Heritage and Tamil Identity in the Context of Post War Sri Lanka Volume 5 - Issue 3

Cheran Rudhramoorthy*

• Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, University of Windsor, Canada

Received:September 17, 2021   Published: October 19, 2021

Corresponding author: Cheran Rudhramoorthy, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, University of Windsor, Canada

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2021.05.000215

 

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Abstract

I would like to begin with two recent developments in the culture and heritage front in Sri Lanka. In the first, the president of Sri Lanka, a former military officer and the former defence secretary, widely credited for defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), established two Presidential commissions. The first commission named the Presidential Task Force for Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province was established on June 2, 2020. A Buddhist monk Ellawala Medhananda Thero, who was described as “Archeological Chakravarthi” (Emperor of Archeology), in the official Gazette proclamation, was appointed as the chairperson of the task force [1]. The monk says that 99.9 % of archaeological and heritage sites in Sri Lanka are Buddhist . The second Presidential commission was established to amend the old colonial Antiquities Ordinance in order to “strengthen the preservation of antiquities and historical national heritage” [1]. Both commissions are comprised of members of the Buddhist Maha Sangha, Military Officers and a few academics. Both commissions were pan-Sinhala Buddhist commissions. There are no Tamil and Muslim representation in these commissions even though the first commission is exclusively for the Eastern province of the country where Tamils and Muslims form the majority. The department of Archaeology in Sri Lanka now functions under the Ministry of Defense. Thirty-five Institutions including some civilian bodies have come under the ministry of defence now [2]. Since the end of the war in Sri Lanka in May 2009, the government of Sri Lanka has been systematically implementing militarization and Buddhization in the North and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka where Tamils and Muslims are in majority. After the end of the war, the government of Sri Lanka is engaged in a war of cultural and heritage to establish Sri Lanka as a country of and for Sinhalese and Buddhists alone. The warriors in this war are the Military, Buddhist monks, Department of Archeology and the ministry of Environment.

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