Contradictions in Nation-Building: The Story of the Kandyans

Abstract

The evolution of the ‘Kandyans’ of Sri Lanka, now considered a (culturally distinct) part of the country’s Sinhala majority, presents an intriguing puzzle. Even though they currently very much identify with the nationalist imagination and unitary state project of the greater Sinhala collectivity, they were historically the first in the island to forward a federal demand. As such, inquiring into how the Kandyans found it possible to integrate, politico-ideologically as much as materially, to the majority polity promises to be a worthy pursuit. It is even more intriguing when one considers the retention of their cultural distinction from other Sinhalese, notwithstanding politico-ideological integration. In seeking answers to this puzzle, the present study reveals that the plantation economy, administrative restructuring of the island and the choice of Buddhism as the exemplification of the cultural identity of Sri Lanka have been instrumental in the formation as well as subsequent dilution of the Kandyan identity over time. In this equation, the colonial intervention ironically has been crucial in marking the distinction of Kandy’s identity, and—rather unwittingly—its later integration with the larger Sinhala polity as well.