Culture of Sinhala Elite and Shiv Sena in Post-Colonial Asia This paper considers the issue of culture within the context of post colonial Asia. The paper examines the cultural strategies of two cultures; the Sinhala elite and Shiv Sena and how these groups developed and emerged, redefining their own identity.

Religion and politics old ways destroyed by new regimes and ideologies

Religion is a man made concept, as such all things connected to this can be seen as pure superstition and non-existent, yet from an anthropological point-of-view the religions and superstitions of other races is seen as an important and integral aspect of research and calls for an open and understanding mind. Man has since the dawn of time been involved in one form of symbolism, whether it be through cave paintings or making idols of goddesses.

Religion and ritual are always part of the world of Man, it has been there since man became a hunter and Gatherer. However, as this form of religion and ritual did he uses the offerings of his hunt to placate the Gods or did he just dance around a fire and call to the powers and spirits to aid him.

As man grew into larger bands he formalized religion to his own ends, and the cost of religion hit the populace. Religion causes wars and death, rarely does it bring happiness. Yet man continues to have his religions and sacrifices to placate the Gods and Goddesses.

Hinduism is no different to religions around the world, both in the present and in the past, it has its followers and those who are devout yet it also has it discriminations and downfalls.

The use of sacrifice to the Gods is not just a symbolic gesture to them it is real and will continue until the belief in the Gods fail or a new religion stops the sacrifice. However, is the use of sacrificing the best of what you have for a...

Can it be that those who have made up the names of the Gods and Goddesses have discovered a way of living off of the people?
This sacrifice is just a form of ritual bribery that if the people do not appease the Gods then there will be no crops or the animals milk will fail then the people have to turn to the priests to help them.

One scholar, Professor Staal has discovered that the tradition of the Hindu religion supplies no single theory or thought that is consistent with the theory if ritual. However he states that there are a many contradictions (Everson 59)

The Vedic Age or era was the most decisive and influential of eras to place a trend upon the culture of the people of India. However, these trends have now changed and moved on since those times but the underlying rituals of this age still have an underlying effect upon the requirements of modern life (Sen PG).

Brow in his book Demons and Development: The Struggle for Community in a Sri Lankan Village (Hegemony and Experience - Critical Studies in Anthropology and History) revisits the village of the Vedda within the Anuradhapura, Brow seeks out the voices of the villagers, and allows them to have their say in matters important to them (Brow PG)

Demons and Developments is a comparative study of the depth and understandings of the ethnological with a contextual analysis of the lives of these people, with a central ideology of the gama within their community and how an articulation of the local populace and national residents think, act and believe within a localised setting (Brow PG)

With the returning and giving of land and houses as gift to the community of Kukulewa in the late 1970s which was a provision of the states programme of the Premadasa's Village Reawakening, due to…