person who would lead the most powerful Tamil group, the LTTE, Velupillai Prabakharan (Richardson, 2005: 299). In a conciliatory move towards the new groups, the TUF held a convention in 1976 in Vaddukodai and became the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF ). The resolution released described the Tamil ‘nation’ as a subject people, and referred to army and police brutality, including ‘police violence at the International Tamil Research Conference in 1974 resulting in the death of nine persons in Jaffna’ and torture of Tamil youths in police custody.4 It also highlighted government failure to accommodate peaceful Tamil representations and declared that a restoration of the ‘Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of Tamil Eelam, based on the right of self-­determination inherent to every nation’ had become inevitable to ‘safeguard the very existence of the Tamil nation in this Country’ (Keethaponcalan, 2009: 38–45). No mention, however, was made of the use of violence. When Chelvanayakam died in 1977, Appapillai Amirthalingam became leader of the TULF. Events were rolling too fast, however, for the non-­violent TULF to remain central to the psyche of Tamil youth, particularly after the 1977 general election, which brought the UNP to power, under J.R. Jayawardene. Jayawardene hoped to open the island to capital investment and to address Tamil grievances concerning language, colonization and education, through calling an All-­Party Conference (MIRJE 1980: 8). The latter, however, was shelved, after anti-­Tamil violence re-­erupted in several parts of the island in 1977, leaving up to 300 dead, and attacks on the police and army by militant Tamil groups increased. Significantly, Indian Tamils in the central hill country also became

168   The post-colonial period victims of the former; some were burnt alive in their work-­places and others were decapitated by Sinhala mobs. Jayawardene’s response was not conciliation. In 1979, a state of emergency was declared in Jaffna, after a police officer was killed (MIRJE 1980: 21) and a Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was passed in Parliament, modelled on similar legislation in the United Kingdom. In the section dealing with the investigation of offences, for instance, it stipulated: 6.(1) Any police officer not below the rank of Superintendent or any other police officer not below the rank of Sub-­Inspector authorised in writing by him in that behalf may, without a warrant and with or without assistance and notwithstanding anything in any other law to the contrary:

(a) arrest any person; (b) enter and search any premises; (c) stop and search any individual or any vehicle, vessel, train or aircraft; and (d) seize any document or thing, connected with or concerned in or reasonably suspected of being connected with or concerned in any unlawful activity.

In addition, the police and army were permitted ‘to arrest and detain suspects without charge for up to 18 months, restrict visitor access and withhold information on the place and conditions of those detained’ (National Peace Council 2003: 13). These exceeded the limits permitted in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (National Peace Council 2003) and did not stop the violence. On the contrary, it nurtured it. Jaffna under emergency rule between July and December 1979 saw six people killed by government forces – two bodies were found by the roadside, another was recovered in Jaffna prison and the others were never found5 – followed by arrests, torture, detentions and public humiliations of innocent people, all in an effort to stamp out ‘terrorism’ by the end of 1979 (MIRJE 1980: 25–30). In a four month period in 1981, ethnic violence erupted again in Jaffna, in the run up to District Development Council elections, and then in other parts of the island. A report by MIRJE significantly suggested that what happened would ‘come to be viewed as the beginning of the end of democracy in the country’, since state forces – police backed by parliamentarians – were used to manipulate the elections (MIRJE 1983: 2; see also MIRJE 1981), through fear-­instilling arson attacks that attempted to break the hold of the Eelam-­supporting but non-­ violent TULF. On the first night of the violence in Jaffna, numerous shops, the house of the TULF MP for Jaffna and the TULF offices were burnt down. On the second night, the Jaffna Public Library, a repository of over 95,000 volumes, some of which were irreplaceable, followed. For about a week afterwards, acts of arson continued, and just before the elections on 4 June, four Tamil

Ethnic conflict and internal war   169 parliamentarians were arrested and detained, including Amirthalingam (MIRJE 1983: 6–9). Again, protection of territory from the threat of fragmentation lay behind this cultural and political vandalism.

Armed conflict: the suffering of all communities Popular accounts of Sri Lanka’s ethnic war trace its inception to the anti-­ Tamil pogrom of 1983. My account has demonstrated that this is blatantly simplistic. The year of 1983 was a critical moment in an already violent context, which had left several thousand dead.6 It was, nevertheless, a turning point, which internationalized the conflict, by driving out many Tamils to countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and France, and by increasing Indian scrutiny (Coomaraswamy 2003: 5). The apparent trigger was the killing of 13 soldiers close to Jaffna University, the largest number of Sinhala army fatalities at one time (Richardson 2005: 524). The official version of events stated that crowds in Colombo, waiting for the bodies of the slain soldiers to arrive, became inflamed when there was delay, and turned their frustration on Tamil shops and homes. The unofficial version was that the delay triggered a pre-­planned attack on Tamils, masterminded by a minister close to Jayawardena, Cyril Mathew (e.g. Roberts 2009: Illustration 9). In a week of rioting, thousands of Tamils lost all they owned and became refugees in their own country. A large number were killed, estimates ranging from 250 to over 1,000 (Grant 2009: 102). Some rioters possessed electoral lists so knew exactly where Tamils lived, a fact that drew many Sri Lankans towards ‘the unofficial version’, compounded by the refusal of the government to intervene or express ‘moral outrage’ (Coomaraswamy 2003: 3). For, at first, the police did not prevent the violence and Jayawardene was silent. When he did speak, after three days, he offered no words of comfort to the bereaved and homeless, but suggested that the anger of the rioters was understandable in the face of attempts to divide the country (Grant, 2009: 102). If those who had sent rioters out with electoral lists had thought that their actions would intimidate Tamils and halt the demand for a separate state, they were again mistaken. After 1983, the forms of violence used by all sides in the conflict increased in sophistication and viciousness. For instance, in July 1987, Vallipuram Vasanthan became the LTTE’s first suicide bomber, when he rammed a truck laden with explosives into an army camp at Nelliyadi (Roberts, 2009: Illustration 30).7 Between 1983 and 2009, there were at least five phases of war, punctuated by peace talks and failed constitutional proposals, two of which I examine below.8 During this period, expansion of the armed forces meant that Sri Lanka became the most militarized state in South Asia. In 2004, according to the Strategic Foresight Group in Mumbai, there were 8,000 military personnel per million, compared with 1,000 per million in Bangladesh. And between 1995 and 2000, 332.6 billion rupees were spent in excess military expenditure, more than in any other South Asian country (Strategic Foresight Group 2006: 12–21).

170   The post-colonial period Throughout the period of war, government colonization of the East with Sinhala people continued, changing the nature of towns such as Amparai. Anecdotal evidence comes from Ben Bavinck’s diaries – a Tamil-speaking Dutch Christian. On 31 May 1991, he recorded that a Roman Catholic priest had told him that he could not secure timber to build a church in Medawachchiya in the North, ‘because all available timber had to be used for the building of houses for Sinhalese colonists in Manal Aru, on the east coast’ (Bavinck 2011: 182). In the same year, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR) called on the government to understand why Tamils ‘were mortally afraid of state aided Sinhalese colonisation’ (UTHR 1991b: 7) and continued to raise the issue in subsequent reports. In 1994, for instance, they pointed to the changed demography of Trincomalee, namely that the 1992 voters’ list indicated a Sinhala majority, whereas there had been a Tamil majority in 1989 and 1981 (UTHR 1994: 10). As for Ampara (previously the Tamil Amparai), they claimed orchestrated violence had meant that, by August 1993, only 25 Tamil families lived there, whereas in 1990 there had been 600 pupils at Ampara’s Tamil school (UTHR 1994: 16). All communities suffered in the periods of armed conflict. What follows are illustrative examples of the violence that emerged from a Sinhala refusal to compromise on the unitary nature of the country and the eventual LTTE refusal to consider anything less than a separate state; a comprehensive list would fill a book in itself. I begin with Muslims as victims and then pass to Sinhalas, Tamils, violence internal to the Tamil community, the threat to journalists and the destruction of democratic space. Muslims  In 1985, Muslim–Tamil violence for political, religious and economic reasons erupted in Akkaraipattu in the East with Muslims in Tamil-­ majority areas and Tamils in Muslim-­majority areas forced to flee (Sivathamby 1987). Five years later, in October 1990, the LTTE ordered all Muslims, about 75,000 of them, to leave the North without prior notice. Some left with only the clothes they were wearing, without being able to transfer any of their assets, move household goods, harvest crops or close down businesses (Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province 2011: 15). Looting of Muslim houses followed (UTHR 1991b: 58–68). In the East, in August of the same year, the LTTE killed 140 Muslims in the mosques of Kattankudi, and 127 in Eravur a week later (Bavinck 2011: 127 and 341). In the years that followed, the killing of Muslims by the LTTE became characteristic of the East. A van chartered by a wedding party, for instance, was targeted in July 1992: 15 were killed and others, wounded (Bavinck 2011: 259–260). Sinhalas  Sinhala civilians were killed from the early years of the conflict. To begin with colonists and those in villages bordering Tamil-­majority areas, in 1984, the LTTE carried out its first massacre of state-­sponsored, army-­protected colonists in the North, killing 62 Sinhalas within the Weli Oya Project – the Dollar and Kent Farm massacre (Hoole 2001: 206). Then, in 1990, Sinhala villagers who had fearfully left the Maha Oya colonization project were ordered to return. Twenty-­seven were then killed by the LTTE in January 1991 (Bavinck 2011: 166). In June 2006, a bus travelling on the Vavuniya–Kebethigollawa

Ethnic conflict and internal war   171 Road, carrying Sinhala inhabitants of border villages to the funeral of a home guard killed by the LTTE, was gutted by a claymore explosion. Out of 150 people on the bus, 64 were killed, including many children, and over 75 were injured. People from five or six villages near to Kebethigollawa left their homes as a result, having also experienced attacks in 1995 and 1996 (Abeywickrema 2006: 13; Herath 2006: 4). In the East, Sinhala villagers on the borders between army and LTTE controlled areas, some in government-­created colonies, were frequent targets. To take just one example, in 1999, 44 Sinhala people were hacked to death at Gonagala, police protection having been taken away (Farook and De Silva 1999: 6). In the South, LTTE suicide bombers killed and injured both Sinhalas and Tamils, although the targets were Sinhalas. One hundred died, for instance, in a car bomb blast at the bus station in the Pettah in 1987, and roughly the same number in the bombing of the Central Bank in 1996. In 2007, a bus was turned ‘into a fireball’ at Nittambuwa, killing five and injuring scores (Fuard 2007: 6). Economic targets were also hit, for instance the Kolonnawa and Orugodawatte oil refineries just outside Colombo in October 1995. As the humanitarian worker whom I will call Siva told me, if more of the storage tanks had been set alight, Colombo could have gone up in flames. Buddhist space was also a target. In May 1985, the LTTE massacred 146 civilians near the sacred bodhi tree in Anuradhapura. In January 1998, a truck bomb rammed the front of the Daḷadā Mālagāva in Kandy. Thirteen were killed. The government thereupon banned the LTTE, without legal backing, after agitation by the monastic Sangha (Anon 1998a: 8). The Buddhist temple at Nāgadīpa was also attacked and the monks there, evicted (Amunugama 1991: 18). The year 2000 was particularly bad in terms of LTTE attacks on the South. It saw a series of bus bomb explosions in Colombo that claimed several lives and injured hundreds, including a bomb targeted at Air Force personnel in Wattala but which killed civilians, and a sophisticated but unsuccessful attempt to attack Sinhala leaders on their way to the parliament buildings, which left at least 23 killed and over 48 injured (Athas 2000: 11). The LTTE also killed key political figures, and members of the police and army, often by suicide bomber: Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne in March 1991; former Defence Minister Lalith Athulathmudali in April 1993; President Premadasa, at a May Day march in 1993; presidential candidate Gamini Dissanayake, in October 1994 in a suicide bombing that killed 52 others; Industrial Development Minister C.V. Gooneratne, in a blast that killed 22 others and injured over 60 in 2000; Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2005. In December 1999, President Kumaratunge and some of her cabinet ministers were injured in a bomb blast with Kumaratunge losing the sight of one eye. As for military leaders, a landmine on the island of Kayts in the North killed General Kobbekaduwa, Brigadier Wimalaratne and other high-­ranking officers in August 1992. In May 1998, Major Larry Wijeratne was killed in the North, not because he was oppressing the people but because the people of Jaffna liked him (De Slva 1998: 4). In October 2008, Major General Janaka Perera was killed in

172   The post-colonial period Anuradhapura along with over 25 others. According to Narayan Swamy, the government calculated that the LTTE, between July 1987 and November 2001, carried out 54 suicide attacks. He added that the number could have been higher because the LTTE did not accept responsibility for attacks on non-­military targets (Naryan Swamy 2004: xiv). Tamils  To move to the suffering of Tamils, innocent Tamil civilians frequently found themselves the victims of attacks by the army, the police and even civilians, some of which, but by no means all, were indiscriminate retaliations following LTTE attacks. Narayan Swamy, for instance, catalogues those that followed the Anuradhapura massacre: the killing of 48 Tamil civilians in a boat near Nainativu probably by the navy, and raids on three villages in the East (Narayan Swamy 1995: 148–150). The Daḷadā Mālagāva bomb triggered several attacks against Tamils in Kandy, according to Siva. Two Hindu centres hosting weddings were attacked, without fatalities but with seizure of jewellery and the overturning of tables laden with food and, at Gurudeniya, a nearby village, a new ‘chariot’ at a Hindu temple that had cost one and half million rupees was set alight. To take one more example of an apparent ‘reprisal’, in April 2006, a bomb exploded in a vegetable market in Trincomalee leaving five dead. Within 15 minutes, armed Sinhalas entered a Tamil commercial area. Twenty civilians were killed, and over 30 shops and 100 homes, destroyed, with stories of bodies being thrown on the flames of burning shops. As a result, over 3,000 people left their homes. A fact-­finding team from non-­governmental agencies in Colombo, however, concluded that the attack might have been pre-­planned (Anon 2006: 16–17); in other words, the attack and the ‘reprisal’ were staged. In addition, military action in the North and East was consistently accompanied by abductions and extra-­judicial killings. When I visited Sri Lanka in 1999, a mass grave site was being excavated on flat marshland south of Jaffna at Chemmani. The remains of 25 bodies had been found, two of them children (Harris 1999: 3). They dated back to 1996 when the military had wrested Jaffna from the LTTE, who had been in charge for about five years. The government had promised security for returnees and inhabitants but this lasted for only a few months, after which abductions and disappearances began. According to incisive journalist, Macan-­Markar, in August 1996 alone, 190 boys and men were ‘taken into army custody, never to be seen again’ (Macan-­Markar 1998; see also Macan-­Markar 1999: 10). Following the location of graves at Chemmani, Tamil MP for Batticaloa, Joseph Pararajasingham, raised the issue of mass graves in the East that could be traced to extra-­judicial killings by the army and the Special Task Force (STF ) in 1990 and beyond. In 1991, for instance, after the LTTE blew up an army vehicle, the army went on an orgy of violence in Kokkadichcholai, killing approximately 150 people, raping women and setting fire to three villages (Bavinck 2011: 185). Pararajasingham himself would be killed on Christmas Eve 2005 in St Mary’s cathedral, Batticaloa, probably by the ‘Karuna Faction’, which had broken away from the LTTE in the East to work with the government (Spencer and Goodhand 2015: 117).

Ethnic conflict and internal war   173 Many army atrocities were catalogued by the UTHR, for instance the raping and killing of Krishanthy Kumarasamy in 1996 (UTHR 1999; Hoole 2001) and the murder of Rev. Arulpalan, who was taken in for questioning by the army in Kilinochchi District in August 1997; his decomposed was found in September. As Jansz commented, ‘he was just another Tamil mistaken to be a Tiger’, one of some 90 persons who had gone missing that year in the same region (Jansz 1997a: 5). In 2000, 27 young men, seemingly under the protection of the Sri Lankan government at a rehabilitation centre for captured LTTE cadres, in Bindunuwewa, near Bandarawela, were killed and 14 injured through hacking and burning by a Sinhala group. Police officers stationed at Bindunuwewa gave no protection. The government-­initiated investigation into the murders proved ineffectual; the four who were convicted were eventually acquitted (Asian Human Rights Commission 2005). There were also numerous cases of the shelling of Tamil civilian targets, including hospitals, schools and camps for the internally displaced. In 2006, for instance, artillery shells and rockets were fired by the army into a camp for the internally displaced in Kathiraveli, a coastal village near Batticaloa. At least 47 were killed and 136 injured, mostly people who had fled army bombs in other parts of the East. The army insisted the bombs were not intended for the camp but witness statements confirmed there were no LTTE installations nearby (Jeyaraj 2005b: 6). Bavinck gives numerous additional instances of army-­ instigated violence as well as LTTE atrocities in his published diaries (Bavinck 2011 and 2014). Tamil politicians were also killed by forces connected with the Sri Lankan government. A notable example was the Leader of the ACTC, Kumar Ponnambalam, in January 2000. He never held political office but was an outspoken advocate for Tamil rights, a thorn in the flesh of the then president, Kumaratunge. His killing was traced back through investigative journalism to a family closely linked to the government and the military (Jansz 2002: 4; The Insider 2002: 9). In 2006, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Nadarajah Raviraj was also killed by the government. One consequence of these atrocities was that the LTTE gained more recruits. As I was told in 1999 by Tamil refugees in the East, the best LTTE recruitment tool was the army (Harris, 1999: 10). Tactics were also adopted by Tamils, particularly in the South, to protect themselves from anticipated violence. Perera, for instance, charted a fishing village where its Roman Catholic Tamil-­speaking inhabitants changed their identity to Sinhala over a lengthy period of time, in response to political crisis (Perera 2005: 98–102). And the woman whom I will call June, among my fieldwork participants, a person with a Burgher mother and Tamil father, who married a Tamil, told me that she had been advised many times to change her name so that she was not identifiable as Tamil. Violence internal to the Tamil community  A further expression of the conflict was violence internal to the Tamil community. The LTTE gained dominance through mercilessly overpowering rival militant groups. In 1985, the

174   The post-colonial period major militant groups were the LTTE, PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam), TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization), EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front) and EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students). In 1987, the EPDP (Eelam People’s Democratic Party) split from the EPRLF (Hoole 2001: 485). In 1986, the LTTE destroyed the power of TELO, by attacking its camps, killing its cadres and eventually its leader, Sri Sabarathnan. Uma Maheswaran, the PLOTE leader, was killed by the LTTE in Colombo in July 1989, because he was pro-­Indian (Bavinck 2011: 68). Thirteen leaders of the EPRLF were then killed in Chennai in 1990. PLOTE, TELO and the EPDP eventually worked with the Sri Lankan government against the LTTE, and were also known for using heavy-­handed tactics against their own people. The LTTE also killed individual Tamils for acts of ‘betrayal’ such as collaborating with the Sri Lankan government. Leaders of the TULF were particularly targeted: A. Amirthalingam and M. Yogeswaran, former TULF MP for Jaffna, in 1989; Ainsley Nimalanayagam Saundaranayagam in 2000. Dr Rajani Thiranagama, a Senior Lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Jaffna, was gunned down as she cycled home from the university in 1989 (Hoole 2015). Thiranagama had broken away from the LTTE and had worked with UTHR (Jaffna) to expose both LTTE and army atrocities in the group’s first publication (Hoole et al. 1988). Another mayor of Jaffna, Sarojini Yogeswaran, was killed in 1996 (UTHR 1998) and Dr Neelan Thiruchelvam, an internationally recognized intellectual and human rights activist, was murdered by a suicide bomber in 1999 (Coomaraswamy 1999: 11; Loganathan 1999: 6). At a lower level, school principals or village headmen could be publicly executed as traitors, for instance as the army advanced towards Jaffna in 1995 (Bavinck 2014: 143). The LTTE became a movement that crushed dissent, exercised complete control over its cadres and encouraged a cult of martyrdom. Journalists  It is worth mentioning in brief that Sri Lanka became one of the most dangerous global locations for journalists, who suffered at the hands of the LTTE and the government. Journalists covering opposition rallies were targeted, as on 15 July 1999, when batons and poles were used by the attackers. Others were killed: Richard de Soysa in 1990; Rohana Kumara, the editor of the Sinhala journal, Satana, in 1999; Mayilvaganam Nimalarajan, an independent Jaffna-­ based journalist, in 2000; and Lasantha Wickrematunge the editor of the Sunday Leader, in 2009, to name a few. In May 2006, the president of The International Federation of Journalists, Christopher Warren, claimed that the killing of seven Tamil journalists in a single year ‘was a tragic reflection of a country’s civil liberties and democratic practices’ (Handunetti 2006: 6). The destruction of democratic space  Democracy also broke down during the war, with local and national elections marred by violence, fulfilling MIRJE’s 1981 prophecy. Again, I have no space to catalogue this extensively and so offer an illustrative example of the general election of 2001, which followed a violence-­scarred series of provincial council elections in 1999, within which the elections in Wayamba gained notoriety as no less than a heist by the People’s

Ethnic conflict and internal war   175 Alliance (PA) (Perera 1999a: 8–9). Jansz called the 2001 election the ‘bloodiest’ after independence (Jansz 2001a). Nineteen were murdered and there was ballot rigging, voter intimidation and shoot-­outs outside polling centres. Even international observers were intimidated. As the polling day progressed, Chilaw, Anuradhapura, Ampara and Kegalle headed the list for violence. The most horrific contribution to the death toll, however, happened in the Kandy region, in the context of intense competition between the sitting MP, Deputy Defence Minister, Anuraddha Ratwatte, uncle of Kumaratunge, and the UNP and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). Ratwatte pre-­planned violence to intimidate voters and rig ballot boxes, ordering several hundred army personnel to the Kandy region. Supporters of the UNP and SLMC were forced to defend themselves, using rocks, knives and claymore mines. At the end of the day, local Muslims decided to escort some ballot boxes directly to the counting centres to ensure their safety, using two vans, containing unarmed Muslim youth. The convoy was pursued by Ratwatte’s vehicles, which included his military body guards, who fired shots at the vans. One van escaped. The other, attempting to escape, crashed into a lamppost after a passenger was hit. Ratwatte’s personnel then entered the van and shot the ten young men inside at point blank range.9 Attacks on sacred space  I have already mentioned LTTE attacks on sites central to Sinhala-­Buddhist consciousness at Anuradhapura and Kandy, and the reprisal violence that occurred, some targeting religious space in return. According to Neiminathan, numerous Hindu temples in the North and East were also damaged or destroyed during the war. On 10 February 1998, a letter was sent by the ‘Hindu Religious Priest Organisation of North East Province’ to UNESCO, stating that more than 1,800 Hindu temples in the North and East had been ‘destroyed or rendered unfit for worship’ since the beginning of the conflict (Neiminathan 1998: 17–19). An annexure listed some of them. Some temples were occupied by the army and ransacked, for example Thirukketheeswaram Temple in Mannar District, one of the three most important Hindu temples in the island, which had been restored at considerable cost in the post-­independence period. According to Neiminathan, the occupying military soldiers ejected priests and devotees, plundered valuables and desecrated an image of Lord Śiva by gouging out his Third Eye (Nieminathan 1998: 2–3).10 The Tamil Justice of the Peace whom I will call Rajasingham also spoke to me about this destruction, drawing attention to the land taken by the army for Palali airport, up to 16 kilometres in all, within which Hindu temples were destroyed or defaced. He also claimed a Gaṇeśa temple in Ampara had been defaced by Buddhist monks who wanted to replace it with a vihāra. Also catalogued by Nieminathan were attacks on Hindu temples and facilities in the South, such as that on Siththivinayagar Temple in Katugastota in 1977 (Nieminathan 1998: 71–76). In addition, in July 1983, the main Amman temple in Matalē was attacked by a mob. They destroyed the chariot and attempted to blast the main hall. The LTTE, however, could also target Hindu temples. In May 2002, the Kernipillayar Temple in Batticaloa was levelled by them and two others were desecrated by having fence posts or roof tiles removed (UTHR 2002: 35).

176   The post-colonial period Christian sacred space was also targeted if LTTE sympathy was suspected and, again, I give illustrative examples. The Roman Catholic Our Lady of Refuge church in Jaffna was shelled as early as 1984, damaging the tower, leading to attacks on Sinhala residents in Jaffna that I will return to in the next chapter. In 1993, a Roman Catholic priest who became a supporter of the LTTE, S.J. Emmanuel, and Bishop Ambalavanar of the Church of South India, watched the Air Force bomb St James’ church in Jaffna (UTHR 1998: 49–50). In July 1995, St Peter and St Paul Roman Catholic church at Navaly on the Jaffna peninsula was targeted, at a time when government artillery shelling had forced many to take refuge there. Over 100 were killed and about 150 wounded. Then, in 2006, the navy attacked the church of Our Lady of Victory at Pesalai, a fishing village in Mannar, to which 3,000 villagers had fled to escape a battle between the Sea Tigers and the navy. As the battle died down, navy personnel advanced towards Pesalai, set fire to some huts belonging to the fishermen, killed four fishermen who were returning in their boats, and then entered the church compound. They fired through the gap between the main door and the floor, injuring some who were lying on the floor, and then lobbed two grenades through the windows. One person died and 47 were injured. An impassioned plea to the Vatican by Rayappu Joseph, Bishop of Mannar, from whom this information is taken, pleaded for an end to the killings, stressing the innocence of the villagers (Joseph 2006: 16). For this had not been the first time that Tamils, particularly women, in the area had been targeted by the navy (Jansz 2001c: 10). Spaces connected with religious observance, therefore, were seen as legitimate political targets during the war. As a retired Hindu professor and a retired senior public servant told me in Jaffna, the strength of Tamil communities can easily be destabilized if their temples are destroyed and the army knew this. Tamils, however, accused the government and the army of doing more than violating or destroying Hindu temples and Christian churches. They believed there was an attempt to impose a Sinhala-­Buddhist identity on the territory of the North and East even whilst the conflict continued, through military-­supported archaeology and the imposition of Buddhist symbols in Tamil-­majority areas and I now turn to this.

