It is a text “treasured” by millions of Sri Lankans, Sinhalayaas, in a conscious act of cultural valuation, and it is a text lived out by these same millions of Sinhalayaas, in their daily praxis of community, of life-style, economy, religion, politics, intellectual inquiry and other strands of human activity on this island that is named, in the text, and claimed by us, especially the Sinhalas, as the ‘Dharmadveepa’, ‘Sihaladveepa’ and ‘Thri-Sinhale’. The definitions of our specific civilisational practices, whether it is agriculture, food, symbols, artistic imagery, tradition of science, architecture, historiography itself, etc, derive from the Mahaavangsa and the corpus of related texts and further texts being created by us today in that same style and using its material content. Our works of irrigation today, for example, are perceived and described as being a continuation of the ancient irrigation works of the pre-colonial ‘Sinhala’ kingdoms and chiefdoms.

A noble lady from: Robert Knox. An historical relation of the island Ceylon ... . London : printed by Richard Chiswell , 1681. [Marsden Collection J2/1]

What must also be noted is that there are other, equally powerful, influences on the civilisation that is conceived of as ‘Sinhala’ today – influences on our life-style, our daily practice of community (i.e. our lived self-identification in relation to others), the sciences, economic life, arts, etc. Three major influences can be described as the following:-

(a) Pre-historic tribal civilisations: Even before the currently designated ‘Sinhalayo’ originators settled on the island, there has existed a society that had evoled from the early Stone Age onwards, and by the time of the arrival of the SInhalayo, comprised an established civilisation with a well integrated eco-social system (e.g. village and tank) that seemed to belong to a type of civilisation that straddled both sides of the Palk Straights (i.e. in southern-most India and Sri Lankan islands).

(a) (b) South Indian influence: Throughout the two or more millennia of the evolution of what is now termed ‘Sinhala’ civilisation, there have been influences from South India of which there is some mention in the accepted historical traditions referred to above, but these influences are adequately acknowledged in the modern interpretations of these traditions which tend to give higher value to and, perhaps focus exclusively on, an purely internal (or, indigenous) cultural evolution. These political, economic, social, religious and cultural influences came at various times to varying degrees from regions in South India today identified as Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

(a) (b) (c) Euro-colonialism: A powerful influence was very forcefully and traumatically imposed by three successive European colonial dominations the influence of which has continued almost as powerfully in the post-colonial period. Most significant is the fact that the modern definitions of’ Sinhala’ attribute a central role to a purely (or largely) internal or indigenous socio-cultural evolution without making sufficient acknowledgement of the continuous other (‘external’) influences in a way that would expose the composite nature of the Sinhalayo. Rather than giving an equal weight to the obvious very powerful influences from outside the island, the modern practice of Sinhala identity emphasises primarily an isolated, island-exclusive civilisation.

This historiographical logic then results in a major difficulty experienced by the Sinhalas in recognising the co-existence today of (a) various sub-Sinhala demographic groups as well as (b) other non-‘Sinhala’ ethnic groups, mainly the Tamils and Muslims/Moors/Malays.

Self-Identity

This lack of a pluralist perspective of communal Self (as comprising several closely linked sub-groups) and related Others is in stark contrast to a similar island society in the ‘nation’ of Great Britain. The Sri Lankan social evolutionary experience is, in this aspect, similar to that of Britain and not of Japan or Taiwan or some other off-continental island societies. Just as Britain and its earliest indigenous population of Picts suffered successively or simultaneously very dislocative and powerful external influences via the Saxon, Angle, and Norse invasions, the Roman invasions and the Norman invasion. Today’s ‘British’ people simultaneously also identify themselves as being a composite of, firstly Scots, English and Welsh, and secondly, of mixtures of Nordic, Germanic and Norman (Norse-French) peoples. For the Sinhalayo, however, a linear, very simple, singular composition of ‘Sinhala’ alone and none other is accepted as the civilsational core.

Indeed, the very failure to acknowledge adequately the Euro-colonial influence is a sign of the continued power of European/Western (neo-colonial) influence which encourages the sublimation of that influence in perceptions of other phenomena there by ‘hiding’ it.

Our community’s very self-naming as “Sinhala” is a contemporary, lived, practice of a selective interpretation of this Mahaavangsa text, in fact of its most mythic section, and of other texts that derive from it (the Teeka, Saamanthapaasadikaa, Raajaavaliya, Poojaavaliya, etc). Even if an individual Sinhalayaa has not read or does not read the Vangsa Kathaa, that Sinhalayaa’s life practices are explained through the interpretation of these texts by other Sinhalayaas and, indeed by whole social institutions, including the State, social scientific professions, the Sangha, and other processes of ideological production who derive their moral justifications from this corpus of texts.

In our act of possessing the Vangsa Kathaa as “our” history, we then take possession of all its norms and definitions. Hence, the “Sujana” (in ‘Sujanappasaada-sangvegaththaaya’) that is, “the good people”, are we, the Sinhalayo and defined today in accordance with the simplistic historical interpretations described above. And, the telling of our history is done for our further “pasaadaya” (prasaadaya) and “sangvegaya”. All the Vangsa Kathaa taken together enable us, Sinhalayo, to call ourselves many other beautiful things as well, including being the race of people that protected and nurtured a ‘pure’ form of humanity’s ‘most enlightening’ philosophy (i.e. Buddhism) – ‘most enlightening’ as defined by these texts and interpretations of these texts. Furthermore, the Vijaya legend represents us, Sinhalayaas, as the first humans, the first civilised race, to settle on this island, the previous inhabitants being described as non-human Yaksa and Naaga.

