5: Nationalizing Ceylon: Nationalist and Socialist Responses to Colonial Spaces

5 Nationalizing Space: Nationalist and Socialist Transformations of Sri Lanka Adaptations to the colonial society and space in Ceylon, discussed in the previous chapter, were complemented by challenges to the colonial system, and these became most visible from the 1930s. In this chapter I explore the spatial constitution of these challenges, particularly by the socialists and nationalists, whose politics were dominant in the national political arena between the mid-1950s and the1970s. I also investigate a new development in the field of architecture, critical vernacularism, which also became prominent in the 1970s. As colonialism and capitalism are worldwide phenomena, the challenges to these also cause global effects. It is within, and as part of, this context that Sri Lankan challenges to both these systems are investigated.

Anti-Systemic M ovements and the W orld-Wide System of States W ith the stepping up of socialist and independence struggles in the 1910s and 1920s, the movements going against the grain of the system, anti-systemic movements, expanded both in number and in their sphere of influence, posing a formidable threat to the world-society and space centered upon western Europe.

The powerful image of the European states was greatly weakened by the Japanese defeat of Russia in 1904-5 and also, during two world wars, by the specter of “white men killing each other by the most horrific means scientific minds could devise.� 1 The Second W orld W ar also provided the conjuncture in which colonial controls became weaker than they had ever been. 2 This context provided the opportunity for the culmination of anti-colonial struggles.

As discussed previously, Ceylon’s alternative to being a colony was restricted to becoming a member of the system of so-called sovereign states. This world-wide system of states was, however, not the inevitable outcome of the colonized societies gaining self-determinancy but the one that was swiftly fixed by the core states. As 123

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Gellner has argued, “Nations are not inscribed into the nature of things, they do not constitute a political version of the doctrine of the natural kinds. Nor were national states the manifest ultimate destiny of ethnic or cultural groups.” 3 The system of nation-states was legitimated through the construction of world organizations, particularly, the United Nations Organization and its predecessor, the League of Nations. These organizations were, however, created prior to most of the states in the periphery. Instead of post-colonial states participating in the production of a system of states, or an alternative to the modern state, they were recruited into preconstructed positions. Independence was, therefore, a controlled process, best defined as decolonization. In this sense, the Euro-US construction of a world-wide interstate system has been the continuation of the European (and the American) bourgeoisie creating a world after its own image--as Marx once said.4 This new polity represents a particular compartmentalization of the world into states, reducing these to knowable, manageable, and controllable territorial units represented as a politically homogeneous jig-saw puzzle. The far-reaching hegemony such notion has achieved is exemplified by the constant effort of the Peoples Republic of China to join the United Nations, especially since it was not only marginal in the west European system but also claimed to be breaking away from the capitalist world.

Beyond their representation as equal, these states have not been equal in any sense. According to Jackson, what the states in general “received” was a “negative sovereignty,” the power to act within a particular territory, supposedly unobstructed by other states.5 Yet west European states possessed “positive sovereignty” that went beyond the boundaries of the state, and they employed it relentlessly over the extra-European peoples. Moreover, the contemporaneous development of international organizations and transnational corporations has created an extensive and dense network of pecuniary and non-pecuniary exchanges which no single state can control unilaterally and, more importantly, from which no state can attempt to “delink” except at exorbitant costs.6 This worldview also regulated the objectives of independence movements, for which prospective states were largely “given”--or taken for granted--within colonial states, or simply left by them, for example, Siam (now Thailand). Independence was, therefore, a paradoxical situation of recruiting subjects to these already given states, and at the same time attempting to construct a “nation.” Hence, the new system of states established at the end of the principal European colonial era produced another wave of dehistoricization and defamiliarization of space for the extra-European peoples. Ethnic rivalry and separatism, addressed below, are manifestations of the disorientation among “post-colonial” peoples brought about through this defamiliarization of space.

The Bolshevik victory in what became the Soviet Union had become a principal source of inspiration for both working class and nationalist movements. Yet the core capitalist powers had managed the communist challenge to the system by incorporating and institutionalizing it into a duality, the so-called Cold W ar. The overdetermination of this duality between the 1950s and 1980s compelled every

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political movement to identify with and be conditioned by either the US model of “democracy,” or the Soviet model of “communism,” suppressing any political space outside this duopoly.

The hegemone, the United States, also opted to reorganize the world-economy.

The US interest was in dissolving the protectionism of imperial powers and in improving exchanges, a primary means of which was the Bretton W oods Agreement of 1944. This agreement provided for the increased flow of currency across national boundaries, especially US Dollars, making the transfer of “values” and capital accumulation in the core, particularly in the United States, smoother than ever before. Moreover, two basic institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the W orld Bank, were also founded in this process; the first was mainly responsible for the stabilization of exchange and the maintenance of international financial discipline and the latter, for rebuilding the economies of “undeveloped” countries.7 Nonetheless, the “post-colonial,” post-W ar world was much more diverse and fragmented, not only in regard to the number of political centers, but also the meaning of these centers. This process of multiplication of political centers and their particular groupings, in addition to the capitalist-communist duality, is evident in the emergence of “third forces,” for example, the Non-Aligned Movement, regional cooperations like pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism, alternative centers of communism such as the Peoples Republic of China, and multiple ethnic and religious centers, some later resorting to so-called “fundamentalism.” These “third models” were, however, ambivalent, largely because, on the one hand, they challenged the existing political order, yet on the other hand, they were organized and derived their meanings from the Cold War and the inter-state system.

Nonetheless, they represented the incompleteness of the US-USSR duality.

In this sense, if the Iberian expansion of the late fifteenth century, in effect, had the potential towards the homogenizing of world-space, from about the 1880s, that same world-space had begun to fragment. This became evident in every restructuring of the world-space, especially in the 1940s and, again, in the 1980s.

The political space of the world after the 1940s was to be constituted of a complex combination of capitalist-core, semi-periphery, and periphery; metropoles, colonial states, colonies; “democratic,” “communist,” non-aligned, and later fundamentalist states, and many other forms intertwined and interacting with each other. If imperial city structures connected colonial port cities to their respective metropole, the independence of a large number of societies not only multiplied the centers of political power, but also diversified the inter-city relationships.

Cultural Challenges to Colonialism Before any political party, the Buddhist establishment had been a principal challenger of colonialism and had also provided the inspiration for such challenges.

Its survival and continuity, however, required the restructuring of its institutions and practices. According to Malalgoda, these transformations did not affect the essential doctrinal ideals of Theravada Buddhism in any significant way.8 Hence,

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what we see here is a particular continuity and change. In this section, I examine the spatial impact of the restructuring of Buddhism as part of its struggle against and survival under colonialism.

In the Low Country, the removal of the sangha from royal patronage began in the sixteenth century with the conversion of the crown prince of Kotte, Dharmapala, to Roman Catholicism, his transfer of Buddhist temple villages to the Franciscans and, subsequently, the bequest of his kingdom to the King of Portugal after his death. At the same time, keeping Buddhism alive, the King of Kandy warmly received the Buddhist monks, bhikkus, who fled from the Portuguese-ruled areas and endowed them with new temples and land grants. The British conquest of Kandy deprived the sangha of any royal patronage. In addition, under three colonial regimes, Buddhism was also subjected to competition from various forms of Christianity which received the support of the colonial state.9 Changes in colonial state policy and the conflicts between different Christian faiths had helped the Buddhists to reorganize their religious activities in the LowCountry. The broad-based transformation of Buddhism and its organization that took place in the late nineteenth century has been addressed by scholars such as Gananath Obeyesekere, Kitsiri Malalgoda, and Richard Gombrich which need not be repeated here. 10 Obeyesekere argues that Buddhism was transformed in the late nineteenth century (1860-1885) into what he calls “Protestant Buddhism,� in regard to its protest against British colonialism in general and Protestant Christian missionaries in particular. This transformation was largely an urban phenomenon, in which the Buddhist leadership became more socialized, blurring the former distinction between the sangha and the laity. Malalgoda argues that the laity not only became increasingly involved in religious activity but also, from the 1880s, displaced monks from some of their traditional positions of religious leadership.11 The main outcome of the collapse of the Govigama (caste) monopoly of religious life and the entry of non-Govigamas into religious activity was the expansion of the religious sphere, including an increase in the number of sects, monks, as well as temples.

