ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka has been the meeting point of many ideologies and ways of being. This has spelt heterogeneity, syncretism and conflict. In drawing upon the practices of empirical research promoted by Western intellectual traditions, the author demonstrates the strengths of these practices through his contextualised engagement with the pogroms of 1915 and 1983, as well as other incidents, as at the same time he delineates some of the limits of empiricist rationality.
This book is replete with rich ethnographic detail and serves as an exercise in historical anthropology which illuminates Sri Lanka's political culture. It not only opens out the contrast between Western and Indian world views, but also explores the human condition by bringing out the immediacy surrounding acts of victimisation and human beings in conflict.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |54 pages
Introduction
part |91 pages
Past and Present
chapter Chapter Four|16 pages
“Caste Feudalism”? A Critique Through the Asokan Persona and European Contrasts 1
part |168 pages
The Particular and the General
chapter Chapter Seven|33 pages
The Imperialism of Silence under the British Raj: Arresting the Drum 1
chapter Chapter Eight|30 pages
Mentalities: Ideologues, Assailants, Historians and the Pogrom against the Moors in 1915 1
chapter Chapter Nine|36 pages
‘I Shall Have You Slippered’: The General and the Particular in an Historical Conjuncture
chapter Chapter Ten|20 pages
Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhala Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation 1
part |24 pages
Evocations: A Contrast