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SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Observatoire pluridisciplinaire

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

The Ceylon Land Settlement Department and its fight against land speculation from 1897 to 1930

by Eric Meyer

In the series of articles on agrarian history of colonial Ceylon, we publish a new study on the Land settlement department, based on the diaries of Settlement officers.

 

Land settlement in time and space

In colonial Ceylon, ‘settlement’ meant establishment and registration of land rights by a judicial or an administrative process set up by the colonial authorities, with or without the concurrence of the population. As such, it introduced full property relations in an agrarian society where they were inexistent or limited. There was a tendency along the years to extend its scope to a sort of planning of land use. In India, settlement was the basis for taxation of the regularly cultivated lands: no such mechanism existed in Ceylon, the meaning of the term was thus different [1].

The general policy of the British regarding land can be characterized by four periods: before 1840 there was no fixed policy; from 1840 to 1897, land administration was taken up by local Revenue officers through headmen; from 1897 to 1931, it was progressively centrally coordinated by a department with specialized Settlement officers; after 1931, the land policy became politicized through the creation of a Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

During the second part of the 19th century, in the plantation areas, the colonial agents felt free to declare the property of the Crown under the 1840 Waste Lands Ordinance lands areas sought after by purchasers, usually European planters, but also locals, on the basis of ad hoc surveys, and without any general policy. There was no idea of planning. The first wave of plantation development was characterized by systematic official favouritism of the British planters. Until 1897, the system of indirect administration through the recourse to headmen selected by the colonial government meant that for land matters the Revenue officers depended on headmen and that these headmen were in position to manipulate the system to their advantage.  The institution of special officers distinct from the Revenue officers under the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897, and the creation of a separate department limited the power of the headmen over land, which was until then the basis of a sort of unspoken and unwritten political pact with the colonial administration; it opened the way to a form of direct administration, which was strongly opposed not only by headmen but by the rising land-based bourgeoisie; it set in motion a process which contributed to the drive towards independence.

When land grabbing by locals became an organized business which impinged on colonial authority, and when individuals started to contest every decision taken by the colonial State, land policy became stricter, at a time when the Ceylonese would-be planters of citronella, tea, rubber and coconut came into the picture. It was evident for the first nationalists that the new land policy was aimed at Ceylonese entrepreneurship, rather than at land speculation in general, even if European land speculators were also affected. The setting up of a distinct Settlement administration, in addition to the Revenue officer system to enforce the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 was a decision of the first magnitude taken by the governor West Ridgeway. It was immediately resented by the emerging Ceylonese bourgeoisie and by a section of the colonial milieu, and its working met with constant hurdles. The first three settlement officers working under the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 were John Penry Lewis[2] (November 1897 to December 1900), Walter Edward Davidson[3] (January to September 1901) and John George Fraser (1901 to 1911)[4]. Before them, Leonard William Booth had been Forest Settlement officer in the early 1890s and his opinion on settlement work is also valuable. J.P. Lewis could not find the time to review the general policy because he was busy countering in Matara the claims of Le Mesurier and his followers. J.G. Fraser was the real initiator of the Land Settlement Officer way of thinking, distinct from the Revenue Officer ways: he systematized a conception based on direct administration at the root level bypassing the recourse to the headman system.

The Department was set up progressively during the first decade of the 20th century ordinance and impinged on the prerogatives of the local revenue officers and their headmen.  In the context of the second wave of plantation development, in which the British planters were partly superseded by local entrepreneurs, the activity of the department was resented more by the rising bourgeoisie than by the colonial plantocracy. With the emergence of a social approach among a section of the colonial administration and among the rising political class, the Department slowly evolved in the late 1920s into a tool of social redistribution. At that point, the emerging bourgeoisie changed its mind and used land administration as a tool to rule and the headmen system disappeared (but a part of the headmen class joined the ranks of the emerging bourgeoisie whose power was based on land control)

A spatial approach is necessary to understand the working of the Settlement Department: its activities did not extend to the whole of the island. The map produced in 1930 by the survey department provides a synthetized information on its first thirty years.

  • Its initial activities focussed on the Morawak korale of the Matara district, the theatre of intense speculation and opposition led by a former revenue officer, Le Mesurier, who attempted to subvert the official land policy
  • Then the Ratnapura and Kurunegala districts were taken up, together with parts of the Kalutara district, because these were the areas were land speculation for rubber was booming
  • Other districts such as Uva, where land hunger was intense, were also taken up at the same time
  • The villages of the coconut triangle in the North western province were then systematically settled
  • And finally, work was started in the extensive north central areas where paddy colonies were being set up in the dry zone.
  • The plantation areas of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Matale and Kägalla districts were practically left aside

The principle of individual property was initially the basis of the working of the department. It is only after many years that a section of the officers stared to think in terms of ‘commons’. No settlement was possible without a preliminary survey; the next step was for Government to recognise claims (of actual cultivators or of outsiders) or the sell (at low price) land to cultivators or would be cultivators. This process involved the fixation of individual property where before there was an undefined common usufructuary system controlled by the headmen.

The motive behind the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 was to block the extension of land speculation to the mid-country where new products – low grown tea, rubber and coconut, and new actors – Ceylonese entrepreneurs, local lawyers, small scale planters, Chettiar moneylenders, and a few European speculators, were at work. The position of the colonial administration was however ambiguous, because its aims were often contradictory: revenue considerations, economic development, European planting interests, preservation of the peasantry, preservation of natural resources. It was too late in many areas to stop land speculation: chena highlands in the Kelani valley, Kägalla and some areas of Ratnapura and Kurunegala, had already been sold out to land brokers through Ceylonese middlemen, to the final benefit of European planters. But there were large chena or forest areas where coconut and rubber plantations could be developed, in Kurunegala, Ratnapura and Kalutara districts, and the emerging Ceylonese entrepreneurs were prospecting these new opportunities, bypassing the colonial government control.

There was a contradiction at the core of the colonial system: the European colonial planters of the 19th century had initiated the land grabbing process; they were followed by the Ceylonese bourgeoisie of the next generation; the colonial administration which had set the alienation process into motion (or left it to develop) pretended to protect the peasantry at a later stage. The Ceylonese who resented the difference of treatment between the European speculators and the local speculators, turned towards a specific form of nationalism, and accused the colonial administration of hypocrisy when it pretended to protect the peasantry against the native speculators with its settlement procedures, but at the same time the nationalists were accused of hypocrisy by the colonial administrators when they pretended to side with the peasantry.

Initially, there was no question of interfering with claims and rights between villagers, but only to define the respective property of the Crown and the people. Ellis, when he was Government agent of the Western province, wrote in 1900[5]: “It is in every way better to leave the people to settle their own land claims rather than make any attempt to do this for them” Quoting the case of a garden possessed in common: “These people have up to the present lived quite peacefully, possessing the produce of the land by some system of division known to themselves. I can hardly imagine a more helpless task than that of an officer who undertakes to make in this garden a proper surveyed division based on the legal rights of the parties”. The settlement officer Fraser considered that it was outside the scope of the ordinance to assign the private property of a land to a specific individual[6]. But the experience of settlement work progressively put into question the principle of non-intervention, and led the Land settlement department to redefine its policy during the 1920s, on the basis of a new concept: land planning.

 

The sources: diaries and the other land settlement records[7]

From the 1880s, and especially during the governorship of Arthur Gordon, the members of the Ceylon Civil Service administering districts  (Assistant Government Agents) and provinces (Government Agents,) were required to keep official diaries which were sent to their hierarchy for reading and comment before being returned and kept in the record room of the kachcheri for the perusal of their successors[8]. With the development of specialized departments, the practice was extended to a few of them, and these documents were kept in their respective offices. The Settlement officers and their assistants, who were originally drawn from the same pool as the district administrators and had the same kind of field experience, adopted the practice which they found useful for the efficient functioning of their department. These semi-official sources are extremely valuable. Of course, their value depends on the personality of their authors, which they reveal[9], and they must be analyzed and interpreted in the context of power relations and often conflicting interests within the colonial administration. But they have the freshness and often the frankness which the official and publicized administration reports lack. This is specially the case with the Land settlement administration reports which are statistical lists of villages settled (for example the 84 page report for 1912-1913) and offer little information on the social history of the villages.

The diaries of the settlement and assistant settlement officers were meant to be read by their superiors (the Controller of Revenue, the Colonial Secretary or the Governor, and after 1931, the Minister of Agriculture and the Land Commissioner) who sometimes wrote marginal comments, and returned them[10].  

Little research has been done on the basis of these documents, which were difficult of access. Lal Jayawardena read and used for his unpublished Cambridge thesis[11] a certain number of them. I have myself examined all the diaries from 1897 to 1939 and noted the information of a general nature and the local information dealing with my research on the relations between the plantations and the villages. I propose here, using a selection of significant excerpts, to show the difficulties and oppositions encountered by these colonial administrators to define and defend a clear policy in land matters, and in a second part to follow the evolution of the Land settlement doctrine and practice in fighting land speculation until 1930. Of course, on the subject of the relations between colonial administration and the people at large, the partiality of the source should be balanced by the recourse to other sources and/or to inner critique – reading against the grain. 

Apart from diaries and administration reports, the departmental records contain the files of settled villages, the final village reports which were printed until the late 1930s: they are very detailed, giving population statistics, often information on caste, agricultural resources, land acreages; but they can be used only in specific cases and lack the vivid notations of the diaries. There are also special files regarding the work of such and such civil servant and the general correspondence of the department.

 

John Penry Lewis in Morawak korale of Matara district (1897-1900)

The Southern province had specific features which distinguished it from the Kandyan provinces: the Dutch impact was much deeper, especially in the registration of land and people. Morawak korale was the northern part of the Matara district, abutting on the Ratnapura district. The villagers of this hilly area, many of them belonging to minority castes, especially Vahumpura, were living on a mix of chena, paddy and garden produce, and had been the victims of bouts of chena repression by several revenue officers, in the 1860s-70s, and again in 1890, with the result that starvation conditions were often prevailing; an Assistant Government Agent, Elliott, had recognized the right of the peasants to cultivate their highlands on the basis of the ‘Dutch thombos extracts’, in order to settle the long standing distrust between the administration and the people, but he was disavowed by his superior[12]. By the end of the 19th century, under the impulse of Karawa entrepreneurs from the coastal areas, the cultivation of tea, citronella and rubber was developing in Morawak, and the colonial administration was confronted with a demand for land which it could not understand nor admit because in its conception, based on the Crown ownership of ‘waste’ and forest lands, land development was to be controlled by the State (and practically reserved to European planters), and any attempt at claiming private rights was suspect. For example, this is how in 1898 the Matara Assistant Government Agent described the process of land appropriation[13]: “A suitable extent of forest or jungle is selected, if possible with indication of its containing plumbago. A neighbouring villager is then persuaded that as the owner of a garden on the borders of the forest, the whole tract belongs to him. Or else an old family tradition that his ancestors at one time cultivated the land is revived. A claim thus springs up, a transfer in favour of a speculator is executed. Jak and other fruit trees which are found in nearly every jungle in the district are seriously pointed out as indication of a former cultivation, and the Crown (in stepping in to prevent the destruction of the forest) is loudly accused in the public newspapers of wholesale spoliation and oppression. The result of course has been demoralizing in the extreme. Fictitious claims have sprung up in the most unexpected quarters, and both villagers and speculators are intent on acquiring land at the public expense”.

The diaries of J.P. Lewis span a period beginning in November 1897 up to the end of December 1900. They offer an insight into an intensive land broking activity of a very unusual nature, because it was encouraged or rather engineered by C.J.R. Le Mesurier, an ex-civil servant formerly posted at Matara, who had been dismissed as a result of various provocations[14].  During these first three years, most of the time of Lewis was spent fighting the ‘spurious’ claims set up by Le Mesurier and his associates (Lewis 9.02.1900)[15]. The paradox was that the appointment of a special officer to enforce the ordinance of 1897 was done at the request of Le Mesurier himself.  The legal issues raised by Le Mesurier touched on the sore point of the colonial system in which the colonial agent was at the same time judge and party as defender of Crown interests (Lewis 27.06.1899), and he radically challenged the concept of Crown land, which was at the basis of the settlement work. The following quotations of the diary give an idea of these exchanges:

“Mr. Le Mesurier has told the people that the only Crown land in the island are Pidurutalagalla and Adam’s Peak” (Lewis 13.11.1897) and the growing number of claims is due “to the notion developed by Le Mesurier that the payment of 1/10th tax before 1874 meant that the land was private”. In the settlement of Atureliya village, (Lewis 21.01.1898) Le Mesurier appeared as agent of the claimant who promised to give Le Mesurier 1/3rd of the land to if he won: “this is a case of champerty”. Lewis was compelled to stay with Le Mesurier at the kacceri while the latter studied the wattoru (taxation lists) to find out which chenas were taxed at ‘private’ rate. Le Mesurier declared (Lewis 31.01.1898) “I do not even know where the land is. I claim it on public grounds and in order to prevent government from getting possession of it”. Lewis commented (14.02.98): “I have never seen a case more dishonorably conducted, even by the shadiest of proctors”. “Engaged in reply to Le Mesurier memo facetiously entitled ‘Spoliation of lands by the Crown in the Matara district’. It is a plausible but ridiculous attempt to show that the British government have by Ordinance 12 of 1840 dispossessed the villagers of their highlands. According to Mr. Le Mesurier there are no Crown lands in the Matara district, not even the primeval forests. He has put this theory into practice by setting up claims to half a dozen of the latter” (Lewis 16.01.1899).

Lewis depicted Le Mesurier as a dishonest land grabber, even at the time he was posted at Matara: Le Mesurier’s brother had started mining operations in the district while Le Mesurier was Assistant Government Agent, and according to Lewis he was just a front-man for Le Mesurier who paid himself the mining coolies (Lewis 6.06.1899).  At Talgahahena in 1893 as Assistant Government Agent he prosecuted a villager for illicit clearing, but the villager was cleared, he then put up a part of the land for sale at 10 Rs per acre, and when dismissed he purchased himself the rest of the land from another villager (20.02.1900). Lewis considered that the extensive land purchases at the beginning of 1890s at Asmagolla, Kotawila and Marambe by one Mr. Bultjeens for Mr. Creasy were actually for Le Mesurier who was then Assistant Government Agent and conducted the sales, and to whom the lands were transferred in February 19th 1896. The firm Julius and Creasy were the agents for T.N. Christie, an influent member of the Ceylon Planters Association, who was an associate of Le Mesurier during and after his Kägalla days[16]

Among the documents used by Le Mesurier and his associates to assert private property were the ‘Dutch Extracts’ forged by a local goldsmith, Don Salomon Wijendra, (who was rewarded once the claim was admitted) and certified by the notary B. J. Wijenayaka “who was prepared to write any act, the usual practice being to describe a chena as garden and a forest as chena”. Another actor in the land business was Jayasuriya, the son of a land registrar of Matara, who was using an old fiscal transfer of 1834 to assert private title (Lewis 4.12.1897), in competition with T.N. Christie : “It is a relief to have these landgrabbers quarreling among themselves”. But it appeared that Christie was acting for Le Mesurier to whom he sold back his claim as soon as it was admitted by the Crown by a Certificate of Quiet Possession for half the area claimed, and Le Mesurier transferred the property to his wife (Lewis 6.09.1898).  Another actor, Floris de Silva, was the schoolmaster of Urubokka (Lewis 22.03.1900): “nominally schoolmaster but his real business is acquiring shares in claims from the villagers”. He was the brother of Francis de Silva, a dismissed mudaliyar (chief headman) of Wellaboda pattuwa, who was behind most of the sales together with his brother in law, the division officer of Morawak korale (Lewis 3.03.1898): “I have been told several times that that the late mudaliyar of Morawak had examined the wattoru and had ‘made the land private’ (praveni karala).  Possibly it is from him that Mr. Le Mesurier got this notion on which all his claims are based, or it may have been the reverse. The mudaliyar was his agent in the plumbago business, and Mr. Le Mesurier was very much concerned to hear of his dismissal as he told me himself”. There were other schoolmasters involved, and the brother of the Rest House keeper of Urubokka (Lewis 25.03.98), Dias (31.10.1898) “trying to get into favour with the villagers by posing as an exceptionally devout Buddhist”. There was the case of an ex- village headman, who threatened to commit suicide if his claim was not recognized (Lewis 19.11.1898); in some cases, there are several actors who purchased the same land from a villager or ‘helped’ him purchasing it at an auction sale to grab it after. Local headmen or dismissed headmen were always involved in these land dealings (Lewis 16.12.1897). “I wonder whether there is any native official, clerk, registrar or headman in the Matara district who is not interested in some claim, either openly or secretly” (Lewis 3.10.1900).  What Lewis failed to clearly understand is that the power of headmen over highlands was the result of their giving permits to cultivate highlands at the demand of the colonial authorities. 

The diary leaves the impression that Lewis was obsessed with the defense of Crown rights, overwhelmed by the fight against land speculators, and unable to understand the real grievances of the peasantry. He was upset by the systematic attitude of the judges who usually discharged the offenders, and of the press, especially The Independent, that sided with Le Mesurier in February 1899, and The Times of London that published a letter of the same in April 1899. Lewis felt insulted by Rudra, Le Mesurier’s lawyer, and by the Chilaw Association which started its agitation against the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 and also against that of 1840 by using the arguments of Le Mesurier (Lewis July 1899). His action was also impeded by the poor quality of many surveys, the lack of cooperation from the Survey department, and the corruption of young surveyors who accepted bribes (Lewis 17.03.1900). Another problem was the lack of cooperation between the Assistant Government Agent and the Settlement Officer, the former putting up for sale or settlement lands which the latter was going to proclaim under the Waste Lands Ordinance. And the worst point was that the kacceri and the district court administration themselves were “the headquarters of the land speculation” (Lewis 20.11.1900). Lewis felt betrayed by the position of the Supreme Court which considered as peasants notorious landgrabbers such as Dias; the clash between the judicial order and the executive was just the same as in Kägalla during the preceding decade.  

Lewis admitted genuine claims, but felt that the system did not preclude speculation (26.10.1898): “The villagers complain that when the lands are put up for sale they are unable to compete with the outsiders – rich fisher caste people and Moormen who want land for citronella cultivation. If the extents sold are small (3 or 4 acres only), the villagers are not likely to sell them to outsiders, as they prefer cultivating themselves than becoming the coolies of the citronella people”. In a Vahumpura village, Narawelpita, “noted both for their industry and for crime, especially cattle stealing”, but where there were many disabled persons “I found that the real explanation for it was want of land,  and I decided that it would be better not to proclaim this block, but to have it surveyed into small lots to be sold to the villagers” (16.12.1897). Progressively, Lewis became more preoccupied with the condition of the peasantry and the impact of the restriction to chena cultivation; he took into consideration that the local headmen had always admitted wattoru as proof of property. In the end of his diary (10 and 26.11.1900) he quoted the case of Alapaladeniya and Idandehita villages: “chena was allowed from 1885 to 1892 and in 1892 it was fully put a stop to. The people were then much better off than they are now, as there is not enough paddy land to cultivate. The men now go to Panagoda in Hinidum pattu to work in the plumbago pits (…) but all the people cannot get work at the pits. The headmen assure me that very few families in their division have more than one meal a day. Whether they tell a different story to the Assistant Government Agent I don’t know. I am told by the headmen that the people owing to the stopping of chena cultivation and the want of paddy lands do not get enough to eat. Yet the Administration report usually says that ’food was plentiful’ etc…”

 

Walter Edward Davidson as Settlement officer (9 months in 1901)

Davidson had an extensive knowledge of land speculation when he was Assistant Agent in the Kägalla district in the early 1890s[17], and was an efficient administrator, but his experience as Settlement officer was limited and his appointment of short duration. A practical and hard-working man, his future career as Colonial secretary in Transvaal, then Governor of Seychelles, Newfoundland and New South wales in Australia is a testimony for his value.

In his diary of July 1901, he gave an illuminating explanation of the working of the ‘Dutch Extracts’ system in the Matara district: “The Dutch made a record of all cultivated lands in private hands with a view to their taxation” “It became the custom for each native family to hold an extract [of the register]. The Sinhalese called it a ‘black letter’, or Dutch extract from the rolls, and we can see from the date of the issue of true copies by the authorities when pressure was put on them. It then became a mark of gentility to hold an extract, like a sannas in Kandyan district. I know of one case when a copper sannasa was made simply to forward negotiation for a marriage into a respectable family, to show that the suitor’s family was also respectable. These paper monuments have often been destroyed – damp, rats, white ants and so on. But the tradition in the village that your panguwa has held a Dutch extract was enough among easy going people. Then came Mr. Le Mesurier, and the land speculator’s period, and each family became anxious especially as government (very wrongly as I most deferentially submit) practically prohibited chena cultivation and absorbed chenas which the villagers bona fide believed to be theirs, and a desire arose for extracts. Ingenuity is never lacking in the forgery line in the Matara district, when a saleable article is wanted. So, two sets of makers of Dutch extracts appeared. The procedure was this: an agent found an anxious householder who either believed that the family had had an extract, or wanted one badly to recover his chenas. Enquiries by the forger’s agent ascertained what the householder believed to be his lands and elicited what more he would like to have. A suggestion followed that the extract might be traced and recovered for a consideration. The householder readily concurred. A few months later, an extract appears. It is very worn and aged, but it is taken to the village schoolmaster, and he traces triumphantly the name of the family and the names of the family’s fields and gardens and these coveted chenas. The body of the document was in an unknown tongue and did not signify. The bargain is then struck. One hundred rupees in cash if squeezable, if not cash down as much as possible and a pronote or assignment of half the chenas.”

“Then speculators appeared and bought conditionally the highlands for citronella cultivation. The difficulties arose. A painstaking officer, with highly developed antiquarian tastes [J.P. Lewis] arrived to settle this title to waste land. He peered into those easily acquired documents and found that the balance of the extract was gibberish, that a whole series contained the same type of errors, he collated them and called in experts in Dutch, brought the documents before the civil courts and had them declared forgeries (…) But an able and painstaking advocate, Mr. Bawa for instance, can convince a jury if he be strenuous enough (that) the expert is no clever than you and after all he knows very little more than we do about what happened about 150 years ago.”

Davidson attempted to win the confidence of the Wellaboda pattu villagers  (Davidson 20.06.1901) “If I am to do any good in the settlement of these valuable villages (…) it will be by a crushing defeat to the most prominent landgrabber [Don David Kulatunge](…) The people understand that while settlement is going on I am all patience and consideration. It is only the interloper who has cause for fear”.

When he left his post as Settlement Officer, he drew a program for his successor (Davidson 10.08.1901), in which he displayed his deep understanding of the peasant condition and the role of chena cultivation in the villager’s subsistence, his paternalistic attitude, and the opposition he encountered on the part of a section of the Ceylon civil administrators[18]:  

“Keep good relations with Government and Assistant Government Agents and never appeal to the government against their wishes. Consult Ellis [Controller of Revenue] personally, not on papers because he has a destructive genius and is an awkward person to disagree with. Spend time with Surveyor General and Government printer and give them full particular of what you require, never oblige a busy man to make reference and thus delay his answer. Work with the mudaliyar and headmen; the clerk Gunatilake wants to do too much himself. Continue to work on the lines of the panguwa or communal interest. It is true that in the Southern province the communal instinct has been dying out. Revive it, it gives the poor man and the stupid man a chance and it saves you the risk of doing the weaker man an injury. Hunt out men that should be claimants and let them come in at any time. Do not rule out claims for want of a paper title, but strive that every householder should have 5 acres of highland near his field or garden to do what he likes with. You will thus check illicit chena clearing and yet provide a man enough land to feed him.

Keep the man on the land. Let him have land sufficient to feed him and keep him honest. Your settlement will last twenty years, but then the people will be encroaching just as they do now. Then there should be a revision and a further apportionment of Crown land for nothing, for by then most of the chena given will have become garden lands. Begin before you ‘notice’ the land by a cursory inspection of the land and note then what you mean to give and what you mean to reserve. Speak firmly then to the villagers as to what you mean to reserve. By the time the three months are passed, no one will claim what you mean to reserve.

Your duties are merely to declare this or that land Crown or private. Never hesitate to exceed your duties. You will have occasional setbacks and be told to confine yourself to your duties. Don’t take much notice of that, always exceed your duties in these directions. When and where you can, declare a private land in favour of the persons who ought to have it. If you think a ‘Crown land’ should be devoted to any specific purpose (village forest, small allotments, sale to capitalists for plantation or plumbago, deniya for paddy, irrigation scheme etc.), attach a rider to your finding and convey the recommendation to the Government Agent…Always value the lands, undervalue per choice. The Crown does no want to lock up a lot of unproductive land, it wants it to go into cultivation. My scheme is good of apportioning a tract of Crown chena with permission to cultivate small extents, an acre a year, paying a rent of 1/10th to government. The Government Agent of the South Province disapproves it, but with all deference, he carries his horror of chena cultivation to extremes. A landless labourer is the lowest of all in the scale of happiness. A wanderer is a danger to the community. And you cannot make colonists of the weak and stupid and timid villager. Give him an opportunity to live and thrive in the village where he was born. The government did not definitely decide against me, it merely said it was not my duty to make such proposals. Remember that chena cultivation to excess is destructive, yet it is in moderation in some districts a necessity for bare livelihood, and it will be continued in defiance of you, if you do not make reasonable provision for villager to raise their food somehow. Keep the two registers I have opened out (…) This has the immediate advantage of interesting the government in your work and preventing your being forgotten (…) Get each report printed (…) it is the landraad roll of the village it should contain the description of the village” etc.

Davidson ended his diary with a personal note: “Both my present work and the Ceylon Civil Service I leave with the keenest regret. Starting life again at middle age I have doubts whether my wife and I will ever do such good work again and whether we will succeed in winning this regard and confidence of the Afrikaners as we believe we have won the real affection of the Ceylonese. In the East only custom and caste continue undisturbed. Individual influence may work largely for the time, but the work and name perish out of memory. It is something to remember for a year or two.”

