Catholics, Buddhists, and the Church of England

In his discussion of community formation, Benedict Anderson argues that communal identity is not natural but rather is constructed, dynamic, and fluid. He views identity as imagined by people who are linked together by the print medium, which has the power to consolidate despite great distances or geographic boundaries.' The development of Catholic identity in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country, provides an interesting example of the fluid nature of communalism that Anderson addresses. In this paper, I explore the changing identity of Sri Lankan Catholics in the colonial and postcolonial periods, especially as it appears in the 1992 Kandalama project controversy and the 1883 Kotahena riots. In regard to this, I argue that, although in the present Sri Lankans cast identity predominantly in terms of markers such as Sinhala, Tamil, Burgher, or Moor, only one hundred years ago they cast it in terms of religion. As we shall see, the study of Catholic identity in Sri Lanka affords an interesting instance of the way in which communal identity is constructed and deconstructed in response to various historical exigencies

Ancient history · Sociology · South asia · Sri lanka · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · History · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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