ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to illustrate an argument about the primary sources of day-to-day religious innovation and change in Sri Lanka’s upcountry. It argues that four primary factors influence the kind of change that so shocked our mother on that sad day when the god’s chariot did not come forth. These were the continuing role of migration in the lives of upcountry people; the complex history of change on Sri Lanka’s plantations as such; the ethnic conflict that had surrounded Upcountry Tamils since 1948, when colonial Ceylon became independent; and post-war political and socio-economic changes that have affected Sri Lanka as a whole. In addition to suffering oppression inherent within the plantation system, Upcountry Tamils have been subjected to state-level systematic discrimination since 1948 when Sinhalese nationalists in the newly independent state’s parliament passed the Citizenship Act. Only a handful of estate Tamils continue to worship the deities of their abandoned temple, and most Hindu ritual practices have disappeared.