 

Land Settlement under John George Fraser (1901-1911)

Fraser remained in his post for an unusually long period and was able to set up the principles and the practice of settlement on a firm footing, but his progressive views, partly inherited from Davidson, were opposed by a section of the colonial administration and he was prevented from implementing them. He was however critical of the idealism of Davidson (Fraser 24.09.1901): “The more I see of these villagers, the more I am persuaded of the fatuity of Mr Davidson’s hopes of re-establishing a communal system. That idea had passed away and individual possession is the aim of everyone”. His project was to develop a land settlement department with an island-wide approach and a strong staff, which would deprive the local Revenue officers and their headmen of a large part of their power, and to set up a sort of rural development planning – which actually took shape 30 years later.  With the passing of years, he became more interested in developing the strength of his department and his later diaries are less interesting for the social historian.

From August 1901 to June 1903, Fraser was special officer under the Waste Land Ordinance of 1897. In July 1903, a Department was set up by the Governor West Ridgeway with wider powers: “to settle amicably as between the Crown and subject the title to all land, cultivated as well as uncultivated”. It was staffed with one Settlement officer, one Assistant settlement officer and 18 employees. In 1911, the Department had one Settlement officer, 11 Assistant settlement officers, and 84 employees.  In the meantime, 1081 villages had been settled and 1357 were being settled, in spite of the difficult coordination with the Survey department.[19]

During the first two years, under the governorship of West Ridgeway, Fraser was busy trying to pacify the relations between the Morawak villagers and the Crown. His diaries from October 1901 to January 1904 are filled with remarks on the difficulty to deal with the headmen in the Morawak korale: “Settlement in this part of the country has been rendered more difficult through the action of a former mudaliyar who went about admitting chenas to be private whenever a 1/10th wattoruwa was produced (…) I have seldom seen a more worthless set of headmen than the vidane araccis and police officers of the Morawak korale (…) The great difficulty in this part of the country is that there is practically no documentary evidence and that most of the headmen side with the villagers when difference of opinion arises”. It is clear that the intervention of the colonial administration in land matters was strongly resented by the landed class – the headmen class, because it impinged on the basis of their arbitrary power. Apart from the questions of power, another problem was the organization of surveys, which “almost exclusively lay on the information of local headmen”. By 1904, Fraser seems to have succeeded in dispelling the distrust[20] : “Features highly indicative of the good relations have been the success of land sales held in course of the settlement of villages and the large number of applications made to the Settlement officer to purchase land. The latter is a new development not originally contemplated and is in great measure consequent on the special arrangements made by the Settlement officer to accelerate the surveys and thus curtail the length of time that elapses between the application for land and its actual sale” “The villagers first imagined that I was merely here for one of these numerous inspections made by Revenue officers which settle nothing. Now that they realize that the whole village is to be completed, they are becoming very anxious of amicable settlement” “A year ago, my operations were regarded with the greatest distrust, now the people willingly come forward and meet me half way in effecting amicable settlements (…) The success is entirely due to our living in the villages, inspecting each lot ourselves and coming into contact with the claimants who soon convince themselves that their distress is unfounded”. For example, in the case of Puwakbodaowita village, (Fraser 12.08.1902): “The claimants all except a landshark, C.A. Goonewardena by name, came before me and asked me to let them have the 6 acres of land I offered them in full settlement of their claims instead of referring them to court. I agreed and we sat down in a roadside hut and made our treaty. This deprives Goonewardena of all his props and we shall now crush him effectually”.

The new popularity of Fraser was also the result of his recognition of the value of chena cultivation in the subsistence economy of the peasantry of the hills; his critical remarks of the effect in Morawak of repressive government policy are worth quoting in full (Fraser 30.11.1901): “I drove to Urubokka Rest House. As I came along, I was forcibly struck by the miserable appearance of the villagers. I stopped my carriage occasionally and had a chat with some of the wayfarers, picking up some hints about their condition and about the geography of the place. They appear a simple-minded set of people, these Morawaka villagers, easily led, not as gentlemanly as the Kandyans in their instincts, but only requiring fair and considerate handling. Their great grievance is of course the restriction, or shall we say prohibition of chenaing. After hearing their views and considering the question without bias, I am of opinion that it is desirable to set apart certain areas of waste land useless for other purposes for chena cultivation in villages in which large areas have not been handed over to claimants. I further believe that the early introduction of some such system would tend to a great reduction in claims. What the people want is to chena. They do not want the land and will be quite content to cultivate on permits from the Crown, and I do not think any damage can accrue to government as such cultivation would only be allowed after all necessary reserves have been set aside. A careful enquiry should be made into the circumstances of each village by a sympathetic but firm officer. The main objections to chena cultivation are: a. That forests, a valuable asset of the community, were frequently ruthlessly destroyed; b. That climatic changes for the worse might follow on indiscriminate felling of forest and jungle; c. That the villagers set up title to the land in any case, clearing without permit; d. Ethical objections [Fraser omits the planter’s pressure to get land]. The first three objections will be surmounted by the operation of the Waste Lands Ordinance and by the constitution of reserved village forests. The ethical objection is that chena cultivation is detrimental to character in making the people lazy and improvident. But for my part I cannot see how the enterprise and exertion spent upon chenaing can be half as demoralizing as periods of enforced idleness and loafing. For it is not as if gardens and fields were being neglected for chenas. No, they are cultivated, in many cases over cultivated, planted with trees until production is impeded by overcrowding. Even if given new areas to convert into gardens, the people, destitute of money, must have a means of livelihood until the new gardens come into bearing. And this means can only be found in chena cultivation. Only by some such scheme will it be possible to introduce a little of the joy of life into the hearts of these dejected and poverty-stricken subjects. And I am sure the government will also reap its reward in the greater contentedness of the people and in the greater rapidity with which chena claims will be disposed of. Often when I ask claimants who have not a bit of evidence why they claim, they say: ‘What are we to do? We are not allowed to chena on Crown land. So, we must claim on the chance of getting a bit of land for ourselves to chena!”

 When Fraser undertook the settlement of the Middeniya area, further east, in the dry zone, he noted (Fraser 14.06.1902): “All the lands here, except a few tanks and fields, is waste land covered with thorny scrub jungle of no commercial value whatsoever. It is of vast extent and will take many years to plant it with permanent products, supposing they will grow in a country where there is so little water. Formerly the villagers used to cultivate large extents on permit from the Crown, paying share to the Crown. During that period, the title of the Crown was never questioned. Then the policy was adopted of restricting chena cultivation, in the hope that the people would then devote themselves to permanent products, especially paddy (…) If I am right that Government desires to foster a native peasantry, I do not think this policy is likely to have the desired results. There has been misunderstanding on both sides of course, and this chena question has greatly strained the relations between the Revenue Officers and the villagers. When chena cultivation was restricted, the villagers retaliated by clearing what they chose without permit, or clearing in excess of their permits. The Revenue Officer then prosecuted them. They pleaded guilty and were fined 4 or 5 Rs for each acre cultivated, instead of 1 Re per acre they used to pay as permit. They still laid no claim to the land in most cases. When the Revenue Officer saw his order disregarded in this way, and that he was hindered with large numbers of prosecutions, he began to forbid cultivation, to prosecute where it was persisted in, and to sequester the crops. This, the villagers say, drove them to desperation for they must live, and they then began to clear, claiming the land on any frivolous title, sure that in the Police Court the Crown would then be referred to its civil remedy. Finding that the result came up to their expectations, they then began to think their claims would hold water. It is in this way that a great many claims have originated. Now the Assistant Government Agent reports that the villagers refuse to acknowledge the Crown title or to take permits. This appears to be the net result of the present policy, according to the views of the villagers. The villagers yesterday spoke quite sensibly and said they did not want the land but only their immemorial right to chena (…) If the intention of the present policy was to protect Crown rights, it does not appear to have been very succesful. If it was to put a stop to a ‘wasteful system’ of cultivation, I fail to see how the present means of cultivating their thorny area can be termed wasteful. There is no doubt that these lands formerly produced an immense quantity of Indian corn and fine grain, whereas they now produce next to nothing. The ‘waste’ all seems to be on the side of the present system if the question is regarded from the economic point of view (…) To ask villagers to desist from chena cultivation is much the same as asking them to starve to please government, and of course if they are not allowed chena cultivation they will cultivate without permits. It is a question of life or death for them”.

Fraser reiterated during the next years his analysis and suggested a new policy, repeated in his Administration report for 1906, but his views were censored by Governor Blake, and it took practically two decades for the colonial administration to seriously reconsider its position with the Land commission of 1927[21]

“To the villager’s mode of thinking, there is nothing immoral in making encroachments on Crown property. Probably this is the result of former administration prior to the British administration. In Dutch times, the Company did everything to increase the area under cultivation and did not much object to encroachment, as every encroachment brought money to the exchequer. The Company had an interest in every land in its domains and maintained these interests by levying a share of the products. The people were content to hold their land subject to these taxes. The Dutch system may thus be said to have encouraged cultivation and as they had regularly kept thombos giving the particulars of each land, there was a very efficient check on encroachment or rather a check that encroachment did not escape payment of taxes.

The British system has altered most of this. The registers were allowed to lapse and gradually a period of chaos set in, the results of which are still being felt. Registers were kept only of Crown lands except in the case of fields. The tax on private gardens and chenas was relaxed and thus all the advantages of having a complete list of all the cultivated lands in each village with all particulars of extent, ownership and so on were lost. It is true that a tax was levied on private chenas also and that yearly statements of crops raised were made but this was quite another thing from the complete register of Dutch times. Now as then, the desire of the people is to have a land for cultivation. The average villager does not much mind whose land it is as long as he is allowed to take his crops. This is seen every day in the case of villagers who chena Crown lands without permit, knowing that they will be prosecuted and fined. They prefer to take this course to that of applying for a permit which may be refused. They are quite ready to pay a fine.

The policy of government has of late been to restrict chena cultivation. With this every right-minded person will agree. But have we substituted anything for it? Have we made it easy for the villager to take up permanent cultivation in place of chena cultivation? I think not. To ask the average villager, leading a hand to mouth existence, to purchase land at 10 Rs an acre and fees, is to demand of him an impossibility. Even if it were possible for him to raise this amount, it would mean that he would have to borrow it or that in paying he would exhaust his capital. Neither of these is desirable. We do not wish him to become indebted, neither do we desire to strip him of all his capital, for the result will be likely that the moneylender will reap the benefit of the villager’s labours by selling him up, and in the other case he will have no capital to enable him to develop his purchase.

What is wanted would appear to be a system of rent in perpetuity coupled with the power to purchase outright whenever desired (…) at a rate of say 50c or 1 Re per acre per annum (…) The result would be:

  1. A great decrease in the number of cases
  2. A development, probably immediate and enormous, of permanent cultivation`
  3. The majority of Crown land in populous villages thus disposed of
  4. The necessary register would keep alive the Crown title
  5. Sales on these terms would form a convenient introduction to a general land tax if it is even desirable to have one
  6. It would save the delays of a re-survey and the difficulties inherent in the constitution of communal chenas”


Formation of the Land Settlement Department: a political decision

The policy of the colonial government in land matters was subjected to recurrent reviews. It was the most intricate political issue encountered by successive governors, from West Ridgeway to Clifford. The contradictory imperatives were:

  • To support British colonial interests, especially interests of the planters
  • To preserve government control over ‘waste’ lands
  • To avoid social discontent and peasant unrest
  • To foster economic development
  • To delineate the respective roles of the Revenue Officers and the Settlement Officers

The Waste Lands Ordinance was the brainchild of Governor West Ridgeway and had met with the opposition of his predecessor Gordon (Lord Stanmore) and of a large section of the Revenue Officers, who considered that the creation of a distinct department would impinge on their prerogatives, that it bypassed the age-long hierarchical working of local administration based on the headmen system and introduced a system of direct administration. For some time, the Revenue Officers could still effect settlements under the Ordinance of 1897, but they could not devote sufficient time and expertise to that work, and they distributed chena permits without proper enquiries, in the view of the Settlement Officers (Fraser, 29.07.1907).

The long despatch sent to London in June 1903 by the governor West Ridgeway[22] paved the way for the formation of a Department (which he would put under the direction of the Controller of Revenue F.R. Ellis, the officers in the field being junior). West Ridgeway was about to leave his post and was anxious to establish on a firm footing a project which he had started in 1897 at the beginning of his almost eight years long governorship (February 1896 to November 1903): “I regard the success of this enterprise as the most important feature of my administration (…) for I have had ample experience of the fatal results of the absence of any systematic method of disposing of land claims which is the main cause of ill feeling towards government and discontent among the mass of people (…) I look forward with apprehension to what may happen during the first years of my successor’s rule, unless the department is placed on a permanent and satisfactory footing before I leave”

He painted the situation prevailing before his ordinance of 1897 as characterized by “a chronical state of hostility between the Crown and the villagers” due to the lack of survey and uncertainty regarding the status of unsettled lands. Hostility to his ordinance was reduced, but the settlement work had to be organized in a systematic way at an all-island uniform level, with a continuity in time. It was therefore impossible to rely on the Revenue Officer network for the task, because of the lack of continuity and the ever-growing multiplicity of tasks. Annexed to the despatch were four case studies (supposedly randomly chosen) with a commentary by Ellis: Baduraliya (Pasdun), Dankoluwa, Gorakawala and Puwakbodaowita (Morawak, along the Nilwala Ganga), to explain the working of settlement. The idea of village planning was present, the basic rule being that no sale should be allowed “unless there is ample reserve to meet the requirements of the expansion of the village for many years. If there is land available, it is desirable to allow capitalists to open an estate, as by this means money is brought into the village, and the people benefit greatly by the demand for labour. But this cannot be allowed if it would have the effect of excluding the villager from his own village”.

During the following years, the policy of the department, under the direction of the Controller of Revenue, F.R. Ellis, was to undertake the systematic settlement of certain areas – especially the coconut areas of the Kurunegala district and the rubber areas of the Ratnapura district, a task entrusted to the Settlement officer Fraser and his assistants; and to intervene where problems arose which could have political consequences, a task reserved to Ellis[23]. The Settlement department records preserve a collection of the cases settled by Ellis; some documents are also found in the Colonial secretary records, and the Colonial Office papers are also useful to follow the affairs. After the departure of West Ridgeway, as head of the department, Ellis effected personally the settlement of the most intricate cases involving European and Ceylonese land speculators, especially in the North Western Province, where the early 20th century witnessed a boom of coconut plantations. This led to an great amount of correspondence between the Settlement department, the Colonial secretariat in Colombo, and the Colonial Office in London[24].

 

The Settlement department facing land speculation by European planters in the Kurunegala  and Matale districts

The Kurunegala district is large and its ‘Kandyan’ identity is somewhat blurred because it is more connected with the maritime areas and the dry zone than with the hilly districts. The history of village land sales in the North Western province started with the bursts of anti-chena legislation in the years 1860-1870, like in Kägalla and Matara. In Kurunegala there were two very different facies of plantation development: in the hilly border areas adjoining the Kandy and Matale districts, especially in Madure korale, the demand for land was for rubber or tea estates by Europeans; elsewhere in the district, especially in the Katugampola and Dambadeni Hatpattus,  it was for coconut plantations and came from Ceylonese rather than from European would-be planters.

Before the ordinance of 1897, there was a general tendency for Kurunegala Government Agents to minimize the impact of village sales, especially when European purchasers were involved[25]. An example is found in the report for 1896 by Aelian King: “As far as the villager is concerned there is, I am convinced, but little room for alarm for he only sells generally speaking what he has a very uncertain claim to, namely some of the waste lands of the village more or less often cleared and sown with dry grain at intervals of from 8 to 15 years, perhaps at even a greater interval, probably not by himself but by the village in general. Defective legislation, or tenderness on the part of the courts, made it very difficult for the Crown to assert its rights. Consequently the village is in a position to offer a good deal of land for sale and the Crown is after all probability the only sufferer in the transaction (sic). No instances have come to my knowledge of villagers impoverishing themselves and rendering themselves homeless by such sales (…) These sales are only possible in the damp and therefore fertile parts of the province. In such localities chenaing is not a necessity to the people while it is certainly a most wasteful system (…) Few candid persons could hesitate to declare that it would be immensely to the advantage of their inhabitants that the desolate wastes should be put under permanent cultivation, bringing capital into their midst and opening up markets for their labour and for their produce. New areas of cultivation are consequently large, cultivation of coconut is advancing everywhere”.  But another administrator, Sewell, drew a different picture : “In many instances whole families have been turned out of the holdings so acquired, their houses broken down and the members left to shift for themselves – in some cases they have left the district, in others they remain about the villages as vagrants and having no occupation it is to be feared become criminals (…) It is also going on in the Katugampola and Dambadeniya Hatpattu to a large extent, chiefly among the invaders from the low country and European companies in search of coconut properties. [It is difficult to dissuade the villagers to sell] as their neighbours selling they are gradually squeezed out of their lands, they find their fields ruined by the wash from the highland opened for cultivation above them”. Sewell pleaded for an immediate legislation to stop sales “for the low country middleman or Moorman is making large profits by buying at low prices and re-selling to Europeans”, and “prevent the serious evils which must ensue from the displacement of a large a number or native landowners and their conversion into casual labourers”. He added: “It is notorious that the planters will not as a rule accept and work Sinhalese labour – especially the Kandyan villagers – and the inevitable result must be the increase of crime and theft of praedial produce”[26]

Madure korale had features similar to Kägalla district: it attracted the attention of European planters between 1890 and 1910. Its center was the upper valley of the Deduru Oya, from its springs to the well-known locality of Ridigama with its historical temple. It was partly inhabited by Kande minissu (Vahumpura), partly by Goyigama, with a few Batgam interspersed. The kandegam were considered as royal villages in the Kandyan times, the Vahumpura being in possession of highland chenas (often cultivated with älvi) for the service of furnishing jaggery and honey to the capital: all the highlands were still in the 1840s recognized private by the Revenue officers[27].

The whole Madure korale became the hunting ground of various land brokers, mostly Europeans (especially the Farquharsons), in association with local headmen (Palipana), who were acting for the big managing agency Finlay Muir, with the assistance of the legal firm De Sarams.  The process was quite similar to that which had taken place in the Kägalla district during the previous years, and was characterized by the considerable extent of gardens and even paddy fields included in the sales. The sales to Europeans for the years 1894, 1895 and 1896 were as follows: 3,149 acres of chenas sold 28,667 Rs (9.10 Rs an acre); 214 acres of gardens sold 5,157 Rs (24.07 Rs an acre); 84 acres of gardens and chenas and paddy fields sold 1,193 Rs (14.10 Rs an acre). And in addition 141 acres of paddy fields and 15 acres of houses and gardens. The large extent of gardens and paddy fields is to be noted, this was quite unusual in such circumstances[28].

In Madure korale, the largest land buyers were the members of a Scottish family, A.J. and R.J Farquharson, who were followed by other members of the same family, George Fraser and Francis G. Farquharson.  Niyangama, a Batgam Duraya locality, was totally absorbed by an estate: there  the Farquharsons purchased between July 1891 and April 1896 an area of 172 acres, allegedly for 5,010 Rs, which included 11 acres of houses and gardens, 31 acres of gardens, 11 acres of gardens and chenas, and 118 acres of chenas. The local headmen (the korala, Palipana Meduma Banda, and the ex-aracci and the vel-duraya) sold their lands and acted as intermediaries to sell first chenas belonging to Batgam people;  the estate later extended with sales of gardens and houses between August 1892 and July 1893 at a rate up to 100 Rs an acre (in the deeds, but probably much less). Further north, in the localities of Padeniya, Mahawela, Akolagomuwa and Madige Malbe, the Farquharsons purchased from May 1895 to September 1896 some 450 acres for 4,930 Rs, including 23 acres of gardens, 8 of fields, 84 of fields, gardens and chenas, and 334 of chenas. The sellers were Goyigama and Muslims in Malbe, and Palipana served as middleman, purchasing for 110 Rs chenas in 1893 and reselling them to the Farquharsons for 817.75 Rs Another Palipana, P.B. Palipana Ratemahatmaya, acted as intermediary in the sale of Bolagama (Goyigama village), Elawissa and Mayamulla (Duraya villages), which were purchased by him for 620 Rs for 364 acres (6 acres of fields and gardens and 357 acres of chenas sold 1.34 Rs per acre), between May 1894 and May 1896.

Another landgrabber was W.L. Strachan, also active in the Kägalla district. He purchased from the peasants and also from the local monk, between January 1894 and September 1896, 404 acres (including 4 acres of gardens) for 3,337 Rs in the localities of Moratuwa, Dunukewatta, Mitenwala. In Panagamuwa (a Muslim village), Rambodagalla, Ogodapola (Vahumpura), the purchasers were the North and South Sylhet Tea Companies which acquired 1,028 acres paid 11,859 Rs (10 to 15 Rs per acre), including 50 acres of fields and 94 acres of gardens, an enormous amount, between August 1894 and August 1896, from various sellers, including numerous Moormen, large Goyigama landowners (notably Tikiri Banda Delwita, 111 acres) and some Vahumpuras : the Delwita estate was as a result a patchwork : this is very characteristic of these estates made up entirely of village sales.  

Pitiakande estate was purchased from villagers by Edmund Scott and Frank Shelley who paid 3,079 Rs for 400 acres including 4 acres of gardens, between 1894 and 1896, from Goyigama villagers of Kotikapola and later Duraya villagers of Rambatta and Mitenwala, including a vel-duraya and a washerman. Another purchaser, J. Manley Power, had acquired 64 acres at 1,946 Rs, and this included 18 acres of gardens and 2 of paddy fields, near Kotikapola. In Ellagonna and Talahengoda 286 acres were purchased by F.W. Harper and F. Watson Davidson, including 62 acres of fields and 26 acres of gardens. And at Etagahawela, one A. Melville White purchased 216 acres (including 5 acres of paddy fields), through the intermediary of Alfred Gaspar Herat, for 2,595 Rs.

Delwita is one of the best documented cases of large estates built up by land purchases from villagers[29]. In 1904, the Controller of Revenue, Ellis, undertook a settlement of the estate’s claims. The Surveyor General sent his deputy, Ferdinands, to inspect Delwita; he was apparently in the best terms with the superintendent of Delwita, Long Price, and wrote that “the settlement should be an easy one with so many facilities placed at the disposal of the Settlement officer”. But Ellis was not prepared to be lax in the matter, and considered that “this is a typical case of large property formed by purchases from villagers, which should be considered as a test case of the working of the Waste Lands Ordinance”. The estate owned 1,846 acres, entirely purchased from villagers by A.J. Farquarson who resold them to the Finlay Muir business. As usual, De Sarams were managing the legal interests of the firm and they sent to the Assistant settlement officer Fox “a trunk containing the Delwita Estate deeds, there are between 500 and 600 of them, most date from 1894-1898”. The settlement proposed by Ellis recognized 597 acres of paddy fields, old gardens and reasonable percentage of appurtenances to be settled on Certificates of Quiet Possession and asked the estate to pay from 10 Rs to 20Rs per acre for the rest, adding that the Crown would not defend the estate against village claimants as it could not ascertain whether all village claims had been purchased by it. Finlay Muir transmitted the refusal of the settlement by the successors of Farquarson, but accepted to pay 17,507 Rs; however the Certificate of Quiet Possession was not issued until December 1912.

In a report of March 1906, the Kurunegala agent informed the government that the superintendent of Delwita was felling 400 acres of forest “apparently outside the settlement, in the village of Reddagoda”, that Farquarson was doing the same near Malbe, and that the superintendent of Nelahella was felling 100 acres of forest. He asked for a general settlement of the whole valley of Madure korale : “the rush for rubber land is so great that it is evident that planters and speculators are not going to wait any longer and are felling freely in all directions, trusting to luck as to the consequence. The land in Madure korale is about the most promising and valuable rubber land in the province.”

Finally, the Settlement department resurveyed in the 1930s several villages of the valley and found that most villagers were practically landless and lived on rubber tapping on the estates, which was curtailed as a result of the great depression[30]. Buluwalakanda was described as follows in May 1931: “One of the largest villages in the korale, a large part occupied by part of the Shakerley estate on title plans. The village lies on the slopes of a steep hill, land is very rocky. I think that the villagers might find it difficult to pay for their settlements because they depend for ready cash on employment in the estate which is now nearly closed. The villagers own no paddy fields. About half the village was sold 20 years ago to the estate”. A few years later, in Niyangama (Pinnapota hamlet), there was “little chena land in the village, ¾ of the village is paddy land, the highlands consist of old gardens. The area under notice was keenly claimed owing to the scarcity of any available highland. In one case, an extent of 6 perches was settled on 6 persons. Many of the villagers find employment in the neighbouring Keppitigala estate, Population 190 for 230 acres of which 150 acres are paddy, 45 families mostly of the Batgam Duraya caste”.