Claiming the island for Sinhala Buddhism The archaeological museum at Vavuniya became an early source of controversy. According to Neiminathan, in January 1979, the Archaeological Department began excavations near the Sammalankulam Pillaiyar Temple in Vavuniya, without honouring a commitment that the local member of parliament should be present. Images and other artefacts of Hindu origin were found but were suppressed. A museum was then built in Vavuniya, stocked mainly with Buddhist artefacts said to have been found in the region (Nieminathan 1998: 56; Uduwara 1990: 161). There were two bones of contention for Vavuniya Tamils: the magisterial Buddha image placed outside the museum and the Buddhist-­dominated content

Ethnic conflict and internal war   177 of the museum. In connection with the first, a Sinhala Christian contemplative I will call Donald shared with me that he had been told many times by people in Vavuniya, ‘Look at this! Why put this up? We are not Buddhist. We are Hindu and Christian.’ They saw it, according to Donald, as a sign of control. Siva told me that he remembered the initial controversy, which had happened well before the ending of the war. A Buddhist monk had insisted on the image and there had been a mass protest from the people but to no avail. As for the content, the museum initially held Buddhist artefacts almost to the exclusion of Hindu items, according to a British citizen working in Sri Lanka, whom I will call Colin. His impression in 2010 had been that the aim of the museum was to ‘prove’, through material objects, that Buddhism was not only the main religion in the North during the Anuradhapura period but also that Vavuniya was under Anurad­ hapura’s governance. In 2015, my last visit to the museum, the artefacts were still predominantly Buddhist, for instance a sacred foot stone from a monastery complex at Madukanda, an ancient Sinhala village near Vavuniya, and Buddha rūpas from Kilinochchi and Vavuniya. And the entrance to the museum commanded a view through some arches to a beautiful Samadhi Buddha, the central piece in the central room. An image of Gaṇeśa from Mannar District was also in this room but it was subordinate. Further north, the Department of Archaeology began reconstruction work at the previously mentioned Kadurugoda/Kantarodai from 1972 (Uduwara 1990: 175), using a southern Sri Lankan template to build on the foundations of the dāgäbas found there, in the assumption that they belonged to Anuradhapuran style. This was eventually contested by Tamil archaeologists, as I will show. I have already mentioned Mēdhānanda Thera in the context of archaeology. There is no need to say more about him now, except to stress that his work was given army protection (Frydenlund 2013: 100–106) and did not go unnoticed by Sinhalas or Tamils. To move to further examples of the controversial use of symbolism during the war, in 1991, the gift of a clock tower to majority Tamil Batticaloa by President Premadasa caused offence because it was ‘based on Kandyan architecture, topped by an ornament of Buddhist significance’, an act compounded, according to the UTHR, by the president’s inability to engage seriously with the disappearance of 175 Tamils, mainly youths, from the Eastern University refugee camp in the same year (UTHR 1991a: 1). The offence, however, did not provoke violence. Trincomalee, in May 2005, was different. Tension arose when the Sinhala United Trishaw Association, backed by a local Buddhist monk (Dehiowita Piyatissa Thero) and possibly by the JVP, replaced a small Buddha rūpa close to their trishaw stand in the centre of the town with a much larger one. As the Sinhala academic whom I will call Soma confirmed to me, this was not unusual. In many Sinhala areas, trishaw associations erected Buddha rūpas close to where they parked their vehicles. This, however, was not a totally Sinhala area, and tensions were already high over the question of P-­TOMS, mentioned in the last chapter. The first response came from the Trincomalee District Tamil People’s Forum, which called a hartal (a total shutdown of shops, banks and state

178   The post-colonial period enterprises), demanding that the image be removed, since it was on Urban Council land. Shops that did not close were attacked. A grenade was thrown at the image injuring two and ‘in one incident a youth was killed’ (Fernando and Fuard 2005: 6). When, at the end of May, the Attorney General, Kamalasa­ beysan, ‘filed a plaint at the Trincomalee District Court seeking the court to declare the construction of the controversial statue unlawful’ (Jeyaraj 2005a: 10), the hartal was called off. The Sinhala side of the conflict then sprang into action with members of the National Bhikkhu Front marching in protest outside Kamalasabeysan’s office and threatening fasts-­unto-death if the image was removed. The government tried to defuse the situation through dialogue. As a result, a further hartal was called off until 15 June, because it appeared that the image would be declared illegal and removed by 12 June, and that the additional troops sent to the town would be withdrawn. However, some Tamil parliamentarians, backed probably by the LTTE, then took up the issue and rescinded the decision to postpone the hartal, contravening the assurance given to the government. A hartal was, therefore, called for 3 June, with the threat that suicide attacks would be launched on the military. On the Buddhist side, Piyatissa threatened ‘to lay down his life’ if the image was removed and renewed threats were made concerning fasts-­unto-death by some members of the monastic Sangha (Jeyaraj 2005a: 10). The image was not removed. The Trishaw Association filed a petition to curb the council from carrying out a magistrate’s court order to remove unauthorized structures and the whole issue was taken to the Court of Appeal. A Tamil public servant interviewed by The Sunday Leader later in June commented, ‘The intention is sinister. They erected it during the donor forum in Kandy in secret. They will now plant a Bo tree, build a temple and call it a Buddhist country’ (Samarasinghe 2005: 10). By 2017, the central space near the fish market had changed. A bodhi tree took the central position with a small glass-­encased shrine in front, containing several small Buddha images. Behind the tree, moreover, was a brightly-­ coloured peace mural, sponsored by civil society organizations. This foregrounded a white dāgäba but behind it were a church, a mosque and a Hindu kovil. To one side was a dove, held up by three hands, possibly symbolizing Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. ‘Peaceful Town’ was written underneath in English. A conscious effort had, therefore, been made to reverse inter-­religious competition but a subtle foregrounding of Buddhism was still present. In the South also, the placing of Buddha images could be controversial. At the end of 2005, for instance, Fowzie, the environment minister, warned of communal riots if an unauthorized Buddha image erected by a trishaw driver opposite the Jumma Mosque in Kollupitiya (Colombo), some 50 feet away from it, was not removed (Christopher 2005: 1–2). Sound, as a dimension of space, was also utilized before the ending of the war to assert Buddhist dominance, in continuation with Buddhist revivalist strategy in the nineteenth century but now with government support.11 Ben Bavinck’s diary encapsulates it when, on 8 February 1992, he wrote from Colombo:

Ethnic conflict and internal war   179 Last night the branch of the Government Food Department across the road celebrated its 50th Anniversary with all night pirith chanting by Buddhist monks. The loudspeakers were turned up to the maximum level which made sleep almost impossible. Amazing that such disturbance of a whole neighbourhood is accepted by the police. It was also amazing to see how a state enterprise identifies itself completely with the Buddhist religion. (Bavinck 2011: 239) Before the ending of the war, therefore, public space was being used to assert the identity and dominance of the Sinhala majority, further proving the potency of public space to embody contest and conflict.

The political process and its spatial component I will end this chapter with a case study of one of the peace initiatives that occurred during the war – the devolution ‘package’ of Chandrika Kumaratunge in the 1990s – with a brief mention of the 2002–2006 peace process. Both demonstrate the impact on politics of the Sinhala spatial imaginary. Kumaratunge, daughter of Sirimavo and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, leader of the PA, was elected prime minister in August 1994, ending 17 years of UNP rule, and president in November of the same year, with a landslide victory of 62.3 per cent. The UNP had become discredited and distrusted, popularly judged guilty of numerous human rights violations and failure to end the ethnic war. Kumaratunge was elected on a peace ticket. Since her voters knew that she wanted to begin talks with the LTTE, her election demonstrated that there was a genuine wish among both Sinhalas and Tamils for compromise, change and peace, and a rejection of ‘narrow Sinhala chauvinism’ (Rajanayagam 2006: 168). In the North, according to Bavinck’s first-­hand account, Kumaratunge had ‘real star allure’ (Bavinck 2014: 33). As journalist Vimukthi Yapa said, ‘the country was ready to believe that here was a leader who was sincere of purpose, someone with the will and the vision to fashion out of the chaos that was Sri Lanka, a nation of prosperity and peace’ (Yapa 1999: 7). To the South, she also portrayed herself as embodying Buddhist motherhood (Rāghavan 2016: 83). After she was elected prime minister, her government relaxed the economic embargo on Jaffna and the LTTE released ten policemen in their custody. Direct communication between Kumaratunge and the LTTE leadership began. The first round of talks happened on 13–14 October 1994, concentrating on issues connected with the sufferings of people in Jaffna (Rajanayagam 2006: 174). The second round was postponed because of the previously mentioned assassination, on 23 October, of UNP presidential candidate, Gamini Dissanayake, which indicated that the LTTE had not changed its overall strategy (Rajanayagam 2006: 175–176). In one of her first broadcast addresses to the nation as president in January 1995, Kumaratunge stated that her vision was a Sri Lanka in which all communities ‘could live in safety and security’, where all ‘must be given the space

180   The post-colonial period to express their identity, and participate fully in the life of the nation, whether it be at the national, provincial or local level’ (Daily News 4 August 1998, reproduced in Sri Lankan Information Monitor 1995: 6). It was a vision based on a commitment to human rights and a ‘pluralist’ democracy, and an awareness that ‘the aspirations of the Tamil people were not adequately fulfilled within the parameters of the political process’ (Daily News, 4 August 1998, reproduced in Sri Lankan Information Monitor 1995: 5–6). Kumaratunge’s presidency, however, although it could boast economic achievements, failed dismally to bring that safety and security. Kumaratunge’s chosen method to bring change was a new constitution that granted greater devolution, and continuation of talks with the LTTE. Rajanayagam’s analysis of the correspondence between Kumaratunge’s government and the LTTE after the presidential elections demonstrates that there was a fundamental divergence of opinion about the overall aim of talks, the LTTE wanting to concentrate on alleviation of economic difficulties and logistics, and the PA seeking talks on a political settlement (Rajanayagam 2006: 177–185). Nevertheless, the second round of talks on 2 January resulted in a cessation of hostilities that came into effect on 8 January. Foreign monitors were appointed but found difficulties in taking up their work. To cut the narrative short, the peace talks, based largely on an exchange of letters, were short-­lived, mainly due to the LTTE unwillingness to discuss political solutions before the resolution of issues such as their right to carry arms in the East, the removal of certain army camps and the total lifting of the embargo (Rajanayagam 2006: 187–213). There was also a lack of awareness on the government side of the rigorous preparation and time needed for constructive peace talks. In Jaffna, hope turned to despair (Bavinck 2014: 27–29). After a fourth round of talks in April 1995, the LTTE broke the ceasefire, by sinking two navy vessels in Trincomalee, and withdrew from peace talks, having given an ultimatum to the government that it was unable to fulfil (Bavinck 2014: 72–75; Rajanayagam 2006: 212–213). After this, Kumaratunge, found herself reluctantly but nevertheless ruthlessly fighting the LTTE, who had been in control of Jaffna since 1990 and had gained new weaponry, whilst at the same time seeking parliamentary agreement for a devolution ‘package’. In April 1996, the army re-­conquered Jaffna and two military operations were launched into LTTE territory, Operation Edibala and Jaya Sikurui (Victory Assured) (Wickramasinghe 2014: 307). As for the devolution ‘package’, in August 2000, after years of work and several drafts, Kumaratunge’s Electoral Reforms Bill sunk in a fiasco of a parliamentary debate marked by cross-­overs, defections, booing, jeering, mud-­slinging and posturing, as the government sought to inch its way to a two-­third majority, in the face of opposition both from the UNP and all Tamil parties – the TULF, TELO, EPDP and PLOTE (Wickrematunge 2000: 11; Jansz 2000: 7). The Sihala Urumaya (SU) had been formed a few months previously (Handunetti and Abeywickrema 2004: 10), taking into itself the NMAT, to oppose the ‘package’ and held a ‘black flag’ protest campaign under a bodhi tree in the Pettah in the days before the parliamentary debate, with a monk embarking on a death fast, and, outside

Ethnic conflict and internal war   181 Parliament on the day itself, Buddhist monks chanted and made threats until Kumaratunge announced the voting had been put on hold (Berenger 2000: 4). How did it all go so sour? Rāghavan cites Kumaratunga’s inability to appreciate the political nature of Buddhism and the importance of using traditional methods to gain the support of the monastic Sangha (Rāghavan 2016: 833). I concur but there were other factors such as the lack of a truly bipartisan approach that included the opposition as an equal partner, which led to the UNP playing a destructive role. Paramount, however, was that her proposals, together with her wish for a pluralist democracy, were seen by many Sinhala nationalists as fracturing the cosmically-­ordained unity of the country. In addition, she failed to gain the support of the Tamil parties, because her proposals did not change majoritarian rule at the centre. The narrative of failure went like this. In August 1995, Kumaratunge summarized her proposals to the country and, in January 1996, a legal draft was released by her government. The proposals envisioned ‘a Union of Regions’ within a ‘united and sovereign’ republic, with only Colombo and Jayawardenapura-­Kōṭṭe (the parliamentary region) directly under central administration. The term ‘unitary state’ in the 1972 constitution was, therefore, to be deleted. Each ‘region’ would have a regional council with a governor, a chief minister, a board of ministers and a high court. Fifty-­eight powers remained with the centre including defence, immigration, foreign affairs, public debt, custom duties, atomic energy, minerals and mines, national rivers, civil aviation, national health administration and, significantly, Buddhism. Forty-­five powers were devolved to the regions, including educational services (with some exceptions), agriculture, fisheries, minor ports and harbours, housing and construction, tourism, state land and its alienation or disposal, regional police and law and order, sports, the regulation of foreign and direct investment, land revenue and planning at a regional level. There was no attempt to change the majoritarian system of central government. Among the key advisers to Kumaratunge and her government in compiling the proposals were Neelan Thiruchelvam and G.L. Peiris. A Colombo-­based NGO, the Movement for Constitutional Reform, also contributed, releasing, after a long period of consultation, ‘A Democratic Political Structure for Sri Lanka’ in February 1995 (Movement for Constitutional Reform 1995). Responses to the proposals were immediate and diverse. Before the release of the exact proposals, a group of prominent English-­speaking Sri Lankans, including Dr Hevanpola Rathanasara Nayaka Thera, welcomed what she had already indicated, as containing the elements ‘essential for removing the root causes of the conflict and laying the foundations for a united Sri Lanka’ (Anon 1995a: 11). A similar statement was released on 6 August, signed by more people but not Rathanasara, welcoming the proposals as an opportunity to rebuild, ‘a secular, democratic and multi-­ethnic country on the basis of a genuine sharing of power between all communities’ (‘Basis for new Lanka’. The Sunday Leader 6 August 1995, reproduced in Sri Lanka Information Monitor 1995: 8). Thirty NGOs came out with the same message (‘30 NGOs appeal for peace consensus’. Daily News 7 August 1995, reproduced in Sri Lanka Information Monitor 1995: 9).

182   The post-colonial period Negative voices, however, were also quick to emerge, particularly in the Sinhala press. On 13 August 1995, an equally sizeable group of prominent English-­speaking intellectuals, including S.L. Gunasekera and Stanley Kalpage, argued that the ‘package’ would create ethnically-­determined regions of the country, Muslim and Tamil, where Sinhala people would not be able to live, and a central government that would be powerless to negate actions taken by the regions, elements unacceptable to the Sinhala imaginary described in the last chapter (‘The Unity and Sovereignty of Sri Lanka’. The Island 13 August 1995, reproduced in Sri Lanka Information Monitor 1995: 10). Gunasekera’s vivid judgement voiced in another interview was that the package was ‘poisonous and tasteless as a badly cooked sambar’ (Peiris 1995: 8). Nationalist Sinhala parties followed, such as the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) and S.L. Gunasekera’s newly formed Sri Lanka Ekiya Sanvidhanaya (SLES). The SLES argued for a military defeat of the LTTE and described the ‘package’ as ‘monstrous’, not least because it disqualified any Sinhala people from gaining state land in the North and East, and presented a ‘federal form of government far more extreme than that which exists in India and a near total abdication by the Government of Sri Lanka of its legislative and executive powers’ (‘SLES wants govt to abandon the “devolution package” ’. The Daily News, 2 August 1995, reproduced in Sri Lanka Information Monitor 1995: 14–16). On 14 August, a number of Buddhist organizations, including the Mahabodhi Society of Sri Lanka and the ACBC voiced the same argument, adding that it would lead to a ‘balkanization’ of Sri Lanka in terms of regions based on ethnicity (‘YMBA and other organisations reject devolution proposals’. The Daily News, 14 August 1995, reproduced in Sri Lanka Information Monitor 1995: 18). Although the devolution proposals did not use the word, ‘federal’, newspapers critical of the government, The Island for instance, presented this as a ‘cover­up’. One article stated, ‘[E]ven a schoolboy who has studied Civics or Government will at once recognise that the proposed Union of Regions … will result in the creating of a federal state’. It continued, ‘It is concealing the fact that it is the power to alienate enormous tracts of land which are the traditional homelands of the Sinhalese to the Tamil community that really is being given not just power only’, after which it predicted, ‘The Sinhalese will be in the position they were before King Dutugemunu united the country’ (Swaris 1995: 12). A further criticism that emerged was the sheer cost of maintaining seven regional councils (Perera 1999b: 13). The Sinhala papers, particularly the Divayina reiterated these arguments, forcibly stressing: the threat posed to the unitary nature of the country because the ‘package’ would recognize the North and East as a ‘traditional homeland’ for the Tamils; the need to defeat the terrorism of the LTTE rather than pander to their separatist wishes; the ‘fact’ that the package would create a federal state with regions that could negotiate foreign aid (Sri Lanka Information Monitor (Annexure) 1995: 32–37). Perhaps the Sinhala papers had not heard that the LTTE had also rejected the proposals, judging them to be ‘a political mask to cover military designs’ (Anon 1995b: 7).

Ethnic conflict and internal war   183 The Daily News, and its Sinhala counterpart, the Dinamina, both government-­ supporting, sought to counter these arguments, for instance through ‘Fact sheets’ on devolution, which stressed that a re-­demarcated North-­East Province would probably have no more than 20–21 per cent of the land mass rather than the 33 per cent stated by detractors, and that Sri Lanka, under the proposal, would neither be a unitary nor a federal state (Anon 1995c: 10). In this polarized context, a cross-­party Parliamentary Select Committee was put in place only to degenerate into stalemate. Lawyer and academic, Rohan Edrisinha, attempted to intervene, by drawing on normative definitions of federalism to demonstrate that Kumaratunge’s proposals were not federalism. He directly addressed the popular Sinhala assumption that the ‘package’ would split the country into autonomous units that would then come together in a limited way, by explaining that this was only one form of federalism. The other was devolutionary federalism, a way of ‘organising diversity within unity’, but, even here, he claimed that the proposals fell short of its classic form. He also suggested an alternative Article 1 of the draft that used neither unitary or federal and jettisoned ‘Union of Regions’ in favour of ‘Cooperative government in which the national, regional and local spheres of government are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated’ (Edrisinha 1996a: 5; see also Edrisinha 1996b: 7). Neelan Thirulchelvam also intervened, again to allay Sinhala fears that the proposals would mean central government could not impose its rule on a wayward council (e.g. Peiris 1997a: 5). In September 1997, the previously mentioned Sinhala Commission of Inquiry published its Interim Report, which lambasted the proposals as the biggest threat Sri Lanka had ever faced in spite of assurances from G.L. Peiris that the special status of Buddhism would remain (Jansz 1997b: 3). In the same year, a new draft of the package was tabled, mainly to gain the support of the UNP. Before the UNP responded, however, the leaders of the four main Buddhist fraternities publicly opposed it for three reasons drawing on the commission’s findings: the country would no longer be unitary; it would be divided on ethnic lines; it would provide the foundation of a separate state in the North and East (Anon 1998b: 1). The UNP, therefore, continued to stall, Ranil Wickremesinghe, UNP leader, reverting to a previously voiced opinion in favour of the 13th Amendment, namely the 1987 agreement that had put provincial councils in place (e.g. Peiris 1997b: 4). The version that came to Parliament in 2000, therefore, had changed again, mainly through incorporation of UNP proposals, for instance that the term ‘Union of Regions’ be dropped. On 7 July 2000, it actually seemed that agreement had been reached between the PA and the UNP (Narapalasingham 2000: 16). But this collapsed, with the UNP stating that both the LTTE and the monastic Sangha should be consulted before further action. Narapalasingam (2000) labelled this UNP opportunism in the face of Buddhist opposition. However, by this time, even supporters of the ‘package’ were becoming disillusioned. On the Sunday before the parliamentary debate on 8 August, The Sunday Leader interviewed political and religious leaders, only two of whom, both PA ministers, came out in favour. TULF Parliamentary group leader, Joseph Pararajasingham,

184   The post-colonial period conceded that the PA government was ‘genuine at one stage’ but feared that the Bill was now ‘a sinister move to satisfy the international bodies’. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera stated that the ordinary people were in ignorance about the new proposals, whilst former leftist, Vasudeva Nanayyakara, stressed that they could not solve the ethnic war – only talks with the LTTE and other parties could (Gnanadass 2000: 8–9). On the same day, two key Buddhist leaders also intervened. Madduma Bandara claimed the Bill was ‘high treachery’, appealing to familiar arguments about the unity of the land: Parliament is debating a draft constitution that is attempting to subvert the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka and erase Sinhala-­Buddhist identity.… When Buddhism is threatened with extinction by invading armies or the persecution of governments, someone must step forward to champion its cause. And since the time of the monarch Devanampiyatissa, the champions of Buddhism in Sri Lanka have been the Sinhala people. The moral standards of the philosophy are so high, that in vigorously defending Buddhism, its protectors are forced to violate its very tenets. (Bandara 2000: 12) The second, Madihe Pannasiha Thera, opposed the Bill on the grounds that it would destroy Buddhist principles, and threatened international action by the monastic Sangha if passed. He also cited the vaṃsa tradition, namely the threats faced by Dutugemunu and Parakramabahu, and argued that no problem would have arisen if Sinhala people had been settled in the North according to their national ratio after independence. When asked whether Buddhist leaders would meet the president to discuss the Bill, he replied, ‘We have not been invited. If the invitation is done in the proper Sinhala-­Buddhist way we can consider it’ (De Silva 2000: 6). Kumaratunge’s attempt to introduce a radical form of devolution ended, therefore, because it violated the dominant Sinhala-­Buddhist imaginary and Tamil aspirations concerning greater parity of power at the centre. The next peace initiative, which followed an Agreement for a Ceasefire in 2002 under the UNP government of Wickremesinghe, has been well documented (Frydenlund 2013; Gooneratne 2007; Rupasinghe 2006). I will not reiterate their narratives, except to highlight three factors in its eventual breakdown. First, as Frydenlund argued, about 75 per cent of Buddhist monks believed the peace process would betray Buddhism through the ‘spatial division’ of the country into Tamil and Sinhala homelands (Frydenlund 2013: 97–98). Second, after the tsunami of 2004, the possibility of P-­TOMS, mentioned in the previous chapter, implied, for many Sinhalas, that the ‘traditional homeland’ concept was already being endorsed. The JVP, the JHU and the JVP-­affiliated National Bhikkhu Front held high-­profile protests in Colombo (Fuard 2005: 4) and, in Kandy, Omalpe Sobhitha Thera, of the JHU, fasted outside the Daḷadā Māligāva for five days, until Kumaratunge, who remained president, stated that discussions with monastic Sangha leaders would be held before P-­TOMS was finalized (Seneviratne 2005: 1). Third, the process

Ethnic conflict and internal war   185 imploded completely when Kumaratunge dismissed the UNP government at the point when the LTTE had submitted proposals, ‘for an agreement to establish an Interim Self-­Governing Authority for the Northeast of the Island of Sri Lanka’ (Gooneratne 2007: 234–246) and it seemed that Wickremesinghe would accept them. In other words, it collapsed when the spectre of a formally endorsed separate Tamil administration in the North seemed possible, whether through P-­TOMS or an interim system of self-­government, although the number of violations of the ceasefire agreement by the LTTE also played an important part, reaching, according to Gooneratne, 3,186 by September 2005, compared to the army’s 144 violations (Gooneratne 2007: 19).

