'Royal science' and civil war in Sri Lanka : a comment on S. Goonatilake

In highlighting the relationship between the production of knowledge, the administration of government and the formation of subject–citizens in colonial systems, post-colonialism has arguably found its most fertile field of inquiry and revision in South Asia. The reasons for this are complex and relate, in part, to the nature of both colonial administration and the colonised civilisations to be found in the region, as well as to the nature of the different independence movements—many of these persisting well beyond the formal grants of independence in the late 1940s. Also important is the emerging post-colonial middle class, its transnational interconnections comprising inter alia extensive participation in knowledge/information economies, and its ‘organic intellectuals’ (Gramsci 1971) whose work represents the interests of their class. In other words, the tremendous insights offered by post-colonial theory into the nature of latent or implicit power relations to be found in forms of knowledge reveal the ongoing complicity of scholarship in government. Post-colonialism, thus, raises the issue of how the nexus of knowledge and power translates into contemporary situations—the post-colonial predicament (Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993).<br />