The position taken by Ellis had an echo in the nearby district of Matale, where two influential European land grabbers, Anderson and Malcolmson, who had asked for Certificates of quiet possession for land purchased from villagers, felt threatened. As Europeans, they believed they could obtain the indulgence of the colonial government. In the case of Anderson, the position of Ellis was uncompromising. The file ‘Anderson claims’[31] begins with a minute by Ellis (26.04.1904) dealing with the claim of James Anderson, the owner of Gansarapola / Bandarapola estates, which Ellis considered to be a test case.  “I advise that Mr. Anderson be informed that the Crown is not prepared at present to issue a Certificate of quiet possession (…) This is merely the precursor of much larger similar claims (…) Mr. Anderson has purchased these lands probably at a nominal figure, land which is really the property of the Crown (…) These purchases involved a double fraud: the Crown is deprived of its land, which properly belongs to it, and the people of the use of the land for chena and grazing purposes. If one villager sells land which was in this way occupied by himself and ten others, the latter have no redress, they cannot claim the land because it belongs to the Crown and no one therefore has a locus standi to eject the purchaser (…) There is some reason to suppose that in the past there has not been sufficient check exercised by government over the alienation by private parties of land of this description (…) The question is simply whether the laxity is to be continued. If it is, it will involve to giving up of probably half the land in the North Western province and three quarters of the land in Ratnapura. I cannot for a moment advise this wholesale abandonment of Crown right especially when it is borne in mind that the benefit will accrue no to the villager, who will in all probability sustain severe loss, but to foreign speculators, who will, not improbably, resell at a fair price when they had bought it at an inadequate one, and who will do this on the strength of a title which government, entirely disapproving of the sale, has given to them (…) Anderson  now asks government to give him a good title for his defective one, and thereby allow him to secure for himself the difference between what he paid for the land and its true value. It seems clear that the difference in justice belongs to the villagers and not to Mr Anderson [author’s emphasis]. I cannot see how the fact that a man has succeeded in inducing the headmen not to report a clearing, or the fact that the Revenue Officer has delayed in holding an inquiry into the matter, can in any way alter the occupant’s title.”

The other speculator, Joseph Malcolmson, was an Anglo-Irish Quaker turned missionary, who attempted to use his status to exert an influence in favour of the planter’s lobby. His exchange of letters with the colonial administration offers a typical example of the colonial discourse at the beginning of the 20th century[32]:  

“The action of Government in the North Western Province with regard to native lands has caused considerable disquiet amongst planters in this district, and will certainly do so amongst capitalists at home. Though I am now a missionary and I am not directly connected with business except so far as being owner of this estate [Clodagh], I have a great many friends and connections at home who are very considerably engaged therein, and I know how they and other possible investors will be influenced by the action taken. Not long ago I was spoken to regarding the possibility of one of the Cadbury family coming to the island and acquiring land for cocoa. The Cadburys have I believe cocoa estates in other countries and are as you probably know one of the largest cocoa firms in the world. I also know the heads of the firm of J.S. Fry and co, Bristol, and Rowntrees of York, both very largely interested in this product, as well as others who are very largely interested in tea; some of them are already owners of estates in the island. I am quite sure these men, who are cautious but at the same time enterprising men of business, could be greatly if not entirely dissuaded from investing in new estates in Ceylon by the fear that the government might step in and claim their purchase, when it is considered that land which costs say 20 Rs., takes 300 to 400Rs. to bring into bearing in tea or cocoa. There is a considerable amount of land in the Matale district suitable for planting cocoa, coconuts and rubber, but it is mostly in native hands and is of little benefit to anyone at present, being under chena cultivation only. I need hardly throw Your Excellency’s attention to the general benefit that arises when such land is opened up and planted. An estate of the size of this (800 acres opened) pays about 7,500 Rs a year in rail freights, in some cases more, say about 10 Rs per cultivated acre. I have paid during some years over 15,000 Rs per annum in wages to the Sinhalese villagers, apart from carpenters, carters and contractors employed, and Tamil coolies’ wages, which are mainly spent in the district. The villages adjoining the estate, when I came first, were exceedingly unhealthy, fever, dysentery, etc. constantly prevailing. Since the land has been opened, they are as healthy as any in the district (…)

No one can blame the Crown for claiming land which has been undoubtedly encroached on, but lands which have been held by villagers for generations without dispute, and have been bought in good faith for estates from them while the Government has been quiescent, ought certainly not to be subject to dispute and disturbance. I may say that my own investment here was on the faith of Sir West Ridgeway statement to the Matale planters eight years ago [1896]. His words are well remembered by me and can no doubt be referred to, “that bona fide investors and planters had nothing to fear from the Waste Lands Ordinance, that it was only directed against land speculators and middlemen; and that Certificates of quiet possession would be given without difficulty”. How difficult these are to obtain is well known and from the nature of the case it must be so. It would take the Assistant Agent some weeks to inquire into all my title deeds for instance of which I have some 300 to 400, though I believe not one piece of my land has ever been claimed by the Crown, except the Crown land I have bought in the usual way at the kacceri sales (…) As you are aware the largest portion of lands bought from villagers are held by them under piya uruma [ancestral heritage] and Government can easily dispute such title (…) I cannot conceive of anyone either purchasing for himself as a bona fide planter or acting in good faith for his employer, speculating as you suggest (…) If he was a man of any substance, he would rarely take such a risk, and I feel sure few Europeans would do so. I do not dispute that such may be done by Moor traders and Low country Sinhalese. I do not think I have ever come across a case of a Kandyan doing so (…) My position as a Sinhalese missionary [sic] brings me into close touch with the Kandyans and I can positively state that ancestral lands are well known to the people”.

Malcolmson pointed the problem resulting from the frequent change of Revenue officers “I communicated with the Assistant Government Agent and told him what boundaries I wished to buy within, and asked him ‘was any land belonging to the Crown?’;  he informed me that he would take no responsibility and that I must find out for myself. Mr E.B. Alexander was the first Assistant Government Agent that I could get information from and he came down here and took great pains to investigate doubtful pieces on more than one occasion (…) I would far rather buy from the Crown than from the villagers, but there is almost no good land in the hands of the Crown in this district. We are compelled to buy from the villagers or not at all.”[33]

Storey, Chairman of the Matale Planter’s Association, exchanged simultaneously letters with the Colonial Secretary in September 1904, who answered that intending purchasers could ascertain from Government if a land was Crown land, that after Kurunegala, Matale would be taken up by the Land Settlement department, and that “until each case has been considered on its merits, Government does not propose to issue Certificates of quiet possession”. Storey insisted that “if carried out to the letter, it will affect thousands of acres of land in the Matale valley, and the owners thereof could ill afford to pay even 10Rs an acre for such lands (…) In the case of the estates Muwagala and Owitikande (…) held mainly on native titles purchased in good faith by me (…) will you kindly give me a letter assuring me of government’s no intention of contesting our claims to same, similar to the document or letter given to Mr James Anderson on behalf of the owners of Gansarapola estate by Mr Im Thurn”.

Ellis, in a note to the Governor, developed his position: “Government is not prepared to depart from the policy previously communicated (…) It does not feel called upon to supplement the titles which capitalists have considered sufficiently strong to justify investment as the land has probably been bought below its value on account of the weakness of the title.(…) Mr. Storey’s letter is full of humour. He first states as a threat or warning that planters will cease to buy lands on native titles, this being the very object with which the circular issued. He then predicts the practical ruin of the villager”. Storey should send a schedule of his deeds and then trace the title to the original owner: “It is a common practice for low country men and other unprincipled speculators to go round the villages collecting signatures on native deeds which they use to form the basis of a subsequent transfer to the planter”

The enquiry of the Assistant Agent at Matale (25.11.1904) concluded that Malcolmson had paid a fair price for the lands but revealed that there were many cultivated lands included in the estate, just as in the case of Delwita: 348 lots purchased from 441 persons covering 1,075 acres, were paid 45.77 Rs. an acre. The larger lots, 165 acres in all, were purchased in 1897-1898, they were paid 41 Rs. per acre: “all appear to have been old gardens, some with coconut trees over 20 years old, except one claimed as appurtenance to a field; coffee had previously been planted on much of the land and there are on some lots old houses or sites of houses; as regards the other lots generally inquired into, it will be seen that they include fields.” Malcolmson had purchased mainly from Low country men and not from Kandyans: one lot from Abraham Appuhami, the schoolmaster of Kaikawela, his wife and other family members who themselves had house and coconut trees; another from Lokuge Alwis Silva who declared that he bought the land in 1873 from the (Kandyan) aracci Koralegedara Appuhami, another from Samuel Appuhami “It was old paddy field or small garden, purchased from 100 to 200 Rs per acre. These lands have been planted by me with tea and coconut and rubber at different dates from 1897 on”. Other intermediaries, Welgamage Simon and David Appuhami “bought the land to sell to Mr. Malcolmson, including small paddy fields (about 13 acres)”; and one Wickramasekere who claimed upon a fiscal transfer”. On the basis of this enquiry, Ellis was compelled to admit Malcolmson’s claims (minute of 10.02.1905) but added: “it could be noted that for a good deal of the land claimed by Mr. Malcolmson, title deeds have been issued by Crown (but) he apparently has no bought from the persons who received the deeds; this however is not a matter in which the Crown is interested”.  

In his annual report for 1905, Hellings, the new Assistant Government Agent, underlined the social effects of such the land sales[34] : “Sales of whole chenas by some of the shareholders only; many of these transactions occurred years ago; the chenas were recently cleared by the purchasers, and the co-owners who did not join in the sale found themselves compelled to accept such compensation if any as the purchaser chose to offer, or to enter upon a costly action at law against perhaps a wealthy company. This involved hardships on poor people. I did what I could to promote fair settlements”

 

The Settlement department facing land speculation by Ceylonese entrepreneurs : the first Kurunegala meeting (June 1904)

There was a geographical and historical continuum between traditional coconut cultivation in small holdings in the coastal areas (Chilaw / Negombo) and its extension in the interior (Kurunegala). But investment in large scale coconut cultivation was not a peasant activity: it became between 1880 and 1930 the main field of investment for the emerging bourgeoise hailing from the coastal areas, from Chilaw to Panadura via Negombo, Colombo and Moratuwa. Quite often belonging to the Karawa caste, these investors had accumulated a capital through arrack distillery or tavern renting, trade and the professions, and could hardly access the European banks. Rich Muslim traders were also in the field. Following their example, smaller investors, such as clerks and government employees, opened medium scale coconut estates with borrowed money. The Nattukottai Chettiar merchant bankers from South India (Chettinad) established at that time hundreds of small agencies in the district to finance the development of coconut estates. Their implantation in Ceylon dated from the mid-19th century: they acted as money changers for the coffee planters and the Tamil coolies up-country, and after the collapse of coffee by 1880 they partly converted their activity to money lending to Ceylonese on mortgage[35].

Among the pioneer Karawa entrepreneurs stand out the De Soysas, who had already entered the plantation business up-country in the mid 19th century during the coffee area, and continued to do so in rubber and coconut areas of the mid-country after 1900. The Lenawa case[36] offers an early example of the trend: in this remote area of Hiriyala (north of the Kurunegala district), the elder son of C.H. de Soysa, J.W.C. de Soysa, in association with one Mr. Whitehead, had purchased five entire villages (1168 acres) from Thomas Benjamin Lenawa in 1899, including paddy fields and chenas, and started planting on forest and chenas “claimed by the villagers on deeds as the paraveni appurtenances of their fields: no highlands were thus left to villagers who complained (…) They continue to chena and grow tobacco on highlands and dispute the right of De Soysa ». The Settlement officers therefore allowed the villagers some highlands (134 acres on the condition that they reach an agreement with De Soysa) – but they were opposed by the De Soysas who were influent in Colombo (“hopes to obtain better terms from H.E. the Governor”) and wanted them to lower the price they asked for the offer of a Certificate of quiet possession for the Lenawa estate (17,900 Rs for 998 acres)”.  In 1936 when the village was surveyed for mapping out there was absolutely no Crown land left: “Lenawakanda from which the villagers had been in habit of obtaining their fence sticks and creepers had been settled in 1906 on Lenawa estate”

The colonial administration was more alert to the activities of the Ceylonese land speculators in coconut than in the case of European land grabbing in Madure. The governors Henry Arthur Blake (December 1903 to July 1907) and Henry McCallum (August 1907 to January 1913) had to manage the agitation created by the government policy in the Kurunegala district. The starting point of the whole affair was a petition of “landowners and proprietors of estates” of the Kurunegala district led by Jacob de Mel[37], Clovis de Silva and others, dated 10.10.1903 (just before the governor West Ridgeway left), in which the petitioners expressed their dissatisfaction of the land policy of the Government Agent, S.M. Burrows, who attempted to control the sale of village lands as he had done a few years before when he was in charge of the Matale district. They asked – paradoxically, the government to bring the district under the Land settlement department and entrust the work to Fraser. The government answered that it would treat liberally the paraveni owners but strictly scrutinize the claims of “the persons who, by purchasing such lands, have ejected the original proprietors”.

A few months later, the Controller of Revenue, Ellis, went to Kurunegala to find out by himself the situation[38]. Ellis position was to defend Crown rights uncompromisingly, his approach was that of a legist and an accountant: “As far as I could discover, the land business in the North Western Province is in a more unsatisfactory state than in any other part of the island (…) Everyone seems to have taken possession of any land that he thought suitable for his purposes (…) The usual mode of procedure has been as follows: any person, native or European, who wished to become possessed of an estate and had a small capital, selected a certain block of land and obtained a transfer for it from anyone who was willing to sign the deed (…) The land was then cleared. If the matter was reported, the occupant forwarded his transfers and, in some cases, the Ratemahatmaya reported that the land was chena; this was considered sufficient to justify the tacit abandonment of all claims on behalf of the Crown. In many cases the cultivation was not reported, but the claimant himself when he had cleared and planted the land got it surveyed by a private surveyor and applied for a Certificate of quiet possession which in many instances was granted to him (…) In this way many estates varying in extent from 3,000 to 2,000 acres have been acquired without the payment of one rupee to government, by the simple process of giving a trifling sum to some villager who may or may not have had a small interest in the land.” In the area between Wariyapola and the Kurunegala-Negombo road – the heart of what was to become the ‘coconut triangle’: “the whole country seemed to have been planted within the last few years, say since 1896. On enquiring who were the planters, I found that with few exceptions they were non-residents who had taken possession of the land in the manner indicated above. Mr J.G. de Silva has already taken a Certificate of quiet possession for over 300 acres and now applies for 340 acres more”. Quoting the case of a Kurunegala shopkeeper, and of Mr Modder, a resident of Kurunegala, (“who had bought land on a writ issued against some Tamil man”) “it has I believe been the practice in Kurunegala tacitly to waive Crown rights with reference to chenas and to allow the villagers the temporary use either of chenas where the paddy crop was insufficient for their maintenance, or as appurtenance of their fields (…) this cannot however be constructed into the abandonment of Crown rights when the villagers have shown that the possession of these lands is in no way necessary to them”

Ellis concluded: “I advise that an offer be made to the occupants of a grant at 10 Rs an acre for all the lands planted prior to 1899 (…) For the lands cultivated or purchased since 1900, I would advise that 15 Rs be demanded for cultivated and 20 Rs for uncultivated land (…) For the future I advise that the Ratemahatmayas be informed that they will be held strictly responsible for failure to report at once any clearing (…) I believe from what I have seen that chena cultivation is much less extensive than it used to be, and if the land which I inspected were really old chenas, the representations made by scientists and others as to the injury done to the soil by this species of cultivation must be considerably exaggerated (…) The villager at all events can have no cause of complaint at the resumption by the Crown of land which he himself has already alienated.” Ellis failed to understand that only some of the villagers had sold, while all had use of the highlands; another factual element is that in the Kurunegala district there was a gradual transition between the intermediate zone, where chenas were a supplement to paddy and garden and the dry zone, where they were the main source of food especially when paddy crops failed: it was therefore difficult to impose a uniform rule.

In the case of the coconut lands of Kurunegala, the Governor decided to publicize the decision to settle lands at a price on the basis of Ellis advice: 3,000 copies were printed in Sinhala and a few in English together with oral instructions to headmen (“held strictly responsible for failure to report at once any clearing ”) but also with the recommendation to be lenient and use the ordinance of 1897 and not that of 1840. The publication of the notice created a commotion, but interestingly enough it is group of estate proprietors distinct from the petitioners of 1903 who reacted. Most but not all of them were anglicized Kandyans, their leaders were T.B.L. Moonemalle and G.E. Madawela, together with C.F. Markus, a Burgher lawyer.  They held a public meeting at the Kurunegala town hall (4.06.1904), and sent a resolution to the private secretary of the Governor, in which they made out that the unsigned notice distributed by the kacceri “will involve a large majority of villagers in absolute ruin (…) One question only for a series of years has disturbed our equanimity, namely the tenure of land in this district. It seems to have been a mistake from the beginning”. The ordinance of 1840 had never really been enforced in Kurunegala and the courts “recognized the distinction between Crown lands and private chenas” and often issued Certificates of quiet possession for the latter; this proclamation “has been flown among us like a bombshell (…) That you have opened up lands and planted them at great cost, increasing thereby the wealth and importance of the district, and that you have largely employed native labour, and put into circulation among them money, whereby their condition has been materially improved, will not be considered”. Commenting on the report of the Government Agent Burrows (15.06.1904) on this meeting, Ellis asserted that “there is no intention of government to interfere just at present with the system of chena cultivation”, but to prevent the alienation of highlands to outsiders. Another meeting was held on 30.07.1904 by the Kurunegala Planter’s Association which condemned the action of government ‘as unconstitutional’ in stronger terms[39].

Blake, under the influence of European planters whose interests in the Kurunegala and Matale districts were similar to those of the Ceylonese petitioners, finally gave an oral promise that the administration would recognize the principle of appurtenance of chena lands to paddy fields on a ‘3 to 1’ basis in the North Western province, and this offer was the starting point of a long opposition between the Land settlement department and the central government.

 

The controversial history of the “appurtenances to paddy fields” and the “3 to 1 settlements”

The introduction of the principle of appurtenance was the result of the pressure put on the Settlement department by the Kurunegala petitioners. The history of the case is given in a letter sent by the Settlement Officer to the Colonial secretary (12.10.1929), where he regrets that the issue has not been raised before the Land commission[40]. “The origin is a speech made by Sir H. Blake at Kurunegala on 6.02.1906. There is I believe no official record of this speech, but according to newspapers reports of this time, a deputation consisting of Mr T.B.L. Moonemalle, G.E. Madawela and T.B. Delwita waited upon H.E.” stated that “it had always been recognized fact that the owners of paddy land had from time immemorial possessed highlands as appurtenances to their paddy fields” and went on to urge that the people “be allowed to retain their highlands without payment of the high rates demanded and that a Certificate of quiet possession in respect of such lands be issued to them on payment of survey fees to Govt”. Blake answered that “all officers have been instructed to concede highlands in the proportion of 3 to 1 of paddy land”. “No such instruction had, as a matter of fact, been issued to this Department, and the method of settlement adumbrated in this speech was at that time wholly unknown and a complete innovation and I believe that the Settlement Officer of this period, sir John Fraser, had no previous intimation of a proposed change of policy. Therefore, until the present day, the 3 to 1 system has been in operation in those parts of the Kurunegala district (and not elsewhere: this is underlined by the papers of the 3rd interim report of the Land Commission quoting the letter of the Colonial Secretary to the Government Agent Central Province, 20.04.1912, excluding the Matale district from the benefit of the promise) where chenas are claimed. In the case the villagers prefer a 3 to 1 settlement, there is no survey and no individual settlement but a global area of chenas is allowed free to the villagers as a group. The application of the 3 to 1 system is the source of difficulties, because they have been clearly exploited by purchasers of land to develop coconut cultivation and that it gave rise to endless disputes. Among these purchasers of village title figure chief headmen such as C.E. Tennakoon (Devamedi Hatpattu), who acted as middleman for Mr. Dias Bandaranaike and Proctor Paul”[41].

The historical argument of the Kurunegala petitioners is corroborated by a few texts of the 19th century unknown to them. In discussions regarding the Waste lands ordinance of 1840[42] in which the Kurunegala agent said that “scarcely any land in this district is held upon sannas or grant, and more particularly of the original possessors. Many lands are held by deeds of purchase from the ancestors of those who have no documents whatever for the remaining portions of their lands. The decisions in these cases will therefore affect a very large proportion of the property in this district as it is only in the upper part that paddy has ever been cultivated on high ground which have been taxed (…) Each field has always been considered to have a certain portion of high ground attached to it”. In a further letter, Morris raised the issue of the kandegam – the villages inhabited by jaggery caste villagers, who had no documents to prove their ownership of highlands, but should be recognized by virtue of tradition.  In 1884 it was still accepted by the administration: “The jaggery caste people owned no paddy land and only occupied gardens as tenants of a Vellala landlord. Yet I have seen claims admitted to chenas claimed as appurtenant to the arambas of the jaggery caste people”.  In other districts, the principle of appurtenances was also accepted: in Madulla village, Nuwara Eliya, in 1869, the administrator, Braybrooke considered “that highland should be allowed in the village in the proportion of 2 to 1 or higher according to the local custom and the nature of the soil”; and in 1927 the Settlement officer finds that “there are evidences of settlements on these lines”. According to Hulugalle, Ratemahatmaya of Dewamedi Hatpattu the rule 3 to 1 was the result of an undated conference between Braybrooke, Government Agent Central Province and Kandyan chiefs, but in Kurunegala there was no fixed proportion. [43]

The appurtenance principle was always unpopular with the settlement officers. Fraser wrote in 1903[44] : “there being no such things as appurtenances to fields, the best basis in determining the land to be given is in ascertaining the area required to produce a sufficient supply of food for the claimants and their families”.  One year after the Blake promise, at the request of Fraser, Brodhurst, the Controller of Revenue, wrote to the Colonial Secretary to suggest that 3 to 1 settlements be no longer offered and that settlements should be done by the Revenue officers only in cases of great urgency and on the principles of the Settlement department: “The villagers are not so much interested in the question of appurtenances for ranges of paddy fields as in securing a clear title from the Crown for each individual holding (…) The general recognition of appurtenances, especially where they have been alienated, is likely to give rise to untenable claims and consequent dissatisfaction as there are cases in which rights to appurtenances did not exist”[45]. The government answered by the negative.

In practice, the Settlement officers advised the claimants to prefer either individual settlements which gave definite title to land, or chena reserves, but they often met with the opposition of the headmen and the reluctance of the peasants. Brayne, when he was Assistant settlement officer, vividly described the process:[46] “I was present at an interview between the Settlement officer and C.E. Tennakoon, the Ratemahatmaya of Devamedi Hatpattu, at which the Settlement officer carefully explained to him the two methods of settlement now definitely approved by Government in this district, viz. the grant of appurtenances – a concession in land; or instead an all-round concession in price. The Ratemahatmaya finally expressed his opinion that the terms were ‘more than liberal’. An old ex-aracci of Dehikumbura was the called in. He had no land of his own but seemed to consider he held a brief from his fellow villagers, and had petitioned government that they should be granted appurtenances. The Settlement officer carefully explained matters to him, showing him how in this part of the district where a great deal of land was planted the all-round concession in price was very much more to the advantage of the people than the grant of appurtenances. The ex-aracci pretended to think that the people might get appurtenances and an all-round concession in price as well. The SO made quite clear to him they he could net eat his plantain twice, and he said that his people would choose concession in price”. The story is recounted by Fraser in a private and confidential correspondence in which he mentions that Tennekoon had purchased from the villagers and sold to one Miss Wodehouse, and that the demand for a 3 to 1 settlement by the ex-aracci was “instigated by someone behind the scenes”. He suggests that “the concession of highlands to owners of paddy fields is made in the interests of paddy cultivation (…) if such lands are diverted from the purpose for which they were granted, the land is to revert to the Crown, for example if they are planted with coconuts they will cease to be appurtenances; and that when the demand is made by a majority of field owners for a settlement on the 3 to 1 basis, the whole village will be dealt with on that system and no application will be entertained to a reversion to the other system”[47] .

According to other settlement officers, “The more I see of the results of the 3 to 1 provision, the more I realize how unfortunate that promise was. In the first place, a large acreage is admitted private and the villagers have a heritage of disputes concerning the division, or else, as this is done in most cases, they sell the lands to some speculator who plants coconut. The villager has a temporary benefit as he receives a certain amount of money, but in 2 or 3 years he is worse off than he was.  Then, no chena at all. Consequently the 3 to 1 settlement is not in the interest of the villager. A chena reserve is Crown land and the villager enjoys the right of re-cultivation”. “From a government point of view, a 3 to 1 settlement is a sheer waste of time and money, for the villagers, it is the beginning of litigation and trouble”. Stace showed the class implications of the choice to the villagers and asserted the position of the colonial administration: “I explained in detail the options, between 3 to 1 settlement and individual settlements, the disadvantages of the former and the advantages of the latter. After I had finished two of the chief men of the village at once rose and demanded a 3 to 1 settlement. The others were silent. Then I pointed out to the crowd that it was in the interest of the two powerful men of the village to ask for 3 to 1 settlement since they could seize whatever chena land they liked and the other villagers would be pushed out. I said that this matter was not going to be decided by the wishes of the first two speakers but by a majority of claimants and I asked the rest what they had to say. With one accord they called for individual settlements and so it was decided”.[48]

In 1926, Madawela raised before the Legislative Council the question whether the Settlement Officer always offered the villager the 3 to 1 option.  Hodson, the Government Agent at Kurunegana, answered in an official letter to the Colonial secretary explaining the options offered: either 3 to 1 free, or 3 or more to 1 as chena reserve, or land sold in individual shares at 20 Rs maximum per acre. The last option according to him was preferred in the wet zone, and the second in the driest zone; the only case where the appurtenance system was regularly adopted was in the case of the pillewas close to the paddy fields. In his diary he reiterated his  position in favour of individual settlements and against the projects of communal lands: “ In a few cases, the villagers have sold to capitalists chena lands which were admitted private by the S.O. but as a rule they did not part with any lands to which the SO gave them individual title (…) A villager complained that 1 ½ acre of his land had been sold to a capitalist by another man, and the capitalist had forcibly fenced it: another Victor Corea case, but I hope to get the capitalist to disgorge without recourse to court”. The same Hodson, in his Administration report for 1928, wrote that “the villager is ready enough to part with his sometimes shadowy and always vaguely defined claims to unsettled land, but he is extremely loath to part with land settled on him to which he has good title. I have therefore found little need for using the ‘peasant-proprietor’ system in disposing of Crown land to villagers, except in a few cases where the village lands are hemmed in by estates which are anxious to expand”[49].

