Table of Contents:
  • Introduction : the power of the past / Jonathan Spencer
  • Colonialism, history and racism. The generation of communal identities / Elizabeth Nissan and R.L. Stirrat
  • The people of the lion : the Sinhala identity and ideology in history and historiography / R.A.L.H. Gunawardana
  • Historical images in the British period / John D. Rogers
  • The politics of the Tamil past / Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam
  • History at a moment of crisis. Nationalist rhetoric and local practice : the fate of the village community in Kukulewa / James Brow
  • A compound of many histories : the many pasts of an east coast Tamil community / Mark P. Whitaker
  • Rural awakenings : grassroots development and the cultivation of a national past in rural Sri Lanka / Michael D. Woost
  • The politics of the past. J.R. Jayewardene, righteousness and realpolitik / Steven Kemper
  • Newspaper nationalism : Sinhala identity as historical discourse / Serena Tennekoon
  • Afterword : scared places, violent spaces / E. Valentine Daniel.