The protest against colonialism and Christianity was also the process in which, and for which, Buddhism acquired many W estern Christian attributes. The formation of a Buddhist Theosophical Society, invention of a flag, incorporation of songs modelled on Christmas carols, sending of cards during Vesak celebrations, organization of Sunday Schools and catechism classes, and the use of English are some examples of this influence. The new Buddhist mission schools, sponsored by the Buddhist Theosophical Society--founded by Olcott--and the Mahabodhi Society --founded by Dharmapala--also adopted the model of Christian missionary public schools, whether in regard to cricket or the curriculum.12 Spatially, these Christian and colonial influences are evident in making Colombo the principal site for Buddhist protest activities. Although the southern city of Galle was developing as the B uddhist center of the Low-Country in the eighteenth century, a century later, Colombo and its vicinity had become the locus of Buddhist organizational activity. This is evident in the reinforcing and revitalization of

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temples at Kotte and Kelaniya, both former Lankan seats of power close to Colombo, the building of temples in Colombo itself, the establishment of missionary schools, and the reinforcing of monastic educational institutions, piriven, such as the Vidyalankaraya and V idyodaya in the vicinity. The contest with Christianity also provoked the establishment of their main printing presses, publishing houses, and new organizations like the Society for the Propagation of Buddhism, Mahabodhi Society, Young Mens Buddhist Association, and “mission�

Schools, such as Ananda in Colombo. Nonetheless, since Buddhism was not privileged by the patronage of the political authority, its presence in Colombo was not conspicuous. 13 This surge in Buddhist activism in cities, and in the Low Country at large, should not confuse the fact that Buddhism was largely operative in villages. The sangha were overwhelmingly recruited from villages, and the villagers were more closely acquainted with their local Buddhist monks. As in the process of protest in which Buddhism acquired many Christian characteristics, in socializing its own institutions Buddhism was also influenced by local beliefs and worldviews. This was largely a rural phenomenon, where the expansion of Buddhism in villages made the bhikkus engage in astrology, local medicinal systems (Ayurveda), traditional approaches to designing and locating buildings (vastu vidya), and even in so-called supernatural interventions, such as bali, thovil, and huniyam. As in missionary activity, the temple became closely associated with the laity in particular areas supporting not only their spiritual needs, but also aspects of day-to-day life. As in

FIGURE 5.1 The Buddhist landscape: Ruwanveliseya at Anuradhapura.

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the Christian organization of space in terms of parishes and dioceses, the temple became the center of a particular group of dayakas who in turn supported it, including the provision of food (dana) for monks.14 Transformations can also be seen at the level of households and dwellings. The introduction of a place of worship as the prayer room, also introduced new divisions between the sacred and profane into dwelling spaces. This was constructed through the use of (Buddha) statues and pictures, the adding of another ritual of offering flowers and food resembling the Christian offering of one tenth of produce to the church. Moreover, rituals such as chanting pirith and alms giving in houses, in both cases inviting bhikkus (priests) to one’s residence, also became institutionalized.

In addition to the restructuring of “national” as well as its own space, Buddhism has also been a major contemporary source of historic built forms. Since key temples formed a part of the former religio-royal landscape, their survival has contributed to the partial continuity of historic Lankan built forms. (figure 5.1) Moreover, as the center of education and knowledge, the temple has also been an instrument for the survival of Lankan medicinal, astrological, and architectural (vastu vidya) systems and practices. These also provided potential nodes for the subversion of European cultural hegemony and the basing of nationalism.

Similar and comparable developments also occurred in other Buddhist societies, particularly Burma, and in regard to other Asian religions, including Hinduism and Islam, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to M alalgoda, changes in the “traditional” social and political order and competition from Christian missions provided the common background for changes and revivals of religions in those areas, 15 and the Hindu revival in the mid-nineteenth century demonstrates developments similar to those of Buddhism.

Anti-Colonialist Conceptions of Ceylon The early “nationalisms” that were more of a critique of colonialism, and which emerged around the 1880s with religious revivals, were replaced by more confrontational struggles in the 1920s and 1930s. Subsequent to the stepping up of the Indian national struggles in the 1920s, south and south-east Asia gradually developed into an anti-colonial battlefield. Drawing Ceylon into the spreading arena of anti-colonialism, the active leadership of the Suriya Mal (Sunflower) movement, organized in 1933, formed a political party, Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP, the party for social equality), in 1935. These socialists and the nationalists, principally the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), formed in 1951, shared the view that independence in 1948 was incomplete. From this perspective, the process of independence continued until the 1970s.

The LSSP had two primary objectives: independence and socialism. Its impact on national space was in the development of an island-wide anti-colonial sentiment among the people; the transformation of prime capitalist spaces, particularly the plantations, into a locus of anti-colonial struggle; and the drawing of “outlying areas” and “marginalized subjects” into a future national arena. Since it was these

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processes that finally produced “Sri Lanka” as an independent state, much more than merely the name, I shall identify anti-colonial spaces as “Sri Lankan.”

Unlike its outcome, the national state, the struggle for Sri Lankan independence was constructed through the articulation of widespread anti-colonial sentiments against the colonial state of Ceylon. Just as trade unions of the European proletariat corresponded to the production units (factories) and “trades” organized by capital, this independence movement, which had been born within the colony, saw colonial society and its territory as orthogenetic, i.e., natural or given. As most socialist movements of the time, however, the LSSP’s spatial orientation was international.

Its internationalism largely lay in the Marxist slogan that attempted to unite the working class against capitalism, across national frontiers, and a critique of the Stalinist notion of socialism in one country. Although its objectives contested those of the capitalist world-system, the international solidarity the Sama Samajists strove to build was not explicitly directed at producing a single socialist world. The international socialist revolution it conceived was to be carried out by socialist parties at national level. More so than with any other political movement in Ceylon, the Sama Samajists’ ambivalence towards the “inter-national” was more effective in producing a “national space.” This was not, however, the outcome of supporting the notion of the “national,” but was largely their ignorance of it.

W hat I am arguing here is that the nature of the society and space represented by anti-colonial movements was not inevitable. For example, given the international orientation of organizations like the LSSP, in theory, much broader anti-colonial movements could have been organized within the Empire as the social and spatial unit; given the working class orientation of many independence movements, they could also have joined with the working classes of the metropole.

Yet historically, despite the sporadic occurrence of some alliances across colonial boundaries, such as between Vietnamese and French Communist parties and the LSSP cultivating relationships with leftist anti-colonial groups in India, none of these developed into broad-based anti-imperial organizations. Yet the LSSP’s increasing focus on the national political arena demonstrates the “naturalness” this colonial territory and society had acquired.

W allerstein points out that, in Europe, “it was the socialists who first and most effectively integrated the “outlying” zones into their respective nation-states.” 16 He refers here to the strength of the British Labour Party in Wales and Scotland, French socialists in Octavia, and Italian socialists in the south. W ithout exception, the LSSP was also instrumental in closely integrating marginalized areas and subjects into the prospective national space of Ceylon. The Sama Samajists organized the masses across ethnic, religious, and caste boundaries and had a special appeal for the marginalized. Two forms of social consciousness were produced among such groups. First was the consciousness of discrimination against these, especially Sinhalese “low-castes.” Roberts suggests that supporting the LSSP also provided the means to engage in caste and other conflicts. 17 Second was the consciousness of being a part of the same society, and not outside it. This is demonstrated in the confidence the LSSP gained as a national movement among the Tamils and, more

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ardently, the plantation workers of Indian origin (officially, “Indian Tamils”).

Beginning with trade unions, the Sama Samajists transformed the plantation workers into a significant political force in Ceylon in the 1940s, drawing the plantation enclave into national space. Despite the deprivation of their citizenship by the government of 1947, it was impossible thereafter to perceive plantation workers as “alien.” The Sama Samaja Party, of which the first goal was national independence, therefore, not only represented nationalist sentiment during this phase, but also produced it, profoundly promoting the perception of Ceylon as a “nation.”

Post-Colonial “Dem ocracy” and Colom bo’s Centrality Lankan religious revivals of the late nineteenth century and the shifting of the locus of independence struggles to the plantations in the 1940s obscured the centrality of Colombo. Yet in the long run, Colombo’s political and spatial centrality over the island also remained unchallenged, even by the socialists and nationalists, until the 1970s. That political negotiations took place in Colombo, which were hardly confrontational, indicates that those were carried out within a set of rules that favored those who controlled Colombo.

The reliance on the “proletariat” in its struggle against capitalism made the LSSP view capitalist spaces in Colombo and the plantations as the principal potential sites of confrontation. They entered the plantations, creating a working class--in regard to its consciousness--and organized plantation workers against both British domination and capitalism right at the heart of the space that British capital commanded. Struggles in the plantations in the 1940s, therefore, were an invitation to the colonial regime, once again, to enter the opponents’ territory to settle the disputes, as they did in their wars with Kandy.