After the reforms of 1930, the social implications of the 3 to 1 offer were still apparent[50].  “All the claimants except an e-aracci preferred a settlement according to claims. The ex-aracci had recently planted up more than his share and would no doubt have continued to plant a further acreage, had a 3 to 1 settlement been made. It is interesting to note that the villagers are gradually opening up most of the chena land in permanent products and the only sales to outsiders amount to about 2 acres. In the surrounding villages most of the lands except old gardens and fields, and sometimes even old gardens and fields, have passed into the hands of outsiders within recent years”. In that case outsiders were taken away by the enterprise of ‘koulaks’.  But the domination of a few enterprising individual could lead to violence: “Villagers stated they had violent quarrels over land disputes and a 3 to 1 settlement would they said reduce their population quickly by the number of fatal affrays over land questions”. In April 1934, Rasaretnam noticed “the inclination of the average villager to ask for a 3 to 1 settlement. The reasons appear to be: 1. Poverty, 2. Desire to get land free 3. A mistaken idea that the Crown is benefitting pecuniarily from individual settlements 4. The desire of the rich landlord or bully to squat on more land than his lawful share 5. The desire of the unscrupulous villager to sell land for which he has no claim 6. The anxiety of the village capitalist to lay claim to village chena for which he has paid and to which he vendor has not a justifiable claim”. In his opinion,  3 to 1 settlements should be restricted to cases of real poverty. In 1936, the Ellepola wrote: “I am of opinion that the preference of 3 to 1 settlement is at the instigation of the more influential people of the village (Illukpitiya). On such a settlement they will continue to possess the land themselves to the detriment of the interests of the weaker and more ignorant among them. This appears to be how the land is possessed in the village at present (…) The complaint of inability to pay individual settlements seems a myth” He succeeded in convincing the villagers after 2 months that individual settlements were in their interest.

 

Charting settlement work: the second Ellis memorandum and the Fraser report (1906-1907)

After the Kurunegala meeting, the department continued to systematically organize its work in the coconut areas of the district and confront numerous speculative claims. In December 1904, the Settlement officer Fraser wrote in his diary[51]: “The usual North Western Province speculative type: 1,059 acres in 9 villages on either side of the Deduru Oya near the confluence with the Maguru Oya. Mr. Dandasekera bought these lands from the villagers and resold 1/3rd of it to Mr. Scott (…) who sold ½ of it to Mr. Van der Poorten”. In immediate proximity, the department had spotted another speculation[52]: “Gonagama coconut estate is claimed by H.H.J. Pieris on the basis of 30 acts (1895-96), 6 villages, more than 1,000 acres, one third or one quarter cultivated in coconut. Includes an old gangoda (village cluster). The land purchased includes old gardens and paddy fields, chenas and forest, but consists mainly of the latter two”.

By the end of 1906, Ellis, who was to relinquish his office, sent privately and directly to the Colonial Office a second long and detailed memorandum[53] including guidelines for his successor, in which he explained the settlement process, expressed auto-satisfaction on the success of the settlement operations (contrary to the persisting critique of the Kurunegala memorialists) and developed his views on the origin and nature of land ownership and the legal value of titles.  “Fiscal transfers, because they are executed by Government officers, are sometimes regarded almost in the light of Crown grants. Such view is totally erroneous. Prescription is established only by uninterrupted possession for 30 years, that is when a chena has been transformed into garden or field. The claims on the basis of ‘appurtenances’ are accepted by an act of grace, as a right to use and not as a right to possess: the ‘3 to 1’ rule (allowing 3 acres of highlands for 1 acre of mudlands) is just indicative and can be increased: in point of fact, the smaller the amount of paddy with the Kandyan family, the larger may be the extent of appurtenance which it may require for its maintenance (…) The extent of land which the villager has already alienated or converted into garden must be taken into consideration (…) and it is usual to make allowance to the requirements of the poorest by assigning to them limited extents”.

Ellis explained the working of the settlement: verification of titles, genealogies, determination of limits in the field, and then “fair offer by the settlement officer”, and noted that when the settlement was made by a revenue officer, reports by headmen instead of personal enquiries, were usually accepted as conclusive, which was absolutely unsatisfactory. The question of who effects the settlement depended on the nature of the claims. The head of the department took up cases “in which capitalists, whether European or native, have purchased lands alleged to be chenas from villagers”; Ellis quoted the Delwita case, in which the sellers admitted they did not know what they had sold; “in many cases, especially in Ratnapura, the villager has been careful to sell nothing to which he could set up any reasonable claim (…) in addition to this, the deeds obtained from the villagers are in the majority of cases defective and self-contradictory”; in such settlements work was made heavy : a mass of acts had to be analysed, private surveys usually inaccurate to be checked, erroneous decisions by former Revenue Officers to be accepted (“it would be unequitable to hold purchasers responsible for the carelessness or inefficiency of government servants”). The proposed settlement was finally submitted to the Colonial Secretary and to the claimant and if he accepted it, he was given a deed precising that the government does nor guarantee his rights against those of other native claimants: the settlement did not determine the right of one individual versus another, but only the rights of a family group (actually a panguwa) versus the rights of the Crown.

According to Ellis, who criticized earlier settlements by Revenue officers, cases dealt with by Settlement officers were usually well received: “The outcry raised on various occasions by interested parties, that Government was taking possession of the ancestral lands of the people, never proceeded from the villagers or from paraveni owners. It has emanated entirely from speculators who had purchased, frequently for a nominal figure, lands belonging to the natives, often the only lands they have, but had also obtained transfers of large extents of Crown lands to which people had never asserted any claims. Such settlements take time and require field inspections instead of headmen reports; there is no short and at the same time reliable mode of settlement”. Settlements by Revenue officers had hitherto proved almost total failures: the kacceries were full of unfinished enquiry files and the carelessness of the administration had encouraged the swelling of spurious claims and petty encroachments which grew from year to year with the complicity of ‘village proctors’. To get rid of these land problems, the Revenue officers distributed Certificates of quiet possession: “the insertion of the magic letters CQP in the plan or the record was the most effectual way of evading a land enquiry (…) Some Revenue officers are I fear unwilling to undergo the fatigue, exposure and hardship necessarily involved in a personal lot to lot inspection in remote villages and lack sufficient authority on headmen to impose the respect of the settlement by the villagers”.   

In 1906, H.R. Freeman, the Revenue officer at Kurunegala[54] recognized that “the law as what constitutes Crown waste land has not been enforced in the past: Certificates of quiet possession were given right and left on the recommendation of Agents and with the sanction of Government. Lands for which Certificates of quiet possession were given should have been settled on purchasers from villagers on payment of a fair settlement price to Government, and it required the intervention of Mr. Ellis in 1904 to indicate to everybody that land affairs were not what they should be”. He insisted on a speedy settlement of large claims[55]: “For years it had been said : the Settlement officer is going to the district, though, when he does come, it is not the burning claims, with few exceptions, which he undertakes, but block plans, where there is no particular hurry. He works I know on a proper method, whereas what is in the most insistent interest of government here is: Johannes de Mel’s claims in Gadolwakka[56]; another similar claim of the De Mels[57]; the new Delwita estate clearings; Mr. Holloway’s claim; Capt. Farquharson; Mr. Vanserslots. There is between 30,000 and 40,000 Rs of revenue in this list and possibly more”.

The same year Fox, the Assistant settlement officer, pleaded for wider powers to sell or lease Crown lands in villages already settled: according to him there was a great desire to purchase lands but the process when dealt with by the kacceri administration was impeded by the necessary recourse to headmen. In his opinion the settlement was useless if it was not followed by a continuous monitoring of village development through judicious land sales; the popularity of settlement depended on the possibility it offered the villager to obtain land when required. Such a plan would go “a long way to obliterate the recollection of the former antagonism that existed between the Crown and the subject” “The facility for the acquisition of land thus offered renders land settlement easier for us and more palatable to them. But on the completion of these villages, these facilities will cease to exist and would-be purchasers will no doubt encroach on Crown lands that they want for the cultivation of citronella and for the extension of their gardens” [58]. This proposal was opposed by most Revenue officers, notably those of the Southern and Central provinces, who felt that it would deprive their headmen of their authority, except Brayne (at Mullaitivu) and Booth (at Badulla) who stressed the necessity to have a large staff of settlement officers “ One of the most urgent needs of the colony is a speedy land settlement. The existing uncertainty (…) creates a feeling of irritation between the officers of government and all classes of the community (…) The settlement must be a fair compromise between the Crown and the subject, erring if at all on the side of generosity towards the latter”[59].

Fowler, successor to Ellis, aligned himself on the position of Governor Blake[60]: “I find that in the North western province it is generally believed that the policy of government is to prevent as far as possible the alienation of chena land, not because such alienation is illegal, but because it is desirable to keep the land available for chena cultivation. This is the sense in which the Government Agent, headmen and natives understand clause 11 of the notice of 1904. If this view is correct, I can only express my dissent from such policy, as I consider that there cannot be greater blessing than the conversion of chena into permanent cultivation of any kind. The contention that chena cultivators will become vagrants and pests carries no conviction to my mind when I see the results of the process of conversion in Kegalle, Ratnapura, Kalutara and many parts of the North western province, where chenas have been converted with plantations of coconut, tea or rubber. The people are far better off than before, with profitable employment at their doors and an improved and assured market for their field and garden produce. The people who become vagrants for the want of chenas are of the class already worthless, depending solely on desultory cultivation, and the absence of chenas is more likely than anything else to compel them to take to honest work and a settled life”.

The relations between the Settlement officer and the Revenue administration became again tense. In January 1907 Fraser sent to the governor a memorandum on the future of the Land Settlement Department which included paragraphs (14 to 26) omitted from the printed Administration Report for 1906, at the express request of governor Blake[61]. In these censored sections, he developed a strong critique of the colonial land policy: “The English government having upset or allowed to fall into disuse the land policies existing in his Eastern possessions at the time of annexation cannot escape the responsibility of substituting for these the most perfect form of land policy which our western civilization can devise. The present chaotic state of land matters in Ceylon is most unsatisfactory both to the government and to the governed”. “The question must be dealt with as a whole, the chief points being the making of the block survey, the settlement of whole claims between the Crown and private individuals, the preparation of plans showing such settlements, the gradual conversion of the block survey into a cadastral survey in connection with the registration of private title to land, the keeping up to date of the cadastral survey and the registers of titles, the question of a land tax”. Fraser finally respectfully demanded “a complete scheme for dealing with the lands of the colony” and insisted that his proposals outlined what could be the basis for “a homogenous and continuous land policy for the whole island” to prevent “the recurrence of the same deplorable state of things as has just been remedied” by the work of settlement.

The omitted paragraphs affirmed that the retransfer of settled villages to Revenue officers “would be a retrograde step”, that only a Land department, “a natural outcome of land settlement”, could manage settled villages in order to keep the settlement plan up to date, secure the protection of Crown lands, reserve certain lands and “offer business-like facilities for the purchase or lease of such areas not required as reserves” and organize land registration for the areas recognized as private. The cost of such undertaking would be upset by the reduction of land-related crimes and the creation of a land tax. This program was actually realized thirty years later under the ‘mapping out’ system developed by C.V. Brayne.

In his diaries of 1907, and his correspondence of 1908, Fraser looked back at his action, and tried to defend his views against the critiques which were expressed by the governor himself. In his diary of March 1907, entitled ‘the dawn of a new era’, he wrote: “It must of course take time to reintroduce the idea of purchasing land from the Crown after so many years during which everyone and anyone has simply helped himself to any land he fancied, and no one objected, least of all the headmen who were all in the swim”. In July 1907, according to Fraser, the peasants were rushing to purchase lands from the Settlement department: “If Government desires the ‘pacification’ of the North Western Province, the moment has now come for it. So take action. Large areas adjoining those now dealt with have been surveyed and these can now be settled and revenue of many million rupees gathered in if Government will give the necessary staff and equipment”. In August 1907, just after Governor Blake left his post, he expressed his hope that the new governor, Mac Callum, and his Colonial Secretary Hugh Clifford, would be more open than Blake: “I have endeavoured to demonstrate that it is possible to settle disputes as to the ownership of land on a large scale practically without recourse to litigation (…) As the time went on, I arrived at the conclusion that it was feasible to settle not only all waste lands, but all lands whatsoever in a village, and after much opposition on the part of the Revenue officers, my scheme prevailed and the Land settlement department was constituted. It was obvious to me at an early stage that encroachments on Crown lands had in the past been done as much to want of proper facilities for acquiring land in a legitimate way as to any desire to rob the community of its prosperity, and I succeeded in obtaining authority to receive applications to purchase land and to hold the sales. These facilities which I offer bring the people into personal touch with me, convince them in the long run that my intentions are honest, and result in the effacement of all bad feeling due to the long-maintained struggle in the past for the assertion of their claims. (…) It is true that my operations have hitherto been on a comparatively small scale and that their effect on the progress of the colony can therefore not be assumed to have been great [its extension is a matter of men and money] My appeals to government for assistance in carrying out this scheme have been numerous, the appreciation of the work by government considerable, the answers to my appeals entirely inadequate (…) One of the chief duties of the British in this island at the present moment is the establishment of a sound and consistent policy in connection with land, and I am confident that this will soon be a fait accompli”.

 

 

The second Kurunegala mass meeting (October 1907) and renewed agitation in the North Western province[62]

Kurunegala remained the focus of organized agitation against the land settlement policy. Opposition to the Settlement department in the North western province was led by the lawyers of the Chilaw Association and more generally by the interests of the landed bourgeoisie who was investing in the ‘coconut triangle’. They were vocal enough to have the sympathy of a section of the Colonial office, as in the case of their critique of the Land Registration ordinance of 1907[63]. Their argument was that land registration should be effected by persons independent of the government and with a legal background; enquiries should be made where there are lawyers and not on the spot : “a peripatetic court is altogether unsuited to the conditions of the people , it would always be less expensive and more convenient  to the people to have their claims taken up at places where they have been accustomed to go for legal redress and where the services of lawyers are easily procurable, that is in the towns where the ordinary courts of law are, than at places at which legal assistance will not be available although such places maybe nearer their own homes”

Another mass meeting (40,000 participants according to the organizers, 6,000 “peasants collected and brought in by their headmen” according to the Government Agent) was convened at Kurunegala in October 1907 by the same Ceylonese leaders as in 1904. At that date T.B.L. Moonemalle had been chosen as the first Kandyan member of the Legislative Council and his position was much stronger than previously; he had the support of Buddhist monks, headmen (Hulugalle Dissawe), and Low country plantation owners. They elaborated a memorandum (dated 29.10.1907) signed by Moonemalle, Madawela, Modder, Markus, Dodanwela, Jayasundera, followed by a question before the Legislative Council ‘on the Kurunegala land question’ (15.11.1907)[64]. Their thesis was grounded on historical arguments: that the kings had never asserted their proprietorship over chenas; that in 1840 the absence of a Kandyan member led to the acceptance of the Crown lands ordinance; that sannas “ were granted to immigrants from India and other places who desired to settle down in this country  and to that end sought the protection and patronage of the king”; that the provisos of the ordinance of 1840 were never strictly enforced in the North western province: “as regards chenas in this district, successive Government Agents who being on the spot foresaw the evil effects, doubtless informed the government as to the situation. As a result the law was not put in force as regards chenas (…) In this feeling of security the people periodically cultivated and sometimes planted (…) and the Crown gave certificates of no claim and purchased from villagers chenas for public purpose such as building of village tribunals …(…) While the Waste lands ordinance on 1897 was before the Council it was the cause of no small agitation among the people from the sense of insecurity it had aroused, and though the ordinance was passed, it was not put into operation in this district to any considerable extent.” The Governors (Ridgeway, then Blake) proclaimed that “the government wishes to make the people sure and safe in the possession of the land”. The memorandum mentioned the special case of the Vahumpura caste: “There is a section of the Kandyan people known as Kande Ätto (hill tribe) who live in the hills and whose chief occupation is the manufacture of jaggery. They have been known to live on and possess these hills, chenaing and planting them from time immemorial.” Finally, the enforcement of the 1904 circular “must undoubtedly have involved much hardship to the ordinary villager as he was totally unable to pay the rate demanded from him”, and its suspension by a circular of 10 September 1907 “aroused a feeling of widespread unrest” : “the government had not laid down a settled policy on the land question”.

The new governor (McCallum) and his Colonial Secretary (Hugh Clifford) were really upset by the situation and in a lengthy despatch they exposed in detail the problem to London in order to cover themselves in the eventuality of a serious political crisis[65]:  “in spite of the firm attitude which I have taken up in the matter, a very determined attempt is still being made by certain interested individuals to keep alive the excitement and to mislead the ignorant peasantry as to the intention of government (…) When I assumed the government of this colony I found that the Land settlement officer was engaged in settling claims in the North western province on equitable terms, irrespective of the above mentioned notification”. McCallum therefore decided to cancel the notification of 1904: “the immediate consequence of this action was a public meeting held at Kurunegala on October 5th , Mr Moonemalle taking the chair on that occasion (…) It may safely be predicated that any action which government may take in this matter, unless it be in the direction of abandoning all claims to Crown lands, will assuredly meet with more or less violent protests”. The attitude of Hulugalla Adigar encouraged the obstruction of surveyors, and the press published ironical letters attacking the colonial authorities, for example by Mr. Corea (who signed ‘Abhayaratna Vijayasekera Seneviratne’): “In this 20th century of grace Hon. members of the executive ask in derision and scorn how is it possible that this rabble horde of nigger, this canaille of natives, could ever had justly acquired the vast tract of land which they now so impudently claim”. Corea in his articles and Moonemalle before the Legislative council developed arguments which were reiterated in the 1930s during the depression: the owners had no money to pay for the settlements and were compelled to borrow from Indian Chetties who exploited them. Petitions received in 1907 had a xenophobic tone: “Ceylonese borrow money the interest of which they cannot pay, and the invariable result is litigation which ends disastrously to themselves, the alien Shylock-like moneylender grabbing their land”.

In 1908, the agitation eventually receded in the Kurunegala district, but other demonstrations against settlement were held in the deep South, (Beliatta, 22 May 1908), instigated by the chief monk of Mulkirigala and one Ratnayaka, which led to obstruction[66]. A result of the agitation was to define the principles governing the selection and action of Settlement officers[67]: “The work is of a somewhat unpopular character, and it is of supreme importance that the settlements arrived at should be accepted without question (…) I consider it would be unwise to select for such work gentlemen who have local ties, sympathies and connections”.  The Governor reiterated the official position in a minute on the Administration report of 1907 that the Settlement officer should not deal with the disputes of ownership between private parties, but only with the relations between Crown and private rights; Fraser answered in March 1908 that “where different  portions of what appears to be prima facie one block of Crown land are claimed by different parties, it is necessary to subdivide the block as originally surveyed in order to deal with the separate claims”.[68]

The success of direct administration by the Settlement department was underlined in a memorandum of 1909 by the Controller of Revenue[69]  : “Theoretically after paying the first one tenth instalment to the Settlement officer the purchaser should pay the balance 9/10th to the kachcheri, but this balance is almost invariably paid to the Settlement officer on his next circuit to the village (…) The purchaser naturally prefers to pay in the village as it saves him the journey to the kachcheri and back, the time occasionally wasted in obtaining a receipt, and other possible irregularities” – allusion to the widespread corruption of kachcheri petty officials.

But discontent in the North western province was simmering during the following years, and the relations between Settlement and Revenue officers remained strained. The clash between J. G. Fraser and W. E. Thorpe is an example of this state of things.[70] In April 1911, Thorpe, the new Government agent of the North-western province, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, warned of numerous sales of so-called ‘paraveni’ chena lands, even of considerable growth, to outsiders for the plantation of coconut estates, with the assistance of headmen who regarded ‘paraveni chenas’ as lands not at the disposal of the Crown, “trading upon the apathy of the kacceri in years past”. He considered that the settlement system was too slow to take pace with the growth of the plantations. He quoted the case of Digana, a whole village sold through a Colombo middleman, Sundarasekera, to a German planter, Boysen. He proposed that villagers be noticed ‘by tom-tom’ that they have no right to sell to outsiders, that permits for chena must be insisted upon and delivered by chief headmen. The Secretary instructed him to “confine himself to prevent further encroachments and let the Settlement officer deal with land ownership”. Thorpe further requested government to let him deal with the chena question, stating that during numerous meetings the chief headmen “entirely accept the government view of the law and the baselessness of the paraveni chena claim”. He considered that the ordinance of 1840 should not have been superseded with ordinance of 1897, and that settlement should be undertaken by the Revenue officers as before and not by Settlement officers.

Fraser, in a personal letter (31.07.1911) to his superior Frederick Bowes expressed his apprehension: “We have had several interviews on the subject since Thorpe assumed duties as Government agent, but nothing has been in writing. I now wish to put on record that I believe the apprehensions that I have communicated to you verbally are well founded, and that unless great care is exercised by government, in restraining Thorpe’s well meant but almost fanatical zeal, you will shortly have a recrudescence of the whole land question in Ceylon (…) I understand that the people of the Weudawili Hatpattu are contemplating organized action which may result in the whole land question being brought up again, when the reorganized Legislative Council meets for the first time (…) The trouble is that Thorpe is persuaded that the action taken by him is absolutely in the interest of government, that such action is popular, and that no opposition will result. I advise the government to act on the safe side…”  As a result, the Secretariat sent a confidential mail to Thorpe censoring his “apparently unconscious inability to discern the natural feelings of the people”, and warning him of dismissal in case of any indiscreet further action.

In a long letter (22.08.1911) Fraser reviewed the policy concerning the application to ‘paraveni’ chenas of the 1840 land ordinance: “The Government had seemed fit to relax its application to some extent, and to undertake that in the Kurunegala district certain undetermined extents of chena proved to be the appurtenances of fields shall be regarded as private property: a class of chena lands has been created which, though falling within the definition of the chenas by ordinance of 1840, has been as an indulgence exempted from the application of that ordinance (…) A very difficult position was created for the officers of the Crown [and now] interference with such chena rights may give rise to very intricate situations” . The Settlement officers adapted themselves to the situation, and the smooth working of the settlement depended on “what I may call a truce”.  “To my mind matters have been allowed to go so far in the Kurunegala district in the past that it is exceedingly doubtful whether any commensurate result will be obtained from a belated attempt to deal with this class of land (…) I can see no object in exasperating the people with fines and prosecutions”. Fraser added that “the planting up of chena lands with permanent products is in my opinion a very desirable thing”. Fox, the successor to Fraser, was again attacked by Thorpe who wrote that the settlement department “deliberately exposes the administration to suspicion of corruption” and Thorpe was again censored in January 1912: “The Governor views your letters with much displeasure”

Criticism of the settlements and sales done by Revenue Officers remained frequent in the settlement diaries after Fraser left the department. Davies mentioned ‘extraordinary settlements’ by Thorpe, “the result of trying to settle land without personally inspecting it and examining the alleged documentary title”.  Settlement work was made difficult because some villagers objected to the headmen playing a role in the settlement sales: “This department has always found that the direct communication between the Settlement officer and the villager which is always insisted on in this department even in small matters, has entirely prevented this sort of grievance from arising”[71]. In other districts, the rivalry between Revenue and Settlement officers was common. For example, the Revenue officer at Matale, Saxton, considered that the government should not intervene in disputes between villagers and planters and that the time-consuming genealogical enquiries of the Settlement officers were useless, when a simple report by the chief headman could easily settle the matter. Fox, on the contrary, considered that it was unjust and unpolitical to leave the villager without support facing the planter’s raj. Similarly in the Sabaragamuwa province where the Government agent, E.B. Alexander, was notoriously pro-planter, Madampe Estate was asked to pay for his settlement 150 Rs per acre by Fox, for land purchased from villagers, and Alexander intervened to reduce the price at the instance of planters; he was followed by the Controller of Revenue, who disavowed Fox[72]. During the next decade, the Revenue officers were still considered by the Settlement officers as bureaucrats out of touch with the people[73]: “There must be scores of villages the Government agent never finds time personally to visit while under present conditions we have lot of departmental people going about the country whilst the Civil service sits largely in office” The nomination in September 1925 as settlement officer of a member of the revenue service, Frank Bartlett, former Government agent at Galle, was resented by the settlement department and finally Bartlett had to leave his post.

 

The Settlement department at war with Ceylonese land speculators in the 1920s.

In the context of the accelerated development of coconut and rubber estates after the first world war in the areas where settlement was in progress (especially in the Kurunegala and Ratnapura districts), Settlement officers fought against powerful Ceylonese entrepreneurs who purchased large extents of village highlands for conversion into plantations, generally in advance of settlement. These entrepreneurs followed the example set up by the European land speculators in the 1880s, with the difference that the colonial administration was equipped with new legal tools and was harsher against ‘native’ speculators in its paternalistic defense of the ‘native’ peasants, and that Ceylonese entrepreneurs could tap on the nascent nationalist movement to confront the colonial administration. The position of the settlement department was either to protect the rights of the villagers by forbidding the sales or forcing the purchasers to pay them a fair price – but it lacked the authority and the means to implement such a program, and consequently it more often tried to make the purchasers pay the highest price to the Crown in exchange of the legal recognition of their acquisitions.

Among the big coconut plantation investors stands out the powerful De Mel family from Moratuwa, who had made a fortune in plumbago mining in the Kurunegala district in the late 19th century. The H.L. De Mel company started acquiring extensive highlands in the same district for coconut and also in the Ratnapura district for rubber in the late 19th and early 20th century. The same De Mel company also tried to develop tobacco cultivation in the driest part of the Kurunegala district which was settled in the 1920s[74]. At Diyankonwewa (near Maho): “Villagers appear to be poor, their gardens and coconut being in bad condition. Several attempts have been made to grow tobacco but there has been sufficient water. Most of the chenas was high jungle. Was interested to find that the villagers had sold their rights in chena land about 10 years ago to one Peter Perera of Kurunegala and De Mel company. The villagers while admitting that they had sold all the chenas stoutly asserted that they had not received the full consideration which was promised on survey of the land (…) They described the visit of the brokers like martial law in the riots. People were paid 5 Rs for deeds transferring about 3 villages to which they had no paraveni claim, and some of the grantees had no claim at all. This method is of course common, but in this case the purchaser left behind his agreements, or rather receipts, which clearly show that the full purchase amount was not paid”. When Batugedara, a feudal village in Ratnapura, was settled in 1924, the department had to deal with the “extremely speculative claim” of H.L. De Mel “representing himself and eleven brothers and sisters”[75].

