Dharmapala’s racist rhetoric seeded later manufactured ethnocentric nationalism leading to civil war

Evidence

It is difficult to defend Dharmapala against claims of bigotry, although it is also clear that his rhetoric was designed to shame his fellows for embracing all things foreign and, therefore, alien to Sinhalese Buddhist culture. … His harangues were certainly inspired by deliberate British efforts to marginalize Buddhism, but his racist rhetoric also laid the groundwork for subsequent generations of monks and politicians who adeptly manipulated Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism to create an ethnocentric state and thereby propel the island toward civil war. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 116

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s question on whether group enmity is manufactured rather than primordial — Dharmapala’s rhetoric is a constructed/constructed threat-shame mechanism, echoing modernist theories of nationalism (Gellner, Anderson) in the Sinhalese context. — connects to: Dharmapala constructed Sinhalese identity through racialized Aryan claims against colonial others. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 112; Dharmapala’s anti-colonial rhetoric was later manipulated to justify civil war. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 116
• QUESTION: What exactly were the ‘deliberate British efforts to marginalize Buddhism’ and how did Dharmapala turn an anti-colonial corrective into ethnocentric chauvinism?