Conclusion I have argued in this chapter that, throughout the build-­up to war and the war itself, one of the strongest factors that hindered resolution of the conflict was the Sinhala fear that the land would be fractured with parity given to Sinhala and Tamil. Throughout this period, many voices, Sinhala and Tamil, pleaded for a human rights based approach to conflict resolution, based on democratic principles, the rule of law and devolution of power. However, in the final stages of the war, these were side-­lined or condemned in the media as ‘pro-­LTTE’ and, therefore ‘pro-­terrorist’. Important to stress also is that, during the latter period of the war, the LTTE gradually built up the structure for a separate state, with Kilinochchi as capital, and governed much of the Vanni, the land south of the Jaffna peninsula. A court of justice, for instance, was established in Kilinochchi in 1990 (Bavinck 2011: 92). In effect, what Sinhalas feared actually happened, geographically and psychologically. Although the North and East of the country, throughout the war, were legally and constitutionally part of Sri Lanka, the South treated these areas as though they were already another country, impossible to visit or to understand, especially when the LTTE administered Jaffna. The National Peace Council of Sri Lanka (NPCSL), for instance, published A Glimpse of the North: Impressions of Southern Journalists in 2005 (National Peace Council of Sri Lanka 2005), in attempt to bridge the divide. Visits by people from the South – Buddhist monks or Christian leaders – were reported in Sri Lanka and externally as though they were to an alien region. For instance, when a Roman Catholic delegation travelled to Jaffna in January 1992 to speak to the LTTE leadership, The Sunday Times entitled the article, ‘Mission to Jaffna: Into the Depths’, describing in detail the different check points to be negotiated and permits gained (Anon 1992a: 5). When Methodist leader, Soma Perera did the same, the Methodist Church in Britain gave him hero status, given the dangers of the journey, including ‘a five km trek through marshes and the crossing of a shallow lagoon’ (Anon 1992b: 1). When the LTTE was defeated, therefore, one Sinhala response was absolute joy. Shops in the majority Tamil suburb of Colombo, Wellawatte, however, remained closed in reflective uncertainty (Wickramasinghe 2014: 352). The next chapter examines the aftermath of this.

186   The post-colonial period

Notes   1 In 1833, there were six unofficial members. After 1889, there were eight, and after 1910, ten, some of whom were elected (Gunasingam 2016: 396–398).   2 Section 29 (2) (b) and (c) – which provided that no law passed by the Parliament could (b) make persons of any community or religion liable to disabilities or restrictions to which persons from other communities or religions are not made liable; or (c) to confer on persons of any community or religion any privilege or advantage which is not conferred on persons of other communities or religions.… (De Silva 1981: 511–512n)   3 According to De Silva, Section 29 (2) (b) was sidestepped because it could be argued that the law was simply defining citizenship, for all, in a more rigid way (De Silva 1981: 511–512).   4 See Fernando and Weerawickrame (2009) for an account of the endemic practice of torture that developed in Sri Lanka.   5 Interview with Siva in 2017.   6 A significant report by a mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists offers a disturbing account of this moment in Sri Lankan history: the operation of the PTA; hostile propaganda on both sides of the ethnic divide; the riots of 1983. See Sieghart (1984).   7 Personal accounts of the pain involved in the violence up to 1987 are narrated in Wynne 1988.   8 Accounts of these peace processes can be found in: Rupasinghe (1998); Panditaratne and Ratnam (1998); Richardson (2005); Rupasinghe (2006); Rāghavan (2016).   9 I have taken this narrative from Jansz (2001b) and an interview with Siva in 2017. 10 After the ending of the war, the temple was renovated by Government Minister Basil Rajapakse in recognition of the harm done. 11 See Weiner (2014) for a significant study of religious sound and public space in the USA, which argues, as I do, that religious contest is as much about public practice as truth claims.

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190   The post-colonial period Peiris, Roshan, 1997a. ‘Neelan Allays Fears of Sinhalese’. The Sunday Times, 26 October: 5. Peiris, Roshan, 1997b. ‘Ranil Calls for a Needs-­based Devolution’. The Sunday Times, 9 November: 4. Perera, Amantha, 1999a. ‘The Sham(e) of the Wayamba Polls’. The Sunday Leader, 31 January: 8–9. Perera, Amantha, 1999b. ‘The Cost of Maintaining a White Elephant’. The Sunday Leader, 18 April: 13. Perera, Sasanka, 2005. Alternate Space: Trivial Writings of an Academic. Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture. Rāghavan, Suren, 2016. Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka’s Civil War: Ethnoreligious Nationalism of the Sinhala Saṅgha and Peacemaking in Sri Lanka 1995–2010. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox. Rajanayagam, P., 2006. ‘Govt-­LTTE Negotiations 1994/1995: Another Lost Opportunity’. In Kumar Rupasinghe (ed.), Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka: Efforts, Failures and Lessons Vol. 1, 2nd edn. Colombo: The Foundation for Co-­Existence: 165–222. Richardson, John, 2005. Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars. Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Roberts, Michael, 2009. Confrontations in Sri Lanka: Sinhalese, LTTE and Others. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. Rupasinghe, Kumar (ed.), 1998. Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka: Efforts, Failures and Lessons, 1st edition. London: International Alert. Rupasinghe, Kumar (ed.), 2006. Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka: Efforts, Failures and Lessons, 2nd edition, 2 vols. Colombo: The Foundation for Co-­Existence. Russell, Jane, 1982. Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution 1931–1947. Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo. Samarasinghe, Sonali, 2005. ‘Trinco – calm before the storm’. The Sunday Leader, 19 June: 10. Seneviratne, Shane, 2005. ‘Sobitha Thera Calls off Fast; Police Ready for Eviction’. The Sunday Times, 12 June: 1. Sieghart, Paul, 1984. Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in January 1984 on Behalf of the International Commission of Jurists and its British Section, JUSTICE. London: ICJ. Sivathamby, Kartigesu, 1987. ‘The Sri Lankan Ethnic Crisis and Muslim-­Tamil Relationships: A Socio-­Political Review. In Charles Abeysekera and Newton Gunasinghe (eds), Facets of Ethnicity in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association: 192–225. Social Scientists’ Association, 1984. Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists’ Association December 1979. Colombo: Social Scientists Association. Spencer, Jonathan, Goodland, Jonathan, Hasbullah, Shahul, Klem, Bart, Korf, Benedikt and Tudor Silva, Kalinga, 2015. Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace. London: Pluto. Sri Lanka Information Monitor, 1995. Special Dossier on Devolution Package. Colombo. Strategic Foresight Group, 2006. Cost of Conflict in Sri Lanka. Mumbai: Strategic Foresight Group. Swaris, J.C., 1995. ‘Proposed Package – Really a Federation of Regions’. The Island, 13 August: 12. The Insider, 2002. ‘Kumaratunga Cornered in Ponnambalam Murder’. The Sunday Leader, 13 January: 9.

Ethnic conflict and internal war   191 Tiruchelvam, Neelan, 1992. ‘Bandaranaike Ideology and Social Harmony’. The Thatched Patio 5.4: 1–17. Uduwara, Jayantha, 1990. ‘History of the Department of Archaeology, 1970–1990’. In Nandadeva Wijesekere (ed.), History of the Department of Archaeology (Archaeological Department Centenary 1890–1990: Commemorative Series Vol.  1) Colombo: State Printing Corporation: 153–192. UTHR, 1991a. The Clash of Ideologies and the Continuing Tragedy in the Batticaloa and Amparai Districts. Jaffna: UTHR (Jaffna). UTHR, 1991b. The Politics of Destruction and the Human Tragedy Report No. 6 September 1990 – January 1991. Jaffna: UTHR (Jaffna). UTHR, 1994. Frozen Minds and The Violence of Attrition Report No. 13. Jaffna: UTHR (Jaffna). UTHR, 1998. A Tamil Heroine Unmourned and the Sociology of Obfuscation Special Report No. 11. Colombo: UTHR (Jaffna). UTHR, 1999. Disappearances and Accountability: Gaps in the Krishanthy Kumaraswamy Case. Special Report No. 12. Colombo: UTHR (Jaffna). UTHR, 2002. The Plight of Child Conscripts, Social Degradation and Anti-­Muslim Frenzy Special Report 14. Colombo: UTHR (Jaffna). Veluppillai, Alvappillai, 2006. ‘Sinhala Fears of Tamil Demands’. In Mahinda Deegalle (ed.), Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge: 93–113. Weiner, Isaac, 2014. Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space and American Pluralism. New York and London: New York University Press. Wickramasinghe, Nira, 2014. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Wickrematunge, Raine, 2000. ‘Bill Sinks Amid Crossover Circus’. The Sunday Leader, 13 August: 11. Wijesekere, Nandadeva (ed.), 1990. History of the Department of Archaeology (Archaeological Department Centenary 1890–1990: Commemorative Series Vol. 1) Colombo: State Printing Corporation. Wynne, Alison, 1988. Lament for Lanka: Voices from an Island in Conflict. Kowloon: Christian Conference of Asia. Yapa, Vimukthi, 1999. ‘The Five-­year Blessing’, The Sunday Leader, 15 August: 7.

9 Spatial change and competition after the ending of armed conflict

I heard this kind of digging outside my house and woke up. It was dark and there were no lights for them to work with. It was a group of young people from the area. As soon as it got lighter they went off and then came again in the night. We had no idea what it was until a structure came up and we realized it was a Buddhist shrine. I couldn’t understand why they were doing it in this way. For it was all done in the dark. If they want a Buddhist statue, we have no problem. Then someone said, ‘But this is Christian property’. (Fieldwork interview with June in 2012)

I focus in this chapter on the changes to the religious landscape of Sri Lanka after the ending of armed conflict in 2009 and the implications of these changes, concentrating on the former war zones of the North and East, but not excluding the predominantly Buddhist South. I draw on field visits to Sri Lanka in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2017, between which there were significant changes. The chapter, therefore, combines a narrative of my own observational experience after 2009, and that of the Sri Lankans I interviewed during these visits. I would repeat that all names have been changed to respect the anonymity of my participants. The chapter recognizes Jude Lal Fernando’s study, which argues that Sinhala Buddhist ethno-­religious ideology demanded a ‘re-­conquest’ of the North and East after 2009 (Fernando 2013: 200) and Sasanka Perera’s more recent work, Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka (Perera 2016). With reference to Fernando, however, my own narrative argues that ‘re-­conquest’ was only part of the story. On the Buddhist side, the yearning to return to a perceived golden past where minorities recognized the prior claim of the majority community and so lived in harmony with it was more important than outright ‘conquest’. On the side of the minorities, there was also a spirited, competitive response. With reference to Perera, in line with my narrative approach, I primarily honour my own journeys into the former war zones, presented at academic conferences since 2011,1 and use Perera as supplementation. I begin with government-­sponsored spatial changes immediately after the war before passing to war tourism, post-­war spatial developments connected with religion in the South, the expansion of

Spatial change and competition after 2009    193 Buddhist space in the North and East, and the self-­affirmation of other religious communities, concentrating particularly on my themes of inclusivist subordination and rupture with pre-­colonial patterns. Lastly, I survey Sinhala and Tamil response to these developments.

The ending of the war, the re-­fashioning of space and war tourism Mahinda Rajapakse, in his victory speech in May 2009, as I have already indicated, implicitly placed himself within the line of kings that had ‘defeated enemy invasions’, a self-­definition that was reinforced by the honour given to him by the Malvatta and Asgiriya Buddhist monastic fraternities: ‘Universally Renowned Overlord of the Blessed Three Sinhala Regions’ (Fernando 2016: 272). The pre-­colonial concept of Sinhalē was, therefore, consciously evoked at this point and in the years following. A plaque erected in 2011 at Lankāpotuna on the East coast, for instance, named him Vishwa Keerthi (Universal Pride) and ‘monarch’ of ‘Trisinhala’. Nevertheless, he also attempted inclusivity by using Tamil in his victory speech and promising reconciliation (Wickrama­singhe 2014: 352). In the months following May 2009, however, public space was moulded to express victory over the LTTE rather than reconciliation with Tamil communities. In the South, during the war, public space had been shot through with fear-­filled tension. People feared that the bus they were travelling in or the road junction they were negotiating on foot would be the target of the next suicide bomber. Perera gives some of the strategies adopted by Sinhala families so that they did not travel together, so risking the death of all (Perera 2016: 73). After May 2009, this fear was removed. Internal tourism and pilgrimage recommenced. A trishaw driver, in the summer of 2009, pointed out to me the dramatically increased number of private buses parked outside Dehiwela zoo, close to Colombo. And for the first time since the 2002 ceasefire, Sinhala Buddhist groups could travel north to the island of Nāgadīpa and east to Sēruvila. According to Fernando, about half a million Sinhala people travelled along the A9 road to the North in the year after May 2009 (Fernando 2013: 206). For people in the North, however, the story was different. Thousands of Tamils who had escaped or survived the ‘cage’ (Weiss 2011) were confined to refugee camps. The land was under army control, with ongoing high security zones. The city of Jaffna limped towards some form of normalcy, with damaged buildings coexisting with new developments. The first government priority, however, was not residential housing but economic infrastructure improvement, through the rebuilding of roads and railways. Those travelling within the island at this time could not fail to be reminded of victory. Anyone entering Colombo via the Kälani bridge saw a billboard displaying rows of red-­bereted army personnel, unsmiling faces angled to the right, guns raised across their left shoulders, triumphantly represented as military heroes. Those passing Bandaranaike International airport saw a magisterial

194   The post-colonial period cut-­out of Mahinda Rajapakse, hand upraised. And those going north and east saw victory monuments. There had been monuments to the dead before the ending of the war, for example in Kandy. After May 2009, four victory monuments were erected: in Kilinochchi, the former LTTE capital; at Elephant Pass, the strip of land separating the Jaffna Peninsula from the rest of Sri Lanka; at Puthukkudiyiruppu near Nanthikadal Lagoon, close to the final battle and at Battaramulla close to the national Parliament. The Kilinochchi monument represented the LTTE as a forbidding, grey, concrete block into which a barrel-­sized bullet had been fired. From one of the cracks that radiated outwards from the bullet, a pink, open lotus flower, symbol within Buddhism of purity growing from impurity, grew upwards. At Elephant Pass, four massive hands held up a cut-­out of a united Sri Lanka, again topped by a lotus, this time with petals closed. The block on which this was raised was flanked by four lions. At Puthukkudiyiruppu, an elevated, more than life-­size representation of a soldier’s torso, muscular and belligerent, holding the Sri Lankan flag in his left hand and a gun in his right, lips parted in a cry of victory, greeted ‘war tourists’. The monument at Battaramulla, a homage to ‘war heroes’, consisted of a column mounted on a base, surrounded by eight lions. Behind it, the names of 27,462 soldiers killed in the war were written on a granite frieze. The plaques on the column eulogized soldiers who ‘sacrificed their lives for safeguarding the territorial integrity of the motherland’ by ‘eliminating mighty hostile enemies’.

Figure 9.1  Victory monument at Kilinochchi (2015).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    195

Figure 9.2  Victory monument at Puthukkudiyiruppu (2012).

It replaced a peace monument, destroyed by the Rajapakses, which had represented the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities through three pillars. In all of these, two key symbols were foregrounded: the lotus and the lion, representing Buddhism and the Sinhalas. Smaller tributes to the military as liberators also appeared, often explicitly linked with Buddhism. To take just two examples, in 2012, a vihāra in Somapura, near Trincomalee, on the border between what had been government and LTTE held territory, gave the military semi-­divine status. The ‘guardstones’ leading to a shrine room in front of the dāgäba were life-­size, pale-­skinned military figures, one a soldier and the other, a Civil Defence Force member, each holding the tail of a lion. And, in 2015, when travelling by train from Kandy to Colombo, I noticed that one of the platforms at Doraluva Station boasted a life-­ size model of a crouching soldier surrounded by Buddhist flags. A similar ethos was created by the bus that shot past us soon after Somapura, as we headed away from the East, which had ‘Buddhist Country’ emblazoned on the front in English. In direct continuity with the Sinhala imaginary that underpins this study, by 2017, a ‘Sinha le’ movement was adding to this ethos. Trishaws, private cars and other vehicles were boasting ‘Sinha le’ stickers, consisting of the lion image

196   The post-colonial period from the Sri Lankan flag, without the strips representing the country’s other communities, and ‘Sinha le’ underneath, the ‘le’ coloured in red. ‘Le’ in Sinhala can mean ‘blood’. Formed in 2015, the movement took the name Sinhale Jathika Balamuluwa (Sinhala National Power or Powerholding) in 2016. Its General Secretary in 2017 was Madille Pagnaloka Thero. To return to the immediate aftermath of war, LTTE memorialization of history in the North was obliterated. Monuments to individual war heroes and war cemeteries, such as that at Koppay, which the LTTE represented as holy ‘temples’ (Natali 2008), were destroyed by the army. Between 2002 and 2006, ‘tourists’ from the South had visited Koppay and monuments to LTTE heroes such as Kittu (Sathasivam Krishakumar) and Thileepan (Perera 2016: 50–65). After May 2009, they could not. The LTTE dead were spatially eliminated and, using Perera’s words, ‘the rebel’s structures of memory became deliberate casualties of the post-­war regime’s interest in both rewriting history as well as reorganizing landscape’ (Perera 2016: 77). Yet, by 2012, the ‘cage’ was open for visitors. Perera has given a detailed analysis of the ‘tourism’ that resulted (Perera 2016). My ‘tour’, with Siva and a driver in 2012, went something like this. The first stop, travelling from Jaffna, was Prabhakaran’s ‘bunker’ or jungle hide-­out. The journey towards it was bleak with burnt vehicles and bombed houses by roadsides, and clouds of dust entering the car, since the road itself was still under construction. I was not prepared for the number of ‘tourist’ buses at the site. The queue of people to see Prabhakaran’s underground rooms was so long that it would have meant an hour’s wait at least. So I saw the site from ground level: the funeral house where martyrs were laid out for Prabhakaran’s gaze; the bullet-­proof sentry post; the camouflaged vehicle port; the top of the ‘bunker’ covered with strips of cloth from military combat uniform. Members of the army oversaw everything, evidently seeing it as endorsement of their victory. Siva, however, pointed to another message. People he had taken there before, had said, ‘Look how simply he lived’. By 2017, it had been demolished. From this site, we went through an area nearer to the last stand. Siva pointed out the affluence of the houses. People there had been doing well. The cultivation was good. But almost every building was in ruins. When the LTTE had quit an area, the army had bulldozed everything. It was against this backdrop that there was the sign, ‘Welcome to 681 Infantry Area’. The next point of our ‘tourist’ circuit was the victory monument at Puthukkudiyiruppu, alongside which an army-­run museum of LTTE artefacts, containing Sea Tiger boats, rockets, rocket launchers and other weapons, rusted and corroded, showcased victory but also the ingenuity of the LTTE. It was still there in 2017. The road from this monument towards our next point – the site of a burnt-­out ship, Farah 3 – was, for me, heart-­breaking. Masses of burnt-­out vehicles were piled up beside the road. Some would have belonged to refugees being pushed into the ‘cage’, perhaps with the hope that one day they would collect them. There were also LTTE vehicles. Some had been burnt twice, according to Siva – the LTTE burning their own vehicles so the army could not benefit from them,

Spatial change and competition after 2009    197 the army burning all in their way. We then passed through what I can only call a wasteland. The ground was dry and without vegetation, strewn with a crowd of objects – fishing nets, piles of logs, burnt and twisted vehicles, concrete slabs, the remains of wells, burnt oil drums, a few ruined houses, buckets, plastic chairs and other personal effects. It was after going through this that we reached the Farah 3, a boat that had carried arms for the Sri Lankan military before it had been intercepted by the LTTE and then recaptured by the navy (Perera 2016: 114–116). The site had become another opportunity to promote victory. The army was running a food and picnic area close to the beach – Sinhala food only – and it was packed with people. When I was there, what was happening appeared to me to be voyeurism or triumphalism. I was wrong. As the Sinhala academic whom I will call Nimalka reflected, some who travelled there would have lost relatives in the army. To reach the ‘last stand’ was to see the landscape their relatives saw, to touch what their loved ones had touched, to glimpse the agony they had experienced. It was a way of coming close to them. In 2013, the ship was removed. Another site visited by Sinhala ‘war tourists’ lay just south of Elephant Pass: a monument, overseen by the army, to Gamini Kularatne, a soldier who died in 1991, when disabling an LTTE bulldozer packed with explosives. In 2012, I noted the burnt-­out bulldozer and the monument but did not stop. In 2015, stopping was imperative. The site was originally overseen by the LTTE with

Figure 9.3  The burnt-out hulk of Farah 3 (2012).

198   The post-colonial period LTTE graffiti and a Tamil nationalist interpretation (Perera 2016: 30–31). After the war, it changed into a Buddhist nationalist shrine. Perera stresses the transformation of Kularatne into a ‘heroes’ hero’ (Perera 2016: 88–92). I saw it differently. To use a Buddhist term, Kularatne had been made into a bodhisatta, a Buddha-­to-be. Some Sinhala visitors were plucking flowers from the opposite side of the road and placing them below Kularatne’s raised statue, as they would offer flowers to a Buddha image, and Kularatne himself seemed to rise from flowers, since flowering plants had been placed around his feet. To the left of the statue was the corroded, burnt bulldozer and a ‘Souvenir Gallery’, opened by the army in 2014. Apart from photos of Kularatne and the bulldozer, and a blown-­up replica of the memorial stamp issued in 2001, viewers could see Kularatne’s plate, bedsheet and clothes, each displayed as if holy. They could also view a documentary, only in Sinhala, about Kularatne’s actions. If this had been a Roman Catholic site, canonization would have come to mind. The billboards on the road were only in Sinhala and English but, inside, there was a plaque in three languages about the gallantry honour awarded to Kularatne. Fernando has pointed to an important aspect of Sinhala experience of the North and East after 2009. When pilgrimage had recommenced during the ceasefire between 2002 and 2006, pilgrims had interacted with Tamil traders, since the army had not yet moved into commercial enterprise. After May 2009, they interacted only with the military and military commercial enterprises. They could pass through the North without talking to a Tamil (Fernando 2013: 208), informed only by a Sinhala version of the war and its ending such as that presented at Kularatne’s ‘shrine’. For as Deegalle explains, the armed forces, after 2009, entered the commercial world, setting up businesses, overseeing cricket stadiums and operating commercial flights (Deegalle 2013: 25).