During the 1920s., the hostility increased between the Settlement officers and the coconut lobby represented by the Low Country Products Association, an extension of the Chilaw Association. In the settlement diaries there are constant allusions to the activities of the Corea brothers, C.E. and Victor[76]: “Ratmale, one of the villages claimed on the Pihimbiya sannas. Villagers had previously on the advice of Mr. C.E. Corea refused to pay for their gardens and wanted Certificates of quiet possession. They now greed to accept Crown grants in the absence of Mr. Corea, there was no difficulty at the sales. I feel sure the villagers would have accepted settlements long ago but for the intervention of Mr Corea who I believe told them he would get them all their lands without payment”. C.E. Corea was indeed very vocal against the British land policy, as member of the Legislative council: “There was a time when it was the proud boast of this country that every villager within its bounds was a landed proprietor, but thanks to the activities of a callous bureaucracy (…) I think that about 50 p.c. of our peasantry are coolies or vagabonds while their forefathers were independent freeholders”[77].

Land speculation through legal means was widely practiced by the Chilaw lawyers, especially the Corea brothers who were considered by the Settlement officers as their strongest opponents, especially because they adopted a nationalist stance, which was not the case with the De Mels who were strong supporters of the colonial government.[78]: “These speculations [in  Puttalam district] have been greatly encouraged by the success of the claimants in the Potukulama case which went to the Privy council and in which careless handling in Ceylon caused government the loss of about 90,000 Rs over the one claim”. The officer Davies pleaded for the nomination in this district of officers “as strong in character, numbers and ability as possible”, as for example “the total value of the land inspected this week is about half million rupees”. Local Mudaliyars (one Rajapaksa), local Tamils (Canagasabei) and several low country Sinhalese (A de Zylva) were together active in manipulating old deeds to purchase and re-sell large tracts of land[79]. Among the people dabbling in land for rubber before the ordinance of 1927, Francis Kotelawala was especially active in the Weudawili area (close to Madure korale, in a Vahumupura area) and his purchases disturbed the peace in the villages[80] (Puswelikanda, Puswella, Erepolakanda). D.D. Pedris, the most affluent and influential member of the Vahumpura caste, was himself active as a land buyer in the area, although the basis of his wealth was not plantation land.

Baladora korale (north of Hettipola) was already the scene of intensive land speculation in the 1910s: “proctors, plumbago merchants and ratemahatmayas have vied with each other in buying up large tracts of chenas; in some cases whole villages have changed hands and always at the rate of one or two rupees an acre (…) the aracci apparently buys at 2 Rs per acre and sells at 34 Rs perhaps the money will not pass until the land has been settled. The aracci has applied for a Certificate of quiet possession for more than 1,000 acres”[81]. In the 1920s, the scramble for land extended to Yagam Pattu, and finally to the whole district. The Government agents at Kurunegala were facing new methods of land speculators who took advantage of the recognition of ‘paraveni chenas’ by government in 1926[82]: “The settlement is difficult to carry out with any justice to the villager (…) There are usually several claimants, and advantage has been taken of the policy recently adopted in this district by persons whose claim is, to say the least, dubious, to submit applications for chenas. Another aspect which strikes villagers as an injustice is the fact that they have been compelled to submit applications for their chenas, while many estates equally held on village title in practice escape with immunity.”

In 1927, the Government Agent, asking for the proclamation of the totality of the district of Kurunegala under the new Land ordinance, mentioned that the most affected areas were Dewamedi, Hiriyala and Madure. His aim was to prevent speculative purchases before settlement “it had come to my knowledge that 800 acres of land at Kiribamuna, Hiriyala, had been purchased by an outside capitalist for a consideration of approx.. 2.50 Rs an acre and this was one of a number of other cases (…) In Madure which is being block-surveyed, land speculators are doing their best to get a footing. In unsettled parts of Dewamedi, all of which are suitable for coconut cultivation, I have considerable difficulty with capitalists who buy up unsound claim to a small share in a large extent of land and then put their men to take possession of the land. In Hiriyala a number of cases where extremely exiguous claims to chena have been sold to capitalists in Kurunegala and Colombo. Hitherto I have generally succeeded in protecting these lands from depredation, but my powers are limited and the capitalists know it”. The commission after hearing Hodson recommended the proclamation of these areas, in spite of the strong opposition of Madawela who feared that this measure would prevent the ordinary villagers of his coconut district to clear their ‘paraveni chenas’, and of Senanayake, who considered the measure to be unjust for owners who were in the process of opening their lands. The question of ‘paraveni chenas’ was specific to the North Western Province, and was since the beginning of the century the subject of a long-standing controversy between the colonial administration and the local members of the Legislative council, especially G.E. Madawela.[83]

Outside the coconut triangle, the settlement department had to deal with European as well as Ceylonese planters, and in many cases the Planters Associations played the same game as the Ceylonese entrepreneurs in the 1920s. For example, in the Kägalla district, where many rubber estates sprang up on lands purchased from villagers, a deputation visited the Colonial secretary in 1922, using the same arguments as those of C.E.Corea to circumvent the rules established by the Settlement department under the Waste lands ordinance[84] 

In the war between land speculators and the Settlement department, the latter was handicapped by the slow pace of its operations, which allowed the former to keep the initiative in purchasing land in advance of settlement. “The delay in settlement [in the south of the Kurunegala district] encourages the operations of the speculators, and leads to the available land passing into the hands of outside capitalists to the exclusion of the small local man and to the creation of a landless peasantry”. “Much harm continues to be done in unsettled areas by speculative capitalists who buy up shares of land on village title, often from someone who has no shadow of right to the land, and then endeavour to take forcible possession”. “During the previous two years speculators, mostly low-country Sinhalese, had been buying up village claims to unsettled lands on an enormous scale in areas which it was expected would in the near future be taken up for settlement by the settlement officer [in the Ratnapura district]. Whether his vendor’s claim was a genuine one or not was of little interest or concern to the purchaser. His object was to create for himself a ‘claim’ to cover his entry upon the land, which he would then proceed to clear and plant”[85].

This is how a fresh Settlement officer described the situation: “My first experience of the chaotic land grabbing in progress in the North Western Province. Half the chenas had been planted up since the surveyors left the village. There is no doubt that the Land Settlement Department operations are a powerful fertiliser of the soil here. Most of the encroachments were by big landowners. The notary of the place came to pay me a call. I found he was an ex-Badulla practitioner whom I had occasion to report to the attorney general for irregularities. Mr. Rajapakse, one of the late agricultural scholarship holders of the island, accompanied me on a couple of inspections, representing one of the estate owners for whom he is now doing agency work”[86]

In a report of 1926 which was perused by the Land Commission, Tyrell, the Government agent of the North western province, gave several examples of settled villages in Kiniyama korale around Dandagamuwa where land sales which were rife before settlement had ceased after settlement: “For this reason, efforts are always made by speculators to induce villagers to part with their rights before settlement. When the settlement survey is in progress, these harpies appear and carry on their propaganda. They tell the people that all the land will be declared Crown. ‘You will in any case lose your land, you may as well get something for it and transfer your claim to us for hard cash’.  On the same theme, Hodgson, the Government agent of Sabaragamuwa reported in October 1925 on the situation in Kukul korale: “The action of the Land Settlement department tends to accelerate the sale of village lands in undeveloped parts of the province, for example in the Kukul korale, by attracting speculators who hope to open the country in rubber or tea. But in the more developed regions such as Nawadun or Kuruwiti, I do not think that settlement accelerates or retards the sale (… ) The ordinary villager cannot command the capital required for the development of permanent cultivation, except on a small scale, and the idea of combination and cooperation does not enter his head (…) The chief benefit that strikes the villager is that he can sell lands with a Crown title at a considerably enhanced price” [87].

With the second boom in rubber demand after the end of the war, there was a rush for rubber land by Ceylonese investors in the wet zone, especially the Ratnapura district[88]. European speculators had started the process before the war. In the Karandana area there was initially “a large rubber estate set up after 1910 by a Mr. Fletcher through share purchases from villagers done in 1907 for about 600 acres, and resold in 1910 to the Grand Central Rubber company at a price of… 760 Rs per acre! When the area came under settlement 15 years later, the estate, property of the Grand Central Rubber company was of 900 acres. Wattoru I find cover only 690 acres, the rest is at law Crown land” As usual in such cases it was the De Sarams firm which was employed by the company to negotiate with the Settlement officers, and which said they would ask Fletcher to pay what was demanded (24 Rs. an acre…), but “Fletcher has retired to the remote fastness of Scotland in order to be safe from the Land Settlement Department”. Finally, the local representative of Fletcher, another planter, alleged that “in 1910 Mr. Fletcher applied to the Government Agent for a Certificate of quiet possession and was allowed to continue clearing and planting on the understanding that the SO would deal with the application after the block survey. These are the pleasant creations of Mr. Fletcher’s imagination”. But after the first world war, the most enterprising investors in rubber were Ceylonese. A very powerful concern, the Panadura bus company founded by W. Leo Fernando (allied with the De Mels) invested in rubber land in the Kukul korale, together with other ‘rubber kings of Panadura’ such as Abraham Perera. And the example set up by these big entrepreneurs was followed by smaller investors.

The settlement officers were confronted by 1925 with a spate of speculation which they found difficult to resist.  Stace described the process at work in the Ratnapura district: “In nearly all the villages, low country speculators, chiefly from Panadura and Moratuwa, had feverishly bought up just about the time of the survey (1922-23) and were excitedly rushing in and clearing and planting large extents of chena lands, evidently with the idea that if only they got extents planted up  before the settlement enquiries, the Settlement officer could be practically compelled to settle on them what they had planted. Warnings were sent through headmen and had little effect. These gentlemen gave solemn undertakings to stay operations pending settlement but after staying their hands for a few weeks they began once merrily burning down jungle and sticking in rubber plants (…) The Settlement officer cannot allow himself to be coerced in this way, and it may be necessary either to refuse to settle on these people considerable tracts of land actually planted by them, or have them declared Crown and sold by auction, or settle on them at prices which will teach them a lesson”. The same Stace noticed another trick to ‘fortify’ title: “every villager has sold chenas to each other villager (…) the result was that practically every single claimant produced stacks of deeds and then greatly complicated the enquiry”. “The most important of the causes which complicated the settlement and rendered a fair division of the chena land almost impossible was the growing habit, not only of speculators, but of villagers, to clear and plant up their chena claims in rubber just before settlement enquiry. Some plant and clear far more than they are entitled to, some far less or none at all”.

The case of the village of Nugadanda Kahandikele was typical of the difficulties encountered by settlement officers[89]: “Any rights to chena lands have mostly passed out of the hands of the villagers in the following way. They signed a deed to the late korala of the district, locally known as Toranagoda korala. This gentleman however, being a government servant, did not wish to appear in the deed, which was actually drawn in favour of a certain vederala whose miserliness, rapacity and meanness are well known in the district. The korala died almost at once, without paying the consideration on the deed to the villagers, or paying only small sums of 2,3 or 5 Rs each, the balance being promised at a later date. On the death of the korala, the vederala declined to pay anything further to the villagers, but sold his rights for fat sums of money to various low country speculators who have now planted up nearly the whole of the chena lands in rubber.  I do not think there are 50 acres of chena left. At the inquiry all the villagers claimed when it was pointed out that they had sold all their rights, they replied: ‘yes, but we claim because we were paid nothing’ I shall certainly do anything that appears possible to help the villagers in this case”

“I contrived to settle at least small areas on those villagers who had the best claim to consideration. Land settlement in Ratnapura is an odd business. It is so complicated and the claims so confused and muddled that no matter what you do, your decision is certain to be illogical and inconsistent with some other decision in the same inquiry. If the inconsistency is spotted by the claimant there is a howl at once. One becomes expert at reconciling irreconcilable principles, and making the illogical appear logical. The whole business is one of dancing among eggs.”. “The notorious landgrabber and forest thief, Mr. W.D. (Warusahennedige Daniel) Fernando, who was a large claimant in the village, received a block of 200 or 300 acres and is forming himself into a limited liability company and wants to hurry up the sanction of government for his settlement. The agents of the new company (Gordon Fraser and co) appear to have seen the Controller of Revenue, and I received letters from the Settlement officer and Gordon Fraser and a personal visit of Mr. Fernando. Incidentally he informed me that he was appealing to the Colonial Secretary against the decision in Ayagama calling him to withdraw his claim to forest. He hopes if the matter was referred to me that I should view it ‘with sympathy’”

The village of Hindurangala was the theatre of extensive purchases by the well-known ‘bus tycoon’ from Panadura Warusahennedige Leo Fernando; Stace wrote in his diary: “The most difficult settlement I have done. Nothing seemed to fit in. Every inch of chena feverishly planted up by speculators after the survey so that he village bears little resemblance with that shown on the plan (…) The biggest claimant was Mr W.A. Fernando: he told me in his evidence that he had planted up some 300 acres and that he had bought up the whole of a certain panguwa (…) It was shown on inspection that he had planted only 180 acres and that he had purchased only about 1/3rd of the panguwa (…) I decided to make him pay heavily in order to get him in the right frame of mind”. Stace proposed to sell him 100 acres and to retain 80 acres for the Crown, and Fernando “sat in total silence, unable to speak, beads of perspiration on his forehead”, then he proposed an enhanced price for the remaining 80 acres “which was that I had intended all along. He agreed with infinite relief (…) His statement that he had bought the whole panguwa was apparently his bona fide belief”[90]

In the village of Yatipahuwa, Stace met with what he called the machinations of Moratuwa speculators: “One group of lots had previously been sold to Mr. H.P. Dickman de Mel. It was afterwards found on the representation of a certain apothecary Jayaratne that he had obtained the settlement of these lands upon himself by what may be euphemistically called an omission to state the whole truth. I held full enquiry and settled them upon Jayaratne. In another group of lots the same De Mel figured. He and a certain Dr. Mendis had nearly come to blows and their coolies had actually come to bloodshed in their feverish endeavours to plant up in rubber certain chena lands in the village and to get them fully planted prior to settlement. I had both parties up about a year ago and they gave solemn undertakings to cease operations pending settlement. This solemn undertaking they soon broke, each clearing and planting, and each accusing the other of having begun it. They were warned many times. Now one block of this land has I found been declared Crown by the Government agent 20 years ago. I therefore put up this block for sale without of course bringing it under the Waste Lands Ordinance. At today’s sale I made these parties pay at the rate of 150 Rs per acre for this chena land since it had been declared Crown, I had them completely at my hand. It is a pleasure occasionally to be able to make the land speculator dance to the tune one sets”[91].

 

Land settlement, peasant indebtedness and peasant resistance

Critics of land settlement operations argued that they contributed to peasant indebtedness and eventually led to land alienation to outsiders. The argument was already developed by Moonemalle in his speech of 1907, and was regularly invoked by the nationalist leaders during the next twenty years. There was a definite tendency for members of the national elite to lay the blame of landlessness at the door of non-Sinhalese groups, especially the Chettiar moneylenders. In 1925, a Committee of the Legislative council on landless villagers, of which D.S. Senanayake was a member, collected evidence from Madahapola, Ratemahatmaya of Hiriyala hatpattu[92]:

Senanayake: “About 50 years ago the villagers owned much land, but now very much less. The chief offenders have been the coast Moors, Chetties and so on. Do you know that they tried to get undivided shares and harass the villagers and put them into court and so a man loses all his land?

Madahapola: “Yes, that is the chief cause of losing land that must be prevented if we want to make the people prosperous”

Senanayake: “What is the effect of the Waste Lands Ordinance in your district. Has it not helped the outsider to acquire title to the land?”

Madahapola: “When Land settlement is going on, they have to borrow money to pay. Then the outsiders make arrangement with the land owners and afterwards buy these lands. In certain cases they buy the land before the settlement. At the same time the settlement helps the villager to get away from litigation”

Senanayake: “After settlement will the villagers not get rid of the land?”

Madahapola: “Before settlement outsiders buy the land at the rate of 10 to 25 or even 35 Rs an acre. The villager will not sell the land after settlement unless he gets a very good offer”

A couple of years later, the evidence collected by the Land Commission, especially the testimonies of Mediwaka, of Jayatileke and of Leslie de Saram, together with the diaries of the Settlement officers, suggested that the working of the sales and settlement under the Waste Lands Ordinance had encouraged land litigation and land speculation, and the large scale transfer of land from peasant cultivators to absentee coconut landowners in the North Western Province. In his comments on the proposals of the Land commission[93] the Assistant Settlement Officer Bassett considered that 50% of the lands settled on peasants were resold, and that if the resale was forbidden, the villagers would sell their fields and gardens to pay for the settlement; in his diary[94] he wrote: “Now that villagers may not sell lands settled upon them, a certain hardship has arisen (…) If a very poor villager gets the settlement of perhaps 3 or 4 acres at even 10Rs an acre, he cannot pay for it. If he could sell one acre, he could do so (…) the remedy is for villager’s settlements up to about 5 acres to be given free. There is a present marked increase in the sale by villagers of fields and old gardens, partly to meet this difficulty, although to a great extent the increase in this disastrous practice which was rare before the prohibition of unsettled lands, is due to the necessity for ready money which the villagers used to meet by the sale of chenas on doubtful title”.

The diaries of other Settlement officers are full of similar stories: “The general complaint is that the villager cannot afford to pay. It appears that previously he was prepared to pay because as soon as he got a settlement a capitalist was ready to buy up the land or a portion of it settled on him at a much higher price, and thus he raised the money to pay. Now he cannot sell. This is one of the drawbacks of ordinance 8 of 1927 as the villager has to deal with his garden or paddy field to raise the money”[95]. “One result of the overlavish settlement of chenas on ancestral claimants: quite a number of lots sold in Mangulagama were at once transferred, before the ink of the land register was dry, to the proprietor of a large coconut estate, who was there waiting for his prey. These lots would have been of inestimable value for future village expansion. Instead of that they have in effect been alienated at slightly over 10 Rs an acre to an outside capitalist”. “A villager [of Karaulla] who purchased [at settlement sale] was already so heavily in debt that he wanted me at once to enter the name of an outsider. This is a direct infraction of the spirit of ordinance 8 of 1927 to prevent improvident alienation, but very difficult to prevent, unless the debtor can be put on his legs to start afresh, it is doubtful whether he will have the energy, enterprise and the capital required to make his land pay. He certainly cannot do it by drawing merely 50 to 75 cent a day as an estate coolie”[96]. “Two women appeared and asked me to allow them to sell the greater part of the land I had just settled on them. One of them I know head over ears in litigation and debt, the other an old cousin completely under her influence (…) If one consents, they will lose most of their chena lands; if one refuses, their planted and dwelling lands will be sold up for debts and they will be ruined hat way. It is a choice of evils. They have not paid for the lands yet, and are not likely to be able to pay for it. One sometimes wonders whether it is possible to rescue the peasant from his own innumerable weaknesses”[97]

“The sales may be divided into two classes: to outside capitalists / to villagers. The capitalists in most cases paid the full sale value, but the villagers were unable to even pay a first deposit, that is 1/10th price of their lands. In such cases, a few hours’ time was given to them to make the payment, which they did during the course of that day. There were two instances where the villagers on being told the sale value negotiate with outside capitalists who were present, and obtained from them the necessary sum. In these latter cases, it is surmised that the villagers arranged to sell their lands to the capitalists.”[98]. “Sales on applications by landless villagers about 2 or 3 years ago. There is reason to believe that quite a number of these applications have been made at the instigation of third parties who intended subsequently to get hold of these lands. Several of the applicants who appeared before me asked permission for the deed to be drawn up in favour of a third party, who was in no way connected with the applicant. In some cases the third party was some big landowner owning lands adjoining the allotment or some representative of him. Such cases were turned down”.[99]

The link between settlement sales and indebtedness is suggested by the extension of the activities of Chettiar moneylenders in the North Western province. In the diaries of the 1930s, there were very numerous cases of villagers either indebted before settlement to Chettiars, who needed titles to repay their debts, or who mortgaged their land to Chettiars as soon as it was declared private. The obvious correlation between the rapid development of Chettiar agencies in the North Western province and the advance of settlement will be explored in a further study[100].  

It is difficult to assess the depth of peasant discontent and resistance using the settlement diaries as a unique source: when such cases of opposition occurred, the colonial authorities usually explained them by the peasant ignorance of the real working of the settlement, and by the influence of outside agitators, speculators affected by the working of the settlement. On the other side, complaints against settlement were often aired in the Ceylonese press by nationalist writers but not by peasant themselves. What cannot be doubted is that opposition in land matters was the most sensitive issue encountered by the colonial administration. There was a tendency for settlement officers to see land speculators everywhere, and on the part of the villagers, to see administrative demands as potential expropriation and/or greed for taxes. As late as after 1931, when the department was manned by young Ceylonese officers, distrust or diffidence was not far away: “Villagers here seem to regard land settlement as land grabbing. A villager presented a petition, it mentioned that there was a rumour that the Crown intended to take away from the villagers a considerable extent of their land, which they had owned from the time of the Sinhalese kings. It was an unalienable right of the villager to till his paddy field and clear his chena. The Crown had therefore no right to interfere with his land”[101]. Even when villagers accepted to collaborate with the Settlement department, “I was struck by the intimate knowledge the villagers had, especially the elder ones of the village, and by their usefulness in settlement work. They show you round out of sheer willingness to help you, but have a certain fear that some of their lands may be taken away from them”. “I found the villager an extremely courteous man, a characteristic which should not be confused with subservience” [102].

The most common form of resistance was delaying acceptance, refusing to collaborate, pleading poverty and refusing to pay for settlement, as in the case of Welipitiya (Hambantota district): “the failure to pay is due not so much to the want of money as to a conviction that if they do not settle nothing will happen”, wrote the Settlement officer[103]. According to his subordinate, C.V. Brayne, the difficulty to settle in the region of Walasmulla was due in part to poverty, in part to organized resistance: “The people are poor and very obstinate, and repeated visits at short intervals will be necessary to complete settlement (…) They are under the influence of one Don Lewis Appuhamy of Dikwella, a pretty scoundrel who was the only claimant under the old notice and had no real claim”. Another young officer, Wedderburn, displayed a typical colonial attitude in his description of the confrontation: “Crusade against the villagers who refuse to pay and plead poverty. I assisted the crusade by being mistaken for a police superintendent. The chena headman joins the crusade. The villagers show a more reasonable frame of mind and a number of settlements are effected”[104]. The settlement officers were often confronted by these amaru karayo, acting for their fellow villagers as ‘jungle proctors’. But popular forms of defiance or opposition were also expressed through rumours. For example, in 1908 in the Matara district, “there is a curious rumour prevalent among the uneducated classes (sic) that the Japanese are to take over Ceylon in a few years with a view to the improvement of Buddhism, and that is the reason why Government wants to collect as much money as possible through the sale of lands before the transfer takes place”.[105]

 

 

Self-critical views of settlement work in the 1920s.

After the first world war, a new generation of Settlement officers such as Hughes (1924), Stace (1923-1932) and Sandys (1929-1930) produced diaries or memoirs in which they questioned the aims and impact of settlement work and exposed its practical and structural difficulties. In the 1920s, at least in Ceylon, colonial paternalism began to be undermined by a section of the officials who denounced its inefficiency in fighting land speculation, questioned the legitimacy of the colonial interference upon the socio-economic structure, or pleaded for a redistributive policy.

The first pages of the diary of Hughes show how a candid Settlement officer discovered field work in the Ratnapura district: “The long and tedious work of inquiry into genealogy is apparently necessitated by the intention to deal mildly with the villager, and settle land at upset price on claimants who have an equitable, if not legal claim. Some knowledge of the rules of equity as established by settlement officers is common in the villages” “It looks like a jigsaw jungle, first getting applicants into genealogical groups according to the panguwa and then fitting their reduced demand into the available lots. The settlement officer has to be the historian and geographer of the village (…)  but the original necessity for chena cultivation had passed to a great extent with the development of the district and the demand for other forms of labour”. Interference by the Settlement officers with the balance of village society is another problem: “To raise the question of ownership occasionally store up a hornet nest of petitions (…) Once you propose to sell land to a villager, others will remember all sorts of occasions on which their ancestors took a crop off it or helped him to cultivate. The enquiry then becomes one of settlement of family disputes rather than waste lands proceedings” [106].

