Malathi De Alwis, Colombo

The MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index for 2015 recently declared Colombo to be the fastest growing destination city among the 132 most important cities of the world connected through air travel, covered by the Index. Despite most Sri Lankans being unaware of this index until a few weeks ago, the former President, Mahinda Rajapakse, secured much mileage by congratulating himself and his government for having “now gained formal international recognition” for the capital city (The Island, June 10 2015). He went on to note that this was due to the many improvements wrought upon the city, the “visible achievements” of his government (Ibid).

Colombo’s history of positioning itself as ‘a city for capital’ rather than a capital city is a long one (Nagaraj, forthcoming) and thus will not be rehearsed in this paper. Rather, I will explore the disjuncture between the hegemonic state/elite discourses about the city and what they seek to both repress and restore through a variety of ‘beautification’ practices: slum clearance, relocating pavement hawkers, expelling Tamils, intimidating Muslims, restoring Dutch and British colonial buildings etc., with the active involvement of “militarized civilians”. The paper will conclude with a discussion of several artistic initiatives, some more successful than others, that have sought to re-inscribe public space and/or offer a critique of militarization and ‘beautification.’