Nonetheless, the timely British transfer of political power to the Ceylonese was instrumental in transforming the locus of anti-colonial struggles from the plantations to Colombo, and drawing the challengers’ attention to the task of capturing political power in Colombo. This raises another significant issue concerning the difference between the societies in the capitalist core and the periphery and the applicability of discourses produced within core industrial states, particularly M arxism. In core capitalist states, state power, command centers of capital, and a large concentration of the working class tended to be concentrated in the principal cities. In Ceylon, however, most of the working population was in agriculture, and the majority of the working class was on the plantations. In 1911, Colombo had only 4.4% of the total working population of the colony, but the population in the plantations was five times that and about 40% of the working population was engaged in agriculture and dispersed in the island.18 Despite having a strong electoral base in Kegalla and Kalutara Districts outside Colombo, however, the LSSP’s urban bias made it pay more attention to the urban working class, and also to consider Colombo as their center of organization.

W ith independence, Colombo’s role as the locus of political negotiations in

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Ceylon was continued through a form of European political culture based on a “Westminster” type of democracy. Representatives from electorates were sent out to the House of Representatives in Colombo to govern the “nation” as well as to negotiate issues concerning each individual electorate. The socialists who questioned the premises of capitalist democracy, but who were ambivalent about resorting to “armed struggle,” were drawn into the election process by their success in elections, rather than failures. The hope of winning a future election was boosted by the LSSP coming closer to forming a government in the elections for the first parliament of independent Ceylon. By the 1970s, they were so deeply entrenched in this position that some factions became quite interested in such European models as “Eurocommunism.” The “success” of this imported system of European political culture in Ceylon can be contrasted with its failure in many post-colonial countries in Asia. According to Pandey, “Indonesia abandoned its democratic system in 1957, as did Thailand for the second time in the same year, Pakistan in 1958, and Burma in 1962. Cambodia’s skeletal democracy collapsed in 1970. In 1972 the Philippines came under martial law ...” 19 Hence, the post-colonial locus of political power, for socialists, communists, capitalists, and elite alike, remained in Colombo.

Colombo’s significance was further reinforced by the somewhat balanced strength of the two major political forces at independence, one led by the elite United National Party, and the other by the socialist LSSP, later by the nationalist Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The political culture developed during the transition, in which the strength of political rivals in Ceylon was evenly balanced, prevented either of these attempting to use excessive force of any sort against the other, or to extinguish its rival. This can be contrasted with the political situation in India where the Indian National Congress was so dominant that the Muslim League resorted to a policy of separatism.20 The Parliamentary system also added a new dimension within the national society and space, namely, the dividing of the country into electoral divisions. 21 Here the electorate has become the organizational base for political parties and voting patterns have constructed political identities through loyalty to particular parties and allegiances for different leaderships. Electoral identities are more complex than party loyalties since most successful candidates have drawn on the support of villagers, through village-level leaders--religious, caste, business, or otherwise--who delivered them blocks of votes. 22 Despite periodic changes in voter loyalty, however, it is not difficult to see electoral identities. Moore documents the pattern, In all general elections since 1956, the UNP has generally been relatively secure in most urban seats while the Marxist parties ... have continued at least until 1977 to form the main opposition to the UNP in much of the densely populated south west coast. Sri Lankan Tamil electorates almost invariably return members of separate Tamil parties. Thus the question of which of the major (Sinhalese) parties should take power has mainly been decided in the Kandyan and Dry Zone Sinhalese electorates.23

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There has also been a particular urban-rural combination and tension in the election process. Although every government appeared strong at the beginning of its term, it has generally been the case for it to be crippled by a general strike, mostly at the end of its term, and be defeated in the following election. This process, mostly dominant until 1980, had its own tensions since the strikes were staged by the urban working class and led by the socialist and communist parties; the change of government was caused by the rural voters who favored the two major Sinhalese parties and Tamil ones where Tamils were the majority. Spatial changes brought about during this period were, therefore, dominated by the particular alliance between the broadly defined nationalists and socialists.

In short, the reason why both political leaders and the people believed in the “parliamentary system” lay in the early beginning of that system, the timely transfer of political power by the British, the balance of political forces at the time of transition, the relative absence of corruption in the electoral process, the relatively “healthy” economy, and the lack of direct external manipulation. All these factors contributed towards the process of people with various regional, ethnic, religious, and communal identities and affiliations being transformed into “nationals,” principally concerned with economic and social rather than ethnic issues and considering Colombo their capital.

Nationalist-Socialist Construction of Sri Lanka W ith the end of the post-colonial elite rule in 1956, Ceylon entered a twentyyear period (1956-1977) in which governments were primarily led by the nationalist Sri Lanka Freedom Party and supported by the socialists, particularly the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, and the Communist Party. Since both nationalists and socialists viewed the political independence of 1948 as incomplete, the 1956 government negotiated the withdrawal of the British military and the closing of their military bases in Ceylon, and the United Front government (of the SLFP, LSSP, and CP) that came to power in 1970 completed the political decolonization of Ceylon, severing all constitutional and judicial authority retained in British hands. If the colonial spaces were indigenized up to the mid-1950s, we might say these were “nationalized” during the two following decades. By “nationalizing” I refer to the transformation of the Ceylonese society and space from a “dominion”-like state into the republic of Sri Lanka and to describe this period in which the state employed nationalization of private enterprises as a key instrument to reorganize the economy.

International Orientation and National Identity Non-alignment was a central aspect of post-colonial Sri Lankan identity. During the Cold W ar period, most newly independent states not only resented being part of this bi-polar political order, but also the idea of being identified with one or the other camp. The active role of Sri Lanka in setting up the Non-Aligned Movement was one such expression. In this context, rejecting the Cold W ar formation, the nationalists and socialists advanced Sri Lanka into a leading Non-Aligned nation.24

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The pro-British foreign policy of the UNP and the LSSP’s dominance over the (pro-Moscow) Communists were instrumental in keeping both the “right” and the “left” of Sri Lankan politics at a distance from both the USA and USSR. As the most powerful state in the region and a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India had also been quite central in the construction of the non-aligned position of Sri Lanka. 25 India’s reluctance to accept the US presence in Sri Lanka could later be read into the Indo-Sri Lankan Peace Accord of 1987, which included clauses directed at preventing the USA from establishing a naval base at Trincomalee.

The differentiation from the Cold W ar diversified Sri Lanka’s political links with the outer world. This is especially manifest in the immediate steps of the United Front government which strengthened ties with China, broke relations with Israel, recognized the Provisional Government of South Vietnam and began to look towards Eastern Europe for technical assistance. In a larger world, Sri Lanka’s activism in the Non-Aligned Movement has helped build direct links with many states that rejected the Cold W ar duality, as well as maintain a balanced relationship with the US and Soviet bloc countries. It also continued to be a member of the Commonwealth. It is within these geo-political regions and boundaries that independent Sri Lanka was reproduced in the 1950s through 1970s.

Economic Developm ent Prioritizing the economy over society and culture, and glorifying the particular path taken by W estern industrialized states, “economic development” became a main policy objective for the so-called Third W orld from the 1950s. The W orld Bank, for which societies were economies, was quick to provide these states with the economic identity of “undeveloped” states, and extended its support to raise their income per capita. This discourse was not only appealing for the nationalists, but the Left did not offer any radically different alternative to this doctrine.

“Development” represented here is a disciplined one that should occur within dominant social and political structures of the world-economy, without disrupting the processes of capital accumulation in the United States, and the core states in general. W hat was new here is that even those who defended the inevitability of inequalities felt the need to argue that over time these inequalities would disappear, or at least diminish considerably in scope. 26 This discourse was therefore instrumental in the reproduction of the capitalist world-economy through the building of a consensus among the leaders of the new states that “development” is not only desirable, but also feasible within the extant socio-political structures.

Both M arxists and Liberals alike, however, implicitly and explicitly, drew on this evolutionary model.

The focus, however, was on the appearance of progress that the W est had made and the primary model emulated by the post-colonial states was one of physical growth and modernization of the landscape. According to Arndt, “In Western countries, the tendency to think about economic development mainly as economic

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growth was undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that in the post war decade economic growth became a major objective of economic policy in the developed countries and a major interest of economic theorists.” 27 In regard to the United States, Logan and Molotch argue that the elite have used their consensus on growth to eliminate any alternative vision of purpose of local government, or the meaning of community. 28 M oreover, the modernization of society and space, based on the absorption of W estern science, technology, attitudes, and behavior, was also seen as a necessary condition of economic growth. It is largely this strategy that is institutionalized on a world-scale from the 1950s through the function of worldscale growth, led by world organizations dedicated to the economic growth of the Third W orld, especially the W orld Bank and the U nited Nations, trivializing alternative economic--let alone social, political, and cultural--goals. Marking the 1970s as the “development decade,” the United Nations brought this discourse to its peak.

