Under the Giant's Tank
UNDER THE GIANT’S TANK VILLAGE, CASTE, AND CATHOLICISM IN POSTWAR SRI LANKA Dominic Esler A thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology, University College London, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. December 2019. 2 I, Dominic Esler, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 4 ABSTRACT This thesis is an investigation of the relationship between the village, caste, and Catholicism in northern Sri Lanka. Drawing on almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Mannar District, as well as subsequent archival research, it provides a detailed analysis not only of the postwar context but also of prewar history, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century. In this thesis, I analyse three overlapping topics. First, I problematise ‘village’ through an examination of ‘cultural’ and ‘state’ village concepts, before arguing that within the complex social diversity of the village of Marudankandal there is a numerically dominant Tamil caste group, the Kadaiyars, whose prominence is reflected both rhetorically and through the control of institutions such as the Catholic village church. From this, I turn to two central dimensions of local caste praxis. First, I offer a historical explanation for the regional prevalence of village churches controlled by single castes, which remains a key characteristic of local Catholicism today. Second, I argue that despite the lessening of certain kinds of hierarchical caste relationships in recent decades, caste identities continue to be mobilised and expressed through regional communities, some of which maintain caste associations.
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