CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

PUNSARA AMARASINGHE CYIL 15 ȍ2024Ȏ access to the public and only a limited number of scholars had the permission to examine her under the guise of academic purposes. 12 The sexual hysteria prevailed in the Victorian England abhorred eroticism, which echoed in the promulgation of the Obscene Publication Act in 1857. This Act led to form special secretums in the British museum to display revealing objects such as Tara for the viewing pleasures of the gentleman with sound mind. Regarding the deplorable status of Tara Devi’s statue under Victorian hypocrisy, Caltlin McCurdy states “While the statue of Tara is now housed in the British Museum’s China & South Asia gallery, it was not originally defined by its own culture, but rather what the colonial powers perceived it to be. That the nudity of a colonized and racialized deity was considered dangerous and erotic by the same museum that displayed and revered the nudity of Greco-Roman statues for their artistry”. 13 British attitude towards Colonialism British Empire known as the empire where the sun never set controlled the lives of 458 million people at the zenith of its power in history and looting became a legitimate act that prevailed among the British officers. It is consistent with the facts to affirm that the British reception of International law in the 19 th century was akin to a set of rules, which were not objected by the states subjugated by the British themselves and the doctrine of sovereign equality remained a fluid argument as a stark contrast to the well-known maxim international law “ par in parem non habet imperium ”. As alluded to British reluctance in admitting the conquered territories to the family of the law of nations, the 19th-century British jurists extended several unequal treaties to the Asian territories devoid of Westphalian statehood. The curious case of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the advent of British rule denotes a paradoxical example of the twisted notion of sovereignty. After a long resistance from the European nations since the 16th century, the last remaining principality was on the verge of succumbing as the British became the masters of the maritime provinces of Ceylon under the 16th Clause of the Amiens Treaty, which marked the end of the administration of Dutch East India’s Company rule in the island. 14 In places where British succeeded their other European counterparts as the colonial masters, British often clung to the role a protector for the remaining native polities, where the sovereignty was an ambiguous term. British penetration to Kandyan kingdom and the convention which ended the rule of Sinhalese monarchy in 1815 reflected the British notion of attaining the colonial power under the pretext of justice. However, many of the conquered territories were excluded from the universal standards of international law revered in Europe, because of the formers’ inability to adhere to the standards. John Westlake, the Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge, declared in 1894, that ‘Government is the Test of Civilization’ and elaborated 12 HAHN, C., Reclaiming History in the British Museum Entranceway, The Journal of Theory and Practice , Vol. 27, No. 3, 2023. 13 MCCURDY, C., For Gentlemen’s Mature Years and Sound Morals: Bodhisatva Tara in British Museum’s Secret Room, 2020, https://musingsmmst.blogspot.com/2020/07/for-gentlemen-of-mature-years-sound.html, (Access Date: 2024.06.10). 14 AMARASINGHE, P., Addressing the Imperial Promise of Protection of the 19 th century International Law: The Case of Kandyan Kingdom in Sri Lanka, SOAS Law Review , Vol. 7, No. 3, 2020.

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