As discussed above, for the elite, development lay in the expansion of agricultural production, complementary to the plantations. Two main criticisms of such a policy came very early from the socialists and nationalists. One preoccupation of the two Sama Samajists of the Legislative Council in the 1930s was to call for the industrializing of Ceylon. Even earlier, nationalists such as Anagarika D harmapala had raised the issue in the form of promoting a Sinhalese industrialist class. For the lack of interest on the part of capital, nationalist governments depended on the state to industrialize the nation. Marking a clear break from the policies of the previous governments, that of 1956 took the initiative in industrializing Sri Lanka, guided by an economic policy of import substitution and industrialization. Propagating industrialism as well as industrial progress under it, the SLFP-led government of 1960 held a grand industrial exhibition at the end of its term in 1964 and state-sponsored industrializing was carried out until the late 1970s.

The first attempt at planned industrialization can be seen in the ten-year plan of 1959, under the first SLFP-led government. Yet specificities were glaringly absent.

As with its political orientation, Sri Lanka’s economic links with the outside world increasingly diversified from the late 1950s. Although its main trading partners continued to be western economies, particularly Britain, Sri Lanka increasingly imported rice from China and industrial goods from the USSR; exported rubber mainly to China and the Soviet Union, and copra and coconut oil to India, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union. Moreover, SLFP-led governments were more in favor of bilateral trade than so-called “free trade.” For example, these governments expanded the model of the Sino-Sri Lankan rubber-rice agreement of 1952 to other sectors of the economy. This diversification is clearly apparent in regard to tea exports, where the function and meaning of tea estates in Ceylon was transformed from a sector that produced primarily for London, to one that produces for the world. Moreover, institutionalizing state-dominated bi-lateral trade, the government placed harsh restrictions on imports in 1961, and these remained in effect until 1977.29 In addition to the lack of capacity and commitment among the Sri Lankan

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entrepreneurs to industrialize the state, the governments did not favor private capital, particularly foreign companies. The 1956 government reversed the privatization policy of the previous government, not only by continuing to appoint the members of executive boards but also in increasing the number, making state corporations just another variation of state-run institutions. 30 Concurrently, nationalization was carried out across all businesses whether owned by Ceylonese or foreigners, including institutions such as schools and, in the mid-1970s, plantations. Complementary to nationalization was the expansion of state activity in sponsoring banks (Peoples Bank, Bank of Ceylon, National Savings Bank, and the State M ortgage and Investment Bank), insurance corporations, new industries, and development projects, particularly in agriculture. The state policies further narrowed the room for development of large private enterprises. Taxation, price controls, and the welfare system largely regulated the rest of the (private) economy.

Moreover, in the early 1970s, elected workers’ councils were given a role in the management of many state departments and corporations. W hat we see between the 1950s and 1970s is therefore a quasi-Soviet type of economic development, guided by five-year plans, and not very different from developments in many states in the periphery, particularly India. 31 Holders of private capital were, therefore, reluctant to invest, except for a few who received state patronage, such as Piyadasa Mudalali.

It is well known that many “developing” countries had indeed enjoyed rapid economic growth, more rapid than W estern industrialized states had generally experienced in the nineteenth century, and that this growth had not eliminated poverty but had frequently been accompanied by a widening gap between rich and poor. 32 The new industries were large, but uncompetitive in the world market.33 Yet their competitiveness in the world market was not an issue for these governments since, under the policies of import substitution, these industries produced primarily for the national market and they were expected to be labor intensive. Therefore, despite the diversification of the sources of foreign earnings and exports, tea continued to be the main source of foreign income and plantations the locus of production.

Despite its declining economic indicators, particularly the ones employed by the W orld Bank based on national incomes, suggesting Sri Lanka’s “backwardness,” its social indicators have always been significantly high. For example, in 1988, life expectancy at birth (68 years) was the highest in South East Asia and the population growth was a moderate 2.0%.34 Nevertheless, the United Front government’s economic policy helped Sri Lanka evade a “debt crisis” common to a large number of states in the 1970s and 1980s. The nationalization of schools in the 1960s further socialized education making it available to all Sri Lankans. The scarce presence of multinational capital and the improved conditions of the workers and rural masses as a whole, largely due to the bargains made by the leftist movements, made the gap between the rich and the poor comparatively small. 35 W hat this demonstrates is that economic indicators do not adequately represent social reality; social indicators can be high while economic indicators such as income per capita, quite low, and this was the case with Sri Lanka.

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In short, what nationalist-socialist policies had foregrounded was an ambiguity within the Sri Lankan economy. On the one hand, SLFP-led governments operated within the hegemonic narrative; striving to “catch up” with the industrialized states, and at the same time, maintaining the colonial-produced import-export economy and the primacy of the plantations within it. On the other hand, these governments continuously attempted to escape and subvert this dominant narrative, providing social benefits from economic progress and guaranteeing the redistribution of resources, largely through subsidies, compatible with their political objectives.

Nonetheless, both the reality and the meaning of national as well as Colombo landscapes changed radically.

Reorganization of the National Landscape and Colombo As in the early British colonial period, the first period of national transformation was marked not so much by changes in Colombo’s built environment, but by the profound change in its meaning. This was accompanied by a transformation in the rural areas, particularly the village, the so-called “undeveloped” areas, the plantations, and the historic sites. Building the post-colonial nation, the nationalistsocialist governments incorporated these into the national society and space.

Until the 1960s, the village was still largely marginal within national space. The national administration was represented at the village level by the Village Headman and the Vel Vidane (the irrigation headman), who were usually local elite recruited from the village itself. W hile the latter was replaced by a member of the elected Cultivation Committee under the 1958 Paddy Lands Act, the former was replaced by an appointed government officer, Grama Sevaka, in 1963. 36 Secondly, establishing their position in national politics, the rural population actively participated in 1956 elections. The participation in national politics also brought national politics to the village, which was represented by the opening of branch offices of national political parties in the 1960s. The access this provided the villagers to regional and national leaders undermined the hold of the local elite on the village. Moreover, the ruling SLFP leadership at village level had been in the hands of ayurvedic doctors, Sinhala school teachers, and petty traders, and not the traditional elite. If the old leaders gained their power by controlling the villagers’ access to important “outsiders,” 37 these transformations opened the connection between the village and the “nation.” From the 1960s, the village in general ceased to be a semi-self contained social unit, but a part of national society and space.

The nationalist-socialist governments, however, did not alter the compartmentalized organization of Ceylon into provinces and districts, nor their administrative centers established by the British. The United Front government of 1970, however, used this territorial structure to decentralize the administration.38 In 1973, it introduced a system of District Political Authorities led by the District M inister, and supported by a decentralized budget. This potentially transformed district capitals into district development centers, where decisions regarding the development of each region were made. Despite differences, this structure is most

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comparable with Vietnam which also developed districts as key economic and political units and district capitals as development centers. 39 The Freedom Party concentrated on the development of the village, principally the Sinhalese one, and particularly in the provision of collective consumption goods such as transport, educational, and medical facilities to remote areas. 40 Although the buildings constructed during this period were themselves small in scale, the number of building projects, such as bus stations, depots, hospital wards, clinics, and primary schools, spread across the national territory. Expanding the national communications and welfare systems, the nationalist-socialist governments integrated remote villages into the space of a national society.

The industrial policy of the SLFP-led governments also led to the scattered location of factories and plants throughout the island. (figure 5.2) M ost of these were located in small urban centers, far from Colombo. This policy of the dispersed location of industries, however, seemed somewhat ambiguous, particularly since the aspect of profitability was overshadowed by this government’s desire to increase social benefits, especially employment opportunities, outside the main urban areas.

Most of these have large plants, often Asia’s largest. T hese not only required immense resources to maintain, but also produced only at a fraction of their capacity. 41 Despite the dispersed location of factories and farms, their command centers were in the corporation headquarters located in Colombo.

The continuation of projects to improve irrigation works in the rural areas also reached a high point in the mid-1960s with the proposal for the most ambitious and largest single development project in Sri Lanka, the Mahaweli Project, which accounted for 22% of government capital expenditure.42 The principal objective of this multipurpose project was to partially divert Sri Lanka’s longest river, the Mahaweli, to revitalize, reinforce, and expand ruined ancient irrigation works. This project included the construction of six major dams across the river to divert water, regulate the flow, and, in so doing, produce hydro-electric power for the national grid which would also be expanded.

Norms such as a cluster of one hundred families as the “manageable and comfortable social unit” were derived directly from the study of existing old (purana) villages. Fundamental differences between the new planned settlements and purana villages, such as the fact that these existed largely marginal to the national urban structure, were not addressed. The study of purana villages has, nonetheless, influenced planners’ attitudes towards new settlements, for example, instead of using numbers to identify settlements in the Mahaweli Project, hamlets were given associable names. Second, the project primarily focussed on irrigation and the planned rational use of water. Hence, the form of settlements were determined not by social but by physical decisions regarding the best location of reservoirs, the efficient path of canals, and soil types. Third, the dominance of the irrigation infrastructure complemented by a hierarchical structure of “service centers,” new towns and village centers, which were linked to the national urban structure. This process, therefore, put an end, at least in theory, to the remaining communal land, or “unclaimed” land, by institutionalizing its use and bringing a

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large part of it under private ownership.