The South: Buddhist self-­confidence and the spatial In the years following 2009, there was an upsurge of renovations and expansions to Buddhist vihāras in the South and a plethora of new Buddha rūpas in public space, for instance at road junctions. The latter was an expansion of what Obeyesekere first noted after independence – the moving of the Buddha rūpa outside the household shrine and vihāra into public space (Obeyesekere 1970) – but I would argue that the most important driver in this case was the Mahāvaṃsa motif I mentioned earlier, drawing on Kemper: that the most authentic Buddhist response to the ending of violence is to make merit through enhancing the spatial presence of Buddhism. As Soma told me, the JHU sponsored some of the images but others were erected by traders or service-­providers, for instance trishaw drivers, a contentious example of which was covered in the last chapter. Although this had begun well before 2009, Soma was convinced it had increased since May 2009. As for southern vihāras, the sheer amount of renovation and new construction within them struck me in 2012, when I travelled by road from Dambulla to Colombo with a Sinhala driver whom I will call Kanu. Vihāra after vihāra

Spatial change and competition after 2009    199 boasted new Buddha rūpas. Just south of Dambulla, an old vihāra stood on our right and, on the other side of the road, there was a new dāgäba and a board displaying an image of the large golden Buddha that would be erected. Just before Melsiripura, another old vihāra was planning to erect a standing Buddha on its largest rock. At the Pingalpota Prana Vihāra at Gokaralla, a magisterial Buddha in pale yellow had been erected in the foreground of the vihāra, dominating the other buildings, and, at Kadawata, a massive standing Buddha had been erected in front of a vihāra that had greeted people coming from the North for decades. Across the South of Sri Lanka, this has been repeated. In addition, there has been a programme sponsored by the Defence Ministry to build nine Buddhist stūpas in the island’s nine provinces in appreciation of the ‘noble service’ rendered by the armed forces in defeating terrorism (Fernando 2013: 226–227). This confident and joyful building has sometimes encroached into space linked with other religious communities. Both Soma and another Sinhala academic whom I will call Jaya saw the growth of Buddha rūpas as partly driven by the wish to compete with Christians. The story quoted at the beginning of this chapter about the covert erection of a free-­standing Buddhist shrine in the hills above Kandy on property belonging to the Christian church, although some plots of land had been sold to Buddhists, illustrates this. The only reason June could suggest for the work having been done at night was that the diggers believed their actions would provoke Christians. In 2012, she told me that, after a grand opening, hardly anyone came to the shrine or tended it. By 2017, however, the Christian organization that owned the land had legally passed it to Buddhists. A local tourist hotel had sponsored a wall around the shrine and the whole looked more professional. Yet, June still insisted to me that it was not used devotionally. At Vesak, a local boy had put one lantern in the shrine – that was all. And the two factions, the hotel, the owner of which was a Roman Catholic, and local Buddhist residents, did not always agree. I heard of numerous similar instances. A Christian leader whom I will call Philip told me in 2012 that in Matugama, Baptists had bought land for a church only to find that a Buddha rūpa was placed inside the property. Because of the ritual difficulties connected with removing such an image, they sold the land. From a Christian ordination candidate, I heard that, further south, near Buttala, another Protestant Church started a mission in a Sinhala and Muslim village. As soon as land had been bought for this, a Buddha rūpa was placed on the land opposite, not exactly an encroachment but a spatial statement asserting Buddhist presence. I have already shown that sound was used as a tool of inter-­religious competition in the nineteenth century and as an identity-­affirming statement during the war. After the war, this continued and, according to some of my participants, increased. Donald told me of the situation in a North West Province village: There are other kinds of invasions of space such as the invasion of sound. So, for instance, the chanting of Pirit on loudspeakers, which is not conducive to meditation and which distorts.… It serves very little purpose except

200   The post-colonial period to say, ‘This is Buddhism. This is our right.’ This has provoked a reaction. So mosques will respond with the Call to Prayer. So there is this competition that is going on. In my village, there are four mosques and at 4.45 or 4.40 a.m. you will hear the Call to Prayer. And each mosque has its own system. As soon as this is over, you have the Pirit chanting from the local temple. And again I fear – however lovely it is and I love to hear it being chanted – the intention can be perceived to be, ‘If you make a sound, we will also claim the space as Buddhist’. And now recently the Catholic Church has begun a perpetual novena or something like that on Wednesday evening and you hear the singing of Marian hymns and the Mass being celebrated. So there is this continual bombardment and it does not serve devotional purposes. Inter-­religious competition in the South, however, has gone further than the placing of Buddha rūpas close to or inside Christian space, or the strategic use of sound. I take as illustration the call that came from the then chief incumbent of the Jam­ bukola or Rangiri Dambulu Vihāraya (the Golden Temple) in Dambulla, Venerable Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero, that the Dambulla Khairiya Juma Masjid and the Bhadrakālī Amman Kovil should be removed from Dambulla, because they lay within a designated Buddhist sacred area, fairly close to the Vihāraya. After May 2009, Sri Lankan Muslims renovated many mosques and built new ones with overseas support. However, the Dambulla mosque was a modest structure, although Sumangala might have heard that improvements were planned. When I tried to find it in August 2012, I had difficulty. It was hidden from the road and did not rise above the modest buildings of the town. However, on 20 April 2012, these calls had led to members of the monastic Sangha and lay Buddhists, attacking but not destroying the mosque, and, on 28 October 2013, the Hindu temple was forcibly demolished. On 21 October, the roof had been removed and, three weeks before that, an image of the deity, Bhadrakālī, had been smashed and thrown into a well. Protests had been made by opposition parliamentarians and the devotees themselves, but to no avail. Even when devotees, accepting the inevitable, had asked for more time to perform the rituals necessary for the abandoning of a kovil, this was not granted. The attacks were motivated by Sumangala’s conviction that, when Dambulla was made a Buddhist sacred area in the early 1980s, an act that Kemper rightly suggests was motivated by political rather than religious reasons (Kemper 1991: 179), ‘there was no provision for any religion other than Buddhism to have their own place of worship’ within its boundaries (Kannangara 2012). He cited Survey Department maps at this time that did not identify a mosque. The language he used to justify his stance appealed to a familiar motif, namely the need to defend the Buddhist heritage of Dambulla and the country against external threat. For instance, when a journalist, after the mosque attack, reminded Sumangala that Sri Lanka was a ‘multi-­religious, multi cultural and multi ethnic society’, he replied, ‘What nonsense. You are speaking of a nonsensical society. This country has fourteen million Buddhists. How many Muslims are there?’ He added later:

Spatial change and competition after 2009    201 Are you trying to wrest away our Buddhist rights? We have respected all. What we have here is none of that. It is about protecting the Buddhist legacy against the wresting of it.… We are fighting to save the 2300 year old Buddhist heritage that is ours! They [Muslims] in turn are trying to wrest away our heritage. (Ariywansha 2012)2 His solution was enforced spatial exclusion. Sumangala’s methods were similar to those of the Budu Bala Sena (BBS – Buddhist Power Brigade), which was founded in 2012 as a break-­away from the JHU. There is no space here to examine the BBS in detail. Suffice to say that its rhetoric has been anti-­Muslim and anti-­Christian, and its methods of operation have included belligerent attacks on Christian and Muslim space if any form of proselytization or anti-­Buddhist activity was feared (Schonthal and Walton 2016; Stewart 2014). Neither Sumangala nor the BBS represent the majority Sinhala Buddhist voice but their activities are nevertheless significant in the context of this study. By 2017, a small lake was all that could be seen at the site of the Bhadrakālī Amman Kovil. As Siva said, there were simply not enough Hindus in Dambulla to mount a strong opposition. The mosque, however, was still there, unchanged, and had police protection. From the outside, it was impossible to identify the one-­storeyed, corrugated iron structure as a mosque. It was tolerated and protected but debarred from expansion or improvement.

The expansion of Buddhist space in the North and East after May 2009 To return to the North and the East and to an area wider than victory monuments and war tourism, some post-­war spatial changes mirror the activities I have surveyed in the South. Fernando, for instance, cites an instance of a Buddha rūpa being placed provocatively close to a Christian church in the North (Fernando 2013: 217) and of amplified Pirit sessions on Poya Day in ‘strictly Hindu, Muslim or Catholic areas’, extending sometimes into the night (Fernando 2013: 211–213). I will not, however, concentrate on these. I focus in this section on: Buddhist shrines connected with army and navy camps; the expansion of existing vihāras; the redevelopment of ancient sites identified as Buddhist; the discovery or creation of new Buddhist sites and centres; and the Buddhicizing of sites that had not previously been exclusively linked with Buddhism. Some spatial changes within these categories happened well before May 2009 and even before the beginning of the war, such as the developments I have already covered at Sēruvila and Kanturodai/Kadurugoda. The new Buddhist site at Dambakila Potūna/Matakal, to which I will return, was also identified well before 2009. During the war, Sēruvila became a place of quiet repose, according to Colin. Sinhala colonists living close to the site left, since it lay on the border between LTTE-­controlled and government-­controlled land, and Buddhist pilgrims rarely risked the journey. When the LTTE was defeated in the East in

202   The post-colonial period 2007 (Wickramasinghe 2014: 356–358), villagers started to return and pilgrims arrived. With this, a new Vihārage was started in 2008. In 2013, a 52-kilometre road between what had become Sēruvila Rājamahā Vihāraya and Somawathi Rājamahā Vihāraya (Polonnaruva) was formally opened by Basil Rajapakse, then Minister of Economic Development. A memorial plaque evoked Sri Lanka’s dynastic past, declaring that it was opened, ‘in accordance with the ancient Sri Lankan royal custom of discharging the responsibility of preserving and sustaining places of historical Buddhist worship’.

The growth of Buddha images (rūpas) A Roman Catholic priest in the North, whom I will call Moses, told me that there had only been one Buddha rūpa on the A9 road between Vavuniya and Jaffna before the war – at Kilinochchi. During the war, Buddha rūpas accompanied the armed forces. Buddhist shrines were erected inside and sometimes outside army and navy camps, both in the North and the East. After May 2009, small camps were amalgamated with large ones. When a camp was closed, the Buddhist shrine sometimes remained. For instance, in 2012, a small Buddhist shrine stood on the roadside at Kodikamam, on the Jaffna peninsula. All that remained of the former army camp, however, was a small army checkpoint with a Buddhist flag attached to it, on the other side of the road. By 2015, both had been removed, although this may have had more to do with the reconstructed railway than sensitivity to Hindu sentiments. At Kallar, in the East, when a large camp closed, the Buddhist shrine that had stood outside it, opposite a modest Methodist church, was eventually removed. However, in 2012, a Buddha rūpa stood close to a Sinhala police checkpoint by the bridge leading north from the town, on an open stretch of beautifully tended land beside the water. It was the first or last thing a traveller saw on entering or leaving Kallar, a predominantly Hindu and Christian town. In 2012, when I passed the larger amalgamated camps, Buddhist symbolism was only sometimes visible. North of Vakarai, for instance, on the east coast, the most visible element of an army camp was the Buddhist centre inside it. It was pristine, designed as a village vihāra with stūpa, bodhi tree and Buddha rūpa. It was far larger than the one in a camp close to Habarana, in a more Sinhala area, where a fairly modest shrine was the first thing to meet the eye, although enhanced by the empty space surrounding it. In other army camps, no Buddhist symbols could be seen from the road. In 2015, however, I realized that my exposure to army camps was very limited. Moses told me that some camps were now deep in the jungle areas. Many Tamils were neither aware of them nor that family members would be brought to them. He added that a member of the military had politely told him: Father, we expect problems in the North East and so the army will be present always. And soldiers are young people. They need their families. So we will bring them here. Families need schools. So we will build them.

Spatial change and competition after 2009    203 They need food so we will bring shops. They also need documents signed so we will bring a Kachcheri [administrative office]. It was not only adjacent or inside army camps, however, that army-­sponsored Buddha images were erected. In 2012, Rajasingham took me to Victoria Road, behind the Jaffna Central Hospital, to see two Buddhist shrines near a bodhi tree, placed there by the army when they had controlled the area. There were no devotees. ‘Of course not’, Rajasingham responded, ‘There are no Buddhists here.’ By 2017 the shrines had been removed.

Expansion of existing vihāras Before the war, Buddhist vihāras existed in towns such as Kilinochchi, Jaffna and Kankesanturai, serving Sinhalas and Tamils in the North. The Tissa Vihāraya in Kankesanturai, for instance, began in 1973, assisted by the police and army, with Delgalle Padumasiri Thera as incumbent. Through demonstrating empathy towards the problems Tamils faced, Padumasiri turned initial mistrust into friendship. Eventually more Tamils than Buddhists used the temple (Padumasiri 1986: 3), a fact that Siva confirmed: ‘Tamils liked him’. Padumasiri was forced to leave in the mid-­1980s. The Nāga Vihāra in Jaffna, however, was probably the first vihāra to be established in the North in modernity. Although Buddhists now trace its existence to the third century bce, by claiming that the bodhi tree sapling brought by Saṅghamittā stopped there on its journey to Anuradhapura, its modern incarnation began in the 1960s to cater for Sinhala Buddhists in Jaffna (Perera 2016: 31–33). Situated at a major junction, it was attacked and almost demolished in 1984. According to Siva, who experienced these events, militant youth groups were not responsible. It was a popular expression of anger that also targeted Sinhala bakeries, after the shelling, by government forces, of Our Lady of Refuge church, mentioned in the last chapter. The resident monks and most other Sinhala people still resident on the peninsula left. The rebuilding started after Jaffna came into government hands in April 1996. In 2012, the Nāga Vihāra consisted of a mature bodhi tree, a newly painted silver dāgäba, a shrine room with what appeared to be fresh murals, a pilgrims’ rest under construction with a desk for donations, and a new dēvāle close to the entrance. In 2015, very little had changed. The pilgrims’ rest had advanced only a little. Donations were still being requested with the words, ‘Let us rebuild the historic Nāga Vihāra as a link between the North and the South’. In 2017, the new building had advanced further, with a team of workers on site, but was still far from completion. For this study, the dēvāle – the ‘Pancha Maha Devalaya’ – is particularly significant. It is on the same level as the other parts of the vihāra and consists of a long, narrow hall with images of five deities, behind metal grills. In front of each is an ‘altar’ for flowers and lamps. Above each is a notice in three languages, with Sinhala on top, giving the name of the deity: ‘Lord Siva; Lord

204   The post-colonial period

Figure 9.4  ‘Lord Siva’ at the ‘Pancha Maha Devalaya’, Nāga Vihāra (2017).

Vishnu; Lord Ganapathi; Lord Skandakumara; Sri Lakshmi’. In my visits in 2012, 2015 and 2017, offerings in front of these images were negligible and there were no devotees. For these were Sinhala representations of Hindu gods, crafted by Sinhala artists. As Siva told me, the faces had more in common with images of the Buddha than Hindu deities. The dark bronze colour that had been chosen for the bodies was also a Buddhist interpretation; Hindus would have chosen black. And some iconographic mistakes were present. The head of the serpent around Śiva, for instance, extended outwards from the breast, rather than from the neck. In 2017, some paper garlands, ribbons and strips of material had been attached to the grills but again the provenance was Sinhala. Hindus would have offered real flowers.

Spatial change and competition after 2009    205 The intention of this dēvāle was to include Hindus within the vihāra, to affirm the predominantly Hindu nature of Jaffna, although Sinhalas also worship the gods. However, its location near the entrance rather than within the centre of the vihāra suggests an ongoing subordination and what is present is a Sinhalization of the Hindu, meaning that few Hindus would enter for devotional purposes. Kilinochchi experienced a resident Buddhist monk well before the war, living in a simple vihāra centred around a bodhi tree. According to Siva, he had remained throughout the war, keeping the military at arms’ length, and had been given dāna (gifts of food) by Tamils. Bavinck mentioned his educational work in 1992, judging it a ‘remarkable oasis of inter-­racial tolerance in the midst of a desert of intolerance and hatred’ (Bavinck 2011: 243). After the ending of armed conflict, however, the monk left and army-­sponsored redevelopment began. In 2012, the site was under construction. Through the gates, I saw a new Buddha rūpa to the left of the older shrine, an image of Saṅghamittā facing the bodhi tree, a new or renovated dāgäba under wraps and a newly painted gateway. In 2015, the vihāra was open between 10.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m. The sign outside was only in Sinhala. The dāgäba was unwrapped and pristinely white, although the surrounding wall had not been renovated, and there was a new, open-­sided shrine to the Buddha. What was striking, however, was the lack of signs of devotion or care of the complex. The ground was not swept and was hard on my bare feet. There were no lit lamps on the metal racks and no flowers in front of the Buddha rūpas. Two lay men were there but were not offering devotion. As I left, however, a Sinhala tourist bus from the South stopped. Further up the road was a renovated Hindu temple, lavishly painted in gold, carefully maintained and patronized, the work sponsored by the Sri Lankan government in an attempt at inclusivity.

The expansion of sites identified as Buddhist I take as examples of the expansion of sites identified as Buddhist: Nāgadīpa (Tamil: Nainativu) and Kadurugoda (Tamil: Kantarodai) in the North; and Lankāpatuna Samudragiri Vihāraya, Verugal-­Kal-adi and Sēruvila, in the East. Nāgadīpa/Nainativu Nāgadīpa/Nainativu, literally island of the cobra, is holy to Hindus and Buddhists. The Hindu temple, which, according to a Tamil archaeologist whom I will call Jeganathan, pre-­dated the Buddhist vihāra, is dedicated to a mother goddess and her vehicle, the cobra. The Buddhist site is linked to Mahāvaṃsa narrative, which claims that the Buddha visited Nāgadīpa and overcame the ‘nāgas’, although Nāgadīpa, as already discussed, might have referred to the whole of the Jaffna peninsula. Bavinck mentions a navy camp there as early as 1988 and surmises that his own presence had once prevented the navy punishing the Tamils he was with, after the LTTE had killed a naval officer that morning (Bavinck 2011: 48).

206   The post-colonial period To travel to Nāgadīpa/Nainativu, one has to cross two islands by causeway, Kayts and Punkudutivu, and then take a boat. On the journey, there is a sense of space and beauty as sky, land and sea meet. In 2012, however, ruined houses revealed how heavily contested the territory had been during the war. People were, nevertheless, returning. Restored Hindu temples and Roman Catholic shrines peppered the road – by 2017 almost all temples had been restored. Palmyrah trees, though, an iconic symbol of the Jaffna peninsula, were neglected, since few people, I was told, were prepared to tend them in their slow growth to maturity. In 2012, Buddha rūpas linked with navy check points stood at the entry to the first causeway and at the end of the second – ‘small acts of aggression’, according to Siva. New signs indicated ‘Nāgadīpa’ in English, not the Tamil, Nainativu. In 2015, however, I noticed signs in three languages – a small token of inclusivity – but the English transcription was, again, Nāgadīpa, and the Buddha rūpas at both ends of the second causeway were more sophisticated. In 2015, after the second causeway and the Buddhist shrines, a Hindu stood by the road offering ash to Hindu pilgrims. In 2012, I travelled on a Sunday. Lines of vehicles were parked near to the small, rather perilous fishing boats that took pilgrims from Punkudutivu to Nāgadīpa. Sinhala and Tamil travelled together and were dropped at the Hindu temple. Buddhist pilgrims had then to walk or take a trishaw to the Buddhist site. The jetty at the Buddhist vihāra seemed out of use. In 2015, however, the boats were dropping pilgrims at the latter, moving only then to the jetty at the Hindu temple for the return journey. According to the Tamil historian whom I will call Ravikrishnan, the monk at the Buddhist temple had taken charge of the organization that transported people to the island by 2012. In 2015, I, therefore, concluded that the Buddhist side of the island was being given priority, honouring the traditional Buddhist practice of first offering devotion to the Buddha and only then worshipping Hindu gods. A faded billboard to the right of the restored jetty reinforced this message, but only in Sinhala, proclaiming at the top, ‘Welcome to this holy Buddhist place’ and, at the bottom, ‘Let us safeguard this Buddhist land for future generations’. A notice in Sinhala outside the enclosures of a bodhi and a banyan tree, went further in exclusivity: ‘In this holy land it is useless to chant anything else other than Buddhist bana (sermons)’. My 2015 interpretation of the transport arrangements, however, was an over-­ reading. In 2017, conversations with boatmen and others who worked on the island indicated that they were not constrained to land at the Buddhist end of the island. Although boats always returned via the jetty near the Hindu temple, outward-­going boats could choose where to land. Most went to the Buddhist side first, for pragmatic reasons; if they went to the Hindu side first they were then expected to go to the Buddhist side before returning to the Hindu side for the return. Pragmatism rather than ideology was at work. The Buddhist site has two sections. The bodhi and banyan trees are on the sea side, together with: a statue of the monk who pioneered the building of the vihāra, Bramanawaththe Dhammakiththi (1915–2003), donated by P. Ramachandran, a Tamil philanthropist who supported the Buddhist temple for 60 years;

Spatial change and competition after 2009    207

Figure 9.5  The Buddha under the hood of a cobra, Nāgadīpa/Nainativu.

a large painting of the Buddha’s visit as recorded in the Mahāvaṃsa; and a three-­ dimensional image of the Buddha under the hood of a cobra. Little changed on this side between 2012 and 2017. On the other side, is a typical Sinhala Buddhist vihāra with a silver dāgäba and shrine rooms. In 2012, the monastic quarters were to become a museum and the main shrine room was still under construction, the internal Buddha image swathed in fabric. By 2015, there were noticeable changes, some army-­sponsored. The main shrine room was freshly painted, with traditional decorated steps, a moonstone and two guardstones. Internally, the walls were covered in new murals, although I was told that one of Mahinda Rajapakse (the former president) had been removed. One mural showed the nāgas of Mahāvaṃsa narrative fleeing in fright. At the side, two others depicted three lay supporters (D.A. Seneviratne and his wife, and P. Ramachandran) and monks key to the vihāra’s history. Outside, there were several additions, including a glass-­encased shrine holding a golden image of the Buddha, constructed by the northern army and inaugurated by the Army Commander of the North. Funds were being raised to create a higher decorative wall around the vihāra.

208   The post-colonial period

Figure 9.6  The Hindu Temple at Nainativu/Nāgadīpa.

The Hindu temple embodied a different aesthetic. Many lay people were dressed traditionally in white at the Buddhist vihāra. Those at the Hindu temple wore the brightest colours. It was a Tamil world; few Buddhists ventured inside. The complex had been renovated with the help of Indian craftsmen in 2011, the work completed by the beginning of 2012, funded without state or army help, through the donations. Kantarodai/Kadurugoda I have already mentioned the modern ‘discovery’ of Kantarodai, as I prefer to call it, in the second decade of the twentieth century and the reconstruction work of the Department of Archaeology from 1972 (Uduwara 1990: 175). Jeganathan shared with me in 2012 that the site should have been seen archaeologically as an extension of South Indian culture rather than Sinhala culture, a view confirmed by Thiagarajah, who argues that the cluster arrangement of stūpas at Kantarodai has parallels in India but not in Anuradhapura (Thiagarajah 2016: 52). When I visited Kantarodai in 2012, the site was overseen by the army and there were no other visitors. A lay person approached me as soon as I entered and pointed me towards a corrugated iron, army-­constructed Buddhist shrine, telling me to remove my shoes. There was another shrine under a bodhi tree,

Spatial change and competition after 2009    209 which gave the history of the site in Sinhala. So, although the site was under the Department of Archaeology as a place of historical rather than devotional interest, the army controlled it and the first thing I had to do was remove my shoes and offer devotion to the Buddha. Only after this was I shown the ruins. In 2015, several coaches of visitors arrived whilst I was there. Members of the military and others permanently at the site retained their shoes and, this time, I was not asked to remove mine but most ‘tourists’ removed theirs, demonstrating that they saw the site as a vihāra, proof for them that Sinhala Buddhists once practised in Jaffna. I was able to listen to, and, with the help of the friend accompanying me, understand what a member of the military said to one pilgrim group. He took the line of Mēdhānanda Thera, quoting him at least 15 times. His message, therefore, was that ‘Kadurugoda’ had been part of a Sinhala kingdom, inhabited by Sinhalas. Tamils had destroyed this kingdom and slaughtered the Sinhalas, creating an exclusively Tamil area and destroying Buddhism in the North. Lankāpatuna Samudragiri Vihāraya in the East During the armed conflict, the rocky island on which Lankāpatuna Samudragiri Vihāraya is built, was hardly recognizable as a Buddhist site, the location where Prince Dantha and Princess Hemamala are believed to have landed with the

Figure 9.7  The LTTE-blasted bridge to Lankāpotuna (2012).

210   The post-colonial period Buddha’s tooth relic. There were ancient steps, the base of a stūpa, ruined walls and the remains of some images. There was also a prominent Hindu kovil. As the grip of the LTTE on the East lessened, however, the site was transformed by the armed forces and lay donors. A magisterial golden Buddha, for instance, was erected in 2008, visible from the mainland. By the time of my first visit in 2012, it was a navy-­controlled place of Buddhist pilgrimage. The atmosphere was relaxed and totally Sinhala, with groups of pilgrims eating under the trees near the sand and the bridge to the island. A navy-­manned sentry post was situated at the foot of the bridge, which in itself embodied a war narrative. It had been upturned by an LTTE blast and pilgrims had to walk across its skewed form. At the site itself, in 2012, there was a new bodhi tree, planted by the navy, and, apart from the golden Buddha, a new dāgäba, erected on the foundations of the ancient stūpa, and a pristine Buddhist shrine, encased in glass and flanked

Figure 9.8  Hindu shrine at Lankāpotuna (2015).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    211 with two golden lions. Below the bodhi tree and shrine, beyond a banyan tree, a rock carving of a famous mural at Kälani Mahā Vihāraya, showing the arrival of the tooth relic, had been started. All notices were in Sinhala and only Sinhala postcards were available. At the foot of the steps leading to the dāgäba was a small Hindu shrine in a state of disuse. Colin told me he was convinced that it had been higher up the rock before the ending of the war. By 2015, the skewed bridge, and thus remembrance of LTTE violence, was gone. The posts of a replacement rose from the water but pilgrims had to cross by boat, courtesy of the navy. More resources were available for sale – a wall hanging of the above-­mentioned mural, a Sinhala DVD – and there were more Buddhist flags. The rock carving had progressed but was still not finished and, significantly, the Hindu shrine to Gaṇeśa, although in the same subordinate position, showed more signs of being maintained by Hindus. Verugal (Kal-­adi) Close to Lankāpatuna is Verugal (Kal-­adi), known for its Hindu temple. It also contains a site identified by Sinhala Buddhists as a former Buddhist rock monastery, because of brahmi inscriptions carved into the rock. During the war, it was

Figure 9.9  Buddha Rūpa on top of radio mast at Verugal (Kal-adi) (2015).

212   The post-colonial period appropriated by the LTTE, who situated a radio station there, flying an LTTE flag from the top of the radio mast. At this time, there was also a Hindu kovil, at the top of the rock according to Colin and a Protestant clergyman I will call Sidney. After the ending of the war in the East, a Tamil-­speaking Sinhala monk came to Kal-­adi and lived in what had been an LTTE container. The Hindu kovil was demoted to a shrine at the foot of the rock and, by the end of 2008, a large plastic Buddha rūpa had replaced the LTTE flag at the top of the mast. When I visited in 2012, the height of the metal mast and its slim diameter gave the Buddha rūpa an almost comical aspect. I spoke to the monk, outside his ‘container’, then adorned with Buddhist flags. He told me he was a doctor, to whom poor villagers came, but he was unwilling to talk long and pointed me up the rock. As soon as I started to walk, amplified Buddhist devotional chants were turned on. Yellow lines chalked into the rock identified the brahmi inscriptions, and the base of a dāgäba, surrounded by broken bricks and rocks, was clearly visible. At the foot of the rock, where a bodhi tree stood, a new perimeter wall had been built, its ledge holding numerous, mass-­produced Buddha rūpas. That the Department of Archaeology was involved with the site was clear from a department notice that translated, in three languages, one of the inscriptions, a reference to donations to the monastery, dated to the fourth or fifth century ce. In 2015, a Buddha image was still at the top of the mast and I think the same dogs lay under the trees at the base of the rock. The only person there was a member of the army. The site was much the same, except for a new shrine room half way up the rock, white-­washed with a tiled roof and a golden Buddha rūpa. No other devotees were there. Sēruvila To return to Sēruvila, I have pointed out that it was re-­developed before armed conflict began and that further developments took place after the LTTE was defeated in the East in 2007. By 2015, the new Vihārage, in Japanese style, was almost complete. Murals around the interior wall, which had been partially finished in 2012, were pristine, narrating the Buddha biography and episodes from Sri Lankan Buddhist history. Alongside them were photos of the dāgäba’s reconstruction. The three-­dimensional image of the Buddha sitting under a bodhi tree at enlightenment, which inhabited the magisterial central space of the Vihārage, however, remained under red cloth. In 2012, I noted that the older plaques at the site were in three languages, for instance a memorial pillar from the 1970s, but that the newer signs were only in Sinhala. In 2015, the already-­ mentioned plaque to mark the opening of the road was, again, in three languages, an attempt at inclusivity. However, there was no attempt here to include Hindu deities in the main site. When I asked whether there was a dēvāle, I was pointed towards a temporary structure with a corrugated iron roof and open sides, dedicated to ‘Puliyar’ or Gaṇeśa, at a lower level than the rest of the complex, almost hidden from view.

