Multi-religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka: Innovation, Shared Spaces, Contestations. Edited by Mark P. Whitaker, Darani Rajasingham-Senanayake and Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran. 2022. ISBN 9780367862343. Published September 27, 2021 by Routledge. 286 Pages
This edited volume arrives at an opportune time in so far as its theme is concerned. Instead of focusing exclusively on framing, theorising, and analysing violence or conflict, which has now become a very tiresome approach, the volume pushes the borders of marking the limits of academic imagination in general to explore the multi-religiosity in contemporary Sri Lanka broadly. Some of the volume contributors investigate the island’s multi-religiosity in a sophisticated and multi-layered manner.
The volume is edited by Mark P. Whitaker, Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran. The contributors to the volume are Eva Ambos, Malathi de Alwis, Neena Mahadev, Anton Piyarathne, Alexander McKinley, Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran, Selvy Thiruchandran, Kalinga Tudor Silva, H.L. Seneviratne, Sasikumar Balasundaram, Mythri Jegathesan, Dennis B. McGilvray, Harini Amarasuriya, Dominic Esler and Jude L. Fernando. However, in the present review I explore some of the chapters as per my preference as often necessitated by reviews of edited volumes.
Religious Interfaces
Religions and beliefs meet each other in Sri Lanka. In some instances, these religions and beliefs interact and overlap with one another. The volume explores several religious interfaces, including St. Anne’s Church, Kochikade, Siripada, Madhu Church, and Kataragama. These spaces utilise innovative methods and have created space over time to build religious interfaces. According to some of the chapters, the growth of these multi-religious places may be attributed to various factors, including post-war circumstances, the advancement of communication technology, and greater social media use. Some religious festivals such as Christmas, Vel and Vesak are celebrated by the people across religious boundaries.
The neayakku, nagas, buthayas, prethasor hungry ghosts exist across not only the cosmologies of Buddhists and Hindus but also of the Veddas. While much has been written in recent years about “internal” ethno-religious violence, borders, and barriers, the essays in this collection prove that living with and navigating multi-religiosity is a part of everyday life in modern Sri Lanka.
Divine eyes
The chapter, ‘Divine Eyes on the Sorrows of Lanka: Post-war Devotion to Pattini-Kannaki by Malathi de Alwis, is an excellent piece of ethnography, in which she analyses the Pattini-Kannaki devotion in post-war Sri Lanka. She examines faith practices linked to the cult of Pattini-Kannaki through the harrowing experiences of devotees and the tremendous societal upheavals that took place during and after the battle against terrorism, particularly in the Northern part of the island.
The author draws a connection between the war widows, wives, and mothers of disappeared, women-headed households and the expansion of Kannaki-Pattini worship in the country. She also emphasises how Muslims and Catholics also worship Kannaki-Pattini and are possessed by her.
The first sections of the piece explore how these Pattini-Kannaki temples were subjected to many attacks at various times. Initially, colonials assaulted and destroyed the shrines. The three decades of battle, traumatised, wounded, and murdered devotees, ritual performers and practitioners, damaged or destroyed sacred symbols and worship sites. Kannaki-Pattini devotees had to flee during the battle due to advancing troops, activities of militants, continuous shelling, or because crucial areas of passage were declared high-security zones.
Annual Kannaki-Pattini festivities in the Eastern Province were commonly used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to enlist minors. The chapter analyses the stories from different locations about how Pattini-Kannakiis supposed to have protected those villages from Tsunami or violence.
The Kataragama padayatra Pilgrimaging with ethnic “others” by Anton Piyarathne is a thought-provoking piece, where the author has walked with the pilgrims for eight days. The chapter focuses on pilgrims led by hundreds of God Murugan worshippers to Kataragama Devalaya. The devotees walk for many days to participate in the most significant religious celebration of The Devalaya, which lasts for 15 days. During the pilgrimage, the followers of Murugan interact with and help each other regardless of their religion. The author navigates through the travellers’ transitory destinations at Okanda, Panama, and Kabilittha, and attempts to comprehend these sites based on folk histories.
While the text’s ethnographic thickens is commendable at a time engaged field work in Sri Lanka is becoming rare, I was expecting to learn more about the researcher’s experiences with the hikers; the untold stories of the Murugan followers. A more nuanced theoretical engagement with the material would have done much more justice to the chapter.
Negotiating religion
Conversions, fixing faith, and material investments on Sri Lanka’s Tea plantation sector by Mythri Jegathesan explores Vasanthi’s life and trajectories within a framework where religion is being negotiated with economic and social factors. The author has based her analysis on the life of Vasanthi, who she had encountered in her research and has written on how she interacted and engaged with different religious domains in her life history. Vasanthi has worked as a domestic worker for a Muslim family, a Tamil family and for a Christian pastor and his family at different times.
As Vasanthi’s life got messier with an alcoholic husband and a constantly unwell daughter, her faith grew for Christianity. Vasanthi’s eldest son was to sit for the A/L examamination and studied with the help of the Church. However, her son died drowning in the nearby reservoir. With that traumatic personal experience, Vasanthi’s faith changed. Presenting herself as a Hindu or a Christian is not completely based on ‘faith’ as far as Vasanthi is concerned. She negotiates her faith with the life trajectories.
The book is based on a conference titled, ’Innovative Religiosity in Post-War Sri Lanka, which was held in July 2017 at the Open University of Sri Lanka. The volume has three introductions from the three editors, Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran, Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, and Mark Whitaker, which is unusual and is, in fact, quite strange going by global norms for edited volumes. The volume’s attention is dispersed throughout the three introductions. Some of the wealthy scholarship has not been carefully harnessed and tend to be lost as a result of poor editing.
This rupture in editing and compiling is also very evident in the extremely varying quality of the chapters from what they purport to add to scholarship to significant ruptures and miscommunication in language.