The Urban Nature of a Wilderness Reserve: Political Ecology & Pilgrimage at Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka - Oct. 1

Thursday October 1, 2020 • Virtual event
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Alex McKinley, Loyola University, will give a talk titled "The Urban Nature of a Wilderness Reserve: Political Ecology & Pilgrimage at Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka" as part of the Fall 2020 South Asia Seminar Series. The seminar theme is "For the Times They Are A-Changin': Perspectives on the Study of South Asia," convened by Janice Leoshko and Sharmila Rudruppa.

Adam's Peak, also known as Sri Pada, is the most famous mountain in Sri Lanka, bearing a summit footprint revered as the Buddha's by Buddhists, Lord Siva's by Hindus, and the prophet Adam's by Muslims. The mountain now draws over a million visitors during its annual worship season, and such crowds have necessitated infrastructure to facilitate ascents while keeping the mountain's cloud-forest ecosystem intact. This infrastructure has evolved over the past century: from carved stone steps to cement staircases with railings, from lines of torchlight to electric fluorescence, and from pit latrines to a water reclamation plant below the summit. All this makes the mountain more like a city, and the sponsors of its infrastructure, from the banks and corporations funding it, to the Civil Security Department executing it, are the same agencies that have sponsored the last several decades of Sri Lanka's urban renewal. As indicated by the Civil Security Department, a paramilitary branch of the police, development and infrastructure are intimately intertwined with militarization in Sri Lanka, especially following the unilateral end to its civil war in 2009. Focusing on the political ambitions of the Rajapaksa family, especially brothers Mahinda and Gotabaya, now prime minister and president of the country, this talk examines how infrastructure at Adam's Peak is wedded with a nationalist agenda that understands the mountain as a solely Sinhala Buddhist possession. Under the guise of the benevolent facilitation of pilgrimage and environmental protection, development at the Peak has imported not only urban concrete to a remote wilderness, but also a divisive brand of politics to a site known for religious diversity. In the process, control over the Peak has become hegemonic, and religious aesthetics and rituals there have become homogeneous, to better fit the imagination of a pure Sinhala Buddhist nation.


This event will be held on Zoom and is open to the public. Please register here.