Spatial change and competition after 2009    213 In the expansion of existing vihāras and sites identified as Buddhist in the North and East, therefore, inclusion of the Hindu and Tamil Other was not uniform. At some sites, there had been an attempt to include the worship of gods in a way that was intended to welcome Hindus, albeit with subordination, as at the Nāga Vihāra. At other sites, however, there had been a demotion, the pushing of a Hindu kovil into a spatially lower position than it had been during the war or a strict maintaining of the kind of subordination that is found in many southern vihāras. The linguistic use of Tamil as a tool of inclusivity also varied, with a retreat from inclusivity at some sites.

The creation of new Buddhist sites I could give numerous examples of the creation of new Buddhist sites but will restrict myself to Dambakola Paṭuna in the North, army-­sponsored Buddhist sites on the A9 at Maṅkuḷam and Kanakarayankuḷam, and two sites in the East in Batticaloa and Mutur. Dambakola Paṭuna Dambakola Paṭuna or Mātakal to people in Jaffna, is where Sinhala Buddhists now believe Venerable Saṅghamittā touched land, in the third century bce, when she brought a sapling from the bodhi tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment. In other words, it was the ‘Jambukolapaṭṭana’ (Dambukola), mentioned in Chapter 19 of the Mahāvaṃsa. According to Perera, there is no evidence to suggest that the site had been a place of pilgrimage in the past or that any local narrative linked Mātakal’s stretch of sand with Saṅghamittā’s arrival (Perera 2016: 38–40). He traced the site’s beginnings to the navy planting a sapling from the Anuradhapura bodhi tree there in December 1997 (Perera 2016: 40), a photo of which was displayed at the site in 2017. However, there was an earlier identification. Uduwara of the Archaeological Department, under the heading ‘Dambakola-­Paṭuna’, stated that a memorial pillar was erected ‘at Sambutturai in the vicinity of the ancient seaport of Jambukola’ between 1970 and 1990 (Uduwara 1990: 168). I have no reason to believe that this was a different location. To reach Dambakola Paṭuna, one passes through land that was heavily contested in the war (Bavinck 2011: 271), eventually becoming a high security zone, cleared of inhabitants. By 2012, my first visit, some land had been returned to its owners and small Roman Catholic shrines by the sea and the road indicated the beginnings of revived fishing practice among economically poor, predominantly Roman Catholic, fishing communities. In 2012, the site was still under construction as a Buddhist place of pilgrimage and consisted of: a brilliant white stūpa; a well-­established bodhi tree fronted with a shrine, consistent with a 1997 planting; shrine rooms, the interior decoration of which was incomplete; a glass-­encased image of an alabaster-­white ‘Arhant Sanghamitta Maha Therani’, carrying the sapling in a golden bowl; a

214   The post-colonial period bronzed, three-­dimensional replica of Saṅghamittā in a boat, being welcomed by King Devanampiyatissa, hands upraised in devotion, waist deep in concrete ‘water’ – inaugurated by the navy in February 2012; a rack for oil lamps; a concrete arch from which hung a bell; monastic quarters; billboards narrating the story of the site; and a small lagoon that looked as though it would contain a life­size replica of Saṅghamittā’s boat. In 2012, the postcards on sale were only in Sinhala and the first signs I saw were in Sinhala, although I later noticed one in Sinhala and Tamil. The only notice in Sinhala, Tamil and English was below the statue of Saṅghamittā. One Sinhala billboard near the sand about Saṅghamittā’s journey from India to Sri Lanka was duplicated in English but not in Tamil. Adjacent to these was a Sinhala billboard showing the navy coming ashore, linking the site with the armed forces. It read, You are able to visit this site because of the sacrifice made by the forces, who believed that the country was more important than their lives. The forces fought courageously against the enemy and should be remembered forever and they should not be forgotten. The majority of pilgrims seemed to be from the South but there were also a few Tamils. In 2015, there was a large pilgrims’ guest house adjacent to the site, a navy commercial enterprise. An entry board was now in Sinhala and Tamil. A three-­ tiered arch over the entry proclaimed ‘Sanghamitta Temple’ in three languages, with a Buddhist wheel at the top, and there was now a billboard in Tamil narrating the Saṅghamittā story. The billboard about the armed forces, however, was still only in Sinhala. The lagoon was now finished with a simple replica of an ancient boat in its waters. On the far side was a bronze statue of Saṅghamittā under a parasol. By 2017, further changes had been made. The postcards for sale were still only in Sinhala. The old Sinhala board showing the navy, however, was gone. In its place was another, away from the sand, showing a seemingly traditional picture of Saṅghamittā descending from her boat but with a line of white-­clad figures marching with elephants to the point of her disembarkation – the navy! Underneath the picture were words similar to those that had accompanied the previous board but with an addition: ‘Please meditate for a moment in order to remember those who sacrificed their lives to defend the country.’ A free-­standing arrow pointed to a raised stone meditation platform, empty of people when I visited. A further board displayed photos, for instance of the planting of the sapling and the construction of the dāgäba. To return to the shrine rooms, they are unusual in their inclusivity, going beyond the Nāga Vihāra pattern. There are three, in a line. In the centre, slightly set back, is one to the Buddha. On either side, at only a slightly lower level, are shrines to Gaṇeśa and Skanda/Kataragama, offspring of Śiva. In 2015, they were finished and, when I asked a naval officer why they honoured Hindu gods as

Spatial change and competition after 2009    215

Figure 9.10  Shrine to Ganeśa, Dambakola Paṭuna.

well as the Buddha, he replied, ‘Tamils come to the site and they worship them’. He did not mention Sinhala devotion to the gods. In 2017, Gaṇeśa and Śiva were garlanded but with paper garlands, again indicating that this had been done by Sinhalas, not Tamils. If Tamils came to the site, therefore, they would find that the shrines to the gods, although spatially almost equal to the Buddha, inhabited a Sinhala world. According to Siva, they would also have found numerous grammatical mistakes in the Tamil language present at the site. By 2015, the landscape external to the site had also changed, in response to Dambakola Paṭuna. From the lagoon, I saw what looked like a massive Buddha rūpa on its far side. Part of the complex, I thought, but it was not. It was an image of Śiva, complete a part from the painting of it and so still encased in wooden scaffolding. It was part of Sambunatha Easwara Sivalayane, a Hindu temple, constructed around an unusual banyan tree and home to a Saivite ascetic, who had apparently come there at the age of 15. In 2015, he was 92. Hindus had evidently donated money for this massive but not incredibly costly image, started in July 2013. From certain angles, it dominated Dambakola Paṭuna, which does

216   The post-colonial period not have a large Buddha rūpa. I read it as a statement drawn in space and in height that the land on which Dambakola Paṭuna had arisen was not Buddhist but Hindu and that Hinduism would not be subordinated in its own territory. In 2017, the colour of the image was a uniform cream and the ascetic had died just months before. His wife remained and the temple was struggling to survive. The spatial statement of the image, however, was as potent as ever. Not only Hindus but also Roman Catholics were making spatial statements. There had been a ‘Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, Mathagal’, before the war, by the sea near Dambakola Paṭuna, venerated by fishermen. After 2009, it was restored and expanded. In 2015, it consisted of a life-­size re-­creation of the Lourdes grotto painted in silver with a paved forecourt. In 2017, spaced around a larger forecourt area were life-­size, dramatic, three-­dimensional stations of the cross, painted in gold. There was also a new shrine surrounded in glass, containing a similarly life-­size, bloodied figure of the dead Jesus, lying on white cushions. The whole site was a focus for piety and devotion. Also in 2017, just beyond the navy-­controlled perimeter of Dambakola Paṭuna, a new shrine to St

Figure 9.11  Image of Śiva at Sambunatha Easwara Sivalayane (2017).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    217 Anthony had been erected by the road in a similar bid to that mounted by the Śiva image – to claim space for religions other than Buddhism. Whilst the Sambunatha Easwara Temple was struggling, the Hindu temple at Keerimalai, with its hot springs, on the way to Dambakola Paṭuna from Jaffna, was flourishing, with new constructions rising from the earth alongside the ruins of what the war had destroyed. On my visit in 2015, a notice giving the times for bathing in the springs was in three languages, this time with Tamil at the top, a small but significant act of resistance. Across the road, a tower or gopuram was rising. Near the springs, a new shrine area was under construction and a covered hall with open sides was being renovated. Peopled with devotees, the atmosphere was tranquil. By 2017, the area had been further transformed. The hot springs were being marketed as a tourist attraction. There was a pristine, brightly coloured ‘Sivapoomi Pilgrims Rest’, donated and constructed by the All Ceylon Hindu Congress, with an Art Gallery attached. The covered hall was complete and the many pilgrims were being offered a free vegetarian lunch. The gopuram was still unfinished but there was considerable progress.

Figure 9.12  Image of Hanuman at Maruthanamadam Aanjaneyar Kovil (2015).

218   The post-colonial period Throughout the Jaffna region, in 2015, I saw other renovated Hindu temples, some with massive new images outside them, for instance the Maruthanamadam Aanjaneyar Kovil at Inuvil, which, by 2015, boasted a colossal external image of Hanuman, the very size of which could compete with any standing image of the Buddha in the country. It proudly used upward-­forcing space to assert Hindu identity. New Buddhist sites on the Jaffna–Kandy road On the A9 road from Jaffna to Kandy, the first major new Buddhist site is at Maṅkuḷam – the Sri Sugatha Vihāraya, built by the military and formally inaugurated in 2013. Adjacent to St Agnes’ Roman Catholic church, a mature bodhi tree probably sealed its location. It has all the elements of a southern vihāra but in more spacious proportions, including a brilliant white dāgäba, approached along a path with a golden orb feature half way along, from which two pathways

Figure 9.13  Sri Sugatha Vihāraya at Maṅkuḷam (2015).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    219 branched, one to the bodhi tree and one to a shrine. In 2012, it was under construction. I could only see a decorative wall around the bodhi tree. By 2015, it was complete and had a resident Buddhist monk. When I arrived, there were no devotees, only a Tamil boy, who was waiting for the monk, hoping he would again give him some sugar. Since an empty coach was parked there, from which a few young boys tried to attract my attention, I surmised that the monk might be elsewhere with the ‘tourists’. Beyond Maṅkuḷam, the next large Buddhist development is at Kanakaray­ ankuḷam, opposite the camp of the 561 Brigade, the largest army camp in the region in 2012. It began with the planting of a sapling from the Anuradhapura bodhi tree (Fernando 2013: 201) on a grassy mound. By 2012, a Buddha image had been installed in front of the young tree and a plan of the envisaged complex was displayed. An army van was leaving as I arrived; entry was impossible. In 2015, I walked around an almost completed site in solitude. A member of the army rushed up after a few minutes, saying he had gone for a cup of tea. Apparently, there is always a soldier there. He did not attempt to give me its history, which, according to Fernando, would have included that the site was ancient and Buddhist (Fernando 2013: 205). As at Maṅkuḷam, the proportions of the vihāra complex are far more spacious than in the South. The raised bodhi tree was now reachable by several flights of red steps, with guardstones and moonstones at their base. A raised glass-­ encased shrine to the Buddha was reached by grey steps. There was no dāgäba but

Figure 9.14  Dēvāles at Buddhist complex at Kanakarayankulam (2015).

220   The post-colonial period there was a developed dēvāle section, at ground level and therefore lower than the bodhi tree and the Buddha shrine. It consisted of five separate shrine rooms, with a curtain over the front of each, to Durgā/Kālī, Viṣṇu, Kataragama, Pattini and Ganapati (Gaṇeśa). Again, I was struck by the implied subordination in the inclusivity present, although the shrines were far more sophisticated and more colourful than, for instance, at Sēruvila. I saw no evidence, however, of Hindus having worshipped at them. New sites in the East To move to new Buddhist sites in the East, in 2012, I was shown The Buddhist Centre, Jayanthipura, Batticaloa, which was located in a place where there were no Buddhists, only a Roman Catholic church and a Hindu kovil. In the early evening, the iron gates were closed but not locked. Inside, one person was sweeping the ground; no one else was present. The Protestant clergyman, who accompanied me, whom I will call David, explained that there had been a bodhi tree on the site, which had been neglected until the army and police intervened. At that point, the site consisted of two shrines, one under the bodhi tree. A large billboard in English and Sinhala indicated the centre. By 2015, when I visited with a person whom I will call Ranjani, the gates were open. The Centre – it was not a vihāra – was cleaner and its focus was still the two shrines. No one else was there. We noticed that loud speakers were attached to a tall iron bell tower and surmised that these would amplify Pirit. Some one-­storeyed accommodation buildings had police uniforms hanging outside, indicating that those living at the centre were police. At 500 metres and at 50 metres from the centre there were notices pointing to the centre in Sinhala and Tamil, but not English. North from Batticaloa, Pachchannoormalai is a ridge close to Mutur. It is the highest point in the area, overlooking Mutur on one side and a Roman Catholic village on the other. In 2012, one part of the ridge was being appropriated by a Buddhist monk for the building of what local people believed would be a vihāra with a Buddha rūpa at the ridge top. Little, however, had been completed. At the foot was an army post. The early morning climb was stiff. Newly constructed stone steps had been built halfway up the ridge and then I and a Christian worker, whom I will call Samuel, had to scramble. At the top, hung in three strategic positions, including on the highest tree, were Buddhist flags, staking out the territory. Whilst we climbed, Kanu spoke to the military and was told that the government did not want the vihāra to go ahead but that the monk was determined. By 2017, there was still no Buddha rūpa at the summit. The steps up the hillside remained half complete but were neat and tended. At the foot of the steps, though, was a new lion archway, painted in white. Its two massive paws gripped the base stones of the arch. The front legs and a sculpted mane formed the sides and the face, the arch itself. Two fangs hung aggressively down from the mouth – a lion with teeth! Across the road, land had been cleared and a simple monastic cell built. It was a work still in progress.

Spatial change and competition after 2009    221 Mutur has had a Buddhist vihāra for many years, serving, without problem, the small number of Buddhists there. The majority in Mutur, however, is Muslim and the town has numerous mosques. Samuel shared with me that, when a Muslim had asked the monk why he was there, on the ridge, the monk had replied, ‘We have been here 2,500 years. You have been here 500 years.’

The Buddhicization of sites not explicitly linked with Buddhism before the war My main example under the category of the Buddhicization of sites that had not been linked to Buddhism before the war is Kanniyai – Kanniya in Sinhala – the hot wells near Trincomalee, where water, believed to be healing, has been present for centuries. One of the Tamil Hindu intellectuals in my group interview in Jaffna in 2012, who had lived in Trincomalee, pointed out that Hindu stories about the wells, starting with Rāvaṇa, had passed from generation to generation. He had visited them since childhood, had even performed the last rites for his mother there and remembered a temple to Gaṇeśa. Before he left Trincomalee, however, some seven years before, suddenly, people started saying that the site was not Hindu but Buddhist. The claiming of the wells for Buddhism, therefore, began before the ending of armed conflict.

Figure 9.15  Kanniyai/Kanniya with Kanniya Vihāra behind the wells (2012).

222   The post-colonial period In 2012, I visited on a Poya Day (full moon day). Crowds had come from all religious communities – Catholic nuns in blue habits, Hindus with ash on their foreheads, Buddhists, Muslims. Stalls lined the road to the wells, selling an eclectic mixture of recreational, non-­religious items such as plastic ornaments, food and novelties. The message communicated at the site was that it was Buddhist. My tourist entry ticket, replicated on a large billboard at the entrance, stated in appalling English that the place was called ‘Kanniya’ and that the wells ‘have been used Anuradhapura period and it was situated at a Buddhist religion premises proved by archaeological evidences’. Adjacent to the ticket booth was a Buddha image against a banyan tree. Within the area of the wells themselves, there was a low-­roofed ‘Sivan Temple’ but it was dilapidated and disused. If this

Figure 9.16  Stall in the car park at Kanniyai/Kanniya (2015).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    223 had been a temple to Gaṇeśa, it contained no Gaṇeśa image. Dominating the bathing area was a new Buddhist development on an incline behind the wells, consisting of a Buddha rūpa sheltered by a structure to which loud speakers were attached, a small monastic block and an open-­sided temporary structure from which a monk and a lay person were inviting donations. Kanu believed the stall-­holders along the path were only Sinhala and overheard a Buddhist monk telling a group of Sinhala pilgrims that the Sinhalas and Buddhism inhabited the site before Tamils. By 2015, the road to the wells from Trincomalee had improved. A board proclaimed ‘Jesus Loves Gospel Ministry’ at one point along it, witness to the independent evangelical Christian presence in the East. In the car park, I noticed a stall, overseen by a Hindu, selling variously sized pictures for Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. Krishna, Hanuman, Mary and the Buddha were there, together with the non-­religious. Seeing me, a westerner, the stall-­holder produced some Roman Catholic stickers. He was evidently proud of his inter-­religious mix and was delighted when I praised it and asked to take photographs. No one religion seemed to dominate. There was an equal playing field. At the wells, Buddhism was increasingly dominant. I fear the reason that the ‘inter-­religious’ stall-­holder was in the car park and not on the pathway to the wells was that he was Tamil and offered devotional items from all religions. On the path to the springs, two lay people and an elderly monk in a wheelchair, the

Figure 9.17  The ‘Sivan temple’ at Kanniyai/Kanniya (2015).

224   The post-colonial period same one, I believe, who had been there in 2012, were requesting donations for what was now being called the Kanniya Vihāra. At the entrance, in 2015, there was not one but three billboards, one on top of the other, in Sinhala, Tamil and English, the Sinhala one on top, replicas of the same ticket that had been issued to me in 2012, a nod to inclusivity but with a hierarchy. The ‘Sivan Temple’ was outwardly in the same state of disrepair but it was not unused. The interior walls had been painted and pictures had been placed on them, and a brick plinth had been built to hold ash receptacles. Several Tamils were using it. It was evidently a living Hindu shrine, although its subordinate positioning was as marked as ever it had been. There were some new changing rooms in 2015, facilitated by the army. Only a few people were bathing this time, including some Muslims. Behind the springs, the Vihāra was more developed. The monastic quarters were supplemented by another, half-­finished building and the whole area was more lavishly decorated with Buddhist flags. Again, there was a stall for donations. On this visit, one café billboard on the pathway to the springs encapsulated the inclusivist subordination that I would suggest is present at Kanniyai. It offered both Sinhala and Tamil lettering but the Sinhala letters were much larger. At Kanniyai, a Hindu shrine is present, but spatially subordinate to the Buddhist development and in an outwardly dilapidated condition, without a Hindu priest. And the one stall that sold images from all religions was relegated to the car park.

Figure 9.18  On the path to Kanniyai/Kanniya: café Billboard (2015).

Spatial change and competition after 2009    225 Let me finish this empirical section with another stall. I passed it on the way to the renovated Konneswaram Temple in Trincomalee, which is reached by walking through the headquarters of an army regiment. It was overseen by a Sinhala Buddhist and, at first, I saw only Buddha rūpas, because these were foregrounded. So, I asked this stall-­holder why only Buddhas were being sold on the way to a Hindu temple. He then pointed to the less obvious pictures and images behind the Buddhas, which related to the three other religions of Sri Lanka: a picture of Mary, another of Krishna and even an Arabic symbol. Unlike the Tamil-­owned stall at Kanniyai, this stall had a hierarchy. What I find striking from my observations in several research visits is the number of times I have evoked the concepts of inclusivist subordination and exclusivism. The pre-­colonial Sinhala imaginary that I analysed in Chapter 1 through the lens of inclusivist subordination, was not only alive but vibrant after May 2009, tinged, however, with elements of the exclusivist, the lineage of which I trace to colonialism.

Sinhala and Tamil perspectives on these developments I stated in the AAR paper mentioned in the Introduction that symbols, when perceived outside an agreed ‘insider’ frame of reference, are interpreted in diverse ways, conditioned by power relationships, as well as political, economic and religious factors. The developments I have outlined are interpreted in very different ways by Sinhala Buddhists, and Tamil Hindus and Christians. And within each religious and ethnic community, there is diversity. I begin with Sinhala perspectives. I have already stressed the importance of pilgrimage to the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary and also the fear that Buddhism’s very existence in Sri Lanka will always be threatened. Pilgrimage, when it recommenced after May 2009, was undertaken with a sense of celebration that the unity of Sri Lanka had been protected. For many who undertook it, the redevelopment of ancient Buddhist sites and the discovery of new ones was joyfully affirmed. Gunadheera’s words are apposite: The influx into Jaffna is a consummation devoutly to be wished and built upon, not be despised and grumbled at. The visitors are motivated by a sense of curiosity and the momentum of a new found freedom of movement. It would be unfair to attribute motives of triumphalism behind their visits. They were never at war with the Tamils and are happy that the common obstacle to national integration has been removed. (Gunadheera 2011: 142) A monk, whom I will call Dhammavimutti, spoke similarly in 2015: After the war people were more free to come from Jaffna to the South and vice versa.… There was a feeling among those who went to the North that they needed to see Buddhist sites in the northern areas to be flourishing.

