Rebirth of a nation or 'The incomparable toothbrush': the origin story and narrative regeneration in Sri Lanka

I examine the post-Independence role of Sri Lanka’s origin story, revealing the ways in which the foundational myth of the Mahavamsa functions as a conflicted site of cultural ‘encompassment’ (Kapferer) in literary and political discourse. Through an analysis of the fiction of Tissa Abeysekara, Carl Muller and the assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, I show how the scripting of this myth in fiction reveals a shift from the celebratory drives of nationalism to a critique of patriotism in a way that both reflects and anticipates a broader paradigmatic shift in the construction of belonging and the outsider found in post-war Sri Lanka

Taking liberties and making liberty: religious bounding and political violence in Sri Lanka

This paper argues that the relationship between religion and violent politics is best understood through a focus on religious practice. The case study of the Tamil Catholic Church within Sri Lanka’s civil war is presented against a back- drop of Buddhist monk participation in violent insurgency decades earlier. The discrete cases evidence a common preoccupation with management of physical borders and discursive boundaries as actors seek to reproduce themselves and their work as legitimately ‘religious’. Despite relying on remaining ‘pure’ from the dirty political realm, in practice religion is bound to social action and reproduced through the violent circumstances it engages