Memoryscapes: The Evolution of Sri Lanka’s Aragala Bhoomiya as a People’s Space of Protest

Abstract

The ‘aragalaya’ or the ‘people’s struggle’ was perhaps one of the most important and successful movements of Sri Lanka’s long history of democracy. In 2015, democracy prevailed, unexpectedly and against all odds, when Sri Lankans, unsatisfied with their political representation, ‘voted out’ a government. In 2022, just as unexpectedly and for the first time in its history, the people of Sri Lanka ousted a government through mass protest and uprising. The protesters, cutting across socio-economic class and arguably many other barriers, came together and marched to Colombo’s Galle Face Green, in parallel to each other and to each other’s goals. This time, they came to do more than simply oust a government but for an idea of justice, equity, democracy, and system change. This article explores the memories and perspectives of those who ‘lived’ on the protest site and the relationship between memory, place, and the social construction of space, as they reconvened for a memory-mapping exercise in co-creating public histories of the aragalaya (struggle) and the aragala bhoomiya (site of struggle).