Nationhood - Jaathikathvaya

The discussion above of the social significance of our defined historical legacy, points out the ideological roots of our self-definition. While a key ideological resource is the communal practice of interpretation of specific textual sources, our act of self-definition includes:
(a) the practice of self-loving affirmation of our identity through various favourable descriptions of ourselves (i.e. “sujana”, etc.), and
(b) the simplistic exclusion of other sub-identities (as analysed above) and a consequent weaknsess in our self-definition of our relationship with closely co-existing ethnic groups.

In addition to ‘authorised texts’ and the mass psychology of communal self-love, our definition of our community identity includes the historical narration of a political community, specifically in the form of a State linked exclusively to our community: the political community of ‘Sinhale’ or ‘Tri-Sinhala’.

As shown above, we, the “good” or dharmishta (sujana) Sinhalayo, are very clear and definite in the articulation of our identity as a community and that aspect of identity characterising political community – that is, nationality and nation-hood.

In short, we Sinhalayo, love our selves and our ethnic community (as ideologically defined), and regard ourselves as being the ‘best’ (or greatest) community of humans in the world, and insist that we must have our own nation-state – which we already possess today in the form of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. In these living acts of self-definition, both individually and communally, as well as living acts of the self-love that is a part of that self-definition, we are no different from many other ethnic groups, be they the Americans, English, Indian, or Japanese in their own concrete affirmations of nationhood.

And, in a world where political relations are defined systems of relationships between political entities based on ethno-political communities, be they nation-states, kingdoms or provinces, we, Sinhalayo too, are under the compulsion to fit into the dominant world system by ‘being’ a nation-state – Sri Lanka/Heladiva/Sihaladiva/Hela/Lanka. Given this compulsion, the aspiration for, and retention of nationhood could be seen as perfectly justifiable and a viable practice of political community.

Colonised nationhood

A Vaddah or "Wild Man" from Robert Knox. An historical relation of the island Ceylon ... . London : printed by Richard Chiswell , 1681. [Marsden Collection J2/1]

However, the shape of this political community of nationhood is one that also derives from historical realities that are somewhat beyond the control of the Sinhalayaas. We have inherited, today, a structure of a State that was defined, in its immediate past not so much by us by our European colonial masters. After half a millennium of European colonial domination and manipulation, this island and its communities of people have been subverted, exploited, re-ordered and traumatised to a agree that with withdrawal of the British after the Second World War, we could do little but accept the half-baked, inorganically designed political structure that we were happy to call in 1948 the independent State of ‘Lankaava’ (Ceylon). The fact that we have, since then, tried to reform that State twice already (1972, 1978) indicates the inadequacies of that State in effectively managing the various aspirations for social community on this island of ours.

The simplistic form of ‘nation-state’ left behind by the hurriedly departing British, was convenient to the simplistic self-conception of the Sinhalayo themselves. Given that our self-image is of a ‘pure’ island-exclusive ‘race’ (ethnic group) and refuses to acknowledge the composite nature of our ‘Sinhala-ness’ (Sinhala-kama), the Sinhala defined ‘nation-state’ also fails to institutionally and symbolically accommodate the extremely composite ‘nation’ of people with several different identities that live within the boundaries of that nation-state. Hence the crucial failure of the successive post-colonial Sri Lankan polities (the Dominion State, First and Second Republics) to acknowledge the equal national-cultural significance of Tamils, Veddas, Burghers, Moors, Malays, and others, including the various Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim castes.

In fact, all three efforts at conceiving a ‘State’ were efforts and processes manipulated by the Sinhalayo without adequate regard not only for their own sub-Sinhala complexity, but also for co-existing other (related) ethnic groups. Consequently, the polities that emerged, including the current Second Republic, reflect that simplistic exclusivism. As such polities cannot survive for long without making adjustments to accommodate those previously ignored complexities, we have been experiencing the pangs of the internal crises in all three successive polities – since 1948 itself (When the first Parliament of the Dominion of Ceylon dis-franchised its most productive component of the national population – the Hillcountry Tamils). Today, since eve the succeeding polities not just failed to remedy the problem but worsened it, the crisis is so severe as to bring the very survival of the Sinhala dominated State itself into question.

Post-Colonial Recovery

A principal inadequacy of our post-colonial nation-forming has been the fact that our colonially ravaged society did not have the capacity to engineer its own nation-state structure – either via institutional negotiation or via liberation struggle (as happened in India). Thus the polity of Lankaa in 1948 did not adequately articulate the needs of nationalities in a comprehensive manner. Furthermore, the poorly designed State structure failed to properly contain and channel the currents of nationalism that were stultified by its own (that State’s) structural inadequacies. Thus, despite the seemingly radical shift in policy in 1956 in order to cater more adequately to some of the stultified nationalisms here, the ‘Sinhala Only’ policies have failed to satisfy those same nationalist tendencies.

In our practice of this ethno-political community, in our envisioning and construction of the Sri Lankan Republic and persistent defence of it, we, Sinhalayo, failed to accommodate any parallel and similar ethno-political aspirations of other groups of people living either among us or geographically adjacent to living areas. The political structure of the Sri Lankan Republic orders relations between the numerically large Sinhalayaas and smaller ethnic communities in a non-equitable manner that has marginalises these other ethnic groups and treats them iniquitously in the face of compulsions for all ethnic groups to function as political interest groups requiring equal respect for each other.

It is time that we, Sinhalayo show respect to our true civilisation by recognising our failures in the post-colonial recovery process.