226   The post-colonial period This was very normal. Buddhism is a missionary religion. It has elements of growing, just like Christianity and Islam. So Buddhism needs to expand, maybe in the form of development or making a social contribution. Therefore, it was natural that places identified as Buddhist were developed. We see this in other religions too. Dhammavimutti, however, said later, We have to accept that the majority in other regions are Tamil or Muslim and so it is not good to establish a Buddhist monastery where Tamil people live by force, except where missionary activities are done in a non-­ harmful way. Yet, he also stressed that ‘the authorities’ had a right to investigate historical sites. A prominent monk in Vavuniya said almost exactly the same to me in 2012. He disagreed with those who erected Buddha rūpas where there were no Buddhists. A lay Buddhist academic, whom I will call Roshan, added another perspective: Identities are highly contested. In history, it is certainly possible for a place to move from being Buddhist to being Hindu and for a Hindu place to become Buddhist. And certain places can have multiple identities. Within Buddhist culture, we have Hindu and Buddhist shrines going together. The way I look at it is that these are not really sacrosanct places in the sense that they cannot be changed. My personal view is that unless a place is very blatantly violated, which is unacceptable, simply because you place a Buddhist image somewhere does not make the place sacred. He illustrated the latter point by citing what he called a ‘funny instance’ when people protested against garbage dumping in a particular place by clearing it and placing a Buddha rūpa there, which effectively prevented any further dumping. All these participants resisted the idea that Sinhala pilgrims were being triumphalist. They were simply joyful. What they criticized was forcible imposition of Buddhism in the North and East. A Sinhala development worker, feminist and a cat-­lover, whom I will call Anjali, however, was far more direct, sharing that, on one journey to Jaffna before the ending of the war, she had followed a massive Buddha rūpa in the back of a lorry up the A9. For her, placing Buddha rūpas in non-­Buddhist areas could be compared to the actions of a tomcat ‘pissing to mark its territory’. She was fully aware that her simile was objectionable but insisted I should include it, declaring that asserting Sinhala Buddhist dominance in non-­Buddhist areas was ‘a contradiction of Buddhism itself ’. ‘For this to be happening’, she added, ‘in a period of supposed reconciliation is a contradiction in terms’. Nevertheless, I also met with resistance in the South to the thought that Tamils resented the presence of Buddha rūpas in the North. In 2012, for

Spatial change and competition after 2009    227 instance, a Sinhala Buddhist woman, whom I will call Nirmala, accused Tamil Hindus of wrong-­thinking, when I shared this possibility. She continued, ‘Can’t Hindu temples be built in the South? Why then shouldn’t vihāras be built in the North? Why should people resent the placing of a Buddha image by a bodhi tree in Jaffna?’ She then asserted that there should be more Sinhala colonization in the North and more inter-­faith marriage. She was certainly not alone in thinking this. Some Sinhala Christians and Buddhists in the South were also keen to stress that Buddhist and indeed Hindu fears concerning the religious Other in the post-­ war context had to be taken seriously. For instance, a Protestant clergyman, whom I will call Mark, said in 2012: Churches have moved into the Vanni after the war. Churches have never had a presence there. Either they began as a relief organization and then set up a church or they used contacts they had in the IDP camps. So the very same criticism that is made of Buddhists can be made of Christians. This is done by small groups that mainline churches have no control over. In principle it means that there are diverse groups exploiting the situation for religious expansion and this needs to be stopped and investigated. Buddhism is very visible in most areas because it has military backing. Christians are more low profile but they are still exploiting. And Soma stressed the depth of the fear among some Buddhists towards Muslims, attributing the cause to socio-­economic as well as religious factors: There is also a Buddhist fear especially in urban areas of Muslim groups setting up mosques. In Dehiwela [close to Colombo] … a lot of posters appeared protesting against Muslim fundamentalists coming into the neighbourhood. About two months ago [from August 2012], some Buddhist monks led a group of people and surrounded a prayer centre for Muslims. Actually that prayer house was not a mosque. People assembled there and offered prayers. But Buddhists are saying that these are mosques or will become mosques and they feel threatened by this. This is linked with an interesting development in urban neighbourhoods. There are a lot of Muslims who buy urban property and settle down. So then you see Muslim families in traditional Sinhala areas. And there is a cultural clash because Muslim men wear long cloaks and Muslim women wear the chador. Buddhists see this as a cultural invasion. So then Buddha statues are placed in order to reclaim space, Buddhist space … it is an act of resistance as well as reassertion. In the South, therefore, the perspectives I met among Buddhists varied from indignation that Tamils could possibly feel threatened by Buddha rūpas, to criticism of the placing of Buddhist symbols where there were no Buddhists, to the assertion that the Buddha image, in some contexts, could be an act of resistance

228   The post-colonial period against a perceived threat. In 2017, I was also pointed towards the work of Galkande Dhammānanda Thera, an academic historian at Kelaniya University, who, according to one Roman Catholic priest who worked with him, ‘was creating a silent revolution on the ethnic issue and inter-­religious dialogue’ through stressing both the dangers of essentializing ethnic and religious identities, and the need for inter-­religious and inter-­ethnic conversation. To move to Hindus and Christians in Tamil majority areas, I was surprised at the unanimity between them in both 2012 and 2015. In 2012, anger and resentment was uppermost. In 2015, this had largely been replaced by helplessness and resignation, combined with the wish to reclaim space. Most Tamils made a distinction between the Buddha’s teaching and the political Buddhism that was linked with Sinhala nationalism. Towards the former there could be respect and even love. Towards the latter, in 2012, there was anger and resentment. As Rajasingham said, As Hindus of Jaffna, we have no hatred to any religion. We go to other places of worship. Even Sinhala people come to our temples. In Buddhist temples, there are Hindu statues. It is the politicians who are spoiling it. A Roman Catholic priest in Jaffna, whom I will call Kingsley, chose to have a Buddha rūpa in his study, through respect for the Buddha’s teaching, but he also spoke about a ‘Buddhist invasion’, a ‘cultural invasion’. He was happy to have a rūpa at home but declared he would protest against one in the street. ‘It will make people hate Buddhism’ he added. He also shared an instance of successful popular pressure. A Buddhist rūpa was being erected in a Catholic area. The local people appealed to their parish priest, who appealed to the bishop, who appealed to the army and the building was stopped. He interpreted this as part of a drive to claim Jaffna, as well as the whole country, for Buddhism. Mobilized civil society groups could do something, he insisted, but little would happen without political change. Another Roman Catholic priest, whom I will call Peter, pointed me to the Tamil Buddhist epic, the Manimekhalai, which is about a dancing girl who becomes a Buddhist nun, and claimed the atmosphere at ‘Mātakal’ – he refused to say ‘Dambakola Paṭuna’ – was peaceful and sacred. The Buddha image was not offensive to him, he declared. It had been holy to many Tamils in the past and Tamil Buddhists must have helped Saṅghamittā. For him, the image of the Buddha could be an aid to meditation and reflection, even in public space. Yet, he also insisted that there had been a political ‘de-­sacralization’ of Buddhism. For him, Buddhist symbols now indicated imperialism and war, particularly those along the A9 road. They were a betrayal of Buddhism. In my ongoing conversation with him in 2017, he claimed, ‘The moral impact of Hinayāna Buddhism has been negligent. Tamils see Buddhists as not living up to their core principles.’ Similarly, a Tamil academic, whom I will call Vishwa, shared with me that he had once commented that, if the Buddha came to Sri Lanka now, he might

Spatial change and competition after 2009    229 ‘commit suicide’ or be hanged as an imposter, because Buddhism had become so ‘twisted’. Ravikrishnan, therefore, voiced an awareness that was repeated to me continually in the North: ‘I primarily see putting up Buddha statues as not about Buddhism but as an act of Sinhala Buddhist ideology, in terms of capturing space in the North.’ Jeganathan added, when speaking of the planting of bodhi trees, ‘What is the big idea? To show their political presence, not their religious presence.’ Yet, there was also some awareness of Sinhala Buddhist imaginaries. A member of my group interview in Jaffna pointed to the histories that cast Tamils as invaders. ‘If you ask the present generation of Buddhist priests’, he declared, ‘they believe the Tamils destroyed their tanks, destroyed their civilization, and chased them out of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva’. He added later, ‘And they [Sinhala Buddhists] have passed on their anger and waited for an opportunity to give it back.’ A Hindu educationalist, based in Jaffna, whom I will call Balan, explained it in this way, referring to ‘the Mahāvaṃsa mindset’: There is this view, ‘This is our land’. This is the only land we can have as Theravāda Buddhists. You can have other lands … 2009 is the landmark. In the post 2009 scenario, this is going on unabated [erecting vihāras in areas where there are no Buddhists]. Buddhist places of worship come up like mushrooms. And there are historians to say that these are Buddhist places. They can create places and distort history. I will be right in saying that the Buddhist masses are not with them. They are not malicious.… But the politicians and those who want to sail in the crest of Buddhist nationalism, they are taking this forward. And this is what is disturbing. We have a state that is not willing to be impartial and will condone some of these things. They behave as the victors. We are the vanquished. Several of my participants mentioned the fact that bodhi trees are frequently found in Jaffna, the seeds spread by birds. They even grew on rooftops. Jeganathan stressed to me that the tree was not only a Buddhist symbol but was also linked with Śiva. But the remark I heard most frequently was, ‘Wherever there is a bo tree, they, the Sinhala people, have to place a Buddha statue and they plant new trees also’ or ‘Wherever there is a bo tree, the government likes to make it a sacred place’. It was said almost flippantly but masked anger and hurt. One member of my group interview in Jaffna said: You have to understand the politics of Buddhist temples. Once you have a bo tree and image, you can bring down at least two priests and service families. Then you need technicians. So it’s a ploy for minoritizing the minorities. So you will see Buddhist temples in every strategic place. Sometimes it’s funny. Somewhere in 2009, in Trincomalee, they brought two or three lorry-­loads of Buddhist statues, given by China, and for days and days, they were going around trying to find places to put the statues.

230   The post-colonial period He ended with the phrase, ‘Encroaching Buddhas’, at which point, another member of the group said, ‘Conquering Buddhas’ and all agreed. ‘This is a conquering!’ they stressed. ‘These are acts of aggression.’ I met this again and again in my interviews. A humanitarian worker in the East, whom I will call Joyce, for instance, told me that, although it may salvage Buddhist conscience, enforcing Buddhist images in non-­Buddhist areas was ‘a reinforcing of defeat’. Moses went further: state-­sponsored Buddhist expansionism was ‘obscene, not nice’. Several of my participants, Daniel for instance, therefore, claimed that, if Tamils found a Buddhist site or a bodhi tree, their first impulse would be to hide or destroy it. Another concept was introduced by David. He stressed that what was happening was not only an invasion but a trivialization of space. Daniel, on the other hand, linked it to an erasing of history, a denial of remembrance. The development of towns such as Kilinochchi and the possibility of colonization would erase the fact that there was ever a war, and government destruction of LTTE cemeteries meant that Tamil remembrance was being pushed underground into people’s homes. Implicit within the view that the Buddha image was a symbol of defeat was the fear that it was the prelude to further government-­sponsored Sinhala colonization to change the demography of the North and East. Fears about colonization, as I have shown, were present well before 2009 and were realized in eastern towns such as Trincomalee and Ampara, and around Buddhist sites such as Sēruvila. After May 2009, these fears increased, with some justification, as two reports from the Centre for Policy Alternatives on demographic changes in regions such as Vavuniya and Mullaitivu (Fonseka and Raheem 2011) and on continued post-­war land occupation by government forces (Fonseka 2016) attest. Fernando cites the Madhu Road Housing Scheme, which followed the reconstruction of a vihāra, where, out of 50 houses, 40 were given to Sinhala families, five to Tamils and five to military officials (Fernando 2013: 207), a proportion that exceeded that envisaged by Gunaratne. One particular fear in 2012 was that the Sri Lankan government sought to change the demography of the whole country to reflect Gunaratne’s proportions. As Siva stated, numerous stories had circulated about this and truth was difficult to separate from rumour. However, fears had been high enough for parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to voice their concerns in Parliament in 2011. Basil Rajapakse, then Minister of Economic Development, denied the allegation that there was forced colonization of Sinhala families in the North, stating, ‘You should remember that it was the LTTE who evicted the Sinhalese, Muslims and your own people from the North. The government has paved the way for their return’ (Newsline of the Government of Sri Lanka, Thursday, 8 September 2011). This did little to allay fears. Balan claimed of the Sinhala people in 2012: They are trying to alter history – to create their own history. And one of the main Tamil charges is the conscious and planned attempt to change the

Spatial change and competition after 2009    231 geographical and ethnic distribution. There is a conscious and malicious attempt to alter it and to say the North and East is not the homeland of the Tamils but the homeland of everyone. This is a planned affair. The minorities get the beating. We are not against Buddhists or Sinhalese settling down in our areas. The bakers used to be Sinhalese before 1973. We have no quarrel with those who come here to work as much as we go elsewhere to work. But when the Government backs them … the consequences will be very painful, undesirable and negative. Jeganathan agreed ‘If Sinhala people come to live in the North, they have every right to bring in symbols of worship … but impose it and bring about forced settlement protected by the army, nobody likes it.’ Exactly the same was said by Moses in 2015, ‘We are not against Sinhala people coming on their own but when the state gives them assistance, then we are worried. Earlier there were Sinhala mechanics in our villages and there was no problem’. Fear and insecurity characterized many of these responses. As Ravikrishnan said in 2012: People believe that, even if these projects [building Buddhist centres] were genuine, it is too early and too fast. Should this be a priority now, when there are other problems? So this is where the suspicion comes in. During a transition period, such work is problematic. So once things have stabilized, when Tamils are secure in the North and East, Tamils might be prepared to see these as genuine projects. Siva put it this way: We are a multi-­religious society. So any religious community must have its protected space to propagate its faith and mobilize its constituency. It’s a democratic right as laid down by the United Nations. Devotees also must have the right to go anywhere and propagate their religion. But how is this to be done? It should not be done through state patronage and through organized transfer of people from the South to the North to change the demography. These opinions were voiced in awareness that the North had one bargaining disadvantage – the depopulated nature of the Vanni. So Ravikrishnan explained in 2012: The Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said quite recently that he does not think that the Northern Province belongs to the Tamils … it’s a statement confirming that he wants to see a change in the Northern Province.… Part of the concern is that the Vanni is highly depopulated – from about 400,000 to 200,000. Half of the population has moved or been killed. I think that the government is trying to keep the Vanni as a place that people will

232   The post-colonial period want to move from.… So one of the things in terms of colonization, unlike in the 1950s and 1960s where colonization was justified for agricultural reasons, is that it is now being justified for reasons of national security. Moses expressed something similar, when he spoke of Tamil youth wanting to escape Sri Lanka: If you look at the demographic spread in the North, the population per square mile is very low. After the war, it has gone down further. In the South it is very high. Looking at it from the point of view of social justice or natural justice, we consider this as our homeland but when the Sinhala people see a huge land mass, a fertile area, empty, you can understand. And if people won’t stay here, for us to say that others can’t come in, it looks very contradictory. I have told people in the North this. We have a land mass here that is undeveloped. But security is our basic problem. There are also several historical ‘facts’ that Tamils believe Sinhala Buddhists ignore. One is that Buddhist sites discovered in the North of the country were also Tamil Buddhist sites and another, that the lowest strata of archaeological evidence across the country is South Indian. Donald Kanagaratnam, in the mid-­ twentieth century, challenged Paranavitana’s representation of northern inscriptions as an old Sinhalese form of Sanskrit, because it disregarded, for instance, the purely Tamil nature of a word used for chiefs who donated caves for Buddhist monks – paramuka (Kanagaratnam Undated: 31–33). Schalk, later, similarly accused Paranavitana of denying ‘a Tamil substratum in insular Brāhmi Prakrit inscriptions’ (Schalk 2002: 46). Hoole, drawing on other academic sources, later still, accused him of fabricating interlinear inscriptions (Hoole 2015: 364–365), arguing that the game of the ‘Archaeology Department’ was to turn ‘Buddhist remains that were contiguous with South India … into Sinhala Buddhist ones’ (Hoole 2015: 364). Thiagarajah went as far as to accuse the Department of Archaeology of purposely renovating the stūpas at Kantarodai so that they mirrored the round structure of southern stūpas rather than ascertaining whether they could have been similar to those at Amarāvati; the base of the stūpas could have supported either model and the cluster pattern of their distribution favoured Amarāvati (Thiagarajah 2016: 250–252). Among my participants, Jeganathan did not doubt that Saṅghamittā had landed from India in the North but he sought recognition that Tamil Buddhists might have been involved rather than what he saw as the default Sinhala position: that when Buddhist sites or artefacts were discovered in the North, they were automatically judged to be Sinhala. Several of my participants argued that Tamil Buddhism was Mahāyāna, although Schalk, an expert on Tamil Buddhism, claimed the evidence was inconclusive, although Mahāyāna influence was possible (Schalk 2002: 84). Peter, for instance, insisted that the Manimekhalai was a Mahāyāna text,3 Vishwa that some Tamil Buddhists would have ‘become’ Sinhala at the time of Hindu revivalism and Mark that it was pure speculation to

Spatial change and competition after 2009    233 judge whether an ancient site represented Sinhala or Tamil Buddhism, since the country had not been ethnically divided at that time. Kingsley, however, believed it was dangerous for Tamils to argue too strongly for Tamil Buddhism in the North, since ‘Sinhala people will not accept it’. As for archaeological strata, Jeganathan insisted to me that archaeological findings suggest that, about 1000 bc, a megalithic culture was brought to the North by the people of South India, ‘which peopled the whole of Sri Lanka from Pt Pedro to Hambantota’.4 Buddhism was a later entrant and converted many throughout the country, the majority of whom would have been of South Indian origin. Another point that my Tamil participants felt was ignored was the suffering they had undergone during the war. Siva became quite emotional at the shrine to Kularatne. The key question for him was how Sri Lankans should remember the war and what they should remember. These were his words: Anyone killed in the war needs to be commemorated but the question is how. The television documentary at the shrine arouses an extreme Sinhala nationalist feeling and gives the impression that the war was against the Tamils – all Tamils. This is not the way to bring reconciliation. The military is doing this to present themselves as liberators of the country. Yet, hundreds and thousands of others were killed and massacred during the war – innocent Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims. It could be 100,000. We don’t know the exact amount. Yet, there is no monument to commemorate them.… It is sending a very bad message to the South about the causes of the war. The war was not caused by the Tamils. In another context, he said to me that reconciliation will only come in Sri Lanka when Tamils are able to commemorate the Sinhalas who died and when Sinhalas are able to commemorate the Tamils who died in the war. Where Tamil Hindu and Tamil Christian perspectives diverged was over the issue of the Christian missionary legacy. I heard several examples of Hindu self-­assertion in this context. David told me that, in February 2012, the Hindu principal of Vincent Girls High School in Batticaloa, which had been a Methodist school, although then part of the government system, had placed a statue of Sarasvatī in the school. There was protest and it was removed but it caused rancour among the pupils, who were Christian, Hindu and Muslim. Kingsley pointed to tension in Jaffna because foreign ambassadors and international visitors tended to go to the Catholic bishop rather than Hindu leaders, in the absence in 2012 of a Hindu Council. And Mark pointed to the ‘Hindu exclusivism’ that had emerged in Jaffna University. After 2009, ‘Hindu exclusivists’ had been brought into positions of authority by the EPDP, working with the government, and the new vice-­chancellor had declared that Hindu culture would be given a special place at the university. He also pointed to the trend of installing Hindu statues in former Christian missionary schools and changing their names, demonstrating that the Vincent Girls High School incident was not isolated.

234   The post-colonial period I also asked my participants what the implications of these spatial changes were for Sri Lanka’s future. In 2012, Daniel claimed that the encroachment of the Buddha rūpa and the number of Sinhala pilgrims to the North and East were revealing to Tamils attitudes they had feared but had not actually witnessed before, causing them to exclaim, ‘This is what Sinhala people do and feel when they’re free.’ ‘In front of their eyes’, he continued, ‘Sinhala people were seeing the whole island as theirs.’ He believed it proved to some people that a certain aspect of the LTTE representation of reality had been correct. His implication was that what the LTTE had fought for may become more attractive, even for those who had been critical of the organization. A Tamil Christian ordinand said something similar, again in 2012, ‘What really caused the war is reappearing by these kind of actions and it is creating conflict in the communities.’ Others predicted a Hindu Revival that would be less accommodating of the religious Other. Balan, for instance, saw new divisions arising along religious lines. ‘After 1956’, he said, ‘the nation was divided on ethnic lines. But now another dimension is being added to it. It will be divided on religious lines’. Similarly, Soma, in the South, stressed that his Muslim and Hindu friends were extremely worried about the parallels they saw between Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in the 1950s and the present. Identity politics rooted in religion was gaining the upper hand, he believed. Vishwa, in 2012, on the evidence of what his children were saying at home, spoke of the conversations he believed were happening in schools. He compared them to conversations that had happened when he was young, before the conflict became armed, since they indicated that school-­children were again plotting ways of attacking the Sinhala people. He added: In another 10–15 years there might be a group that will be ruthless. There cannot be another LTTE … not another large military movement. But a terrorist movement could be formed and that is far more dangerous than a military movement. That is a possibility if this problem is not solved. In 2012, some of my participants, David for instance, stressed that people in the North and East felt that they could not protest, because of army involvement in the spatial changes. Others such as Kingsley were more positive and stressed the need for civil society organizations across religious lines to ‘stand together against the Buddhist issue’. In 2015, however, a sense of helplessness was more pronounced. Vishwa claimed that a ‘learnt helplessness’ had developed. People were getting on with their lives because they realized they could ‘do nothing’. Others pointed out that fewer articles about Buddha images appeared in the media, whereas in the years immediately following 2009, they had appeared almost every day. Moses stressed that his congregation did not want to antagonize the military, since it could backfire: ‘Our community is a small one – What can we do?’ Only Siva pointed to the ongoing need for dialogue, the need, for instance, for Tamil and Sinhala academics to come together to discuss the reality

Spatial change and competition after 2009    235 of Tamil Buddhism. Renovation of Hindu temples and expansion of Christian churches, however, continued apace. By 2017, as I have shown, some contentious Buddhist statements had been removed from Jaffna itself and the army was less in evidence than in 2015. The ‘learnt helplessness’ mentioned by Vishwa had been channelled into restoring Hindu temples and working for material benefits. Yet, resentment was still present. Peter, for instance, was eager to speak to me again in 2017 to insist that my book must give space to the ‘violence of political Buddhism’, even whilst saying that he considered himself to be both a Christian priest and a Tamil Buddhist, and that the churches had made ‘a terrible mistake’ by not being humble enough to learn from the non-­violent message of ‘the Buddhist scriptures’.

Conclusion My data has shown that the post-­2009 spatial changes in Sri Lanka have had a profound effect on the North and East of the country. In these areas, many Tamils are aware of Sinhala Buddhist emotive frameworks. Vishwa, for instance, commented on his relationships with Sinhala people with great poignancy: At a personal level, Sinhala people will do anything for you.… If you become a personal friend, they will help you. But they have this fear that they are the most isolated people in the entire world. It’s a question of existence. However, there is profound disagreement with the material and spatial expressions of this sense of isolation or what Rāghavan termed ‘ontological insecurity’, stretching from historiography to archaeology, school textbooks to bodhi trees, and from cultural identity to the path towards peace.

Notes 1 For instance: ‘Religion, Space and Conflict in Post-­War Sri Lanka’ (Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, 2013); ‘Religion, Space and Reconciliation: A Case study from Post-­war Sri Lanka’ (European Society for Intercultural Theology and Inter-­ Religious Studies, 2013); ‘Buddhism, Space and Conflict in Colonial and Postcolonial Sri Lanka’ (UK Association for Buddhist Studies, 2013); ‘Religion, Space and Conflict: The Case Study of Sri Lanka’ (Edinburgh University, 2016). 2 For a more detailed examination of this incident as a case study see: Elizabeth J Harris, ‘Buddhism and the Religious Other: Twenty First Century Dambulla and the presence of Buddhist Exclusivism in Sri Lanka’ (forthcoming), which developed a paper given at the International Association for Buddhist Studies, Vienna, August 2014, on ‘Buddhism and the Religious Other: Six Responses in Text and Tradition’. 3 The best analysis of the Manimekhalai is Monius (2001). 4 For academic appraisals of this see Thiagarajah (2016: ix–xviii); Sittrampalam (2005); Indrapala (2005).

236   The post-colonial period

References Ariywansha, Nirangala, 2012. ‘ “We are Fighting to Save the 2,300 Year Old Buddhist Heritage that is Ours”: Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero Interviewed by Nirangala Ariywansha’. The Sunday Leader, 5 May, accessed in July 2014 through http:// dbsjeyaraj.com/dbs/archives/6092. Bavinck, 2011. Of Tamils and Tigers: A Journey Through Sri Lanka’s War Years. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa and Harrow, Middlesex: Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Committee. Deegalle, Mahinda (ed.), 2006. Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Deegalle, Mahinda, 2013. ‘Sinhala Ethno-­nationality and Militarization in Sri Lanka’. In Vladimir Tikhonov and Torkel Brekke (eds), Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia. Abingdon: Routledge: 15–36. Fernando, Jude Lal, 2013. ‘War by other Means. Expansion of Siṃhala Buddhism into the Tamiḻ Region in “Post-­War” Īḻam’. In Peter Schalk (ed.), Buddhism Among Tamiḻs in Tamiḻalam and Īḻam Part 3: Extensions and Conclusions. Uppsala: Uppsala University: 175–270 plus pictorial presentations. Fernando, Jude Lal, 2016. ‘Liberating the Conflicts from ‘History’ in the island of Lanka: Buddhist Perspectives’. In Elizabeth J Harris and John O’Grady (eds), History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity. Sankt Ottilien: EOS. Fonseka, B., 2016. Land Occupation in the Northern Province: A Commentary on Ground Realities and Recommendations for Reform. Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives. Fonseka, B. and Raheem, M., 2011. Land in the Northern Province – Post-­War Politics, Policy and Practices. Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives. Gunadheera, Somapala, 2011. Some Marginal Comments: Ethnic Confrontation and National Integration in Sri Lanka. Pannipitiya: Stamford Lake. Hoole, Rajan, 2015. Palmyra Fallen: From Rajani to War’s End. Colombo: UTHR (Jaffna). Indrapala, K. 2005. The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils in Sri Lanka 300 bce to 1200 ce. Sydney: The South Asian Studies Centre. Kanagaratnam, Donald J., undated. Tamils and Cultural Pluralism in Ancient Sri Lanka: The Brahmi Inscriptions Reveal Tamil Presence and Multi-­Cultural Interactions in Earliest Sri Lankan Social Strata. Colombo: Ananda Press. Kannangara, Nirmala, 2012. ‘ “No Provision For Any Other Faith Only Buddhism So Move the Mosque”, says Thero’. Lanka Standard, 25 April. Accessed in July 2014 through: www.lankastandard.com/2012/04/no-­provision-for-­any-other-­faith-only-­Buddhism-so-­ move-the-­mosque-says-­thero/. Kemper, Stephen, 1991. The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Monius, Anne, 2001. Imagining a Place for Buddhism: Literary Culture and Religious Community in Tamil-­Speaking South India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Natali, Cristiana, 2008. ‘Building Cemeteries, Constructing Identities: Funerary Practices and Nationalist Discourse Among Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka’. Contemporary South Asia 16. 3: 287–301. Newsline of the Government of Sri Lanka: www.news.lk. Padumasiri Delgalle, 1986. My Experiences in Jaffna. Dehiwela: Vimukti Dharma Kendra. Perera, Sasanka, 2016. War Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise. New Delhi; Sage.

