ruptures the linear narrative of conversion that assumes a known or ‘familiar’
ending and looks critically at the complex relationship between evangelical
discourses and the culture of colonialism and the ways in which converts might
subvert missionary agendas.
Mayaram’s work on Muslims (1997), especially the Meos, has problema-
tized several taken-for-granted understandings about Muslim identity and
relationship to the state. Working from a subaltern perspective, she engages
with the oral traditions of the Meos of northwest India as these evoke a
particular self-construction of identity which has, historically, been at threat
by a series of oppressive regimes. Categories of cultural memory, identity and
tradition are treated in a historical perspective and one that is by no means
secure against conflict and control. The transgressive culture of the Meos
survives, but increasingly precariously, on liminal terrain neither absolutely
Hindu nor wholly Islamic.
Buddhism and religious strife in Sri Lanka^1
Scholarly work on religion in Sri Lanka has been mostly undertaken by Sri
Lankan social anthropologists who are resident in the United States and
Western Europe, with a few exceptions. Local scholarship is hard to find, partly
because funding is scarce for social research outside the field of development;
obviously, the study of religion would have low priority. As a result, most
serious studies have been funded by American or European funding agencies.
Social histories and practices within specific religious traditions have been the
focus. As with Hinduism in India, in Sri Lanka Buddhism, the ‘majority’
religion, has been the subject of most studies, whereas Islam has been almost
completely ignored. Both Hinduism and Christianity have received only passing
attention, often not by Sri Lankans or South Asians themselves (see Stirrat
1992; Tanaka 1997).
The person perhaps most closely associated with the study of religion in Sri
Lanka has been Gananath Obeyesekere. His writing has shown the influence
of Durkheimian categories of thought, while later works have been informed
by Freudian psychoanalytic understandings. His most interesting works are
Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience
(1981) and The Cult of the Goddess Pattini(1984). The first was funded by
the University of California San Diego Academic Senate, the Social Science
Research Council, and the National Institute of Mental Health, while the
second received assistance from Wenner Gren, the University of California San
Diego Academic Senate, and the Committee on Research in Humanities and
Social Sciences at Princeton University. Together with Richard Gombrich,
Obeyesekere brought out Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri
Lanka(1988). Sasanka Perera (personal communication) points out that this
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
135
