Page 31 - rohana_journal_No_12-2020-final

Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 12, 2020

Keywords: Memorialization, Post-war, Reconciliation, War memories

Introduction

The war memorialization is a practice introduced in Europe in the late eighteenth
century. The history of remembering the deceased in Sri Lanka is a long-established

practiced (Mahawansa, 2007). However, the European practices of the war
remembrance could be traced back to 1793 (Burke, 1989). There is the first

monument related to memorialization in Frankfurt, Germany, in memorializing a

soldier in the form of heroic expression (ibid). The history of the war
memorialization in contemporary Sri Lanka through monuments emerged in the

context of the civil war and its aftermath. However, the memorialization process is a
common practice throughout the history in forms ranging from monuments and

remembrance days to teaching history and forming of a school and educational

curriculum. The exercises of memory can usefully be mobilized in the ethno
nationalist mindset among the communities (Hass, 1998) as well as a great healer

and an enabler of reconciliation, paving ways, and opportunities for dialogue,
understanding, apologizing, acknowledging and addressing past violence between

divided societies (Luhrmann, 2015). It is revealed that the memorialization could
play the role of truth-seeking, justice, reparations and guaranteeing non-repetition.

However, in the history, the memorialization has been manipulated to elevate the

cultural memory of the hegemonic groups into a high position. As Evans (1997)
pointed out, "the cultural memory is constructed. The erasure of the Memory of "the

other" and the memorialization of 'the events of one's own is normal practice
legitimized and justified through the hegemonic ideologies and the power

formations throughout the history.

This research sheds lights on the memorialization of war events between the binaries

of 'the winners' and 'the losers' who are in the North the East and the South of Sri
Lanka as well.

22