National Ideology in Sri Lanka: A Question Concerning Technology, Modernity and the 'West'?
Kanishka Goonewardene

What does the experience of globalization and modernity have to do with Sinhala-Buddhist National Ideology in Sri Lanka^? How can the sudden rise of this nationalism in Sri Lanka be understood as a reaction to - and an accomplice of - the phase of globalization unleashed there with the introduction of neoliberal economic policies in 1977? What bearing does this interaction between National Ideology and globalization have on the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka? This paper proposes to explore these questions by considering National Ideology in Sri Lanka as a cultural-political phenomenon, with a focus on its epistemological claims, political forms and relationship to popular culture - while paying due attention to its political-economic context within a thoroughly interdisciplinary theoretical framework.

The urgency of these questions in Sri Lanka and in its Canadian diaspora can hardly be overstated. National Ideology is now a prime obstacle in the difficult search for peaceful solutions to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict within a liberal-democratic framework. The political and theoretical significance of the questions raised here, however, extends well beyond Sri Lankan affairs and lies at the heart of our efforts to understand the relationships between globalization, modernity and cultural identity The form and content of National Ideology thus begs scrutiny in a comparative perspective - by way of four questions. Under what political-economic conditions did it emerge in Sri Lanka? What are the epistemological premises and cultural (Sinhala-Buddhist) aspects of its critique of globalization, modernity and the 'West'? What political forms are assumed - or implied - in its critique of liberalism? How does National Ideology articulate itself as a hegemonic worldview in Sri Lankan popular culture and in the public sphere? These questions wi1l be addressed primarily through a content analysis of archival materials pertaining to the discourse of National Ideology in Sri Lanka and a close reading of its formulation in recent Sinhala fiction, particularly in the oeuvre of Gunadasa Amarasekara, by following the example of cultural criticism set in Raymond Williams's incomparable classic The Country and the City. In so doing, this paper will offer a new contribution to our inquiries into 'social cohesion in a globalizing era', or, in Berman's words, the 'struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world'.