Post-war Blood: Sacrifice, Anti-sacrifice, and the Rearticulations of Conflict in Sri Lanka
Since 2009, in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's ethnic war, certain contingents of Sinhala Buddhists have lodged attacks against religious minorities, whom they censure for committing violence against animals in accordance with the dictates of their gods. Considering these interventions against sac...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Berghahn
[2019]
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| In: |
Religion and society
Year: 2019, Volume: 10, Issue: 1, Pages: 130-150 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Sri Lanka
/ Civil war
/ Post-war period (motif)
/ Buddhism
/ Intolerance
/ Sacrifice
/ Religious minority
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| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AX Inter-religious relations KBM Asia |
| Further subjects: | B
Pluralism
B Buddhist Modernism B Violence B post-war Sri Lanka B Sacrifice B political cosmology B Vitality B inter-religious conflicts |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Since 2009, in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's ethnic war, certain contingents of Sinhala Buddhists have lodged attacks against religious minorities, whom they censure for committing violence against animals in accordance with the dictates of their gods. Considering these interventions against sacrifice in spaces of shared Hindu and Buddhist religiosity, this article examines the economies of derogation, violence, and scapegoating in post-war Sri Lanka. Within Sinhala Buddhism, sacrifice is considered bio-morally impure yet politically efficacious, whereas meritorious Buddhist discipleship is sacrificial only in aspirational, bloodless terms. Nevertheless, both practices fall within the spectrum of Sinhala Buddhist religious life. Majoritarian imperatives concerning postwar blood impinge upon marginal sites of shared religiosity—spaces where the blood of animals is spilled and, ironically, where political potency can be substantively shored up. The article examines the siting of sacrifice and the purifying majoritarian interventions against it, as Buddhists strive to assert sovereignty over religious others. |
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| ISSN: | 2150-9301 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2019.100110 |