The empowering of the powerless in the rural area was complemented by policies directed towards disempowering the powerful. Two important legal measures to this effect were the ceiling placed on landed property at fifty acres per person in 1972, and the nationalization of company-owned estates in 1976. This legislation radically transformed land ownership patterns across the national territory, making the state the principal owner of plantation space and by far the largest owner of land.

In regard to the plantations, their authority was moved from overseas to Colombo. Not only were the new state-appointed executives in the plantations paid much less than their British predecessors, but the difference in resources allocated to maintain planter bungalows and workers’ “lines” was also reduced. The increased attention paid to the living conditions of plantation workers is represented in improvements such as the replacing of “line rooms” with “twin type cottages” and the conversion of old “barrack” type lines into separate units with more living space.43 Most crucially, however, the Sirima-Shastri pact brought the plantation workers into the national arena, and repatriation of a proportion--under this agreement--also began to change its composition.

If these policies left the historic sites untouched, the tourist industry, promoted as a response to a worsening deficit of foreign exchange conditions, incorporated these into post-colonial national space. A new ministry was also created in the 1970s for the promotion of tourism. Two major developments affecting the built environment were the growing concern for historic monuments and the numerical expansion of hotels. Although Sri Lankan concern about religion and culture was on the rise from the 1950s through the 1970s, large scale restoration of historic landscapes has only taken place from the 1970s. Nevertheless, apart from vacation and recreational sites, cultural tourism was also developed and tourists were offered new “independent” and “traditional” histories to consume.

These sites were therefore radically different from former tourist attractions, such as the colonial hill stations of Nuwara Eliya and Kandy where the British had attempted to simulate a “home away from home.” In the 1970s, cultural artifacts located in the ancient metropolitical centers of, for example, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa were reidentified and exhibited for the consumption of mainly European and American visitors. These sites, located far away, marginalized Colombo’s tourist value, though it is increasingly viewed as a somewhat alien portcity of less interest. This exemplifies the stereotypical colonial and post-colonial split site of the so-called “traditional” and “modern” city, although in Sri Lanka, these components are relatively far apart. This provides a departure from earlier British representations of Sri Lankan cultures through dead artifacts in museums, whether in Colombo or London. W hat we find here is the post-colonial continuity of the colonial idea of tourism combined with the replacement of the colonial organization of tourism, both in regard to the activity as well as the landscape, buildings, and structures involved.

Nonetheless, the state’s emphasis on rural development increased the

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involvement of rural villagers in the national political process. The district system also became the mechanism through which local level demands were articulated at the national level, with District Ministers assuming the role of the spokesperson.

Mediating between national and local levels, the expanding role of “regional” leaders also strengthened the capacity of the population in these areas to relate to these leaders, rather than to the less accessible national ones. The Mahaweli Project’s policies, not least the naming of places instead of numbering them, also opened a space for settlers to develop relationships with the places they live.

Overall the nationalist-socialist governments’ emphasis has helped to modify the role and meaning of rural areas and centers, but now within the national space.

Colom bo and the National Urban System This brings us to the area of the post-colonial urban structure in Sri Lanka. The spatial implications of the rural focus of development policies, including making the District the development unit, is apparent in the somewhat even distribution of population among urban centers across the nation. In 1981, seventeen out of twenty-four district capitals had a population between 20,000 and 50,000.44 Migratory patterns were also revealing; while Colombo District had received migration from Kandy, Galle, Jaffna, and Matara, it lost to Kurunegala, Puttalam, Anuradhapura, and Kegalla. Instead of a linear migration pattern from rural to urban, what this represents is a circular movement of Colombo gaining from districts in which the next tier of cities are located, while losing population to the next tier.

Just as expanding its bus station represented Colombo’s centrality within Sri Lanka, the expansion of the airport represented its new foreign links throughout the world. Representing the increasing significance of air travel due to tourism as well as diplomacy, a new airport was constructed at Katunayake. Prior to independence, almost all international transport connections with Ceylon were by sea. Indeed, the pre-eminent position and growth of Colombo as a port city, a critical fuelling station, and port of call linking colonial economies and societies in four continents, as all nineteenth and early twentieth century maps confirm. Yet with the introduction of oil burners and the reduction of the distance between Europe and Asia with the construction of the Suez Canal, Colombo’s importance in international shipping declined.45 Air links with a post-colonial world-system of trade and international relations were, however, slow to be established.46 The main international airport in Ceylon in 1947 was for military use, a strategic base for the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, linked to its strategic defense plan for southeast Asia. This small station at Katunayake, eighteen miles north of Colombo, formed the basis of Sri Lanka’s international airport. It was first enlarged in 1956, but with Sri Lanka out of the British imperial system and into the space of the post-W ar Non-Aligned Movement, not least serving as its principal host for the summit of 1976, the government invested three billion Rupees in constructing a new airport to host the event.

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Moreover, entering into a lucrative five-year agreement with the French airline, Union de Transports Aeriens (UTA), the national carrier, Air Ceylon, was reorganized in 1972. In this way, Sri Lanka like all new nations entered the air corridors of the world system of international relations and trade with its own airline.

The diversification of Sri Lanka’s political orientation did not radically change Colombo’s landscape. Most directly related to the Non-Aligned Movement is the Bandaranayake International Memorial Conference Hall which accommodated the Non-Aligned Movement’s summit meeting in 1976.(figure 5.3) Although it came to be identified with the Non-Aligned Movement after its summit meeting of 1976, this modern conference hall was a gift from the Peoples Republic of China in memory of late Prime Minister, S.W.R.D. Bandaranayake (1956-1959). Regardless of its architecture, however, conference halls in which summit meetings were held represent a deep meaning, and stand witness to the movement.

Colombo’s spatial transformation during this period was not so much visual; it was not “modernized” until the 1980s. Private capital, of which the natural home was Colombo, was constantly under the axe of nationalist-socialist governments.

Although the built environment did not change much, the purpose and meaning that it symbolized did drastically. Since the state was expanding mainly through nationalization and investment, so also did its ownership of property in Colombo, and old colonial buildings were turned into government departments and corporation headquarters. Several highrises built in the 1970s also included the state sponsored bank and corporation headquarters.

The continued significance of the British-built Parliament complex stands witness to the central political and economic role of the former fort area. They replaced the Queen’s representative, the Governor-General, with a President, and

FIGURE 5.3 Non-Alignment: Bandaranayake Memorial International Conference Hall, Colombo, 1972.

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the highest court of appeal, the Privy Council of London, with a Sri Lankan Appeals Court. This government also installed a new constitution and changed the name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka in 1972. Despite these changes in the constitution and nomenclature, the colonial landscape of the Fort area remained the same, and the Queen’s House was simply renamed Janadipathi Mandiraya (President’s House).

The colonial mansion, entirely derived from seventeenth and eighteenth century European architecture and dated at least from the 1770s, was used by the Dutch as the Government House, the residence of the Dutch administrator of the maritime province. The British who called it the Queen’s House (earlier King’s House) used this as the Governor’s residence. In 1972, however, no architectural changes were made.

The agencies responsible for the construction of the official built environment were indigenized and expanded. Not only was the Public W orks Department separated into the Highways Department and the Buildings Department, but many new specialized institutions were also established. W hile the Buildings Department designed accommodation for state institutions, for example, town halls, hospitals, and police stations, the new State Engineering Corporation was responsible for the building needs of the semi-government sector run by government-appointed boards, for example, corporations and banks. The expanded role of the state in the production of spaces was also constituted through the increase in the number of buildings it built, which was accommodated by replicating type buildings and homogenizing the national built environment. These state sector buildings provided for a minimum requirement, especially due to the stringent control of budgetary allocations.

Legislation passed by the government of 1970 not only transformed the practices and attitudes but also the legal framework of urban planning. A considerable amount of legislation was introduced, including a rent control act, a ceiling on the ownership of housing property to a maximum of two per family, a minimum lot size for building, and a maximum limit on the buildable area of dwelling houses to 2,000 square feet. These regulations indicate that the United Front government did not perceive “planning” as simply a technical expertise, but a highly politicized, valueladen activity that is closely related to global and national power structures.

In the area of housing too, it was not so much the landscape, but the meanings that changed during this period. For the first time, the government of 1970 created a separate cabinet ministry for housing, and the official perception of poor tenements was changed from “slums” that had to be removed from sight to one that saw these as dwellings in need of upgrading. The appointment of a Member of Parliament from Colombo itself to the ministry (which has continued until today) helped poor urban dwellers in their bargaining for housing. W ith the Ceiling on House Property Act of 1973, which limited the ownership of housing property to two units, Colombo’s rented housing stock fell from 41% of the total in 1971 to 28.6% in 1981,47 and many tenants of so-called slums were transformed into home owners. The meaning of the housing landscape of Colombo, thereby, radically changed.

