Buddhist Reformist Movement in Sri Lanka Under the British Rule: Manufacturing of ‘Buddhist-Modern’ Subjects

Abstract

The Buddhist reformist movement of nineteenth century Sri Lanka was a composite of wealth and the knowledge of the emerging local middle-class. The new middle class owned trades and industries, which facilitated the vast colonial economy. The Buddhist reformist movement, constituted of the new middle class, was engaged in manufacturing Buddhist-modern subjects to fill the emerging need for the modern labour force. The movement established regulated institutions—schools, industrial schools, work plants—which produced docile bodies. The movement created an ideology through a plethora of publications both in local and English language to sustain the forming socio-economic structures. The reformist movement crawled into the spaces where surveillance is difficult and started changing those spaces and people according to the new market structures. New ‘scientific’ institutional models from the West were introduced to the island, fusing them with Buddhism. The new elites empowered with wealth were searching for power, in local entities, where the caste was still prominent, and in the British spaces, where the race was prominent. Against this background, the growing middle class devised a governing mechanism that could be acceptable by both Western and local groups—making of Buddhist modern subjects.