Abstract
The recent military-political lineage, which enjoys unprecedented electoral success, suggests the privileged position of ‘warrior masculinities’ in the highly militarized Sinhala-Buddhist society. The election of Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a former military officer, and the defence secretary to Mahinda Rajapakse’s war-winning regime, marked the pinnacle of the Sinhala-Buddhist military discourse. Soon after the election, a wave of wall art was seen across the country. Social media was swamped with stories of youth engaged in ‘beautifying’ the cities with graffiti. The local armature artists worked long and hard hours, day and night. The people served the artist-youth with tea and snacks. Graffiti was spreading not only in cities but also in villages. Often, the artists were young males, and in some cases, there were few women involved. While the trend was contagious and spread across the country in no time, what they drew had a startling resemblance. The local artists illustrated heroic males – animals and humans depicting valour. The chapter argues that, the Sinhala-Buddhist authoritarian populist rhetoric was using the male body – both physical and virtual – as a platform or a canvas to support, sustain, produce and reproduce the existing populist ideologies.