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The state regulation of the building industry, however, reduced construction activity, making the state the principal builder. This led to the re-use of existing spaces and the transformation of building functions; spacious private bungalows were increasingly adapted as offices, and state institutions intruded into the fashionable colonial suburbs of Cinnamon Gardens. (figure 5.4) This was especially the case with the entire length of the Bauddaloka Mawatha (previously, Bullers Road) connecting Bambalapitiya and Borella.

Decolonizing Colombo, the place and street names were also indigenized. The park in Cinnamon Gardens was renamed from V ictoria to Viharamahadevi Park, after the queen of a highly regarded Sinhalese king in Lankan history; Gordon Gardens attached to the President’s House, and named after a British Governor, was changed to Republic Square. The main thoroughfare in the Fort area, Queen’s Street, became Janadhipathi Mawatha (lit. President’s Avenue). In Kandy too, statues of Governor W ard, and the unknown (British) soldier (who fought to colonize South Africa) were removed and replaced by five other statues including the brave child (Madduma Bandara) of Kandy; the Government Agent’s bungalow was transformed into a museum and street names were also changed.48 Finally, attempting to bring order to all these transformations, which had reached the threshold, the government of 1970 embarked on a project to reorganize Colombo. W ith the United Nations agreeing to support such a project in 1974, the Colombo Master Plan Project was established. If the “socialist” partners of the United Front government had until then been an obstruction to W estern-style city redevelopment that came along with financial aid, this opened the channel. Yet in keeping with the worldview of the government, the three consultants selected were Czechoslovakian, British, and Soviet, a somewhat unusual combination. Despite

FIGURE 5.4 The adaptation of colonial buildings: Colombo University’s College House, previously an elite residence in Cinnamon Gardens.

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the “communist” representation in this team, its initial suggestions hardly differed from any other development project of the time, and its language of “growth,” “growth poles,” and “growth corridors” is a good indication of this.49 Overall, transformations in the Sri Lankan national landscape, urban structure, as well as Colombo were in most part the result of the ambiguity of national leaders and governments about the centers of the society, their focus on upgrading the living standards of the rural masses and the urban poor, on restructuring the national economy in response to the problems of the 1970s, and also on deliberate antiprivate capital policies. In effect, they produced a post-colonial national space incorporating outlying and marginal zones, including villages, plantations, “undeveloped” land, and historic sites, in regard to its double meaning; breaking away from the colonial yet reconstructing in relation to it. Despite minimal change in Colombo’s visual landscape, its content, organization, and meanings were, therefore, profoundly transformed.

The Construction of a Critical Vernacular Architecture Although the landscape of Colombo had hardly changed since independence, a new type of architectural design emerged as the leading trend in the 1970s, transforming the constitution of the Sri Lankan field of architecture. (figure 5.5) Considering its movement beyond so-called “Modern” architecture and its relation to historic Lankan architecture, I shall call this a “critical-vernacular” architecture of Sri Lanka. However, I am not referring to a mere “style,” the main trait of which is that it is visually distinguishable from others, but to a cluster of broadly defined design practices that draw upon historic Lankan concepts of space in creating culturally, climatically, and technologically more appropriate buildings in independent Sri Lanka. The prominence gained by this architecture led to the commissioning of a leading architect of this tendency, Geoffrey Bawa, to design the most prestigious piece of “national architecture” in the late 1970s, the new Parliament complex--addressed in Chapter Six. This section investigates the production of this architecture, its language, and the changes in Sri Lankan architecture it brought about, focussing on Bawa and his partner in the early stages of his career, Ulrik Plesner. I shall first explore the larger context in which similar architectural design practices were developed.

The rise of critical-vernacular architecture has been a particular indigenous cultural response to post-colonial economic, technological, ideological, and historic conditions. W hile the socialists and nationalists contested the colonial system, critical vernacularists contested the colonially produced norms and forms of design.

Unlike the restructuring of the village and Buddhism in the nineteenth century, this architecture has no direct continuity with the past. Instead, it uses indigenous and historic spatial concepts, elements, architectural details, and construction methods to construct a built environment for contemporary institutions and functions. This is, however, not a “vernacular architecture” nor an architectural style constructed by borrowing elements of an historic architectural vocabulary to provide visual

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signs. 50 Nor am I referring to W estern architects’ attempts to create stylistically defined place-specific architecture, or to modern hotel complexes designed for the visual consumption of tourists, simulating built forms of the indigenous environments. W hat I am concerned with here is the conscious or unconscious construction of a historic continuity through a particular cultural response from within the society concerned where the trajectory of history has been ruptured by colonialism, or other aspects of European expansion.

Critical-vernacular tendencies are apparent in the designs of, among others, the late Hassan Fathy of Egypt, Charles Correa of India, and Geoffrey Bawa of Sri Lanka, as well as in building complexes such the Citra Niaga of Samarinda and Sukarno-Hata airport of Djakarta, both in Indonesia. 51 Immediately after returning home, usually after studying in Britain or the United States, these architects designed in the W estern styles they had learned. Yet they are examples of those architects who increasingly became conscious of the incompatibility of such an architecture within the societies in which they practiced. They gradually incorporated elements of indigenous and historic spaces, architectural elements,

FIGURE 5.5 Critical Vernacularism: Bawa buildings.

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building methods, and materials in developing their approach to design. These decisions may well have begun in the interests of developing an appropriate “style,” yet what they finally produced was profoundly different from an alternative style.

Critical vernacularism can also be distinguished from two other contemporary architectural practices. One is the provision of organized support by institutions based in the core for the development of culture-specific and place-specific architecture. The Aga Khan Awards for Islamic Architecture, begun in 1976, and based at Harvard-MIT, is by far the best example. While supporting “Islamic Architecture,” the program has also assumed the role of being “spokesperson” for Islamic culture and architecture worldwide, its paternalism expanded to the broader Third W orld architecture through the journal, Mimar. The second type of practice --the “cultural contextualization” of the non-indigenous presence--can be found, for example, in the US embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Dhakka, and Colombo, built in a “place specific style.”

The culture of critical vernacularism is, however, the result of a consciousness of the inappropriateness of colonial and modern architecture of the W est in a culturally different, extra-European, post-colonial site. This is evident in Fathy’s book titles, Architecture for the Poor, and Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture. Although the inappropriateness of his earlier “modernist” designs were signalled by the shortage of steel and cement during the Second W orld W ar, Fathy clearly notes the significance of issues of difference and identity. highlighting the absence of an architectural signature in modern Egypt.52 The consciousness of the cultural context of design was not limited to well known architects. The open pavilions of Citra Niaga and Sukarno-Hata airport in Indonesia, and much contemporary building, for example, in India and Malaysia, illustrates that this trend is a relatively widespread phenomenon. The Yemenese government wrapped the W est German-built glass and steel airport with traditional Yemeni stonework, complete with decorative motifs. 53 Peter Scriver finds in these trends a “cultural revolt against modern technology --specifically the technological rationalism associated with the modern industrial complex of W estern civilization.” 54 It is in this wider context that Sri Lankan critical vernaculars can most usefully be examined. Critical vernacularists were, however, not insulated from regular architectural trends of the world. Yet the involvement with issues in Sri Lankan architecture has drawn their attention away from the stylistic controversies of the W est.

By referring to the indigenous spatial elements and culture, critical vernacularists have differentiated the field of architecture. Their new designs contested the homogenizing effect of architectural modernism in regard to built forms and the continuing colonial norms. Bawa and Plesner, who began their practice in the late 1950s, and others who engaged in developing alternative approaches to colonialist and modernist architecture, largely practiced independently, outside the government departmental structure of design and construction. By the 1980s, however, the architects employed in government

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departments and corporations, and responsible for continuing colonial practices, had been substantially influenced by critical vernacularism, and many of these offices developed their own variations, for example, in the State Engineering Corporation’s “Summit Houses” and in the M ahaweli townships.55 Critical-vernacular architecture also ended the marginalization of indigenous built forms from this post-colonial structure of architectural production.

Architectural historian Lawrence Vale observes that “Bawa’s capitol complex stands squarely between the abstract universalism of high modernism and the literal localism.” 56 For Shanti Jayawardana, Bawa’s work “implied a sharp break with the then modes of the ‘international style’ which were reaching a high point in neocolonial fluency around [the] 1950s and 60s, best displayed perhaps in the arrogant extravagance of Brasilia and Chandigarh.” 57 The most significant impact of Sri Lankan critical vernaculars was that they began to refamiliarize the official and institutional landscape for Sri Lankans. The “innovators” of this practice, particularly Plesner, were apprehensive about the disarray in post-colonial architecture caused by the colonial and modernist imposition of, and the Sri Lankan desire to imitate, W estern building forms and elements which they had no cultural and economic competence to internalize. In Plesner’s words: Architecturally speaking, the country suffered from post-colonial self-denigration ...

