As is the case in many other countries that underwent a similar experience, the encounter with the European colonialism

from the sixteenth century onwards, has had a profound impact on the formation of Sri Lanka as a modern nation state, introducing far reaching structural changes, reorienting its sense of direction and, above all, integrating it with a global political system. That the British were by far the most influential, out of the three main European nations that sought their colonial expansion in Sri Lanka, was propelled by the fact that they became the first European nation that managed to take complete control of the island, unifying it under the British rule. Among the most consequential of developments, resulted by the pervasive structural changes introduced by the British, were the reconstitution of clearly demarcated ethnic identities within Sri Lanka and the polarization of the Sri Lankan polity along strong ethnic lines. The central concern of this essay is examining the process that eventually led to the formation of these ethnic identities, the central characteristics they possessed and the consequences they had on the Sri Lankan society at large. Understanding this process is of central significance, not only to understand the historical development of the Sri Lankan state and society during the colonial time, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to understand the political configuration of the contemporary Sri Lankan society. For it is still the prevalent assumption, hegemonic in the nationalistic imagery in Sri Lanka that the Sinhalese, if one adopts the point of view of the majority, are a community endowed with an uninterrupted history of more than two thousand years and that the dominance they enjoy as a result of their numerical majority within a parliamentarian democratic system based on the rule of majority, is widely regarded as nothing less than the rightful historical destiny of the Sinahalese community. The inevitable consequence of exclusion experienced by other communities, subordinated under rule of the numerical majority, and the demands of these communities for political independence are primarily dismissed on this historical narrative that unify the destiny of the Sinhalese to that of Sri Lanka. In this context, there is perhaps no urgent a task than the one of examining how these predominant ethnic identities were largely shaped by the colonial experience. There is an abundance of historical evidence that shows how the caste identity, and not the one of ethnicity, played the central role in the hierarchical power structure of the pre-colonial Sri Lanka, even if one can find the evidence of the usage of terms such as Sinahala and Damela

during that time. Perhaps the key change that was resulted by the structural changes introduced by the colonial powers, especially the British, was the displacement of caste as the central category of identity and its replacement by the category of ethnicity and race. This emergence and reconstitutions of new collective identities, however, did not begin with that of ethnicity. Being under the Portuguese and the Dutch rule for almost three centuries the coastal areas of Sri Lanka already had a significant Christian community by the time the British entered the island. In response to the intolerant policies of the European colonizers towards the established religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, many of its religious leaders as well as lay believers had fled to the inner parts of the country, outside European domination. In response, one can see the revivalist programmes emerging from the local communities upholding their religious identity. One can see here, for the first time, religious communities defining their religious self-identity in relation to each other giving rise to a novel sense of collective identity among the indigenous population. Around the same time one can notice the regional difference between those indigenous communities living in the coastal areas, predominantly under the European colonizers, and, those living in the inner parts of the island, mainly under the rule of the Kandyan kingdom, solidifying into distinct collective identities. This too, it is clear, is a direct consequence of the colonial experience insofar as the communities living under the colonial rule were recognized as a hybrid collectivity separated from the up-country Sinhalese who remained true to the cultural heritage of the country. Once again, the important point to be noted is that the authenticity claimed by the up-country population was a reactionary one based on their distinct identity from the lowcountry populations, rather than being an originary point of departure. One must add to these emerging new collective identities, that were changing the population in the country, the new community of Eurasians resulted by the intermarriages between the Europeans and the locals, and, the plantation labourers that British rulers brought in to the country from India and were settled in the central areas of Sri Lanka. The most far-reaching of these changing patterns of identity formation came forth, however, with the British taking control of the entire island and their need to introduce an administrative system to make Sri Lanka a self-sufficient colony, capable of generating surplus of wealth to the empire. Naturally this meant that European methods and techniques such as censuses and maps were

adopted to classify and categorise the people and society of Ceylon and to locate the population corresponding to these classifications and categorisations. Broadly speaking, this process has twofold consequences. On the one hand, census reports produced from 1814 onwards experimented with various categories. As a result the predominant categories of classifications that the Europeans had inherited as well as through their own interpretations of local systems, the population was increasingly divided into ethnic, religious and regional groups. The identities of Sinhalese and Tamils were gradually taking the centre stage in this process, and these identifications were mirrored back onto the population where they were increasingly acknowledged as the accurate classification of the various collective identities within the society. This process was further strengthened by the historiography of the European scholars. Discovery of ancient chronicles such as Mahawansa and their translation into English helped the historians based on these European classifications to consolidate the imagined historical continuity of these emerging new identities. On the other hand, and perhaps even more importantly, in their attempt to make Sri Lanka an independently functioning colony capable of self-sustenance they required the participation of the local population in the administrative and governing bodies. The political and administrative changes that the 1832 Commission suggested, laid the foundation for a unitary state based on a political system that involved the native population in its legislative bodies. Significantly the members of the indigenous population appointed to the legislative council as unofficial members were chosen on communal basis thus establishing the irrecoverable link between the ethnic politics and the state in Sri Lanka. The natives were represented by low country Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers with three other Europeans as unofficial members of the legislative council. During the next seventy years, the only change that was made was to appoint two unofficial members to represent Kandyan Sinhalese and the Moor/Muslim community. The formation of collective identities, thus established through the mechanisms of European classifications and confirmed by their role in the process of state building, was also seen as the medium through which the native population could imagine their opposition to the colonial rule. Immediate cause of understanding ethnicity as a paradigm of resistance resides in the significant fact that these identities were always recognized, and further strengthened by European historians, as historical continuities long preceding the colonial configuration of Sri Lanka.

One significant detail that can often be overlooked but clearly challenging the imagined continuity of the ethnic identities is the dress code introduced by the British. By legally recognizing what the British perceived to be the traditional attire of the local population they not only confirmed the emerging new identities but also bestowed on them a sense of tradition that did not comply with plausible historical accounts. Same argument can be easily extended to many other cultural spheres where the essence of the authentic ethnic identity were formed in relation, or direct opposition, to the colonial master but were practically recognized as one of reviving an original past that had been lost due to the colonial intervention. Nowhere is this evident than in the gender relations where the role of the woman is recognized as the bearer of this endangered tradition, clearly establishing the significance of gender relations in identity formation during the colonial period. Various nationalistic movements began to emerge based on these newly established identities, initially in their opposition to the British rule, and more generally, against the English way of life. Emerging as cultural revivalist movements with a strong religious fervor, these movements used various cultural spaces as well as new technologies of publication and distribution to reach a wider audience. One important tendency of this cultural nationalism was the increasingly discriminatory attitude it adopted not only towards the British, but even more so towards the Tamils and communities acknowledged as its other. These latter communities were perceived as foreigners to the island and Sinhalese were recognized as the original settlers. In response, similar sentiments were expressed by the Tamil nationalistic movements in the opposite direction. In their attempt to think through the experience of being colonised by a culture and a politic that they found alien to them, and in their need to address the related concepts of independence, selfgovernance, and resistance, they were, both consciously and unconsciously, forced to redefine their identities in tune with, and in opposition to, their colonial masters. They found solace in the ideas of race, religion, language and culture as indicators for demarcating ethnic and national boundaries, thus paving the way, in a certain sense, for an even more devastating division in their very midst. By ignoring the shared cultural and historical aspects of their past, the colonized became the colonizer by initiating the politics of exclusion.