Spatial change and competition after 2009    237 Schalk, Peter (ed.), 2002. Buddhism among Tamils in Pre-­Colonial Tamiḷakam and Īḷam. Part One – The Prologue: The Pre-­Pallava and the Pallava Period. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Schonthal, Benjamin and Walton, Matthew J., 2016. ‘The (New) Buddhist Nationalisms? Symmetries and Specificities in Sri Lanka’. Contemporary Buddhism 17.1: 81–115. Sittrampalam, S.K., 2005. ‘The Tamils of Sri Lanka: The Historical Roots of Tamil Identity’. In Georg Frerks and Bart Klem (eds), Dealing with Diversity: Sri Lankan Discourse on Peace and Conflict. The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations: 231–273. Stewart, James John, 2014. ‘Muslim-­Buddhist Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka’. South Asia Research 34.3: 241–260. Thiagarajah, Siva, 2016. Kantarodai Civilization of Ancient Jaffna 500 bce–800 ce: A Study in Archaeology and Other Disciplines. Colombo and Chennai: Kumaran Book House. Uduwara, Jayantha, 1990. ‘History of the Department of Archaeology, 1970–1990’. In Nandadeva Wijesekere (ed.), History of the Department of Archaeology (Archaeological Department Centenary 1890–1990: Commemorative Series Vol. 1) Colombo: State Printing Corporation: 153–192. Weiss, Gordon, 2011. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. London: The Bodley Head. Wickramasinghe, Nira, 2014. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Concluding thoughts

This study has sought to examine inter-­religious and inter-­communal conflict in colonial and post-­colonial Sri Lanka through the lens of space, focussing particularly on exclusion and inclusion of the religious Other, in the conviction that juxtaposing the colonial and post-­colonial can throw light on each, but particularly on the post-­war period and the controversial expansion of ‘Buddhist space’ into the former war-­zones. Has this juxtaposition worked? Has the colonial shed light on the post-­colonial or vice versa? Have I found patterns of continuity or rupture, or charted a middle way between the two? What is clear from my examination of all three periods is that, within the dominant Sinhala imaginary, Buddhism and non-­Buddhist identities in Sri Lanka have never moved within an equal playing field. The non-­Buddhist Other, with its material and spatial expressions of identity, has experienced welcome and tolerance but at a subordinate level within a model of ‘inclusivist subordination’. Because of this, similar spatial productions and strategies appear in all three periods. A version of what Roberts termed ‘tributary overlordship’ in the Kandyan Kingdom re-­appeared with modern dress in the post-­independence period in the idealistic conviction of Malinga Gunaratne and Madihe Pannasiha that Sinhalas and Tamils should live in their national ratios throughout the country. The hope of the monastic Sangha that they could co-­exist with the Christian missionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century if the missionaries respected Buddhism re-­appeared in The Revolt in the Temple in the assertion that education, arts, music and literature would flourish if Sinhalas and the whole island were seen as one, and in Seneviratne’s plea that minorities should assimilate into the majority community. My study has also shown that a major driver behind this, in all three periods, was the wish for peace. If people of all religions and ethnicities could live happily together across the country in their national ratio, peace would reign; Tamils and Sinhalas would know and love each other. If Christian missionaries could have accepted that people from within different religions should live together, albeit within a hierarchy, then there would have been no need for conflict. If Tamils could see that the heart of their culture was in absolute harmony with Sinhala culture (Jathika Chintanaya), integration would triumph over fragmentation. The poet Alagiyavanna, on Berkwitz’s evidence, moved towards

Concluding thoughts    239 integration at the end of his poetic career, outwardly taking Christian baptism but, I would argue, assimilating his Christianity within a Buddhist framework. Within the landscapes of his consciousness, the Buddha, I would suggest, remained supreme. Integration replaced exclusivism. The mapping of this motif across historical periods adds depth, I would suggest, to the understanding of each. In all three periods, moreover, the trigger for conflict was the existence of an Other that would not accept a welcome based on inclusivist subordination. In this case, the default position of the dominant Sinhala imaginary, echoed in spirit religion and exorcism, is that the Other must either be destroyed or forced back into a position of inclusivist subordination. In the nineteenth century, effective spatial strategies were attempted to force the missionaries to see that the land they believed to be Christianized remained, essentially, Buddhist. In the twentieth century, the TUF/TULF and the militant youth groups arose as the Other that refused to accept inclusivist subordination. In the end, the LTTE was destroyed and the other militant groups brought over to the side of the government. Peace moves that hinted at an equal playing field between Sinhala and Tamil did not succeed. In the post-­war period, the spatial changes that happened in the North and East yield similarly to this model. Within the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary, it is as though Buddhist symbols had to be brought to, developed or re-­discovered in the North and East, albeit alongside those of other religions, to encourage integration and a restored order based on inclusivist subordination. It would seem, therefore, that I am arguing for the persistence of one spatial motif within Sri Lankan history and a continuity that glides over colonial rupture. At one level, I am. The sheer persistence of the inclusivist subordination model is remarkable. Nevertheless, there were also elements of rupture, because of the new templates for exclusivism that were given to Buddhists by the evangelical missionaries and the Aryan debate. Exclusivism was present in the pre-­ colonial period in the non-­negotiable lines that were drawn, for instance, between the forces of Māra and the wholesome, particularly when those forces could not be subordinated. Buddhist exclusivism as expressed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, was a product of colonial encounters and colonial templates. Buddhist responses to Christian missionary spatial practice demonstrate that Buddhists were able to challenge Christian exclusivism, with a form of Buddhist exclusivism. With reference to Anuradhapura, it is almost uncanny how similar were the demands of Harischandra and Dharmapāla concerning the use of space at Anuradhapura to the evangelical missionary spatial imaginary, leaving me in no doubt that Dharmapāla’s conscious or unconscious template came from the missionaries. It certainly did not come from the dominant Sinhala imaginary. This adds a significant spatial dimension to ‘Protestant Buddhism’. As for British orientalist debates on the Aryans, on Sinhala origins and the vamsa tradition, I was surprised at the number of motifs that were internalized from them by Sinhalas and used after independence, in an appropriation that was mediated through British lenses. I should not have been perhaps, since the phenomenon has been theorized by post-­colonial scholars

240   Concluding thoughts such as Sugirtharajah (Sugirtharajah 2003). Nevertheless, my study throws light on the conflict-­producing spatial consequences of this. Spence Hardy’s historical picture of the Sinhalas as besieged victims in the face of the Other, repeated in the 1901 Census Report, for instance, was one of the main drivers of Sinhala nationalism in the twentieth century. The British representation of Sinhala moral ascendancy when building Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva – the adjectival excess used in the 1901 Census Report for instance – was reiterated in the twentieth century to create a picture of Sinhala innocence and moral integrity in the context of LTTE atrocities. Even Kuhn’s concept of the Tamils seeking the ‘extirpation’ of Buddhism and achieving the separation of the North from the ‘national kingdom’ was re-­evoked in Sinhala consciousness when the militant groups called for Tamil Eelam. Colonial discourse and experience, therefore, created rupture and re-­ positioning through the templates for exclusivism they offered to Sinhala Buddhists post-­1948, which were added to the older model of inclusivist subordination. Exclusivism, therefore, re-­appeared in the Sinhala Only Act and in the demand that St Paul’s church should be removed from the sacred area of the Daḷadā Māligava. It triumphed when Anuradhapura was split into sacred and commercial areas after independence (Nissan 1985). In the war, Tamils experienced what seemed to them to be exclusivism, namely their exclusion from Sri Lankan polity, when their churches were bombed, their Hindu temples, defaced and they were pushed into the ‘cage’. In the post-­war period, forms of exclusivism are present in the victory monuments, at Kanniyai, at the shrine to Kularatne, in the destruction of the Hindu kovil and the attack on the mosque at Dambulla, and at the places in the North and East where Hindu temples have been demoted beyond what inclusivist subordination might demand. Nevertheless, my data implies that the pattern of inclusivist subordination is stronger in the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary than exclusivism; it is the preferred, longed-­for option. With both exclusivism and inclusivist subordination, however, potential for conflict is present and it is at this point that my use of the typology of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism has proved its worth. Kong and Woods state, with reference to religious space, ‘the likelihood of competition degenerating into conflict is often determined by the centrality and the exclusivity of the religious space in question’ (Kong and Woods 2016: 19). This study has demonstrated the truth of this. Exclusivism breeds exclusivism both at religious and political levels. However, it also adds another dimension – the impact on the Other of inclusivism or inclusivist subordination. Inclusivism, as defined in the theology of religions and in the more secular iteration that I favour, is both a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ to the Other (Race 1993: 38). It seeks a liberal inclusion of the Other, a Yes, but on its own terms. Its idealistic dream is harmony between Self and Other but within an imaginary that subordinates the particularity of the Other to the cosmology and conceptual categories of the Self. It is, therefore, a ‘No’ to the Other when the Other asserts its own particularity and voice, its own history and categories of interpretation. Such inclusivism is present globally in most religious communities.

Concluding thoughts    241 In Sri Lanka, ethnic conflict did not arise because of Sinhala Buddhist exclusivism – a driving out of minorities from the central space of governance or from religious space. It arose and escalated because of the wish of the Sinhalas to hold onto and develop their majoritarian dominance in central government, religion and language. Tamil youth were driven to militancy in the 1970s because this was seen as an attack on their own identity and worth. I would suggest that the dangers of an inclusivism that subordinates and refuses to recognize particularity has been under-­theorized in both peace studies and human geography. Conflict arises globally where one party feels reduced or humiliated by an ideology that has been imposed on them by a more dominant Other. When this is played out in space, these feelings are compounded. For the blind-­spot within inclusivism and inclusivist subordination is that the benefits of creative interchange between Self and Other predicated on differing gifts and an equal playing field are little recognized. In the case of Sri Lanka, the ideal of harmony and integration through inclusivist subordination continues to prevent Sinhalas from appreciating the historical reality of Tamil Buddhism or the possibility that many Sinhalas, if a long enough timeline was created, would find their lineage began not in the North or north-­east of India but in South India, when South Indians in Sri Lanka were drawn to the beauty of Buddhism and eventually became Sinhala-­speaking. And it hid from them the depth of the anger and frustration among Tamils that the integrity of their cultural heritage, the value of their political voice and the need of their children to gain a university education was not recognized. Of course, throughout the escalation of the ethnic conflict and the war, Sinhala Buddhist voices contested what I have described as the dominant imaginary, both through drawing on Buddhist philosophy – the dangers of perceiving oneself or one’s group as superior for instance – and through appealing to human rights discourse and exploring democratic solutions to inequality. Buddhism in Sri Lanka, as I have shown, is plural. The hope for lasting reconciliation may lie in whether this Buddhist voice becomes more dominant.

References Kong, Lily and Woods, Orlando, 2016. Religion and Space: Competition, Conflict and Violence in the Contemporary World. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Nissan, Elizabeth, 1985. The Sacred City of Anuradhapura: Aspects of Sinhalese Buddhism and Nationhood. Unpublished PhD dissertation. London School of Economics. Race, Alan, 1993. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions. 2nd Ed. London: SCM. Sugirtharajah, Sharada, 2003. Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective. London and New York: Routledge.

Selective glossary

Äsala perahära  Ceremonial procession in the lunar month between July and August Atamasthāna vandanāva  Eight-­site Buddhist pilgrimage Bana Maḍuva  Preaching hall Buddha rūpa  Lit: Buddha form; image of the Buddha Cakravartin/cakkavatti  A wheel-­turning monarch or righteous world emperor Chena  Land usually attached to a village that is used for cultivation and then abandoned to regenerate before being used again Daḷadā Māligāva  Temple of the Tooth Relic/Palace of the Tooth Relic Dāna  Generosity; gift of food/requisites by lay people to the monastic Sangha Dēvāle  A temple where Sinhala Buddhists worship deities for mundane blessings Hartal  Total shut-­down of shops, transport, banks and businesses Kachcheri  Administrative centre for a district Kapurāla  Officiating priest at a dēvāle Mudeliyar  Headman; administrative position in colonial Sri Lanka Pansala  Buddhist monastery or temple Poya day  Full moon day Samādhi Buddha  An image of the Buddha in meditation pose Samsāra  The round of birth and rebirth Solosmasthāna vandanāva  Sixteen-­site Buddhist pilgrimage Stūpa  A monument, usually holding a relic, found in Buddhist temples and venerated as a symbol of the Buddha Swabasha  Use of indigenous languages Vaṃsa tradition  Lineage tradition; the historical chronicles of Sri Lanka Vandanā kavi  Chants/verses sung by pilgrims Vihāra  Buddhist monastery or temple Yakkhā/Yakṣa  In Buddhist narrative, non-­human being in need of pacification

Selective timeline

1796 1805 1812 1814 1815 1816 1818 1817–1818 1818 1833 1833 1833 1840 1840 1845 1846 1848 1856 1868 1873 1880 1883 1888–1889 1889 1889 1903 1903

Britain gains power over maritime provinces of Sri Lanka. Five missionaries from the LMS arrive. First Baptist missionaries arrive. First Wesleyan Methodist missionaries arrive. Kandyan Kingdom ceded to the British under the Kandyan Convention. American Mission Board missionaries arrive and work predominantly in the North. First CMS missionaries arrive. Rebellion against the British – violently suppressed. Proclamation No. 21, clause 21: temple lands exempt from taxation. Colebrooke-­Cameron Reforms. Upham publishes translations from the historical chronicles in UK. Turnour’s first publication on the historical chronicles. First SPG missionaries arrive. Encroachment Ordinance No. 12 (Waste Lands Ordinance). First Anglican Bishop of Ceylon arrives to oversee new diocese. CBRAS founded. Disturbances/rebellion against colonial rule. Government Ordinance No. 10 on temple lands. Archaeological Commission founded. Buddhist-­Christian Debate at Pānadurē. First theosophists arrive; Sinhala journal Sarasavi Sandaräsa started. Roman Catholic/Buddhist clash at Koṭahēna. Charles Leadbeater (British theosophist) edits the first volume of The Buddhist. Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance. H.C.P. Bell appointed as first archaeological commissioner. Epigraphia Zeylanica founded by Bell. Disturbances in Anuradhapura.

244   Selective timeline 1915 1919 1919 1924 1927 1944 1948 1948 1948 1956 1956 1957 1957 1958 1965 1970 1971 1972 1972 1974 1976 1977 1979 1979 1981 1983 1985 1985 1986 1987 1987–1989 1990 1989–1990 1990 1994

Communal riots targeting Muslims for economic reasons; harshly suppressed by the British. CNC formed. Tamil leaders walk out of the CNC. Youth Congress formed in Jaffna. Donoughmore Commission constitutional changes. ACTC formed. Sri Lanka gains Dominion status. Ceylon Citizenship Act makes c. 700,000 Indian Tamils stateless. Chelvanayakam forms TFP. Victory of S.W.R.D Bandaranaike. The Official Language Act No. 33 (Sinhala Only Act). TFP holds convention that supports a federal constitution. Chelvanayagam and Bandaranaike sign pact that would give regional councils to Tamil areas and make Tamil the ‘language of the national minority’. Pact abrogated. Violent clashes between Sinhala and Tamil. Pact between Senanayake and Chelvanayagam. Pact abrogated three years later. SLFP come to power with aid of leftist parties. First uprising of JVP. Republican constitution passed. TUF formed. International Tamil Research Conference attacked by police. At Vaddukodai, the TUF becomes TULF and favours Tamil self-­ determination. Anti-­Tamil violence erupts in several parts of the country. State of emergency declared in Jaffna. Prevention of Terrorism Act passed. Violence in Jaffna at District Development Council elections; Jaffna Library burnt. After LTTE kills 13 soldiers in Jaffna, anti-­Tamil pogrom across the country internationalizes the conflict. LTTE massacre 146 civilians near bodhi tree in Anuradhapura. Talks at Thimpu, Bhutan, between the government and Tamil militants, mediated by India. Founding of Maubima Surakeeme Viyaparaya (Movement for the Protection of the Motherland). Indo-­Lanka Accord and arrival of IPKF. Second JVP uprising. IPKF leave. Peace talks between LTTE and President Premadasa. War resumes. Premadasa killed by LTTE.

Selective timeline   245 1994 1994 1995 1996 2000 2002 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2007 2009 (Jan.) 2009 (May)

Chandrika Kumaratunge of the PA elected prime minister and then president; talks with LTTE begin. PA government signs convention on Torture. Peace talks break down; war resumes. The army re-­capture Jaffna. Kumaratunge’s devolution package fails to gain parliamentary agreement. Agreement for a Ceasefire under UNP government of Ranil Wickremesinghe, signed with mediation of Norway. Talks between government and LTTE begin. LTTE pull out of talks but ceasefire continues with numerous violations. Colonel Karuna, LTTE leader in the East, splits from LTTE. Tsunami devastates coastal areas of Sri Lanka. Controversy over the possibility of P-­TOMS between LTTE and government. New government (PA) under Mahinda Rajapakse. War resumes but ceasefire not formally abrogated until 2008. LTTE defeated in the East. Kilinochchi (LTTE capital) captured. LTTE defeated.

Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. abductions and disappearances 172 Abeykon, John 104, 107 Abeysekera, Ananda 5–6 Abhayavardhana, Hector 161, 163 ACBC see All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) ACTC see All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) Ähälepola 22, 82, 84 Ähälēpola Varnanāva 22 Alagiyavanna Mukaveṭi 19–21, 22, 238–9 All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) 146, 165, 182 All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) 162, 163, 166, 173 All-Party Conference 167 Amarasekera, A.B.M. 110 Amarasekera, A.S. 148, 156n1 Amarasekera, Gunadasa 150, 154 American Academy of Religion (AAR) 2 Amirthalingam, Appapillai 167, 169, 174 ancient cities: in British imaginary 96–101, 103, 105; Polonnaruva 99–100, 101, 103–4, 118, 119, 120; significance to Sinhala Buddhist imaginary 118–20; see also Anuradhapura Anderson, Benedict 3 Angell, Marisa 101, 102 Anglican Church 37; in Anuradhapura 133; church building 72–4, 81–9, 82, 83; oversight of education 54; St. Paul’s church, Kandy 81–9, 82, 83, 240; schools 54–5, 57, 60, 62; Wesleyans and 47, 70; see also Church Missionary Society (CMS); Diocese of Colombo anti-Tamil poems 22, 102

anti-Tamil pogrom (1983) 151, 169 anti-Tamil violence (1977) 167–8 Anuradhapura 177, 239, 240; archaeological excavation 127–32; bodhi tree 99, 117, 119, 121, 124, 125, 133, 171, 213, 219; British administration 3–4, 60, 89, 96–7, 101, 116–37; in British imaginary 96–7, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105; Buddhist revivalism and 126, 129, 131, 132–7; massacre of civilians during ethnic war 171, 172; pilgrimages to 117–18, 120, 122–3, 130, 131; Portuguese and 97; restoration of ruins 121–2, 125–7, 128, 131–2; significance to Sinhala Buddhist imaginary 118–20 Anuradhapura Buddhist Defence Committee 129, 134 Anuradhapura Maha-Bodhi School 134 Anuradhapura Maha-Bodhi Society 60 Arasaratnam, S. 97, 148, 162 archaeological excavation of Anuradhapura 127–32 Ariywansha, Nirangala 201 Armour, Andrew 48–9, 70, 98 Arulpalan, Rev. 173 Arunachalam, P. 104–5 Aryan/Dravidan debate 101–11, 239 Äsala Perahära 15 Atamasthāna Committee 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137n6 Athulathmudali, Lalith 171 Backhouse, Thomas Ralph 96 Baird, Ian G. 3 Baker, Samuel 99–100 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo 165

Index   247 Bandaranaike, S.W.R.D. 147, 162, 163, 164 Baptist missionaries 37, 38n3, 47, 68, 71, 74 Baugh, George 57, 75, 77–8 Bavinck, Ben 170, 173, 178–9, 180, 205 BBS see Budu Bala Sena (BBS) Bell, Bethia 102, 106, 127, 130 Bell, H.C.P. 106, 123, 124, 129–32 Bell, Heather 102, 106, 127, 130 Bennett, J.W. 96 Berkwitz, Stephen 17, 19–21, 22, 126, 238–9 Bestall, William 73–4 Beven, F. Lorenz 87 Bishops of Colombo see Diocese of Colombo Bisset, George 47, 98, 103 Blackburn, Anne M. 123, 127, 133 Bodhi Tree Vihāra, Anuradhapura 121, 136, 137n6 bodhi trees 137, 229; Anuradhapura 99, 117, 119, 121, 124, 125, 133, 171, 213, 219; Dambakola Paṭuna 213; Kandy 81 Bridgenell, William 43 British administration 3, 16, 18–19; Anuradhapura 3–4, 60, 89, 96–7, 101, 116–37; archaeological project 127–32; attitude to Buddhism 32–7, 39n25; early educational policy 44–6; inclusivist subordination and 16, 22–3; oversight of education 54, 56–7, 60–1; Sinhala consciousness under 22–3 British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) 1 British imaginary 96–111; ancient cities 96–101, 103, 105; history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka 96–101; Sinhala as Aryan 101–7, 239; Sri Lankan responses to 107–11; Tamil as invader paradigm 101–7; vaṃsa tradition 96–101, 103, 106, 239; see also evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary Brito, Christopher 106, 107, 152 Browning, Thomas (CMS missionary) 25, 32, 43, 49, 84 Brownrigg, Robert 47 Brun, Catherine 5, 6 Buddha images (rūpas): post-conflict growth of 198–9, 202–3, 211, 212, 226–7, 228, 230; Vavuniya archaeological museum 176–7 Buddha Jayanti celebrations (1956) 147 Buddhism: British administration’s attitude

to 32–7, 39n25; evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary of 25–30; Tamil 107, 228, 232–3, 235; see also Buddhist responses; Buddhist revivalism; inclusivist subordination of Sinhala Buddhism; Sinhala Buddhist imaginary Buddhist, The 18, 59, 110, 131 Buddhist responses: to British imaginary 107–11; to British interest in Anuradhapura 126, 132–7; to church building 76–81; to Dutch schools and churches 45; to missionary schools 52–3, 57–62; to open-air preaching 68–9; strategic use of sound 78–9, 178–9, 199–200; temporary preaching halls 79–80 Buddhist revivalism: Anuradhapura and 126, 129, 131, 132–7; Aryan/Dravidan debate 107–9, 110; churches and 75, 78–9, 88; missionary schools and 58–61 Buddhist schools: Anuradhapura MahaBodhi School 134; built in opposition to missionary schools 57–61; pansala schools 45, 46, 49, 57, 60, 62n11, 63n40 Budu Bala Sena (BBS) 201 Buller, C.R. 34–5 Burrows, S.M. 101, 103, 105, 106, 124–5, 128, 129 Buultjens, A.E. 32, 60, 61 Campbell, James 34, 35, 86–7 Capper, George 117, 127 Carpenter, Edward 123 Cave, Henry 81, 82, 83, 88–9, 100, 103–4, 121, 126–7 CBRAS (Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society) 101, 105, 127, 128, 130, 133 CCP see Ceylon Communist Party (CCP) Central School Commission 54, 56–7 Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register, The 107 Ceylon Citizenship Act (1948) 162–3 Ceylon Communist Party (CCP) 145, 165 Ceylon Diocesan Gazette, The 36, 37, 61 Ceylon Friend, The 26, 36–7, 58–9, 61 Ceylon Government Gazette 37, 38n8, 70 Ceylon National Association 161 Ceylon National Congress (CNC) 161 Ceylon News, The 116 Ceylon Reform League 161 Ceylon Times, The 87 Ceylon Workers’ Congress 166

248   Index Chandananda, Palipane 155 chapel building see church building Chapman, James 38n1, 54–5, 61, 72–3, 74, 76, 87, 89, 99, 101, 103, 105, 109, 117, 118, 121 Chater, Ann 68, 70 Chater, James 68, 70 Chelvanayakam, S.J.V. 163, 165, 166, 167 Childers, Robert 127 Christianity: attacks on churches during ethnic war 176; post-independence 146; see also Anglican Church; church building; evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary; missionary schools; Roman Catholics church building 68–89; Buddhist responses to 76–81; intra-Christian competition 72–4; post-independence 146; proximity to vihāras 77–9; St. Paul’s church, Kandy 81–9, 82, 83 Church Missionary Society (CMS): arrival 38n3, 47; churches 71, 72, 74, 79, 80, 84–5, 86, 89, 92n64; schools 32, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 59, 85; spatial imaginary 25, 31, 32 Church of England 47, 54; see also Anglican Church; Church Missionary Society (CMS) churches: attacks on during ethnic war 176; use of sound against 78–9; see also church building civil disobedience 163 civilian casualties of armed conflict: Muslim 170; Sinhala 170–2; Tamil 172–4 Claughton, Piers 73 Clough, Benjamin 27, 28, 31, 43, 46, 48–9, 50, 51–2, 53, 62n11, 69, 85, 102 CMS see Church Missionary Society (CMS) Coke, Thomas 70 Colebrooke Commission 54 conscience clause 54, 56, 60 Coomaraswamy, Radhika 17, 145 Copleston, Reginald 36, 56, 57, 58, 62, 75, 105, 133 Cordiner, James 44, 45, 46 Couto, Diogo Do 97 Cull, J.B. 56, 59, 105 Dadelszen, H.H. 87 Dahamsoňḍa Kava 20 Daily News, The 180, 181, 182, 183 Daḷadā Māligāva (Temple of the Tooth):

bombing of during ethnic war 171, 172; protests outside 184; St. Paul’s church and 81, 82–3, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 240 Dambakola Paṭuna 213–18, 215, 228 Dambulla 200–1 Daniel, E. Valentine 15, 118–19 Davids, Rhys 126, 127 Davy, John 45, 81–3, 117–18, 119, 137n2 De Alwis, H. 86 De Mel, Neloufer 109 De Queyroz, Fernao 97 De Ransonnet, Eugène 102 De Silva, David 29–30, 34, 45, 79, 80 De Silva, H.L. 154 De Silva, John 109 De Silva, K.M. 160, 161, 165–6 De Silva, Nalin 150, 154 De Silva, Shelani 184 De Silva Wijeratne, Eymard 154 De Silva Wijeyeratne, Roshan 15, 16, 17 De Soysa, Richard 154, 174 De Sylva, Peter Gerard 77 Deegalle, Mahinda 198 defensive exclusivism 22 democracy, break down of 174–5 Denham, E.B. 106, 107 Department of Archaeology 152, 177, 208–9, 212, 232 Department of Public Instruction 56, 59, 60 dēvāle system 27, 30 Dēvāles to Viṣṇu, Nātha and Pattini, Kandy 81, 83, 84, 87, 88 Devamitta, Kitalagama 102 ‘devil dance’ 29–30 devolution proposals 180–4 Dhammakiththi, Bramanawaththe 206 Dhammananda Thera, Galkande 228 Dharmapāla, Anagārika 107–8, 133–4, 135–6, 239 Dias, Malini 152 Dibben (CMS missionary) 57, 80 Dickson, John Frederick 36, 105, 126, 128, 129 Dinamina 183 Diocese of Colombo 36, 53; church building 72–4; schools 54–5, 57, 60, 62 Dissanayake, Gamini 171, 179 Dissanayake, Piyasena 146 Divayina151–2, 182 Donoughmore Commission 161–2 Dowbiggin (CMS missionary) 32 D’Oyley, John 33, 84, 88, 102 Duncan, James S. 14–15, 20, 84