Some people enthusiastically believed in things like “American Style” and vinyl floors... Most of the new buildings were a reflection of Western ways, climatically unsuitable and visually indifferent... On my part, it was a process of first clearing away the shabby asbestos roofing, the bare bulb lighting, the disastrous flat roofs, the imported rubbish, the slimy black mouldy walls without drip ledges, the admiration for the second rate from Europe. 58 Clearing away the colonial and modernist “mess” was accompanied by the reintroduction of “traditional” elements and spaces, as found in dwellings, temples, and historical remains, particularly the roof, veranda, and the internal courtyard.

The Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonials in Ceylon also adapted visually dominant roofs with wide overhangs--with modifications such as the introduction of half-round clay tiles--in their residential buildings. The roofs of the main British colonial institutional buildings were, however, concealed behind dominant and decorated walls that rose above the eaves line, generic to British built forms known as Georgian and Neo-Classical styles. The issue is, however, not just about climatic awareness, that monsoons destroy exposed walls and dampness creates “slimy black molds” on them, since there are many design methods in the modern world to enhance the climatic performance of a building, such as using ceramic tiles as a wall finish. The reintroduction of the roof in a proto-traditional character was rather a selection by Bawa and others, not merely to combat climatic problems, but to do so by deploying indigenous methods, and building elements. Bawa claims:

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One unchanging element of all buildings is the roof -protective, emphatic and all important -governing the aesthetic, whatever period, whatever place. Often a building is only a roof, columns and floors -the roof dominant, shielding, giving the contentment of shelter ... the roof, its shape, texture and proportion is the strongest visual factor.59 Similarly, verandas and internal courtyards are not the only solution to problems of heat and ventilation, and their performance and function is not limited to solving such problems either. For example, air-conditioning is used for such purposes in many buildings in Colombo. Again, for critical vernacularists, verandas and courtyards were culturally desirable. The reintroduction of these elements was, therefore, not merely climatic or functional but also cultural and representational, not least since these elements are not used in every so-called “tropical” setting.60 As Plesner has mentioned, although when judged by European standards they may lag behind in building technology, these buildings were basic “simple houses.” 61 Instead of depending on modern technology, such as air conditioning, these architects have employed historic spaces, building elements, and forms, in developing solutions to post-colonial problems.

The particular selection of spaces and architectural elements promoted crossculturally familiar space for indigenous cultural practices. The building elements selected by Bawa and Plesner, such as the roof and veranda, bore a cross-cultural familiarity. These are, however, not the only available historic and cultural references in Sri Lanka. Most intimate religious architectures, for example, represent more of a difference than a commonality. Buddhist stupas (and vatadages), sikhara type masonry roofs of Hindu kovils, Islamic bulbous domes, and the facades of Christian churches articulate their distinctiveness. In contrast, the building type with a rectangular or square plan, extended veranda, and pitched roof is the most commonly used form by all Sri Lankan social and cultural groups.62 Cultural differences among Sri Lankans are largely represented in the organization of particular internal spaces rather than in the basic form or on the exteriors of regular houses. 63 As Vale suggests: “Bawa could [therefore] begin by working with roofs not necessarily choosing sides in so doing.” 64 Despite drawing from historic Lankan built forms, 65 critical vernacularists, however, did neither replicate nor re-produce historic buildings. This can be contrasted with how the British colonial regime conceived and projected postindependent Sri Lankan architecture in constructing a concrete replica of a historic audience hall in Colombo to commemorate independence. Such replication of historic built forms was also an option tried in several buildings, including the Kandy and Anuradhapura railway stations. Critical-vernacular architects rather rediscovered old Lankan buildings within a contemporary context instead of simply replicating building elements. These they transformed, making them compatible with and suitable for contemporary functions.

Critical vernacularists have not limited themselves to drawing solely on Lankan historic forms. The hybridization of built forms over centuries through contacts,

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exchanges, and subjection, has made the field of post-colonial architecture quite complex. Between the two poles of highly prestigious colonial buildings using imported forms (for example, the old Parliament) and Lankan peasant dwelling houses was a wide array of hybridized built forms which included colonial bungalows and new middle class housing. Bawa states: I like to regard all past and present good architecture in Sri Lanka as just that--good Sri Lankan architecture--for this is what it is, not narrowly classified as Indian, Portuguese or Dutch, early Sinhalese or Kandyan or British colonial, for all the good examples of these periods have taken the country itself into account.66 In this sense, this is not a historically defined ethnic or religious architecture, but a particular type of “nationally” relevant contemporary production within a postindependent context.

As with the selection of elements, the efficacy of an eclectic formation like the critical-vernacular architecture of Sri Lanka depends on their composition. Critical vernacularists have avoided a collage of direct historic quotations, as in architectural postmodernism in the W est, or in the case of Papua New Guinea’s new Parliament. The architect of Papua New Guinea’s Parliament house, Cecil Hogan, has adopted a kind of compendium of roof typologies treating three village types of “typical” house forms merely as decorative shells, which “seem almost obviously concerned with a near-literal representative documentation of the art and architecture of the country’s multitudinous component cultures.” 67 In Sri Lanka, critical vernacularists have not attempted to capture and represent all cultures within a single image or as a series of images each representing a component culture, but employed particular combinations that produced a new character with which Sri Lankans can readily associate. As Vale argues, the Sri Lankan Parliament building is inclusive in its approach to history without descending into a caricature or pastiche; the articulation sought to capitalize upon the elements, traditions, and cultures without trivializing them or rendering them incomprehensibly abstruse.68 Jayawardana finds this practice a reflection of the emerging post-independent nationalism. Yet the elite and the W estern background of the architects involved, the forms they produced, and the language of the critical vernaculars of Sri Lanka have nothing undeniably nationalistic. Nonetheless, the architecture they produced was nationally acceptable and the timing was appropriate. In addition to leading Sri Lankan architecture out of post-colonial denigration, the buildings and their architectural spaces have developed a commonality across diverse social and cultural groups. Its coincidence with the emergence or strengthening of particular nationalist regimes in the 1950s provided the appropriate moment for its success.

Jayawardana rightly points out that: “Though Bawa was not the first Sri Lankan to adopt revivalist trends in his work, he was the first to sustain such a course in the building world.” 69 As stated above, critical vernaculars are not specific to Sri Lanka but can be conceptualized as a broader practice taking place in countries like Egypt, India,

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Indonesia, and Yemen. Although this broader trend does not represent one single practice, these architectural practices have many characteristics in common, principally arising from the consciousness of the inappropriateness of European or American models of architecture, and, in some cases, also of notions such as development and modernization, in different social, cultural and political contexts.

These critical vernacularist practices have, nonetheless, breached the larger process in which knowledge is produced and circulated, subverting what Goonatilake calls the “imitative syndrome,” or mimicry of knowledge produced in the center. Yet Bawa’s Parliament gained for his practice the approval of the professional peers in the core, expressed through an honorary Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects and an exhibition of his work in London, sponsored by the Royal Institute of British Architects. As Goonatilake has noted, “If a major breakthrough occurs in a peripheral region, ... it is then usually transferred to other peripheral regions only after legitimation and acceptance in the center.” 70 Bawa, and a few others, have gained the legitimacy of their peers in the core, and entered the world of the architectural “glossy” magazines.

As in the case of the national landscape, transformations in the field of architecture, have been part of the larger production of a post-colonial nation, which they also help to constitute. Critical vernacularists have responded to the economic, social, and cultural problems bequeathed by a colonial built environment as well as neo-colonial attempts to mimic western and modernist built forms. In so doing, they produced a particular architecture that average Sri Lankans, as well as its architects, can relate to. Temporally and spatially, critical vernaculars are both a post-colonial as well as a global mode of architectural design.

Severing the vestiges of colonialism between 1956 and 1977, the nationalistsocialist governments largely completed the post-colonial nation-building process.

Both rural villages, which were operating marginally within the national spatial structures, and the plantations, the labor of which was denied citizenship, were integrated into the national society and space. W hile the governments began questioning the premises of urban and regional planning, critical vernacularism became hegemonic in the national field of architecture. Although Colombo’s landscape did not change much from outside, the social transformation brought it to a threshold from within.

Notes 1. John Hatch, “The Decline of British Power in Africa,” in Tony Smith, ed., The End of European Empire: Decolonization After World War II (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1975), 82.

2. See Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics: An Introduction (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), 28.

3. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 49.

4. Karl Marx, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1948 [1848]).

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5. See Jackson, Quasi-States, 1, 27, 50-55. See also, Immanuel Wallerstein, “The WorldEconomy and the State-Structures in the Peripheral and Dependent Countries (the So-Called Third World),” ch. in Politics of the World-Economy, 80-81.

