Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon, by Ronit Ricci

Abstract

The practice of banishment, an imperial tool for coercing mobility as a form of discipline or punishment, has been an important force in driving diaspora creation and cultural diffusion across the Indian Ocean world. The experience of physical, social and emotional distance from their place of origin led banished exiles and their descendants to transplant and transform beliefs and practices from their homeland in the process of making sense of, and adapting to, new environments. Ronit Ricci explores these processes with reference to a variety of manuscripts preserved by the descendants of Malay exiles and the community they created in Ceylon, later Lanka, where they were banished by the Dutch and British empires. Ricci’s book traces the creation of that community—now known as the ‘Sri Lankan Malays’—back to its origins in the lives of rebellious royals and their retinues, as well as religious leaders, convicts, slaves and troops transported or stationed there from the Indonesian archipelago and Malay Peninsula. Arriving in the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, these exiles and their descendants have, according to Ricci, repeatedly reimagined their place of exile and the ‘routes and roots’ connecting it with both their homelands and the Holy Lands of the Middle East. In her discussion of texts by and about these exiles, Ricci shows how they have mobilised ‘traditions, histories, and attachments’ to construct a sense of belonging in displacement. By preserving, telling and retelling these narratives, this community has actively shaped the ‘experiences and affiliations’ of successive generations, along with the way its history has been remembered in sites and signs around contemporary Colombo and other parts of Sri Lanka.