Great Grandfather Jayakody's Children: Local History and National Politics in Sri Lanka

Abstract

For religious man, space is not homogeneous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others (Eliade 1959:22). Of the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka today, one might say, For political man, space cannot be homogeneous; he must create interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space must be made qualitatively different from others. Much of recent Sri Lankan politics might be labeled spatial politics, an ongoing conflict in which access to resources of many types is contested in the guise of control over territory. Since the 1950s, Sri Lanka has been governed primarily by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, sometimes at the expense of the Tamil minority. Especially after 1983, when a Tamil attack on a Sinhalese military installation provoked widespread anti-Tamil rioting, looting, and violence in the capital, Colombo, there has been a protracted struggle between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil insurgents who seek a separate Tamil state.1 In this struggle, political power, economic opportunity, and social status have come to be associated with location and control of territory. Even history has been mythologized to conform, the past refashioned to subvent present goals. Archaeologists, epigraphists, and historians might describe centuries richly embroidered by the continual movements of peoples, cultures, religions, and languages between the Middle East, India, and this small island just eighteen miles off India's southern tip, but the public does not agree. Instead, history is a tale about proving who people are today by where their ancestors lived yesterday. In this story, as befits the contentiousness of the present, there is no easy intermingling, but instead a parceling out of time and territory together. The Sinhalese Buddhist rendition of this politicized account has been called the Mahavamsa version (Seneviratne 1989), after the major historiographic text claimed to be its source. In this story, the Sinhalese are a chosen people whose ancestors arrived in Sri Lanka around 250 B.C. They were led by Prince Vijaya who had been banished from his father's kingdom in northern India for youthful misdeeds. The Vijayans are supposed to have overcome savage aboriginals to secure the island in its entirety for Buddhism and civilization for all time. Later heroes in the same text fought off incursions of infidels from southern India to preserve Buddhist ascendancy. This heroic Buddhist saga provides emotional support to Sinhalese claims to island-wide hegemony and underpins the burgeoning pageantry of state Buddhism that accompanies contemporary Sri Lankan politics (Nissan 1988). Opposed to it is a Tamil vision of the island's past, one that employs many of the same elements but values them differently, so that South India provides sources of, rather than threats to, contemporary culture. Ancient place