In the village of Batugedara, Hughes came across an “extremely speculative claim. It is astonishing to find a highly placed Ceylonese family (Sir H.L. de Mel’s family) involved in such a transaction. The unmasking and defeating of such sales appear to be a strong justification for the existence of this department”. Later, on inspection in the North central province: “One feels rather an intruder in these villages where for years the villagers have cultivated their chenas and planted up land with coconuts undisturbed by the claims of the central government; and in many cases to charge them for their land cultivated with recent but permanent cultivation appears as harsh as squeezing a man struggling from poverty. In the case of these jungle surrounded villages, struggling with survival where so many have succumbed, I should like to have discretion to recognize the fait accompli and charge up the villager only with the cost of survey”. In the margin of the diary E.B. Alexander, then acting Controller of Revenue, wrote this patronizing comment: “Mr. Hughes ideas will probably be considerably modified after a year or two of work in this department”. In the wet areas of the south-west Hughes questioned the status of deniyas and owitas (wet/marshy areas where cultivation was possible)[107]: “It is clear  from the attitude of the people that although they often claim them, they really regard them as Crown lands which they occupy temporarily from year to year for their own purposes, usually with impunity, unless the headman, for some particular reason, brings in a prosecution. This is however a very rare occurrence” Hughes decided to admit these private or settle at low rates instead of reserving them as Crown, because “land would probably be sold hereafter at auctions at which outsiders from Ambalangoda would buy out the villagers” and that “it is very unsatisfactory having a large number of small pieces of Crown land scattered about in the village”

  1. T. Stace in his manuscript Notes on Life in Ceylon offers an uncensored vision of the working of the colonial administration, and of land affairs[108]. According to him, the colonial government was “wholly paternal and undemocratic” and the Revenue officers were left without any training, although they had “to deal with the land [which] is to deal with the heart of the people”. The Settlement officers were working close to the people without depending on headmen, especially if they could speak sinhala. Stace admitted that the land settlement system could appear unjust because the government compelled villagers to pay for their lands “but in fact the claimants usually welcomed our enquiries and decisions because a Crown grant put an end to all private disputes”: because of the system of undivided shares (complicated by polyandry up-country), in the absence of individual settlement, “the land would go out of cultivation altogether and revert to jungle because if any individual tried to cultivate his share he would be attacked by others who disputed his right”. Stace put his fingers on the result, a settlement between villagers, which was not the initial intention of the Waste Lands ordinance: with the passing of time the settlement of claims between private parties became de facto the main raison d’être of these operations and the reason why they were accepted. “There was scarcely a villager who did not claim to be a part owner of some of the lands included within the boundaries of his village. There were indeed a few landless villagers but this was a recent condition produced mainly by large estate owners, many of whom were European firms, who largely bought up village claims for a song in order to get the land they needed for tea and rubber plantations. Lipton’s Ceylon tea, known to everyone, has usually this sort of background. But in my day in Ceylon this process of dispossessing the villager of his land, though well advanced, still left perhaps 80% of the land in the hands of the peasant proprietors. And this left plenty of work for the Land settlement department to do”.

In his diaries written on the spot, Stace offers a much less optimistic view of settlement work, pointing the lack of money to pay for the auctioned lands and the resulting indebtedness[109]: “How auction sales hit the villager: practically all the sales in this circuit were small village lots, mostly of planted lands (…) As a rule it was found that the influential village applicant had succeeded in suppressing bids, while the poor man with no influence in the village had to bid high and generally lose his land to an outside applicant. The excessive price of land in the Kalutara district rendered it practically impossible for the poorer villagers to get even an acre of land, so long as auction rules are applied. The fat mudalali from Bentota or Kalutara, replete with combs, watch chains and sandals, come on the scene, his pocket bulging with 100 rupees notes, and snaps up even the one acre for which the villager applied and paid his survey fees, often 5, 8 or 10 years ago”. Almost ten years later, another Settlement officer, Abhayakoon, noted that in a North-western province village, Malabendiyawa, where “villagers had bought large extents of land from the Crown, some of them are still in chena: the villagers in some cases exhausted all their resources in paying for the land, and have no means of improving the land a present”[110]

The finality of settlement operations was also questioned by the young M.K.T. Sandys when he undertook field work for a rather short period (1929-1930) in the Dandagamuwa/Kuliyapitiya area of the Kurunegala district[111].  He was a strong critique of the method of settling land according to the genealogical rights of the claimants: settlement according to claims based on tax receipts and genealogical position tended to enhance inequality and favour the more assertive claimants:  “The drawbacks of accepting the inheritance principle in the matter of what is presumed to be Crown lands are obvious. [Some villagers] inherit too little to support them and have to emigrate or starve. If one could treat the land on a different basis, they could all have a new start. I do not mean that one could prevent the subdivided inheritance principle from operating thereafter. The only way to do that would be to adopt the leasing system”.

Sandys was upset by the arbitrary character of the settlements: “I tremble to think what will be the result if a board is ever appointed to review our settlements. What is wanted is more finality about it, not less. In these congested regions where the chenas are in an inextricable muddle, it is impossible to give reasons why one settles the fraction of an acre more on this party than on that; legal considerations are not the only ones and one feels that if one came to a decision on purely legal grounds it would generally be wrong. For example a man gets into debt and sells the whole of his vague ancestral share, but his widow and children go on living there and from time to time, without taking he slightest notice of the sale, help themselves to the chena. Other villagers living in the neighbourhood do the same. 10 or 20 years later, it is impossible to say that the purchaser who bought 10 acres is now entitled to have anything like 10 acres settled on him”. In August 1929, Sandys considered that the possibility to revise settlements as suggested by the Land Commission would nullify the benefits to the poor villager to escape from endless litigation: “What is wanted is a reasonably speedy and final decision, not a slow and revisable one that is theoretically equitable”. He also noted that confusion regarding land rights was common in the villages of the North western province, as is the case of Akkarawatte, where “the villagers had been leaving fallow for several years a relatively large tract of their own paddy fields under the belief that they were Crown”. In Denawaka Udakada (Ratnapura district), he noticed a similar situation: “It was quite a new experience for me to find a number of small lots settled on villagers some years ago but left uncultivated and still in jungle. A good illustration of the advantages of the lease system over a system of outright sales”[112]

In a perspective of social justice, Sandys envisioned that settlement work could be a tool of redistribution: “One claimant said: ‘the fact is we have not the least idea which chena is which or what the extents are’. The names vary from time to time and some people call them by one name, and some by another[113]. The same kind of remark could be applied to almost every chena tract in Ceylon, yet it is on this shifting, variable, unreliable basis that all so-called village title rests. Why should we lay such exaggerated stress on paraveni claims, thereby ignoring the point of view that Crown land should be given not to those villagers with the biggest claims but to those whose needs are greatest?” “There is a regrettable lack of finality about the whole business. In this part of the country, which is seething with litigation, I am frequently asked by parties in whose favour I have decided in settlement and who have paid for the lots or shares settled on them, to save them from the legal machinations of the defeated opponents. There are unfortunately no satisfactory means of doing so. The Crown is thereby exposed to a charge of breach of faith in that it has raised hopes whereof it is unable to secure the realization” (…) “One family claims 2/3rd of a village and another family 1/3rd (but) it was found that the second claimed 10 acres more than the first” because they had been more enterprising. “Morale: grab as much land as you can before settlement (…) It is practically impossible to discover what each individual possesses; they possess in most cases not as individuals but as groups and what share of each ‘group possession’ (old gardens) the individual owns is an unknown and unascertainable quantity” [114].

The position of Sandys was that it should be better for both the administration and the villagers to abandon the tedious work of genealogical reconstruction and distribute land according to the needs of each villager and not to his pedigree, especially in the North-western province where the landless outsiders are numerous. “but this would be unorthodox”. His critique of settlement work was that it creates private property and inequality “The villagers before settlement wander all over their neighbour’s lands, whether planted or not, because the title is vague and uncertain and few are in a position to forbid them. But after settlement all is changed. Title becomes stronger, and the exact position of the land is known. Barbed wire fences spring up in all directions. The villagers do not have plans before them and often cannot realize in advance that their easiest route to the tank or for their children to go to school is liable to be cut off by settlement”[115].

 

The Settlement department and the Land commission of 1927-28. 

The decision to review the land policy of the colonial government of Ceylon was taken by Hugh Clifford, governor from November 1925 to June 1927, as the result of a combination of often contradictory factors: to answer the criticism of the land by a section of the westernized bourgeoisie adopting the nationalist stance and at the same time investing in the plantation economy; to remedy the lack of coherence and vision in the management of land matters; to protect the peasantry in a context of growing landlessness. A Land commission reporting to the Legislative council sat in 1927 and 1928, collected extensive evidence and proposed substantial reforms. The Land settlement department was in the spotlight, and using the platform offered by the proceedings of the Land Commission and the debates at the Legislative council, nationalist critics renewed their attacks against the department, which answered by accusing its detractors of double standards, and defending the fairness of their decisions. G.E. Madawela, member of the Legislative council and leader of the Kurunegala demonstrations before 1915, accused the Settlement officer of arbitrary behaviour in favour of European planters: “The Settlement officer has prostituted the ordinance to squeeze money out of the villager (…) It is not possible for a man to pay 15 Rs to 20 Rs.  for an acre without getting into debt (…) It was Mr. Fraser who commenced this policy, he gave to European planters and to Messrs Finlay Muir land in Kurunegala at 7.50 and 10 Rs an acre. He also gave to other capitalists at that price”[116]. Madawela, together with other witnesses at the Commission such as Mideniya Adigar, defended his thesis that the ordinance of 1840 did not aim at koralegam (freehold) but only at feudal villages, and that prior to the ordinance of 1897 the government regularly recognized the existence of private ancestral (paraveni) chenas by the issue of Certificates of quiet possession. Repeated pronouncements of the Kägalla administrators, and admission under pressure of the appurtenance principle (3 to 1) by the Revenue officers, in spite of the opposition of the Settlement department, were according to him sufficient proofs of his thesis.  He therefore proposed that a new legislation compel the Settlement department to recognize paraveni chena rights.

Wait, Controller of Revenue, retorted: “In the Kurunegala district in which the mover is most interested, the settlement of the village is really a compendious series of partition cases on a system which most villagers well understand and appreciate, and which they generally prefer to the 3 to 1 alternative”. Wait defended the ‘case on its own merits’ approach of the Settlement department; according to him: “the claimant pays no legal fees whatsoever, and gets the land demarcated and settled on him at a less cost than he would have had to pay for a mere survey of the same extent in a partition case in a civil court. If the motion is accepted, it will lead to a scramble in which the honest villager will go to the wall, ousted by the more unscrupulous trafficker in paper titles”.

In his official report for 1929, Stace considered that the proposed rules would deprive the Settlement officers to decide ‘according to the merit of the case’ and finally benefit the capitalist speculators[117]: “The settlement has usually consisted in a mediation or compromise between the two sides, the village claimant buying from the Crown whole or part of the chena lands claimed at a low rate such as 20 Rs per acre. This purchase constitutes the ‘settlement’ of their claims. The land might often be worth 100 Rs an acre, but the lower rate was the recognition of the equitable right of the claimant. It represents the price paid for the bare legal right and the good title conferred upon him”. According to Stace, the new instructions concerning ‘bona fide ancestral village titles’ to be settled gratis except survey and title fees (about 10 Rs more or less) would not affect the fundamentals, but established the right of every claimant to obtain a settlement for the whole of his claim, and the principle that it is not the price of the land, but the price of the title to land, which is paid by the claimant: hence the Crown is no longer the proprietor of uncultivated highlands as in 1840, but the administrator of these lands for the benefit of the people if the people recognize this role by signing the settlement. But as regards the outside claimants, until then the rate was fixed by the Settlement officer according to the merits of each case (usually from 25 to 100 Rs an acre) but “in future, the capitalist claimant will know beforehand exactly what rate he will have to pay – the same whether the land is valuable or worthless, whether he has paid the villager handsomely or meanly. The rates have been fixed by the Governor in council as follows: Sabaragamuwa and North Western Province, 24 Rs per acre, North Central Province 10 Rs per acre, Central Province 20 Rs per acre, Uva 22 Rs per acre. On the whole, the capitalist claimant will get his land settled on him at considerably cheaper rates than he did before.”

In their unpublished diaries, the settlement officers denounced the collusion between the promoters of the proposed legislation and the land speculators: “Many lawyers have stated that there is considerable prospect of very nourishing fees in the latest Waste Lands Ordinance” [118]. One went so far as to cross out some sentences in a manner which made them readable[119]: “A large amount of clearing by low-country landsharks, a good deal of which forests. The position is bad enough now, but it will be worse if the proposals of the Land commission are put into operation. If these proposals which in matter of private and Crown title must surpass the landshark’s wildest dreams meet with the politicians’ approval, government will find it difficult to adopt proposals less favourable to them which have not been discussed, and the political and landgrabbing classes, if they are not identical, have a great deal in common (…) Some of Mr. Madawela’s ad hoc historical pronouncements seem to have been swallowed without condiments (…) The method of arriving at conclusions first and recording evidence later appears a novel one, but is perhaps dictated by political exigencies. Apparently one side is prepared to stomach the peasant tenure scheme, if the other will refrain from regurgitating the former historical notions”.

Among the land speculators denounced by the department were G.E. Madawela and his father in law C.E. Tennekoon: “Mr Madawela, a staunch upholder of villager’s rights, appeared in office on behalf of Mr Tennekoon, a speculator”. After the passing of the new legislation recognizing paraveni chena rights, Tennekoon claimed entire villages, some of them uninhabited, on no other title than “having by the more or less illegitimate use of his great influence as Ratemahatmaya, forced the villagers to yield 2/3rd of the produce” and the settlement officer was compelled to settle on him large extents owing to the new legislation based on the Land Commission recommendations recognizing as private ‘paraveni chenas’[120]. Madawela’s expertise was sought in the whole island: he was considered as the authority able to oppose the Settlement officers. In the case of the village of Paranagama where the leading family held a sannasa apparently never produced and had sold most of their lands for rubber, the headman “had consulted the Hon. Mr. Madawala about the sannas some 2 or 3 years ago and the fee he demanded was too high for them to pay”[121]. Other nationalist leaders followed suit in the 1930s.: for example, in Hitgoda Wapola village (Kandy district) in 1933, “M. George de Silva appeared and wished the sales postponed with a view to his making representations to have lands involved declared private. I declined to allow a postponement. The villagers however sensing the presence of a champion in their cause brought the old cry of ‘no money’, thus bringing things to an impasse. Mr Winter too and Mr Halloway, local planters and purchasers of land from the villagers, declined to pay anything more than 6 Rs. per acre. I wonder how far all this had to do with the electioneering campaign that was going on in the area at the time”.[122] 

The new land policy which was the outcome of the recommendations of the Land commission and was framed by the State council instituted by the Donoughmore constitution and its Minister for agriculture and lands, D.S. Senanayake, will be the subject of a further chapter. It put the Settlement department under the control of the Land commissioner and organized land development from above with the ‘mapping out’ concept.

 

Appendix : the testimony of Frank Leach[123]

In his interview with Michael Roberts and in written answers to questions posed by him, Frank Leach recalled his experiences as Assistant Settlement Officer in the Kurunegala and Badulla districts and gave detailed descriptions of the working of the settlement team and of the speculator’s tricks. The working of the department depended on the character of the officers who started with ‘easy villages’: some worked on a day to day routine, others (like him) had a wider vision of the future. It depended also on the type of villages settled: in small villages of the dry zone without much speculation the work was simple, but in the estate areas it involved a lot of preliminary research “it was surprising how the extent of a piece of land grew with the number of transfers made”. It depended also on the quality of the survey

Leach confirmed the role played by Kurunegala proctors as land brokers, their stratagems in preventing claimants to appear before the settlement officer, and the preference of the villagers for allotments, which saved them disputes, and opened the possibility for paddy-less villagers to obtain land, instead of undivided chenas given on a 3 to 1 basis. He listed as land speculators Victor Corea, Van der Poorten, Charles Batuwantudawe, Madawela, Berry, Henry de Mel. Chief headmen, such as Madahapola, who claimed half the villages north of Kurunegala along the Dambulla road, induced the surveyors to demarcate more land than what was given by the settlement; but the simple village araccis had less lands than village traders who advanced paddy upon mortgage and became petty landlords. The result of the extension of coconut plantations was to make the villages dependent on coconut and to block the extension of subsistence agriculture: “they were no longer agriculturists, except for their own little garden”.

Answering supplementary questions by Michael Roberts, Leach mentioned the frequent recourse to courts by speculators “who wanted to get full credit for dubious paper title often deriving from diga-married women (…) They would purport that the woman was not married in diga but in binna”. “It was common for a large land speculator with probably a mixture of good and bad village title to institute a partition case to get his portion defined by the courts. Having taken the initiative he stopped anyone else taking a case, and then he would take a minimum of action. If the judge insisted on getting on with the case, it would usually be found that one party had died and so the case would be postponed (…) meanwhile the speculator’s rubber grew and the other claimants were powerless to do anything short of murder”

Leach disagreed with the view that “selling the land to its occupant, even at a nominal price, meant selling it to the speculator”, because according to him the villager had time to save enough money to pay by planting one or two crops on the land or pledging valuables. He added that “one must not forget that in sophisticated areas such as the estate areas of Uva, Sabaragamuwa and Kandy, many of the villagers were rogues themselves in land matters and were not above engineering claims and selling on no title (…) but not so much in Uva where Crown title had been more rigorously defended”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Research on the working of the land settlement department before independence is practically inexistent, except a chapter in the unpublished thesis of Lal Jayawardena, who made use of the Settlement diaries. The Agrarian Research and Training Institute (Colombo) had published in 1976 under the title Land Settlement in Sri Lanka, 1840-1975 a review of the writings on the subject which offers little information on the British period.

[2] J.P. Lewis (1854-1923), author of the Manual of the Wanni, ended his career as Government Agent of the Central Province in 1906, and was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society

[3] W.E. Davidson (born in Malta, 1859, died in Sydney, 1923) had an Oxbridge education, and a brilliant career of colonial administrator, ending as governor of New South Wales; a representative of the progressive-paternalistic approach, his diaries display a witty frame of mind and a deep understanding of the Ceylonese society

[4] John George Fraser, junior of the three, was born in Edinburgh in 1864, and died in Launceston, Tasmania in 1941; a Scotsman, married to a German lady; he came as cadet in 1887 (Jaffna) and was Assistant Government Agent Chilaw in 1899. Wrongly qualified of pure bureaucrat by Bowes (Bows and Arrows p. 43), he was a sensible person who did his best to understand the people and a serious administrator who put his department on a firm footing. He was in 1903 assisted by Howard Orme Fox (born in 186, Cambridge educated, Assistant Government Agent Matale in 1899), and in 1907 by Walter Ernest Wait, son of a tea planter in India, cadet in 1902, and member of the Ceylon Rifle Corps (Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, p. 135)

[5] Administration Report Western Province 1900, p. B9

[6] Diary  Fraser, 5.09.1901

[7] These land records were still kept in the Land settlement department record room and in the Old colonial secretariat record room in Colombo Fort area when I studied them in between 1979 and 1983; they are said to be now in the Sri Lanka National Archives repositories in Kandy and Colombo.

[8] The only published diaries are those of Leonard Woolf when he was Assistant Government Agent at Hambantota. The unpublished diaries are available in the Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA). 

[9] The qualities of the Settlement officer are resumed by Frederic Lewis (not to be confused with J.P. Lewis) in his autobiography: he must have a flair for spotting tricks and falseness, and a gift to negotiate and convince.

[10] In his diary of 9.11.1937, the fresh Assistant Settlement Officer Ratnatunga writes: “Spoke to the Settlement Officer about diaries. He said we were the Minister’s eyes in the districts in which we worked. Our diaries should give an account of our observations, what we saw in these places”

[11] L.R.U. Jayawardena, “The supply of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon plantations, 1830-1930, a Study of Imperial Policy in a Peasant Society”. University of Cambridge, Ph. D. Thesis, 1963.

[12] AR Matara 1872, p. 180 : see the controversy in my previous article on chena repression.

[13] Administration Report Matara 1898, p. E20

[14] C.J.R. Le Mesurier was a favourite of the former governor Arthur Gordon-Hamilton (later lord Stanmore) and in his various posts had acted as a sort of almighty benevolent despot. He pleaded for the abolition of the paddy tax and the defense of the peasantry, but was himself involved in numerous land speculations; his conversion to Islam in order to remarry in the face of the refusal of his first wife to divorce finally led to his dismissal. See Michael Powell “Fragile Identities: the Colonial Consequences of C.J.R. Le Mesurier in Ceylon” in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History,11,1, spring 2010.

[15] The dates given between brackets or in footnotes refer to the entries of the diaries, preceded by the name of their author

[16] see “Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries” https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6432 (2024)

 

[17] See “Highland Appropriation by the Plantation Sector in the Kägalla District (1870-1930) https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6273 (2025)

 

[18] It is worth noticing that 27 years later, the Assistant Agent in Matara, A.N. Strong,  reproduced extracts from this entry in the diary of Davidson, with this commentary : “Compared with the state of affairs existing today, the truth of this prophecy is amazing (…) As a matter of fact, the villagers were too well looked after by the headmen to do much illicit clearing. Instead of that they either contented themselves with an adequate pittance (in Pittabeddara I found 180 shareholders subsisting on about ½ acre of village garden), or else eked out a living by precarious coolie work on other people’s land. The new policy came none too soon” (Administration report Matara 1928, p. C33)

 

[19] Administration report of the Land settlement officer Fox for 1911-1912, p. K1

[20] Administration report of the Land settlement officer Fraser for 1904, p. N1; Diary Fraser 26-27.01.1904

[21] Diary Fraser 31.10.1903; see also Administration Report Settlement Officer 1906; SLNA 65/Pending file 1684A ‘Formation of a Land Settlement Department’, Settlement Officer to Colonial Secretary. 9.01.1907

[22] CO54/682 n°240 of 17.06.1903

[23] Francis Robert Ellis (1849-1915) was a witty Irishman who was known for having “the gift of detecting at a glance anything that had the faintest scent of humbug or weakness about it” (Frederick Lewis, Sixty years…p. 317). A punctilious and painstaking administrator, his actions were resented by the young enterprising Ceylonese.

[24] Land Settlement Department Records, files on Ellis Settlement work: Anderson’s claims (1904), Land Settlement Work in the North-Western Province (1904), A uniform system of dealing with encroachments (10.02.1904). Colonial Secretariat records SLNA 65/Pending file 1075 (“Land settlement in the North Western Province”) for 1904-5 and Pending file 2537B (same title) for 1907-8. See also CO54/712.

[25] Administration reports North Western Province 1895 p. G1 to 5, 1896 p.G3, 1902 p. G9 .

[26] SLNA 59/Pending File 178 : Government Agent North Western Province to Colonial secretary, 13.11.1896

[27] SLNA18/2490 (Old chena file): Assistant Agent Kurunegala report, 26.10.1840: “There are in this district a number of hill villages called kandegam in which it is highly desirable that some measures should be taken to secure an equitable adjustment of the lands as regards the proprietorship of the inhabitants and the rights of government. The villages alluded to are situated chiefly on the ranges between Madure and Hewawisse, Tiragandahe, and Ganhaye korale, on which they occupy all the best portions of land such as would be preferred for coffee plantations. The kandegam were all royal, and their rajakariya was to provide jaggery and honey for the king’s store. The original proprietors are said to have been forced by the kings to reside on the hills for the above-mentioned service which was continued by their descendants until after the British possession, when the rajakariya was altered for road service, peeling cinnamon, furnishing cadjan and so on. On the abolition of the compulsory services and introduction of commutation, the holders of paddy land in the other royal villages were allowed to register them in their own names, and have since paid the same taxes as the other paraveni proprietors. The kandegam people, having no low grounds, were excluded from the registry, but the portion of high ground annually cleared and sown with paddy has always been taxed at the same rate as other paraveni grounds (…) The inhabitants of these villages claim the whole extent of lands included within the reported boundaries of the village and from which an extent sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants is annually cleared. The extent varying with the increase or decrease of the population. There can be no doubt of the proprietorship of these people to some portion of all these villages (…) in which I consider they ought to be quieted in possession as much as the other nilakarayas of royal villages. They, like almost all the proprietors of lands in the Seven korales, hold no sannas or document”.  

[28] SLNA 59/PF 178: correspondence and statistics on village sales in Weudawili for the years 1894-1896

[29] SLNA 59/ PF 1384 (Delwita estate settlement); “Land settlement work of F.R. Ellis”, file in the Land Settlement Department records; also Diary Fox, December 1904.

[30] Diaries of Cocks, May 1931 and Navaratnam, April 1937

[31] Land Settlement Department Records, file on Ellis Settlement work, subfile ‘Anderson’s claims’ (1904)

[32] SLNA 59/PF 1074 (Land settlement in Matale): Joseph Malcolmson to Governor, 10.08.1904; Malcolmson to Colonial Secretary, 9.09.1904 and 15.10.1904.

[33] Among the Matale agents, two opposite figures stand out: S.M. Burrrows, in 1896, was instrumental in bringing the issue of land sales by villagers to the attention of Ridgeway by publishing the description of the disintegration of village life written by Aluvihare Ratemahatmaya. And E.B. Alexander, who became after he left the service the head of the Ceylon planters lobby in London.

[34]  Administration report Matale 1905, p. B28

[35] On the Nattukottai Chettiar, see W.S. Weerasooriya, The Nattukottai Chettiar Merchant Bankers in Ceylon, Dehiwala, Tisara, 1973; David Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994; Éric Meyer, Dépression et malaria à Sri Lanka: l’impact de la crise économique des années 1930 sur une société rurale dépendante. Paris, doctoral dissertation EHESS, 1980. On the Karawa elite, Michael Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation : the Rise of a Karawa Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931, Cambridge, University Press, 1982.

[36] Diary Fraser, January 1906, Fox, September to December 1906, Administration report of the Land Settlement Department 1906, p. N22, Ellis Settlement Work file in Land Settlement Department records; Diary Perera 12.05.1936

[37] Jacob de Mel (1839-1919) from Moratuwa, a Christian Karava, plumbago mine proprietor, invested his fortune in large scale coconut plantations in the Kurunegala district; his son Henry de Mel (1877-1936) became the leader of the Low Country Products Association (founded in 1910) and a politician and died after being shot by a worker on one of his plantations. Clovis de Silva (1852-1916) and several other petitioners were also Moratuwites. The full list of the petitioners offers a fascinating catalogue of the coconut planters listed in order of importance, first those who write in English, including a few Tamils, then in Sinhala (about half their names being Kandyan); there is not a single Moor among them.  

[38] The Land settlement department file titled ‘Land Settlement Work of F.R. Ellis in the North-Western Province’ begins with a memorandum on encroachments dated 10.02.1904 (also found in SLNA 59/Pending File 1075 under registration number 03334) written after Ellis had “spent some days in the Kurunegala kacceri” while the Revenue Officers were on leave.