Index   249 Duraiappah, Alfred 167 Dutch East India Company 97 Dutch Reformed Church 70, 85 Dutch rule 16, 18–19, 21, 44–5, 97 Edrisinha, Rohan 183 education: university entrance examinations 166–7; see also Buddhist schools; missionary schools English, teaching of 47, 50, 52, 61, 63n14 EPDP (Eelam People’s Democratic Party) 174, 180 Epigraphia Zeylanica 129 EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front) 174 EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students) 174 Estève, Marie-Hélène 98 ethnic conflict 160–85; armed conflict 169–76; attacks on sacred space 171, 172, 175–6; break down of democracy 174–5; controversial use of Buddhist symbolism 176–9, 201–3, 213–25; internal Tamil community violence 173–4; journalists 174; Muslim civilian victims 170; origin and escalation of 160–9; political process 179–85; Sinhala civilian victims 170–2; Tamil civilian victims 172–4 evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary 25–38; Buddhist space 25–30; Christianized space 31–2; responses to British administration’s attitude to Buddhism 32–7, 39n25; see also church building; missionary schools exclusivism 4, 22, 108, 145, 225, 240; in Anuradhapura 135–6; of evangelical Protestant missionaries 22, 25, 37–8, 43, 46–7; missionary churches and 76–7; missionary schools and 46–7; of Portuguese 20–1, 22 exorcism 15, 27–8, 29–30, 33, 43, 80 Fabry, Philippe 98 Fagan, Lieutenant 96, 118 Falck, Imam Willem 97 Farah 3 (ship) 196–7, 197 federalism 153, 183 Ferguson, John 37 Fergusson, James 102 Fernando, Celestine 47 Fernando, Jude Lal 192, 193, 198, 201, 219

Fonseka, Carlo 151–2 Forbes, Jonathan 99, 101, 116–17, 121, 122 Fox, William Buckley 29, 50, 51, 53 Frydenlund, I. 184 Fyers, A.B. 100, 127, 130 Gal Oya Valley irrigation project 163 Garstin, Norman 86, 87 Glenelg, Lord 86 Glenie, Owen 53, 54, 71 Gnana Prakasar, S. 107 Godage, Charles 56 Godakumbura, C.E. 127 Godumune, Albert 110–11, 125, 146 Gogerly, Daniel J. 25, 26, 29–30 Goldschmidt, Paul 102, 127 Gooneratne, C.V. 171 Gooneratne, John 185 Goonetilleke, A.P. 61 Goonewardene, G.E. 58 Gordon, Arthur Hamilton 36, 37, 128, 135 Gregory, William 123, 125, 126, 127, 135 guidebooks 81, 82, 83, 88–9, 100 Gunadheera, Somapala 165, 225 Guṇānanda, Mohoṭṭivatté 79, 80 Gunaratne, Malinga H. 148–9, 230, 238 Gunasekera, S.L. 150, 182 Gunasingam, Murugar 161 Gunasinghe, Newton 3 Gunawardana, R.A.L.H. 153–4 Gunawardana, Sam 88 Guruge, Ananda 108 Harischandra, Välasinha 133, 134–6, 239 Harvard, William M. 27, 28, 43, 46, 47, 48–9, 51–2, 53, 62n11, 69, 70, 99 Hegarty, James 3, 4 Higgins (CMS missionary) 77 Hindu temples 240; attacks on 175; Keerimalai 217; Maruthanamadam Aanjaneyar Kovil, Inuvil 217, 218; Nāgadīpa/Nainativu 205, 206, 208, 208; Sambunatha Easwara Sivalayane 215–16, 216 Hole, George 71 Hoole, Rajan 166, 232 Horana 136–7 Horsburgh, B. 107, 152 Humanist Association of Bhikkhus 155 Hunter, John 71 Ievers, R.W. 121, 123, 126, 128, 129 inclusivism 4

250   Index inclusivist subordination within the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary 4, 37–8, 88, 136, 145, 238, 239, 240–1; British administration and 16, 22–3; Dutch and 16, 21, 44–5; in Kandyan Kingdom 14–19, 20; in post-conflict spatial change 224–5; of Tamil community 166 Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) 1 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 168 International Federation of Journalists 174 Inter-Religious Alliance for Peace 155 intra-Christian competition: church building 72–4; schools 54–7 Iriyagolla, Gamini 151 Island, The 182 Jaffna Association 161 Jaffna–Kandy road 218–20, 218, 219 Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) 149, 153, 165, 177, 184 Jansz, Frederica 173, 175 Jāthika Chintanaya 148, 150, 154 Jāthika Häla Urumaya (JHU) 153, 184, 198, 201 Jaya Sikurui (Victory Assured) 180 Jayanthipura, Batticaloa 220 Jayawardena, Kumari 84, 149, 150–1 Jayawardene, J.R. 164, 167, 168, 169 Jayaweera, Neville 164–5 Jazeel, Tariq 5, 6, 119 JCBRAS 102 Jeganathan, Pradeep 2, 119, 120 Jeyaraj, D.B.S. 178 JHU see Jāthika Häla Urumaya (JHU) Johnston, Alexander 47, 70, 98–9 Johnston, Charles 105 Joinville, Joseph/Eudelin de 98 Jones, William 102 Joseph, Rayappu 176 journalists 174 JVP see Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) Kadirgamar, Lakshman 171 Kalpage, Stanley 182 Kamalasabeysan, K.C. 178 Kanagaratnam, Donald 232 Kanakarayankuḷam 219–20, 219 Kandy 184; Daḷadā Māligāva (Temple or Palace of the Tooth) 81, 82–3, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 171, 172, 184; Dēvāles to Viṣṇu, Nātha and Pattini 81, 83, 84, 87, 88; Jaffna–Kandy road 218–20, 218,

219; St. Paul’s church 81–9, 82, 83, 240; tooth relic 15, 18, 33, 34–5, 209–10 Kandyan Convention (1815) 33, 84, 110 Kandyan Kingdom (1590s–1815) 14–19 Kanniyai/Kanniya 221–4, 221, 222, 223, 224 Kantarodai/Kadurugoda 107, 177, 208–9 Kapferer, Bruce 15 Karunaratne, Nihal 82, 87 Keerimalai Hindu temple 217 Keethaponcalan, S.I. 164, 167 Kemper, Steven 14, 16–17, 18, 110, 119, 121, 122, 200 Kilner, John 29 Kirala Sandēśaya 22, 102 Knighton, William 99, 103 Knott, Kim 2 Knox, Robert 97 Kohomba Kankariya dance 17 Kong, Lily 2, 240 Konneswaram Temple, Trincomalee 225 Korf, Benedikt 149–50 Koṭahēna Riots 79 Kühn, Ernst 103, 240 Kularatne, Gamini 197–8 Kumara, Rohana 174 Kumarasamy, Krishanthy 173 Kumaratunge, Chandrika 146, 171, 179–85 Kumbakarna 152 Kustantīno Haṭana 21 Lambrick, Samuel 32, 49, 84–5 Langdon, Samuel 49 Lanka Maha-Bodhi Society 134 Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) 145, 165 Lankāpatuna Samudragiri Vihāraya 209–11, 209, 210 Lawton, Swaminathan Kanakaretnam 127 Leadbeater, Charles W. 59, 133 Lefebvre, Henri 2 Lewis, J.P. 107 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 1, 153, 167, 169, 170–2, 173–4, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 196–8, 210, 211–12 Liyanage, Sumanasiri 150 LMS see London Missionary Society (LMS) London Missionary Society (LMS) 38n3, 47 Lovamahāpaya, Anuradhapura 105, 117, 125 LSSP see Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP)

Index   251 LTTE see Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Macan-Markar, Marwaan 172 Mackenzie, James Alexander Stewart 71, 86 Madduma Bandara, C.M. 149–50, 184 Madras Museum 147 Mahā Hatana 19 Mahabodhi Society of Sri Lanka 182 Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) 182 Mahāmaṅgala Sutta 36–7 Mahāvaṃsa 16–18, 96, 98, 99, 101, 106, 110, 119, 122, 134–5, 213 Maheswaran, Uma 174 Mahony, Captain 97–8 Maitland, Thomas 46, 48 Manimekhalai 107, 228, 232 Maṅkuḷam 218–19, 218 Manning, William Henry 161 Marks, Philip 61 Maruthanamadam Aanjaneyar Kovil, Inuvil 217, 218 mass graves 172 Massey, Doreen 2 Mēdhānanda Thera, Ellawala 153, 177 Meegama, S.A. 123 Methodist Church 185; see also Wesleyan Methodist missionaries military expenditure 169 Mirisavätiya, Anuradhapura 125, 128, 129, 131, 133 MIRJE see Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) missionary schools 32, 43–62, 85; British educational policy before arrival of missionaries 44–6; Buddhist opposition to 52–3, 57–62; conscience clause 54, 56, 60; intra-Christian competition 54–7; oversight by British administration 54, 56–7, 60–1; ‘Quartermile Clause’ 60–1; Roman Catholic opposition to 53; schools under Dutch rule 44–5; spatial impact of evangelical Protestant missionaries 46–52; see also Buddhist schools Mitton, G.E. 123, 124, 127 Monthly Literary Register, The 105 Morgan, David 3 Moscrop, Thomas 30 Movement for Constitutional Reform 181 Movement for the Defence of the Motherland 155

Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) 166–7, 168, 174 Müller, Edward 102, 127 Muslims 6, 82; Buddhist fear of 227; churches and 77; civilian victims in armed conflict 170; ethnic conflict 161, 163, 166, 175; schools 49, 50 Mutur 220–1 Nāga Vihāra, Jaffna 203–5, 204 Nāgadīpa/Nainativu 205–8, 207, 208 Nagitha, Kadurugamuve 155 Nanayyakara, Vasudeva 184 Narapalasingam, S. 183 Narayan Swamy, M.R. 172 narrative method 5–6 National Bhikkhu Front 178, 184 National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) 155, 180 National Peace Council of Sri Lanka (NPCSL) 185 nationalism 14, 120, 145, 147–50, 151–5, 176–9, 240; see also ethnic conflict; spatial change and competition after armed conflict Negrão, Francis 97 Neiminathan, M. 175, 176 Nicholson, John 26–7, 30 Nimalarajan, Mayilvaganam 174 Nissan, Elizabeth 2, 14, 119, 120, 121, 122–3, 133, 134, 136 Nithiyanandan, V. 167 NMAT see National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) North, Frederic 44, 45–6, 47 Nuhman, M.A. 166 Oakley, William 31, 72, 74, 85, 86, 87, 88, 92n64 Obeyesekere, Gananath 6, 16, 18, 22, 25, 33, 82, 84, 102, 109, 154 Official Language Act see Sinhala Only Act Ondaatje, S.D.J. 74 ontological insecurity 145 open-air preaching 68–9 Operation Edibala 180 Orientalist, The 106 PA see People’s Alliance (PA) Pachchannoormalai 220–1 Padumasiri, Delgalle 155 Pagnaloka Thero, Madille 196 Palm, J.D. 70

252   Index Pannasiha, Madihe 184, 238 pansala schools 45, 46, 49, 57, 60, 62n11, 63n40 Paranavitana, Senarat 109–10, 151, 152, 232 Pararajasingham, Joseph 172, 183–4 peace initiatives 179–85 Peiris, Gerald 82, 84 Peiris, G.L. 181 Peiris, James 161 Peiris, Roshan 182 Pieris, Paul 107, 109, 145 People’s Alliance (PA) 174–5, 179, 180, 183 Pereira, H. 78 Perera, G.F. 123 Perera, Janaka 171–2 Perera, Sasanka 5, 151, 154, 173, 192, 193, 196, 198, 213 Perera, Soma 185 phenomenology of the confessional 4 Philalethes 98, 103 pilgrimages 18, 23n4; to Anuradhapura 117–18, 120, 122–3, 130, 131; postarmed conflict 193, 198, 225–6 Piyatissa Thero, Dehiowita 177, 178 PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) 174, 180 pluralism 4 poems: Alagiyavanna Mukaveṭi 19–21, 238–9; anti-Tamil 22, 102; Sinhala war poems 18–19, 21; vandanā kavi 119 Polonnaruva 99–100, 101, 103–4, 118, 119, 120 Ponnambalam, G.G. 162 Ponnambalam, Kumar 173 Portuguese rule 18–21, 22, 97 Poson riots 136 Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure (P-TOMS) 153, 177, 184, 185 Poulier, J.A. 78, 85 Prabakharan, Velupillai 167 Premadasa, Ranasinghe 171, 177 Presbyterians 74, 85, 86 Prevention of Terrorism Act (1979) 168 Pridham, Charles 99 Protestant missionaries see church building; evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary; missionary schools P-TOMS see Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure (P-TOMS) Pūjāvalī 98, 99

‘Quarter-mile Clause’ 60–1 Race, Alan 4 Rāghavan, Suren 22, 145, 181 Rajanayagam, P. 179, 180 Rajapakse, Basil 202, 230 Rajapakse, Mahinda 1, 193 Rajapakse (Mudeliyar) 98 Rājaratnākarī 98, 99, 106 Rājasiṃha I, King 19–20 Rājasinha II, King 16 Rājāvalī 97, 98, 99, 103, 106 Rājāvaliya 13 Ramachandran, P. 206, 207 Rāmāyaṇa 104 Rasanayagam, C. 107 Rathanasara Nayaka Thera, Hevanpola 181 Ratwatte, Anuraddha 175 Raviraj, Nadarajah 173 Reed, Susan A. 17 republican constitution (1972) 165–6 Rettie, Clare 104 Revatha, Godakumbure 110 Revolt in the Temple, The 147, 238 Rippon, Joseph 78–9 Roberts, Michael 5, 14, 15–16, 18–19, 20, 79, 96, 119, 154, 238 Robinson, Hercules 127 Rodrigo, Paul 80 Rogers, John D. 118 Roman Catholics 6, 21, 25, 38n2, 48, 49, 54; attacks on during ethnic war 176; churches 75, 79, 82, 122, 128, 136, 146, 176; at Dambakola Paṭuna 216–17; delegation to LTTE 185; Koṭahēna Riots 79; opposition to missionary schools 53; schools 57, 59, 61 Royal Asiatic Society 101; see also CBRAS (Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society) rūpas: post-conflict growth of 198–9, 202–3, 211, 212, 226–7, 228, 230; Vavuniya archaeological museum 176–7 Rutnam, James 154 Ruvanvälisäya, Anuradhapura 117, 121, 124, 125–6, 133, 134 Sabarathnan, Sri 174 Sabaratna, S. 107 St. Paul’s church, Colombo 70, 86, 90n2 St. Paul’s church, Kandy 81–9, 82, 83, 240 St. Thomas’ church, Colombo 70, 90n2 St. Thomas’ College, Colombo 57, 61, 73

Index   253 Samarawickrema, E.J. 161 Sambunatha Easwara Sivalayane 215–16, 216 Samitha, Baddegama 155 Saṅghamittā 213, 214, 228, 232 Sassanavaṃsa 98 Satana 174 Saundaranayagam, Ainsley Nimalanayagam 174 Sävul Sandēśa 19–20 Sawers, Simon 102 Schalk, Peter 232 Scheible, Kristin 17–18 Schonthal, Benjamin 148 schools see Buddhist schools; missionary schools Scott, John 55, 60 Seelalankara, Matāra Kitālagama 149 Selkirk, J. 57 Sen, Atreyee 3 Senanayake, D.S. 162 Senanayake, Dudley 165 Seneviratna, Anuradha 152 Sēruvila 110, 193, 201–2, 212–13 Shipstone, John 27–8, 31–2, 78, 91n33 Sigiriya frescoes 106 Silva, Nihal 151 Silva, Sinaris 61 Sinhala Buddhist imaginary 13–23; Aryan/ Dravidan debate 101–11, 239; contesters of 153–5; historiography creation 151–5; Jāthika Chintanaya 148, 150, 154; in Kandyan Kingdom 14–19; in nineteenth century 22–3; under Portuguese rule 19–21; postindependence 145–55; re-ordering demography to assert Sinhala dominance 148–50; significance of ancient cities to 118–20; Tamil as invader paradigm 101–7, 147, 152, 229; Tamil awareness of 229–33; vaṃsa tradition 16–18, 96–101, 103, 106, 184, 239; see also inclusivist subordination within the Sinhala Buddhist imaginary; spatial change and competition after armed conflict Sinhala Buddhist nationalism 14, 120, 145, 147–50, 151–5, 176–9, 240; see also ethnic conflict; spatial change and competition after armed conflict Sinhala Commission of Inquiry 146, 183 Sinhala language 102, 104, 145, 163, 164, 166 Sinhala Maha Sabha (SMS) 162

Sinhala Only Act 163, 164, 240 Sinhala Urumaya 153, 180 Sinhala Veera Vidhana (SVV) 155 Sinhala war poems 18–19, 21 Sinhale Jathika Balamuluwa 196 ‘Sinha le’ movement 195–6 Siriwardena, Reggie 154 Sirr, H.C. 87 Sītāvaka Hatana 19 Sivasundaram, Sujit 4, 119–20, 122 Skinner, Thomas 76, 118, 120 SLES see Sri Lanka Ekiya Sanvidhanaya (SLES) SLFP see Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) SLMC see Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Small, Walter 56, 71, 77 Smither, James G. 100, 117, 121, 125–6, 127, 128 SMS see Sinhala Maha Sabha (SMS) Sobhitha Thera, Omalpe 184 Sobhitha Thera, Maduluwawe 184 Social Scientists Association (SSA) 154 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) 53; churches 72–3, 74, 85, 87, 88; schools 54–5, 56, 61, 62 Soulbury Constitution 162, 186n2 sound, Buddhist strategic use of 78–9, 178–9, 199–200 spatial change and competition after armed conflict 192–235; Buddhicization of sites not linked with Buddhism 221–5, 221, 222, 223, 224; creation of new Buddhist sites 213–21, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219; Dambakola Paṭuna 213–18, 215, 228; expansion of existing vihāras 198–9, 203–5, 204; expansion of sites identified as Buddhist 205–13, 207, 208, 210; government-sponsored spatial changes 193–8, 194, 195; growth of Buddha images (rūpas) 198–9, 202–3, 211, 212, 226–7, 228, 230; Jaffna– Kandy road 218–20, 218, 219; Kanniyai/Kanniya 221–4, 221, 222, 223, 224; Kantarodai/Kadurugoda 208–9; Lankāpatuna Samudragiri Vihāraya 209–11, 209, 210; Nāga Vihāra 203–5, 204; Nāgadīpa/Nainativu 205–8, 207, 208; in North and East 201–25; renovated Hindu temples 215–16, 216, 217–18, 217; Sēruvila 201–2, 212–13; Sinhala perspectives of 225–8; in South 198–201; Tamil perspectives of 228–35; Verugal (Kal-adi) 211–12, 211;

254   Index spatial change and competition after armed conflict continued victory monuments 194–6, 194, 195, 197–8; war tourism 196–8, 197 Spence Hardy, Robert 26, 28–9, 30, 31, 33–5, 39n25, 47, 52, 55, 62n11, 63n14, 63n40, 69, 70, 85, 103, 105, 240 Spencer, Jonathan 14 SPG see Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) spirit religion 27–8, 37 Squance, Thomas 29 Sri Lanka Ekiya Sanvidhanaya (SLES) 182 Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) 165 Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) 175 Sri Sugatha Vihāraya, Maṅkuḷam 218–19, 218 Śri Vikrama Rājasinha, King 84, 102, 109 state of emergency 168 Stephen, James 34 Stirrat, R.L. 14 Stott, Ralph 71 Strategic Foresight Group 169 Subhāṣitaya 20–1 Sugirtharajah, Sharada 240 Sumanasara, Naranvita 125 Sumaṅgala, Hikkaḍuvē 128, 133 Sumangala Thero, Inamaluwe 200–1 Sumedhaṅkara, Dambagasāre 110 Sunday Leader, The 174, 178, 181, 183–4 Sunday Times, The 185 ‘Swabasha’ 145 Swaris, J.C. 182 Tambiah, Stanley 15, 151 Tambiah, Stanley J. 15 Tamil Buddhism 107, 228, 232–3, 235 Tamil Federal Party (TFP) 163, 164, 165, 166 Tamil language 145, 163, 164, 166 Tamil National Alliance (TNA) 173, 230 Tamil Research Conference (1974) 167 Tamil United Front (TUF) 166, 167 Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) 167, 168, 174, 180, 183–4 Tamils 16, 17, 22; anti-Tamil pogrom (1983) 151, 169; anti-Tamil violence (1977) 167–8; archaeological workforce 132; civilian victims in armed conflict 172–4; internal community violence 173–4; perspectives of post-conflict spatial change 228–35; in post-

independence Sinhala Buddhist imaginary 147, 148, 150–1; re-ordering demography and 148–50; Sinhala Buddhist historiography and 151–5; Tamil as invader paradigm 101–7, 147, 152, 229; university entrance examinations and 166–7; see also ethnic conflict; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); spatial change and competition after armed conflict TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization) 174, 180 temple lands, British appropriation of 110–11, 125, 137n7, 147 Temple Lands Commission 125 Temple of the Tooth see Daḷadā Māligāva (Temple or Palace of the Tooth) temporary preaching halls, Buddhist 79–80 Tennekoon, Serena 151 Tennent, James Emerson 78, 122 TFP see Tamil Federal Party (TFP) theology of religions 4 Thiagarajah, Siva 232 Thiranagama, Rajani 174 Thiruchelvam, Neelan 174, 181, 183 Thūpavaṃsa 17 Thurston (SPG missionary) 55, 72–3 TNA see Tamil National Alliance (TNA) tooth relic, Kandy 15, 18, 33, 34–5, 209–10; see also Daḷadā Māligāva (Temple or Palace of the Tooth) tributary overlordship 16, 238 Triggs, A. 58 Trincomalee 86, 165, 170, 172, 177–8, 180, 225 tsunami (2004) 146, 153, 184 Tuan, Yi-Fu 2, 3 TUF see Tamil United Front (TUF) TULF see Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) Turnour, George 17, 96, 99, 101, 103 Twistleton, T.J. (colonial chaplain) 46, 47, 53, 70 Uduwara, Jayantha 213 UNESCO 175 United National Party (UNP) 162, 164, 165, 167, 175, 179, 180, 183, 184, 185 United Trishaw Association 177, 178 university entrance examinations 166–7 University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR) 170, 173, 174, 177 UNP see United National Party (UNP)

Index   255 Upham, Edward 99, 101 UTHR see University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR) Vajira, Kumburugamuve 155 Valentijn, Francois 97, 98, 103 Vallipuram gold plate 109–10, 152 vaṃsa tradition 16–18, 96–101, 103, 106, 184, 239 vandanā kavi poems 119 Vasanthan, Vallipuram 169 Vavuniya archaeological museum 176–7 ‘Vel Bodiya’, Kandy 81 Veluppillai, Alvappillai 167 Verugal (Kal-adi) 211–12, 211 victory monuments 194–6, 194, 195, 197–8 Vidyodaya Piriveṇa 37 vihāras: evangelical preaching close to 69; evangelical Protestant missionary spatial imaginary of 28–9, 30; impoverishment under British 146; post-conflict renovations and expansions 198–9, 203–5, 204; proximity to churches 77–9; schools 45, 46, 49 Vijaya myth 13–14, 17, 97, 98, 104, 106, 109, 152, 154 Vijayarama Dāgäba, Anuradhapura 130

Walters, Jonathon 6 war tourism 5, 196–8, 197 Warren, Christopher 174 Weiss, Gordon 1, 119 Weli Oya Project 166, 170 Wesleyan Methodist missionaries: arrival 38n3, 47; chapels 70–1, 72, 73–4, 75, 77–9, 80, 85; open-air preaching 68–9; schools 47–9, 50, 51–3, 55–6, 57, 58, 59, 61; spatial imaginary 26, 27–8, 29–30, 31–2, 33–4, 36 Wesleyan Mission House, Colombo 70 Wickremesinghe, Ranil 183, 184, 185 Wickremetunge, Lasantha 174 Wijayatunge, Harischandra 148 Wijeratne, Larry 171 Wijeratne, Ranjan 171 Wijetunge, D.B. 148 Wikramasinha, C. 77 Wilberforce, William 47 Wimalasara, Vavuniya 155 Winkler, Ulrich 3 Wood, I. (CMS missionary) 76 Woods, Orlando 2, 240 Yapa, Vimukthi 179 Yogeswaran, M. 174 Yogeswaran, Sarojini 174