This paper briefly explores a crucial component of Sinhala nationalism that is articulated
through the reiteration of a moral and maternalised historical role model,
namely, the legendary queen Vihara Maha Devi, within particular cultural and
political spaces in Sri Lanka. Describing this phenomenon as the 'Moral Mother
Syndrome', the author extends its original delineation by Micaela di Leonardo—as
providing the framework for an ideology that primarily 'speaks for peace'—to one
that speaks for peace through a call to violence that is nevertheless formulated as
being moral and just due to it being prentised upon an argument about the vulnerability
and victimisation of the majority community, the Sinhalese.