Inventing Localized Catholicism: Historiography in Sri Lanka Following S.G. Perera

Abstract

After Catholicism was brought to Sri Lanka in the sixteenth century, local historical and ritual practice has shaped the ways that this spirituality has been taken up in Sri Lanka in the 20th century and beyond. This dissertation takes up the work of the first ordained Sri Lankan Jesuit priest, S.G. Perera, as a case study to explore some of the dynamic ways that historical practice functions rhetorically to support identity formation in the context of Catholicism in Sri Lanka. While S.G. Perera’s historical practice was invaluable to the discipline of history in Sri Lanka through his efforts in historical education, translation, and archival research, there is yet to be a sustained study that focuses on his corpus as a primary source of inquiry. Drawing upon principles from the disciplines of rhetorical studies, religious studies, and history, this study takes a look at Perera’s corpus as a particular and influential expression of Catholic identity in Sri Lanka. In this study, I employ methods of qualitative coding, textual analysis, and archival ethnography to examine Perera’s textbook A History of Ceylon for Schools; his translation of the extensive seventeenth-century colonial text by Fernão de Queirós, The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon; and the archives built around his corpus (Tulana Research Centre for Encounter and Dialogue). Here, I consider Perera’s texts in terms of how they construct Catholicism’s history as well as their influence in continuing notions of Catholic identity in the Sri Lankan context. Through this work, I hope to provide insights for how historians of rhetoric can approach research and preservation of community histories in ways that are humble and enact accountability to community interests.