Avian geographies: An inquiry into nationalist consciousness in medieval Lanka

Abstract

Several researchers made significant efforts to conduct an inquiry into nationalist consciousness in medieval Sri Lanka. Michael Roberts was one of the researchers who attributed racial identification within the Sri Lankan polity to colonial policies of divide and rule. He stated that this thinking was characterized by an opposition to the extreme forms of nationalism expressed in South Asia during the post-independence period based on primordial or essentialist expressions of self-identity and a desire to refute the notion that ethnic conflict was an inevitable result of extended periods of hostility. Roberts offered an alternative history where a racially and religiously marked precolonial..