[39] SLNA 59/Pending File 2537B

[40] SLNA,65 L754/1929

[41] SLNA 6/374, RN 18393/1909 Settlement Officer to Controller of Revenue, confidential letter 3.11.1909

[42]  SLNA 18/2490 (‘Old chena file’) 8.09.1840 and 26.10.1840, letters of the Assistant Government Agent Kurunegala, William Morris, to the Government Agent Western province, Buller; Administration report Puttalam 1884, p. 100A.

[43] Diary Leach, 4.11.1927; SLNA 65, PF 1075, report Hulugalle of 4.06.1904

[44] Diary Fraser, 4.07.1903

[45] SLNA 6 box 15, 0107/1907

[46] Diary Brayne, 28.11.1909

[47] SLNA 6/box 374, RN 18393/1909 Settlement Officer to Controller of Revenue, confidential letter, 3.11.1909 Note that Charles Edward Tennekoon’s daughter married Godfrey Edward Madawela in 1903.

[48] Diaries Leach, 4.12.1924, Sandys, 3.09.1930, Stace, 1.07.1923

[49] SLNA L91/1926; SLNA L24/1928 3.02.1928; Diary Hodson, 6.08.1928; Administration report North Western Province, 1928

[50] Diaries of Seneviratne, February 1933 (Kahadenigama, near Kuliyapitiya), Abeyakoon, March 1933 (Ketiyawa), Rasaretnam, April 1934, Ellepola, April-June 1936

[51] Fraser, 9.12.1904, 05.1905

[52] Fox, 8.06.1904

[53] CO54/706, 16.11.1906

[54] Administration report North-western province 1906, p. F3

[55] Letter of GA Kurunegala H.R. Freeman to Colonial Secretary, 14.08.1906, in SLNA 59/Pending File 1383.

[56] Diaries Fox, 08.1906, Wait, 10.1906. Johannes de Mel had refused the terms of the Kurunegala circular in his numerous claims (Hendiyapola, Malattawa, Urapotha) and planted with coconut on the sole basis of village purchases

[57] Henry Lawson de Mel was a compulsive buyer of village lands, who was ready to settle with the Crown, but always at reduced prices. He became one of the biggest plantation owners in the coconut triangle: Diary Davies, 31.10.1907 (Nabeta), 12.12.1918: “Inspected Pallama, Pahala and Ihala Kolaeliya. In the list is a preposterous claim by Mr. de Mel, obviously a mere speculation in the hope of inducing the Crown too part with valuable land for less than its value; he has purchased from the villagers 300 acres of Crown forest”

[58] SLNA 59/ Pending File 1684A, Fox to Colonial Secretary, 1.07.1906

[59] SLNA 59/ Pending File 1684A, Government Agent Uva to Colonial Secretary, 8.05.1906; 

[60] Memo 8.09.1906 (SLNA 59/ Pending File 2226): the notification of 1904 is described by Fowler as “a bold attempt to create a new departure in the settlement of the land in the North Western Province, which proved a comparative failure”

[61] Fraser to Colonial Secretary, 9.01.1907, RN 0430/07 in SLNA59/Pending File 1684A

[62] SLNA 59/Pending file 2537B (‘Land settlement in the North western province’), CO54/712 (dispatch 740, 11.12.1907), Diary Fraser, 7-8.10.1907 

[63] CO54/709, dispatch 345 and 362 of 1907

[64] Burgher lawyers like proctor Modder of Kurunegala became experts in fighting the Settlement officers (Diary Fox, 7.12.1912).  

[65] CO54/712, 11.12.1907

[66] Diary Fraser, 27.05.1908

[67] CO54/718, 1.09.1908

[68] SLNA 59/Pending File 2226

[69] CO54/724, annex to despatch of 24.03.1909

[70] SLNA 59/PF 2059, April 1911. Thorpe was previously deputy collector of customs, and in 1901-1903 District Judge Matara, where he had already been in opposition with Fraser (Diary Fraser 15.02.1903)

[71] Diary Davies, 11.12.1913, 25.04.1914, 6.07.1914

[72] SLNA 6/ 761, RN 03961/1913 

[73] Diary Hughes, November 1924

[74] Diary Leach, 30.01.1924 and 8.12.1924

[75] Diaries of Wedderburn and Hughes, February 1924

[76] Diary Christoffelz, 8.05.1930

[77] Hansard 1931, p. 160 (17.02.1931)

[78] Diary Davies, 12.1918. Wright 20th Century Impressions of Ceylon… p. 749 ; SLNA 59 PF 2537B; See on Potukulama CO54/735 (20.07.1910)

[79] SLNA 6/483, Settlement Officer to Colonial Secretary, 2.04.1910; Diary Fox, 5 .12.1912

[80] Diaries Cocks, 15.05.1931 and Abhayaratne, 23.11.1933

[81] Diary Archibald, September 1915

[82] SLNA 65 L73 /1926: Government agent North Western Province (Codrington) to Colonial Secretary, 25.06.1926

[83] Diary Hunter, 20.05.1926; Government Agent North Western Province to Colonial Secretary, 25.11.1927 (printed in the 5th interim report of the Land Commission, SP16 of 1928).

[84] Diaries Wait, 30.03.1922 and Wedderburn, April and June 1922

[85] Administration Report North Western Province 1924 and 1926; Administration Report Sabaragamuwa 1927, p. I4

[86] Diary Hughes, 24.07.1926 (Walgam pattu)

[87] SLNA65  L295/1926 ‘Effect of Land settlement on the alienation of village lands’, Kurunegala, 7.01.1926; Ratnapura, 12.10.1925

[88] Diary Stace 16. 02 to 26.10.1925, Karandana area (west of Ratnapura) and May 1926 (Kiriporuwa village)

[89] Diary Stace, 11/1925, 01/1926, 05/1927

[90] Diary Stace, September – October 1925

[91] Diary Stace, 7.01.1926

[92] SLNA, Land Commission file 907

[93] SLNA 65 L62/1928 Reports of the Revenue and Settlement Officers concerning their comments on the 3rd interim report: “It has been my experience that after settlement quite 50% of the villagers immediately make every effort to sell the land to which they have got good title to capitalists, usually rich men from Panadure or Kalutara.

[94] Diary Bassett, 24.11.1927 (Akkarella, Ratnapura district)

[95] Diary Christoffelz, August 1928 (Lekamgoda, Ratnapura district)

[96] Diary Sandys, October 1929 and 16.07.1930

[97] Diary Aluvihare, 1.08.1930 (Kirindawa, near Kuliyapitiya)

[98] Diary Rasaretnam, 6/7 December 1932 (Kuliyapitiya)

[99] Diary Seneviratne, October 1933 (Niladure and Welanga, near Sinharaja forest); also 5.04.1932 (Wilattawa village)

[100] Diary Jansz, 12.03.1936; on the Chettiar moneylenders, W.E. Weerasooriya, The Nattukottai Chettiar merchant bankers in Ceylon, Dehiwala, Tisara, 1973

[101] Diary Ratnatunga, October 1938 (Nildandahinna, Walapane, Nuwara Eliya district)

[102] Diaries De Mel, January 1937 (Matale district) and Wijekoon (October 1937)

[103] Diary Fraser, 12.07.1909

[104] Diaries Brayne, 1910 and 1911, Wedderburn, February 1912

[105] Diary Toller, 14.11.1908

[106] Diary Hughes, January and February 1924, November 1924. 

[107] Diary Hughes, 18/19.11.1924.

[108] Walter Terence Stace (1886-1967) had an initial training in philosophy; he joined the Ceylon civil service in 1910 and retired in 1932 to become professor of philosophy at Princeton, where his influence was deeply felt. His unpublished Notes on Life in Ceylon are kept at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London (ms. ICS 100)

[109] Diary Stace, 25-26.01.1926 (village of Ratmale, Kalutara district)

[110] Diary Abhayakoon, December 1935

[111] Diary Sandys, August and October 1929, July and December 1930. Melville Kerverne Trelawny Sandys entered the Ceylon civil service in 1919 and ended his career as Government Agent at Ratnapura in the 1940s. Copies of some of his diaries (but not those of his settlement officer period) are deposited at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London [ICS 71]  

[112] Diary Sandys, October 1929

[113] This was already noticed by Fraser (diary November 1901 “It is therefore desirable that any alias should be recorded”)

[114] This view was shared by his superior the Settlement Officer (diary July 1929, Tabbomulla, North Western province): “This village will be almost entirely private by the time it is finished (…) I gather that when these sales are completed, there will still be quite a number of applications for land by those who have abstained from putting forward these preposterous claims, and there will be no land left for them. That is the worst of admitting these claims: it puts a premium on grabbing”

[115] Diary Sandys, 18.07.1930

[116] Hansard 1927, p. 139-163. He was seconded by Francis Molamure, who insisted that there had never been Crown chenas in Kägalla, and that wattoru and ninda registers should be considered as proof of private property and should be freely accessible, while recognizing “that Settlement officers are most fair and most considerate when dealing with the villagers”. Victor Corea supported Madawela with pseudo-historical arguments drawn from the Mahavamsa chronicle

[117] Administration report of the Land Settlement Department (Stace), 1929, p. K3-4

[118] Diary Luddington, 13.12.1927

[119] Diary Hudson, 12.03.1928

[120] Diaries Hunter, 23.01.1928, Leach, 26.02.1927, Stace, 25.04.1930

[121] Diary Christoffelz, 23.10.1930

[122] Diary Seneviratne, March and December 1933

[123] Frank Leach interviews with Michael Roberts and written testimony,1966, in Michael Roberts Oral History Project, Oxford and Adelaide manuscripts. Not to be confused with the anthropologist Edmund Leach.

Magic Maids at Université Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne

https://polity.lk/nadeera-rajapakse-magic-maids-sweeping-up-a-storm-at-the-sorbonne

Magic Maids: Sweeping Up a Storm at the Sorbonne

Nadeera Rajapakse

 

Aug 14, 2025 | Labour

 
 
 

After performing in several theatres across Paris, Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera bewitched the spectators, students, and startled passers-by at the Pantheon Centre of the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in March 2025. They swept through the halls of the 18th century building, housing the second oldest university in Europe, to embody women migrant domestic workers.


Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson at the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Their representation was hailed by an eager audience of economists, historians, philosophers, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers, working on and interested in various related subjects. A roundtable session among scholars and artists, bound by common themes of female labour, exploitation, and agency, was followed by a general discussion between the two dancers and guests.

Among the many compelling insights shared, one particularly resonant idea was that the deepest intellectual understanding often arises through embodied experience. In the novel Expectation, the author describes how this can happen: “suddenly the knowledge arrives, hitting her body before her mind. It spikes her blood, makes her heart race, her palms damp” (Hope 2019: 251). Accordingly, in Magic Maids, resistance is articulated through movement, the dancers physically and symbolically reclaim the figure of the domestic worker. In the following commentary, I will discuss the idea of resistance, its significance in this context, and the narrative power of the performance in reclaiming the idealised image of women.


Roundtable discussion with Emmanuel Charrier (moderator), Jules Ramage (visual artist), Muriel Gilardone (economic historian specialising in gender and economics), Mickaëlle Provost (philosopher), Elodie Bertrand (economic historian, editor of
Routledge Handbook of Commodification).
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Firstly, resistance comes in the shape of exposing the disturbing aspects of migration for domestic work. For one, the fundamental contradiction structuring Sri Lanka’s migration economy: the systematic social devaluation of women’s domestic labour against its staggering economic contributions. The state’s reliance on 8.4 billion USD in annual remittances, of which 54% are from domestic workers (CBSL 2023), exists in violent tension with cultural imaginaries that render these workers as ‘demure’, ‘docile’, and ‘disposable’, while being remittance-sending ‘heroines’.

The aesthetic framing of domestic workers as ‘smiling, docile’ figures emerges from deep cultural constructs. The ideal female figure in religious, nationalist, and cultural tropes lacks agency, existing in submission to men or gods (Sreenivasan 1975, de Mel 2001, de Silva 2004). Added to that is a narrow version of “purity” as well as “pedagogies of respectability” (de Alwis 2022). This has translated into general media representations where most Sri Lankan newspaper articles frame migrant workers mostly as either “victims” or “heroines” (Rata Viruwo in Sinhala), denying complex subjectivity. This is just like the female ideal in certain religious representations: they are either pure, chaste, and submissive, or they are all-powerful, destructive goddesses. The Vessantara Jātaka’s ideal of female self-sacrifice finds an echo in the state rhetoric celebrating “heroines” sending remittances, making resilience and silent endurance the most acclaimed qualities in “good” maids (de Silva 2004).

In keeping with economic market logic, the supply of migrant labour is endless, coming from many South Asian nations competing with one another, whereas demand from employers (mostly in the Middle East) powerfully dictates all terms of employment. Hence, women migrant workers are disposable, easily replaceable. The dancers, Jocson and Perera, recount discovering “24 nails driven into her body, like a living voodoo doll”, referring to a real experience of a migrant worker. Again, the contradiction is made obvious: the horrific exploitation of bodies that literally constitute the nation’s economic lifeline. Sri Lanka’s 1.2 million migrant domestic workers generate about 30% of total remittances, 6.7% of GDP (World Bank 2023). And yet, the institutional recognition of the value of their labour remains an uphill struggle: only in 2020 was the promise made to upgrade domestic work to the skilled labour category (Mudugamuwa 2020), while standard employment contracts under the Foreign Employment Act, and ILO Convention 189 ratification still do not take full account of domestic work.

Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson shedding docility, resisting purity.
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

These institutional failures mirror the “social reproduction paradox”, i.e., the simultaneous economic reliance on and symbolic annihilation of care work under financialised capitalism (Elson 2012). In the course of their performance, Jocson and Perera narrate: “even if you hit her, she may say ‘hit me baby, one more time’”, laying bare the paradox where ‘docile’ workers must be simultaneously productive enough to remit and disposable enough to replace.

Another revelation from the duo is about racialised market hierarchies. The performance’s mocking comparison between “a Filipina” and “a cheaper Sri Lankan” exposes what Bridget Anderson (2000) terms “hierarchies of servitude” in global care chains. Recruitment agencies actively cultivate this in terms of salary differentials: a Filipina worker is paid double the wage received monthly by a Sri Lankan domestic worker in many Middle Eastern countries (Esim and Smith 2004); skills framing: Most Sri Lankan agencies advertise workers as “more submissive and easier to mould” vs. Filipinas as commanding “more respect” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 6). Above all, “Sri Lankan” or “Sri Lanki” is synonymous with domestic worker, so much so that if the domestic worker is from the Philippines, the question would be “Is your Sri Lankan a Filipina?” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 5). Jocson and Perera rephrase the question for the French audience (and French employers), asking where their “Sri Lankan” is from: Algeria? Romania? The Republic of Guinea? 

Discussing embodied resistance: dancers and participants at University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne.
Photo credit: Leonie Seince, Maya Abou Imad, Iris Chaput, Lucie Liu

The devaluation of migrant workers is seen in other disturbing institutional shortcomings and exclusions. While Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has intensified reliance on migrant earnings—remittances cover 128% of the trade deficit according to the Central Bank (CBSL 2023)—the 2023 national Budget allocated only a paltry amount to migrant welfare; only a handful of returnee workers access reintegration programs (IOM 2023) and the majority of migrant households do not use bank accounts, especially for remittances. Most have no pension contributions despite working close to a decade abroad (ILO 2021).

On the other hand, restrictive regulation is palmed more on migrants than on markets. In the SLBFE curriculum, mandatory household training encourages submission (Handapangoda 2023, Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004). There are bans on pregnancy, marriage (Ireland 2018), and unionisation (Amnesty International 2025), while non-payment of wages, non-compliance with labour laws, and non-respect of basic worker rights go unpunished.

By framing domestic work as ‘natural’ feminine traits rather than skilled labour, global labour markets exclude them from formal economic accounting. Then the idealised yet paradoxical requirements are piled on: maids need to perform docility and as a result, suppress emotions for job security. They need to channel productivity to super-human levels: An average workday in Gulf Cooperation Council countries is 17 hours (ILO 2021), which they endure stoically, leading to chronic health conditions.

Lynch documents how Sri Lankan migrant workers face “moral censure for transgressing spatial boundaries” (2007: 92), stigmatised as “fallen” women for monetising domesticity while remaining culturally obligated to perform it, unpaid, at home. These contradictions add up, with the state praising women’s economic contributions while denying them labour rights, which Jayawardena describes as “patriarchal ventriloquism” (2016: 24).

Venuri Perera, wielding the brooms wildly
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon

But then, the Magic Maids strike. Jocson and Perera viscerally demonstrate that the same bodies disciplined into docility can erupt into wild, powerful dancing, symbolising the latent agency within apparent submission. This agency becomes discernible, palpable, when we shed the gendered, capitalist lenses above. Despite moral, physical, and institutional risks, which are well-documented, Sri Lankan women continue migrating at unprecedented rates.

This constitutes not merely economic pragmatism, but a strike against the gendered, spatial order. Migrant women transmit subversive “gender remittances” (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) that slowly corrode patriarchal ideology in sending communities. These narratives weaponise the very mobility that moralists decry. Their efforts have led to movements, like the ILO C189 campaign, which have forced recognition of domestic work as skilled labour providing potent examples of “capability metrics” (Piper 2017). In Sri Lanka, returnee workers now demand pension contributions, not as supplicants, but as creditors of a national economy that they sustain.

By migrating to take up work that challenges traditional ideals of domestic femininity, and through subtle defiance of religious or moral ideals that confine them to obedience and purity, women migrant domestic workers show resistance.

The performance epitomises the central contradiction: these women are economically indispensable, yet socially expendable. Their labour props up GDP while their contribution is undervalued, a paradox sustained by gendered architectures. Yet as the performance’s climactic shift from slow, robotic sweeping to wails, vigour, and piercing eye contact reminds us, even the most disciplined bodies harbour the capacity to disrupt the scripts written upon them. The true measure of feminist praxis lies not in lamenting oppression, but in tracing, as this commentary has attempted, the fault lines where agency erupts through the cracks of constraint. 

Venuri Perera, defying norms of docility
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon


Nadeera Rajapakse
is an assistant professor at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in the History of Economic Thought and in English for Economics. She is a member of the PHARE (Philosophy, History and the Analysis of Economic Representation) research department and her current areas of research include development and identity, women migrant domestic workers, and migration and identity.

 

References
Amnesty International. (2025). Locked In. Left out. The Hidden Lives of Kenyan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia. London: Amnesty International. Available at https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2025/05/Amnesty-Kenya-Saudi-workers.pdf?x69908

Amnesty International. (2014). “My Sleep is My Break”: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers in Qatar. Available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde22/004/2014/en/

Anderson, Bridget. (2000). Doing the Dirty Work? The global politics of domestic labour. London: Zed Books.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). (2023). Annual Economic Review. Available at https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/publications/economic-and-financial-reports/annual-economic-review/annual-economic-review-2023

De Alwis, Malathi. (2022). “The Production and Embodiment of Respectability: Gendered Demeanours in Colonial Ceylon”. In Kanchana Ruwanpura, Caryll Tozer, Chulani Kodikara, Sonali Deraniyagala, Vraie Cally Balthazar (Eds.). Her Smile Lingers. Malathi de Alwis Selected Essays. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

De Mel, Neloufer. (2001). Women & the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

De Silva, Neluka. (2004). The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia, London: Sage.

Department of Technical Education and Training. (2023). National Competency Standards (NCS) Catalogue. Colombo: DTET. Available at http://www.dtet.gov.lk/nvq_standards

Elson, Diane. (2012). “Social Reproduction in the Global Crisis: Rapid Recovery or Long-Lasting Depletion?” In Peter Utting, Shahra Razavi, and Rebecca Varghese Buchholz (Eds.). The Global Crisis and Transformative Social Change (63-80). Palgrave Macmillan

Esim, Simel, and Monica Smith (Eds). (2004). Gender and Migration in Arab States. The case of domestic workers. Beirut: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/gender-and-migration-arab-states-case-domestic-workers

Handapangoda, Wasana. (2023). “Migrant domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf”. Ingenere (2 February): https://www.ingenere.it/en/articles/migrant-domestic-workers-arabian-gulf

Hope, Anna. (2020). Expectation. Black Swan.

International Organization for Migration (IOM). (2023). “Chapter 5 – Migrant-facing Information Initiatives”. In IRIS Handbook for Governments on Ethical Recruitment and Migrant Worker Protection. IOM, Geneva. Available at https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/pub2023-034-l-iris-handbook-for-govt-ch5.pdf

International Labour Organization (ILO). (2021). Making Decent Work a Reality for Domestic Workers: Progress and Prospects Ten Years after the Adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), Geneva: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/major-publications/making-decent-work-reality-domestic-workers-progress-and-prospects-ten

Ireland, Patrick. (2018). “The limits of sending-state power”. International Political Science Review 39 (3): 322-337.

Jayawardena, Kumari. (2016). Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. New York: Verso Books.

Jayawardena, Kumari and Rachel Kurian. (2015). Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

Jureidni, Ray, and Nayla Moukarbel. (2004). “Female Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon: A case of ‘contract slavery’?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30 (4): 581-607.

Levitt, Peggy, and Deepak Lamba-Nieves. (2011). “Social Remittances Revisited.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37 (1):1-22.

Lynch, Caitrin. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Piper, Nicola. (2017). “Migration and the SDGs.” Global Social Policy, 17 (2): 231-238.

Sreenivasan, M.A. (1975). “Panchakanya – An Age-old Benediction”. In Devaki Jain (Ed.). Indian Women (51-58). New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India.

Mudugamuwa, Maheesha. (2020). “Skills development for domestic workers. From Housemaid to Housekeeping assistant”. The Morning (23 September): https://www.themorning.lk/articles/98732

World Bank. (2023). “Personal remittances, received (% of GDP) – Sri Lanka”. World Bank Open Data – Sri Lanka. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/country/sri-lanka

Sri Lanka’s NPP Government: From system change to structural compliance

Article by IFRI: Institut Français des Relations Internationales

https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/sri-lankas-npp-government-system-change-structural-compliance

In September 2024, a relative outsider to Sri Lanka’s two-party-dominated political system, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, won the presidential elections. The anti-establishment, populist movement he represented, the National People’s Power (NPP), went on to receive an overwhelming mandate in the November 2024 general elections, winning 159 seats in a 225-member parliament.

Prix Émile Guimet 2025 – littérature asiatique

https://actualitte.com/article/124235/prix-litteraires/tokyo-colombo-seoul-les-laureats-du-prix-emile-guimet-2025

Le Sri-Lankais Shehan Karunatilaka remporte le prix dans la catégorie roman pour Les Sept Lunes de Maali Almeida (Calmann Lévy), tandis que le duo sud-coréen Lee Dong-Eun et Jeong Yi-Yong est primé en bande dessinée pour Hana (Éditions Ça et Là). Le prix étudiant Inalco pour le manga a été attribué à Taiyô Matsumoto pour Tokyo, ces jours-ci, Tome 1 (Kana). La remise des prix s’est tenue au musée Guimet à Paris, sous la présidence de Laure Adler.

Le roman lauréat, Les Sept Lunes de Maali Almeida, met en scène un photographe de guerre sri-lankais assassiné, revenu d’entre les morts pour élucider son propre meurtre et livrer des clichés susceptibles d’infléchir le cours de la guerre civile qui ravage Colombo en 1990. Un récit entre polar métaphysique et satire politique, salué pour sa modernité narrative et sa force littéraire, déjà reconnu par le Booker Prize 2022.

https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/les-laureats-des-prix-emile-guimet-de-litterature-asiatique-et-etudiant-inalco-pour-le

New publication

Beyond the Binary: The Experiences of Genderqueer People in Colombo

https://www.ices.lk/publications-1/beyond-the-binary%3A-the-experiences-of-genderqueer-people-in-colombo

This paper explores the vibrant and complex landscape of genderqueer
identities in Sri Lanka, shedding light on the experiences, artistic expressions,
and cultural challenges faced by non-binary people navigating both local and
global frameworks. Through the lens of artists, activists, and community
members, the study interrogates how gender fluidity is both marginalized
and reimagined within a predominantly cisnormative Sri Lankan society.
Central to the discussion is the tension between local cultural traditions and
the increasingly visible discourse around queer identities, particularly in the
wake of contemporary legal and social changes.
Drawing primarily on interviews with local genderqueer people in
Colombo, the paper examines how many defy binary gender norms and
construct alternative personal spaces where non-binary people can belong.
Furthermore, this work illuminates the ongoing struggles within the Sri
Lankan LGBTQ+ community to recognize and embrace gender fluidity, with
younger activists advocating for more inclusive approaches to identity and
visibility. It proposes a more localized and inclusive approach to gender,
urging a shift in public awareness and attitudes. Challenging both the state’s
erasure of gender diversity and the limitations of identity politics, this
research calls for a deeper understanding of how genderqueer lives have
always existed but remain hidden in the island’s margins.

Sri Lanka – 6 months on

https://www.lse.ac.uk/south-asia-centre/events/archive/Spring-Term-2025

London School of Economics Event – Sri Lanka 6 months on

As the ‘AKD’ government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake marks 6 months, how is Sri Lanka now? This panel will discuss the country’s current economic and political situation as it recovers from a period of severe crisis and, looking ahead, what needs to be done in different sectors domestically, regionally and globally for Sri Lanka to emerge as a confident and stable power.

SPEAKERS: Harsha Amarasekera PC is a leading commerical lawyer, and Chairman, Colombo Port City Economic Commission, alongside several other leading positions in the private sector; Farzana Haniffa (@FaraFarout) is Professor of Sociology, University of Colombo, and Member, Human Rights Commission, Sri Lanka; Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (@PSaravanamuttu), an LSE alumnus, is Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo.

