Introduction

Rita was born in 1935. Both her parents were devout Catholics, her father being one of the annavis (lay leaders) of Pallansena church, and her mother a member of the Legion of Mary. She was educated in a convent school, many of her teachers being nuns from Europe. During adolescence, she thought of becoming a nun herself, but this wasn't very serious and when she was eighteen her parents arranged her marriage to a very distant relation, also a Catholic, who was in government service.

The world that Rita and her contemporaries grew up in was very largely defined by religion. Each day there was the cycle of prayers signalled by the Angelus bell from the local church. Each week she attended mass on Sunday morning. Through the year she, her family and her neighbours observed the annual cycle of church feasts and fasts. Most years the family went on pilgrimage to Madhu or Talawila. Just as the temporal dimensions of her life were defined by religion, so too were the social dimensions. Most people in Pallansena were Catholic, the few Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims forming an insignificant minority. All her relations and friends were Catholic and she rarely met anyone outside the Catholic community. People like Rita grew up in a self-confident, almost arrogant community, confident in its superiority over non-Catholics in Sri Lanka.

This chapter is concerned with the historical construction of the Catholic world in which Rita and the majority of those who frequent Kudagama grew up.