Sri Lanka has a long history of ‘religious liberty’, both as a legal concept and a claimable right. The 1799 Proclamation of the British Governor – issued three years after the British began occupying territories in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was known then) – granted inhabitants and frequenters of Sri Lanka the right to freely engage in religious worship. However, this right was conditional on the exercise of religion being ‘quiet’ and ‘peaceable’ and not causing ‘offence or scandal to government’. Importantly, establishing a new place of worship required a special governmental license. Even at this early stage, two interrelated priorities defined the parameters of religious liberty in Sri Lanka: the state’s interests in public order; and the privileging of the established. Additionally, religion itself was understood as a genus with several discrete categories, and religious liberty was granted to adherents of these recognised categories. However, in contrast to how religious liberty was conceptualised and legally afforded, the indigenous practice of religion in Sri Lanka was deeply syncretic. Individual religious practice often drew from multiple belief systems, blending rituals and practices in a rich spiritual tapestry. Yet colonial administrators upon encountering this indigenous reality attempted to make sense of it through their own understanding of religion. They introduced mutually exclusive religious classification, and through a variety of discursive means, including censuses and licensing regimes, began to impose frameworks of religious labelling and regulation. The colonial state accordingly mediated religious liberty and co-existence by maintaining ‘order’ between religious groups that were perceived to be discrete and competing, while often privileging the majority and orthodox groups. In this paper, I explore how the conceptualisation of religious liberty in Sri Lanka is shaped by its encounter with colonialism. I argue that colonial preoccupation with religious classification and public order resulted in a conceptualisation of religious liberty that deviated from lived realities and devalued individual dignity and autonomy. I then argue that modern constitutional practice concerning religious liberty has inherited these colonial misconceptions and preoccupations. It continues to be blind to syncretism and exacerbates the tension between religious liberty and public order, thereby privileging majorities and orthodoxy and often suppressing minorities and heterodoxy. I conclude that a process of decolonising our understanding of religious liberty is necessary to ensure that religious liberty in Sri Lanka is re-centred on the values of dignity and autonomy.

Dr. Gehan Gunatilleke is a lawyer specialising in constitutional law and international human rights law. He is a senior partner at LexAG, a law firm based in Colombo, a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, and a visiting lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, University of Colombo. Dr. Gunatilleke is also a former advisor to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he advised the government on international treaty compliance. He has served on several legislative drafting committees in Sri Lanka and was a co-drafter of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance Act and the Office for Reparations Act. Prior to assuming duties at the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Gunatilleke was a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Oxford where he was conducting research on religious liberty and inter-faith conflict resolution mechanisms in Sri Lanka.