Religion, Religious Textbooks and Territorialisation of Sinhala Buddhist Ethno-nationalism in Sri Lanka

The idea of ‘homelanď performed a central role in nationalist debates, and particularly majority/ minority societies exercise the concept of the homeland, religion and religious texts to shaped their nationalist discourse and claimed their rights over a given territory. In this context, nationalism and religion can be understood as contested terms, particularly in third world nation-states including countries like Sri Lanka, which has suffered from the three-decades-long civil war between Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian government and minority-Tamil community based separatist movement of LTTE. The formation of Sinhala- Buddhist nationalism carries interesting links with the religion and religious textbooks and based on these Buddhist religious and historical claims the majoritarian political mindset of the Sinhala community believes Sri Lanka is their homeland, and other minority communities are alien for the society. The contemporary, political and security discourse of Sri Lanka has strongly brought these Buddhism and religious texts to claim rights over the territory and galvanised ‘Sinhala-Buddhist rights’ over the popular nationalist movement. In this context, the paper discusses ‘how and why Sinhala nationalist movement strongly shaped by the Buddhist religious values and books’ and the rationale behind the link between Sinhala nationalism and Buddhist religion based on the conceptual framework of “Geopiety.”