Enchanted: Buddhism, the State, and Modernity in Sri Lanka

Abstract Sri Lanka is immersed in the ideology of Buddhist primacy: “the island belongs to its Sinhala Buddhists, and Buddhism should dominate the state.” Why does this ideology attract? The standard answer is that it justifies the power of the Sinhala Buddhist ethnic group. This article offers a different take through two contestations of modernity. It draws from Sabhyatva Rajya Kara or Towards a Civilisation-State by the Sinhala public intellectual Gunadasa Amarasekara, and the work of post-secular thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, and argues that, along with power, Buddhist primacy attracts because it offers an invitation to join a dignifying, heroic narrative, and a vision of “fullness.” That is, there is more to Buddhist primacy than power. This points to the need for a richer human anthropology, and a fuller account of religion, in studies of religion and constitutions.