ABSTRACT
This introductory essay argues that transnationally networked religious identity politics in this strategically located island at the centre of the Indian Ocean Silk Route may be viewed as a polyphony that sometimes morphs into cacophony. This was evident in the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks that were mysteriously claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, the literature on post-colonial conflict in Sri Lanka has tended to “island” the study of religion/s and to focus on “internal” conflict and political violence while ignoring a rich historical and present-day multi-religious co-existence and the fact that Sri Lanka is once again in the crosshairs of great power rivalry as a new Cold War emerges in the Indian Ocean region. This has given rise to “soft power” interventions and the weaponization of religions by global-local networks and geopolitical actors. Simultaneously, we trace a disjuncture in recent times in how experts and “natives” think about and construct “religion”, particularly in relation to colonial constructions of the violence of “others”. Rather than view religion as a field of conflict, the chapters of the book draw on rich ethnography to show how religion is primarily about everyday practices of and the protection of self, family and kin, healing, spiritual solace, and importantly, resistance to colonialism, real and perceived, past and present, as much as a search for justice and liberation from the violence of the modern nation-state and its apparently democratic violence, both at the individual and community level.