6. “The principles, norms, and rules to which states must submit have increased in number and have become tighter, and a growing number of supranational organizations have acquired an autonomous power to overrule the inter-state system.” (Arrighi, 402-3) 7. See Fred L. Block, The Origins of International Economic Disorder: A Study of United States International Monetary Policy From World War II to the Present (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 46-47; Jeffrey A. Frieden, Banking on the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 64-65.

8. Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhism in Singhalese Society 1750-1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25. See also Gombrich and Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, 455.

9. Malalgoda, 28, 50, 258; Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 138; Tinker, South Asia, 91.

10. For example, Gananath Obeyesekere, “Religious Symbolism and Political Change in Ceylon,” Modern Ceylon Studies I (1970): 43-63; Malalgoda, op cit; Gombrich and Obeyesekere, op cit.

11. Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 7; Malalgoda, 246; de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 249.

12. See Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 204-5; Obeyesekere, 46.

13. Malalgoda, 188.

14. See Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 11, 447; Malalgoda, 25.

15. Malalgoda, 262.

16. Immanuel Wallerstein, “Liberalism and the Legitimation of Nation-States: An Historical Interpretation,” Paper prepared for the conference on Nation-States and the International Order, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, September 4-6, 1991: 13.

17. See Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation, 291-2.

18. See Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon, 4.

19. B.N. Pandey, South and South East Asia, 1945-1979: Problems and Politics (London: Macmillan, 1980), 29.

20. In the 1937 elections, the Indian National Congress came to power in all eight provinces, even in Bengal, and the Muslim League only gained a total of 40 out of 119 seats.

(Niranjan M. Khilhani, India’s Road to Independence, 1857 to 1947 (London: Oriental, 1987), 97) See also, Padmasha, Indian National Congress and the Muslims 1928-1947 (New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, 1980).

21. For the significance of this aspect of society, see Knox, Urban Social Geography; Peter J. Taylor, Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality (London and New York: Longman, 1985); and in regard to Sri Lanka, see Dilesh Jayantha, Electoral Allegiance in Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

22. Jayantha, 3-4.

23. Moore, 25. see also, James Jupp, Sri Lanka: Third World Democracy (London: Cass, 1978).

24. See Urmila Phandis and Sivananda Patnaik, “Non-Alignment as a Foreign Policy Strategy: A Case study of Sri Lanka,” in K.P Misra, ed., Non-Alignment, Frontiers and Dynamics (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1983), 229-31; A.W. Singham and Shirley Hune, Non-Alignment in an Age of Alignments (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1986), 321; Philip Towle, “The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean: Blind Alley or Zone of Peace?” in Larry W. Bowman and Ian Clark, eds., The Indian Ocean in Global Politics (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981), 207.

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25. See Norman D. Palmer, South Asia and the United States Policy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), 277.

26. Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Present State of the Debate on World Inequality,” in Immanuel Wallerstein, ed., World Inequality: Origins and Perspectives on the World System (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1975), 12.

27. Arndt, 52.

28. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 51-2.

29. Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics (Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1982), 230; Department of Census and Statistics, Ceylon Economic Atlas (Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics, 1969), 41, 42.

30. Seven corporations were created in 1955. These were Paper Mills, Oils and Fats, Ceramics, Leather Products, Plywood, Chemicals, and Cement Corporations. By the end of 1959 another seven were added to these; Textiles, Sugar, Salt, Mineral Sands, Small Industries, HardBoard, Industrial Estates, and in the 1960s, Petroleum and Steel (1961), Tyres (1962), Hardware (1963), and Fertilizer (1964). (Peebles, 180) 31. See Stuart Corbridge, “Colonialism, Post-Colonialism and Political Geography of the Third World,” in Peter J. Taylor Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis (London: Belhaven Press, 1993), 191-2.

32. See Arndt, 3.

33. Ministry of Planning and Employment, The Five Year Plan 1972-1976 (Colombo: Ministry of Planning and Employment, 1971), 59.

34. World Bank, Development Report 1989 (Washington, Oxford University Press, 1990).

Only Singapore has less population growth, at 1.6%. (Pandey, 177) 35. See Central Bank of Ceylon, Survey of Sri Lanka’s Consumer Finances, 60.

36. Barrie M. Morrison, M.P. Moore, and M.U. Ishak Lebbe, ed. The Disintegrating Village: Social Change in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Lake House, 1979), 10, 32. See, Roberts (“Problems of Social Stratification,” 558-9) for a discussion on national and local elite.

37. See Roberts, “Problems of Social Stratification,” 558-9.

38. Moore, 229. See also, G.R. Tressie Leitan, Political Integration Through Decentralization and Devolution of Power: The Sri Lankan Experience (Colombo: Department of History and Political Science, University of Colombo, 1990), 8-9.

39. Dean Forbes and Nigel Thrift, “Territorial Organization, Regional Development and the City in Vietnam,” in Dean Forbes and Nigel Thrift, eds., The Socialist Third World.

Urban Development and Territorial Planning (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 99-128.

40. Castells, City, Class and Power, 17-20.

41. Ministry of Planning, 66-70.

42. Moore, 95.

43. Marga, 75; Weerapurage Nimal A. Fernando, Continuity and Change in Plantation Agriculture: A Study of Sri Lanka’s Land Reform Program on Tea Plantations, PhD Dissertation (University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1980), 307.

44. M.W.J.G. Mendis, “Small and Medium Towns in Sri Lanka: A Statistical Analysis and Their Planning Significance,” Economic Review 8 (1982): 30.

45. K. Dharmasena, “Colombo,: Gateway and Oceanic Hub of Shipping.”

46. See Peebles, Sri Lanka, 165-7.

47. Marga, 142-3.

48. See Duncan, “The Power of Place in Kandy,” 197-8.

49. “Urban Development Strategies,” Economic Review 3 (1977): 14; “Colombo Urban Development,” 4.

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50. For a discussion of the use of borrowed elements stripped of their historic substance, see Mark Jerzombek, “Post-modernist Historicism: The Historian’s Dilemma,” in Marco Diani and Catherine Ingraham, eds., Restructuring Architectural Theory (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 86.

51. For an overview of these architect’s work see Hassan Fathy, Architecture of the Poor (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977); Hassan-Uddin Khan, Charles Correa (Singapore: Concept Media, 1987); Brian Brace Taylor, Geoffrey Bawa (Singapore: Concept Media, 1986); J.M. Richards, “Geoffrey Bawa” Mimar 19 (1986) 45-6; Jayawardana, “Bawa”; Ulrik Plesner, “Ulrik Plesner” Living Architecture 5 (1986): 94-97.

52. See Fathy, Architecture for the Poor, 19.

53. Brent C. Brolin, The Failure of Modern Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand, 1976), 109.

54. Peter Scriver, “Arcadia or Apocalypse? Some Observations on Post-Independent Urbanity and the Notion of a Third World Architecture,” Presented to the International Conference on Architecture, Calcutta, November 16-20, 1990, 4-5.

55. Ulrik Plesner, “Mahaweli Building Program, Sri Lanka,” Living Architecture (1986); Nihal Perera, “Parameters Employed in the Planning of Mahaweli Towns,” (in Singhalese) Isura 11 (1986); “The Scope and Potential for Architectural and Planning Professions in the Mahaweli Project.” Mahaweli Architects’ Union 1 (1988): 11-15.

56. Vale, 194.

57. Jayawardana, “Bawa,” 47.

58. Plesner, “Ulrik Plesner”: 85.

59. Geoffrey Bawa, “Statement by the Architect,” in Khan, ed., Geoffrey Bawa, 16.

60. King has observed that the verandah, for example, is not a universal “tropical” feature and many traditional African cultures do not use this element. (The Bungalow, 265) Therefore there is nothing climatic about the verandah or, in a general sense, any building element since which element to use in what situation is primarily a cultural decision. (See Rapoport, House Form and Culture) 61. Plesner, “Ulrik Plesner.”

62. See Bandaranayake (“Sri Lanka and Monsoon Asia”) for typologies.

63. See M.J.A. Rahim, “Muslim Architecture,” in M.M.M. Mahroof et al. eds. According to Rahim, Islamic, Singhalese, and Tamil houses are similar from outside and the differences are encoded in interior spaces.

64. Vale, 197.

65. Barbara Sansoni’s collection of drawings, mainly of historic religious and royal buildings, and country and town houses, entitled Viharas and Verandas illustrates their main source.

66. Bawa, 16.

67. See Vale, 273, 279-280.

68. See Ibid, 194; Barbara Sansoni, “A Background to Geoffrey Bawa,” in Taylor, ed., Geoffrey Bawa, 172-3.

69. Jayawardana, 49.

70. Goonatilake Aborted Discovery, 111.