Abstract:
This study examines why, between 2000 and 2025, religious spaces in Sri Lanka have become
increasingly prominent and visibly differentiated across the four major religions, Buddhism,
Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, and how this trend interacts with secular spaces and intergroup
relations. Using process tracing, this study reconstructs a causal sequence linking colonial
administrative categorisation and missionary spatial projects to post-independence constitutional
privileging of Buddhism, to post-war (post-2009) territorial-symbolic competition, and
finally to post-2019 security anxieties. It conceptualises a “competitive sacralisation spiral”, a
feedback loop in which religious groups, responding to perceived insecurity and bounded opportunity
structures (legal, political, and media), intensify identity signalling via architecture,
soundscapes, festivals, and strategic siting (mountaintops, high grounds, skylines). This spiral
is reinforced by state-led heritage regimes (notably archaeology-led heritage claims), differential
registration rules, and post-conflict land politics that empower majority symbols while
constraining minority expansion, thereby encouraging even more conspicuous religious visibility.
By integrating primary sources (policy reports, legal updates, human-rights monitoring)
and secondary scholarship (religion-space studies; Sri Lanka’s colonial and postcolonial identity
formation), The study demonstrates (1) clearer demarcations between religious and secular
spaces and between religions have intensified; (2) the number and scale of religious sites and
festivals have increased in ways that map onto political competition; and (3) contemporary “social
cohesion” initiatives often fail to engage the entanglement of religion, ethnicity, education,
and territorial administration, and thus underestimate spatial-symbolic drivers of tension. Even
if more general discourses assert continuous secularisation, Sri Lankan religious places have
grown louder, bigger, and more strategically oriented beacons of religious identity. Furthermore,
the majority of the research’s sources are publicly available, which may not fully capture
each party’s unique objectives. Spatial reconciliation is necessary for a lasting peace. Therefore,
important suggestions include establishing clear, community-negotiated rules for religious
soundscapes and processions, ensuring equitable and transparent land and registration procedures
for all religious communities, depoliticising heritage governance through independent,
multiethnic oversight, and changing educational curricula to prioritise a history of interaction
rather than division.
