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Contradictions in the Sri Lankan Society – By Randika Jayakody & Jerome Perera Contradictions are rife within Sri Lankan society. Sri Lanka has an indigenous population that is over 48,000 years old with a wealth of knowledge and history, yet the nation’s origin stories focus on the much younger Sinhalese civilisation. Sri Lanka is home to the majestic Sri Lankan elephant, but the nation often represents itself with references to a lion, an animal that has never lived on our islands. Millennia of multicultural interactions with South India, Rome, Greece, Europe, Africa, Middle East, the Far East, and Austronesia and the tens of ethnic groups that settled our islands is ignored and discounted. Instead ethnic purity has dominated the mindset of society for decades leading to ethnic conflicts and societal disintegration and instability. We consume potatoes, corn, tomatoes, chillies, papayas, smoke tobacco brought to us from the Americas by the ...