DISCUSSANT: Dr Alan Keenan (@akeenan23) is Senior Consultant for Sri Lanka, International Crisis Group, London, where he coordinates and contributes to research, advocacy and publications on Sri Lanka.    

CO-CHAIRS: Naufel Vilcassim is Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE) and Professor of Marketing at LSE; Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE).

Sri Lanka: from debt default to transformative growth

https://odi.org/en/publications/sri-lanka-from-debt-default-to-transformative-growth-second-edition

An expanded essay series charting Sri Lanka’s path beyond stabilisation towards lasting economic prosperity.

In 2022, Sri Lanka faced its worst economic crisis since independence, culminating in a sovereign debt default.

Building upon the insights of the acclaimed first edition, this second edition revisits Sri Lanka’s remarkable economic journey, now extending to early 2025. Following the unprecedented sovereign debt default of 2022, Sri Lanka’s stabilisation has surpassed expectations, yet the challenge remains: to transcend mere recovery and forge a path towards sustained, transformative growth. Edited by Ganeshan Wignaraja and Dirk Willem te Velde, this expanded collection offers critical analysis and actionable policy recommendations.

Featuring insights from 24 prominent Sri Lankan and international experts, this edition includes an updated introduction and a new, pivotal essay advocating for a robust growth plan to prevent future crises. The 15 essays collectively offer 27 refined and expanded policy proposals designed to propel Sri Lanka towards long-term economic resilience and prosperity.

Download the full collection of essays below to delve deeper into these critical topics and discover actionable strategies to help Sri Lanka achieve its economic potential.

 

Photo story – Malayaga Makkal Walk “Tracing our roots to win our rights”

https://express.adobe.com/page/FjB2hx6PCTXoc/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vikalpa.org%2Farticle%2F42592%3Ffbclid%3DIwY2xjawI5MMdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHS2rgo8nwcT-1k41OaFp-RT7-gvqVBnDH_aOR6RDbI4zX4GQyw13-_ppIA_aem_xabt_AfK-Xva3-H4PH5rWg&embed_type=overlay&context=lightbox-expand

2023 – “Walk” from Mannar to Matale to commemorate the 200-year arrival of the Plantation community to Sri Lanka along that road. On the way, there were gatherings at Thalaimannar, Thalaimannar to Pesalai, Pesalai to Mannar Town, Mannar Town to Murunkan, Murunkan to Madhu, Madhu, Madhu Junction to Cheddikulum, Cheddikulum to Medawachchiya, Medawachchiya, Medawachchiya to Mihintale, Mihintale to Tirappane, Tirappane to Kekirawa, Kekirawa to Dambulla, Dambulla, Dambulla to Nalanda, Nalanda to Matale.

Credits:

Sampath Samarakoon/ vikalpa.org

BNF – France-South Asia, shared heritage online

https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-southasia/en/homepage

Resources on France and South Asia’s shared heritage.

Power structures and spaces / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Ceylon was mostly known for its strategic trading position in the Indian Ocean. European powers, the Portuguese (1505-1658), the Dutch (1658-1796) and the British (1815-1948) colonized the island. The attempts by the French to establish a trading post in Ceylon began when French naval expeditions prospered during the reign of King Louis XIV.

The French crown in Ceylon

The French East Indies Company, created in 1664, soon had the monopoly of French commerce and navigation in the Indian Ocean. In 1670 the French Minister of Finance Jean Baptiste Colbert summoned a naval force under the official name of “Squadron of Persia”. This was the first military squadron sent to the Indian Ocean, entrusted to Admiral Jacob Blanquet de la Haye. A few years earlier, the French East Indies Company had recruited François Caron, who had previously served the Dutch East India Company for 30 years. Caron was French by birth and Dutch by adoption. As Commander of the Dutch East Indies (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie -VOC) forces he succeeded in capturing Negambo (on the west coast of Ceylon) in 1644 from the Portuguese. When he offered his services to the French, he declared that he knew of a suitable location for them to establish their maritime base, and suggested Trincomalee, on the east coast of Ceylon. Caron became the Director General of the French East Indies Company. 

It was thus that the squadron reached the bay of Trincomalee in March 1672. The king of Kandy, in the central highlands of Ceylon, King Rajasinghe II was engaged in getting rid of the Portuguese. He had signed the Kandyan Treaty of 1638 with the Dutch, which secured the terms under which they would cooperate in defending the Kingdom from the Portuguese. Caron knew that King Rajasinghe was at war with the Dutch and made use of this situation to gain favor with the King. He negotiated with the King, offering French help to oust the Dutch, while requesting to occupy the bay of Trincomalee in return.

French at the court of King Rajasinghe II

The French saw Trincomalee as an important target in their greater aim of controlling trade in the Indian Ocean. Also known as Koddiyar Bay, it had received high praise for its beauty and location by countless travelers and explorers of all origins. The French too were prolific in their descriptions of the bay, as the journal entries of various officials show. Logbooks from the French National Archives provide insightful accounts of their encounters in Ceylon. The French were entranced by the customs and behavior of the natives in the Kandyan court. One of them is noteworthy. Sieur de La Nérolle arrived in 1672 and left behind a living legacy. He was part of an expedition which departed from La Rochelle in 1670 and arrived at Trincomalee Bay in 1672. The expedition failed to secure control of the Bay, although the French connection with Ceylon was not entirely severed. The members of de la Haye’s delegation sent to the Kandyan King’s court remained in Ceylon and the story of Lieutenant de La Nérolle, whose descendants today belong to the 12th generation, testifies to lasting connections surpassing trade or colonial ties. It emphasizes the impact the French strategies had on Sri Lanka’s history and identity. 

King Rajasinghe II officially handed over Trincomalee Bay to the French. On the 17th of June 1672 the French flag was hoisted on the Sun Island. However, the French occupation of the bay did not last long. De la Haye’s attempt to take over Trincomalee was foiled by the Dutch.

Second French naval expedition to Ceylon

A century after this expedition, many French governors and generals serving in India brought up the importance of Trincomalee again. General de Bussy and Admiral de Suffren pointed out that it was to be regretted that the French possessed no harbor equal to Trincomalee. In 1781, a French squadron was sent to the Coromandel Coast under the command of the experienced naval officer Suffren. In August 1782, his fleet anchored in front of Trincomalee in Ceylon. The French had joined up with Hyder Ali, the leader of Mysore, to counter the British. In fact, out of the five battles fought between Suffren’s fleet and the English fleet led by Admiral Edward Hughes in the Indian Ocean, the Battle of Trincomalee of August 1782 is the most well-known.

The second French expedition was carried out not through negotiations, but through battle. It also had a different focus. It aimed to destroy the English squadron, and to seize the English establishments in India. Unlike their first expedition, the French won the second battle for Trincomalee. However, their control of Ceylon was short-lived. As a result of the 1783 Peace Treaty in Europe, they had to restore Trincomalee back to the Dutch. The political forces in Europe, once again grasped the control of Ceylon from their hands. Then in 1795 it was taken over by the British.

Published in February 2025

 

HIGHLAND APPROPRIATION BY THE PLANTATION SECTOR IN THE KÄGALLA DISTRICT (1870-1930) by Eric P. Meyer

We publish here the 5th paper on the history of land appropriation by plantations in colonial Ceylon, after 

Gamperaliya (Village Upheaval) in the Kägalla district” [http://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/1354],

“Landgrabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district : mid-19th century case studies” [http://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/5090

“Chena (slash-and-burn cultivation) and its repression in colonial Ceylon”[https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6273]

“Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries” [https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6432].

Further papers will be devoted to the history of the Land settlement department and to the new land policy adopted after 1927.

*

The Kägalla district has been the scene of a large scale and brutal appropriation of its highlands by planters of tea and later of rubber, beginning in the 1880s and until the late 1920s. The process started with the sale of blocks of chena lands which had been appropriated by the Crown under the block settlement system and it continued with the sale by villagers themselves, through intermediaries, of the lands which had been left to them under the same settlements or which had not been settled. This sudden extension was not anticipated by the colonial powers; after unsuccessful attempts to stop it, the administration was compelled to legalize these sales.

In the British colonial system of administration, at least during the 19th century, the civil servants were noted according to their ability to increase revenue. The sale or lease of lands appropriated by the Crown under the ordinance of 1840 was in the rural districts one of the main sources of revenue to the State, besides grain taxes and arrack rents. Crown land sales were considered in a purely revenue perspective. Before block chena settlements, Crown land sales in the Kägalla district were generally held in a haphazard manner, according to the applications of individual would-be planters, the lack of surveys was an impediment, and the annual reports lamented the poor revenue of the district[1]. Chena settlements had been started in the 1870s, before the coffee collapse, but at that time the district was not very attractive. When tea began to replace coffee, chena and forest lands of the wet zone were found to be adapted to the new product, and the chena settlements attracted the attention of the colonial investors.  The ‘opening’ of the country with the idea of planned ‘development’ found its way in the official documents during the 1880s, when the rush for tea land began, especially along the valleys of the Kelani river and its tributaries, and Kägalla became for a decade the most profitable district for the colonial treasury.

 

Land sales by the Crown

Block chena settlements made under the Ievers system resulted in putting at the disposal of the colonial government large extents of highland in compact blocks – exactly what the planters were looking for. During the tenure of the Assistant Agents Wace (in 1884), Le Mesurier (in 1885-86) and Price (from mid 1886), large auction sales of Kägalla Crown lands took place in Colombo and not in the district, which gave big European investors an advantage over local purchasers: F.R. Saunders, the Government Agent of the Western province which at that time included the Kägalla district, had close links with the Planters Association and the business firms of Colombo. These early sales resulted in consolidating the colonial appropriation of land, in spite of the uncertain legal status of the settlements, while leaving the peasants to fight between themselves to apportion the village block.

The chena settlements were organized distinctly with a view to offer accessible lands in the Kelani valley to planters as quickly as possible. The idea by the mid 1880s was to sell large blocks; the Surveyor general office proposed initially to put to auction 5,000 acres once a year[2]: “There is such a demand for land now springing up in the district that it would be as well for the Crown to adopt a regular system of selecting and putting up for sale a certain extent of land every year and not to advertise any block simply because it is applied for”. It could thus raise the price by competition (actually there was no such rise because prospective buyers made arrangements) and exclude “men with a small capital who are on the lookout and who apply for small lots in order if they get them to obtain the command of a larger bock hereafter or to make terms with an intending purchaser of such a block”. The Agent considered that “it is absurd to sell fine tea land at anything under 25 Rs an acre, but owing to lack of capital men make arrangements at sales and agree beforehand what lots they should buy and hence the upset price of 10 Rs per acre is the average (…) If the paddy is without complaint put up 40 Rs per acre I see no reason why the European cultivator should have a preference shown”[3].

The first large chena and forest land sales were held in 1884[4] : 3,517 acres of chenas and 1,783 acres of forest in Lower Bulatgama; 1,850 acres of chenas and 656 acres of forest in Atulugam korale, 1,462 acres of chenas and 5,902 acres of forest in Dehigampal korale, 2,960 acres of chenas and 566 acres of forest in Panawal korale. The Assistant Agent Wace played a leading role in proposing a list of lands for sale, and on the planter’s side, William Forsythe was the driving force, buying land for himself or for other investors at very low figures (for example at Pambagama at 10.15 Rs an acre). The result of these sales, in the area at the limit between Atulugam and Panawal, was the constitution of a block of continuous tea estates (Nahalma, Pambagama) later amalgamated to form the Sunnygama group, one of the most prosperous Kelani valley companies. Forsythe in his memoirs published after his death, gives a lively picture of the country and of his relations with the local villagers in the 1880s[5].

But on 17.10.1885 the alienation of lands of the Wace list was suspended at the request of the Surveyor general who considered that the legal value of settlements was too unsafe for the sales to take place. A new Agent, Le Mesurier, backed by the governor Gordon, would prefer to sell smaller extents to discourage ‘arrangements’ between prospective buyers. He would raise the upset price at 25 Rs an acre “the lowest value at which land in the hands of private persons can be obtained in the Kelani valley”. But these ‘arrangements’ were not avoided, and finally a good part of the lands was sold at 10 Rs an acre in the land sale of Panawal korale in February 1886, the best attaining 27 Rs. The same names of purchasers are found in every sale: W. Forsythe, W.W. Mitchell, H. Whitham, W.L. Strachan. In areas further north, some lands were sold at a higher price:  32 Rs per acre at Edurapola, in Lower Bulatgama[6]. In spite of these low rates, Crown land sales represented in 1886 56% of the revenue of the Kägalla district, which thus became the most ‘profitable’ district in Ceylon. But its population derived no benefit at all from the alienation of its lands to outsiders, because the expenditure was kept at a very low level.

From 1886 to 1888 the large auction sales continued in Colombo. At the sale of 20.10.1886 besides the usual buyers – William Forsythe (acting for J. Crickton) for Waharaka (282 acres) and Hinguralakande ( 412 acres), W.L. Strachan for Debatgama (73 acres), new names appeared: David Fairweather for Yatideriya (451 acres), and Waharaka (198 acres),William Anderson for Uduwe, (534 acres), H.A. Clarke for Indurana (258 acres), Waharaka (200 acres) and Pannila-Patberiya (228 acres). Another large sale was held in Colombo on 1.10.1888 where 3,210 acres were adjudicated at an average of 18 Rs per acre only[7].

The planters’ demand for land was so pressing that land sales at the initiative of the Western province kacceri (Saunders being Government Agent) were not confined to block-settled villages. This led to serious embarrassment for the successor of Le Mesurier, Price, who was the first administrator not to consider land sales from the sole point of view of revenue. In May 1886, he inspected 6,000 acres of Crown land proposed for sale near Bulatkopitiya, in the villages of Tunbage, Rangalla and Yatideriya. The area was traditionally chenaed without state interference under the control of the Uduwe korala family. His findings were as follows: “I am satisfied that Tunbage is a nindagama, copy of Service tenures register, exemption certificate and a tudapota produced. How this land came to be included in those selected for sale I cannot imagine. Especially as the adjoining village, Rangalla, land belonging to which is also included in the plan, is not even surveyed for chena settlement, much less settled. After this, I shall not be surprised at the Surveyor General proposing to sell any private land however good the owner’s title may be (I find now that I was wrong in attaching blame to the Surveyor General Department about this). Nevertheless, the case only shows how unadvisable it is to cut out thousands of acres for sale without reference in the first instance to the Assistant Government Agent”[8].  Some of these sales were so hastily organized that they disregarded the settlements: “The whole village of Dehiowita (settled) was surveyed as available for sale! If the Agent had not inspected the block, the lands granted to the villagers by formal settlement would have been exposed for sale probably, and the complications subsequent thereon – to say nothing of the hardships entailed upon the villagers – are obvious”[9]

Surveys for Crown land sales were frequently botched, to the detriment of villagers as in the cases of Batangala, a village finally absorbed in Woodend estate, where 50 acres were erroneously sold ; of Udabage where the planters encroached 40 acres ; of Morawatte where T.N. Christie erroneously purchased village gardens with the connivance of Le Mesurier (see my paper on “Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries”). Still in 1893, there were sales of blocks containing planted gardens in Rangegama which were finally stopped (the intending purchasers wanted to buy the whole land just excluding the gardens which would have been made inaccessible). After the sale, the planters did not hesitate to encroach on lands not sold to them and then come to the administration to ask it to sell them the encroachments. Price resisted their pressure, especially in the case of lands included in the projected Kelani forest reserve or in the densely populated northern part of the district, near Kägalla and Rambukkana: “It is very desirable to put a stop to the hole and corner style in which so much land is now applied for and sold – nearly always at upset price only”.[10]

The government agents and their assistants were constantly bombarded with requests by planters, usually made in unformal meetings or by private letters[11]. For example, William Forsythe wanted 1,000 acres near the Ritigaha Oya, and wrote to the new Government Agent Wace:

Forsythe to H. Wace, 27.10.1889. Nahalma Estate

“My dear Wace,

Any chances of a small land for sale this year? Say 5,000 acres (sic). With tea booming, the present would be a good opportunity for realizing high price, and I  know of a few would-be purchasers, myself among the number. I want 1,000 acres in the Bulatkopitiya side, well away from the Kelani Valley Reserve. The Surveyor General has lots of land blocked out, and a sale on January 1st 1890 would be time enough for opening. I will write you officially if you can hold any prospect of a sale.”

The letter bears endorsements which prove that the civil servant obeyed the request of the planter:

“Dear White, what surveys have been made? Send me any Preliminary Plans. What were last orders for Govt. on subject last year? – Mudaliyar: on this, Surveyor General referred to PP 10, Rangalla and Tunbage. This is not right, I want plans of lands between Ritigaha Oya ferry and Bulatkopitiya – Plans Lewala, Wegalla, Welatuduwa and Panawitiya are herewith submitted”.

Between 1890 and 1892, the demand for tea land boomed: “the leading planters are behind that demand”; and the Assistant Agent complained that such demands occupied most of his time while his staff in the kacceri was reduced, which he resented as “an incredible injustice”.  Planters pressed the Agents to offer land where they liked: “Orchard asks if I can point out any land. I reply certainly in the Kelani valley now at this moment surveyed and blocked out. No he does not like that, he wants the rich soil of Four-korales”. They often tried to extend by bits existing estates such as Ardross Estate, and Lavant estate, or to exchange abandoned coffee estates for fresh fertile land[12]. Any trick was good to obtain land, including spurious ‘land exchanges’. Strachan, a planter qualified by the Assistant Agent Davidson of ‘typical Mercator Britannicus’ threatened to cut for himself 200 acres[13] : “He has a high blown hilltop which he wishes to trade, acre per acre, for land which he wishes in a more favoured place. Urakande, his mountain, is isolated, it has already been once denuded with fatal results to the gentleman who planted coffee there, and it might be denudated again without affecting anybody but the experimentalist. I enjoyed the conversation, the upshot of which was that he would make his selection up to 1,300 acres in the Central Province and would persuade the Government Agent to give Mr. Strachan his fertile acres in order to preserve out hill top in Kägalla”. Another planter, Patterson, described the land he wanted to buy as ‘slab rock’, “the term by which planters describe government jungle when they want to buy it”.

When some Agents, such as Price and Davidson, backed the villagers to resist the pressure of the planters, they were accused by the colonial press and answered: “We hear much of the evil deeds of the ‘native’ who prosecutes the ‘planter’ with cases. The ‘planter’ is not wholly downtrodden. For instance, I do not pretend to have detected half the encroachments on Crown land by him, but I have around dozen proved cases in hand, and the amount paid in compensation to the Crown will be over 5,000 Rs before I leave the district. Again it might surprise newspaper readers to know that I have a list of 21 separate instances of encroachment by planters on seven estates on private lands, which are all a cause of heart burning to the villager who rightly or wrongly considers himself the downtrodden man”[14]

To satisfy planters, the administration launched new large sales of lands in the Kelani river valley, 2,800 acres in 14 lots, in July 1891 and May 1892, in the “hope that the sale of this land will tend to satisfy the wants of investors in tea, and so to diminish the activity of the land brokers whose dealings with village chena land for transfer to estates are so prejudicial to Kandyan life”. But the land reached only 22 Rs an acre because the big estates already established (such as Polatagama) bought adjacent lands with no competition. Davidson, the new Assistant agent, concluded: “This office is the busiest land office in the island. We have constant applications for land both from Europeans and natives. We sell more land than the rest of the island put together. There is a larger acreage put under ‘constant’ cultivation yearly here than in any other district and almost in each case encroachments are made on Crown reserves knowingly or through the plunders of clearing contractors. There is no district in which there is more imminent difficulty in the settlement of the land question, involved as it has been by the system of chena settlements”[15]

The sale of large blocks by the Crown encouraged the proprietors of nindagam (feudal proprietary villages) to follow suit: this is what happened in Udapota, in the Uduwe area[16]. This locality, a nindagama with a Duraya population living by the cultivation of chenas, had been the object of a chena enquiry in 1877: it belonged to the Uduwe korala who had a sannasa. According to the Assistant agent, “by virtue of a chena settlement, one of the earliest, 70 acres were taken to the Crown as excluded from the nindagama portion of the Uduwe korale’s lands (…) The korala’s son negotiated the sale of the whole village to Mr. W. Murray, superintendent of Ugieside Estate. The sale was detected and Mr. Murray, an old Rakwana pioneer of great shrewdness, promptly replied: ‘if it is Crown, sell it to me and I will buy from you too’. So we sell. But an avaricious neighbour steps in and says: give me a 9 acre lot or I will run you up to 1,000£. To the other land hunters Mr. Murray replied: I have already bought from the native landlord all his title to all the adjoining land except the precipice and the peak behind. So this block went to him for comparatively little, the 2,000 Rs obtained being the accidental result of the trick of an arrack renter who wished to establish a business as pirate attending land sales to be bought off.” 

Another means for planters to obtain highlands was to lease them, in the case of villages belonging to temples. In the Kägalla district there were a few large temple villages belonging to the Kandy Maha devale, such as Talduwa and Galpata, where all the highlands including those of the temple tenants (978 and 864 acres) had been leased at the initiative of A.B. Ratwatte, Basnayake Nilame and financier, who had acted “as the agent of the planter H.S. Saunders”, brother of the Government agent F.R. Saunders. The tenants protested and the Assistant agent was put in a difficult position to arbitrate between the planter, brother of his superior, and the villagers: “I hope he will now desist troubling the villagers (…) Mr. Saunders was in such a hurry to get his leases that he probably did not take the trouble to make careful enquiries as to what lands the Temple could lease, and the Basnayake nilame was in such a hurry to get Mr. Saunders’ money that he did not take the trouble to undeceive him”.[17]

In 1894 the colonial administrators attempted to resist the pressure of the big tea planters, to encourage the development of smaller estates, and to reserve forests for the use of the villagers: “there will be no large land sales effected. The government has wisely checked the extension of tea. There is lots of land available for coconut and plantain”[18]. In the diary of 30.06.1896, the available Crown land for sale (in acres) in the Kägalla district was thus tabulated:

                                   Crown land       Reserved     Settlt in course       Settled for sale    Unsettled for sale

Galboda-Kinigoda      7926                6668                                       889                 369

Paranakuru                 3912                1483                                        1255               1174

Beligal                        13933              3883                4989                1587               3473

Three-korales             17365              1230                9315                5817               1003   

Total                           43140              13266              14304              9548               6019

But it was too late to control a rush initiated by the colonial administration itself: land sales by villagers (actually through various intermediaries) had exceeded land sales by the Crown, and led the administration to promulgate in 1897 a new Land ordinance.

 

Sale of village lands in the Kelani valley after block settlements to planters

When Crown sales did not satisfy the new demand for mid-country tea land and where villagers were impoverished and affected by fiscal sales for arrears of tax, there was a sudden burst of sales of village lands. Colonial administrators (Le Mesurier in that case) were aware of the danger resulting from this conjunction, and proposed a policy in 1885[19]: “Legislation is required in the direction of prohibiting the alienation of village highlands to outsiders (…)  I have already mentioned the evils that result from the extended sale of lands for arrears of tax and these evils will be intensified if steps are not taken to preserve the village lands to the villagers themselves. So long as the planting enterprise was confined to the forests of the hill country, there was little or no interference with village interests. But now that estates are being opened in the middle of villages, and village lands are being eagerly sought after by planters, the case is different. If no check is put upon their alienation, the villagers, tempted by an offer of ready money, will be only too ready to part with their lands, and when their money is exhausted, will become with their families a portion of the vagabond population of the island. Whatever good the planting enterprise may do the district in the way of opening up land, distributing money and giving employment to villagers, it will certainly not counterbalance the enormous evil of floating and unsettled population (…) It is only of late years that the idea of an individual and alienable right in village chenas has sprung up. Hitherto they had been regarded as a species of communal or family property, and unless the village system is to be entirely broken up, it is advisable that this communal property should be preserved to it”. The first documented example is that of Hinguralakanda village, where in 1885 the Assistant agent was unable to effect a settlement, because part of the chena area “adjoins the estate [Nahalma] opened up by Mr. Forsythe and the villagers want it so as to be able to sell to him : they will then be without chenas and be continually in need and complaining. It is not I think advisable to encourage the sale of villagers chena to planters to tea estates. This village is also divided into two castes, Vellala and Jaggery, and this makes any joint possession difficult”.[20]

With the development of tea cultivation linked with the large Crown block sales effected during the time of Wace and Le Mesurier (held in Colombo until the creation of the new province of Sabaragamuwa in 1889), the arrival of big planters in the district put pressure on the local administration. The large land sales acted as a sort of ‘settlement by sale’ consolidating the block alienated to the planters, while the village block became fragilized. Once the movement was started, the Agent Price became conscious of the dangers but it was late and he had to fight constant battles in a position of weakness because the chena block settlements were not legalized. The administration was faced with contradictory injunctions expressed in the report for 1886[21]: “The demand among Europeans for land in the Kelani valley has caused much interference with village interests, and the sale of village chenas is open to grave objections (…) Indiscriminate alienation of Crown land is open to grave objection, but a judicious sale of chenas which are the property of the government is to be desired. Politic action in this direction would have the effect not only of largely adding to the revenue, but also of satisfying the demand for land which is at present productive of frequent complications. Investors in the tea enterprise are determined to have land in the Kelani valley, and if they cannot buy it from Government, they purchase it in fragments from the Sinhalese. The result of such transactions is disastrous. Native brokers make it their business to acquire chenas of the Kandyan villagers, who rapidly dissipate the purchase money and eventually become migrants. An extent of 16,700 acres of which 4,000 acres are in forest and 12,700 acres are in chenas is at present surveyed and practically available for sale”

From 1886 to 1896, two successive Assistant Agent, Price and Davidson, were constantly at war with land brokers and planters. The story of their fight is worth recalling in detail, as an example of the inner contradictions of the colonial land policy. In his diary of 13.02.1886, Price wrote : “I am constantly receiving queries from planters as to whether or not the Crown claims such and such lands – as in the latter event they wish to purchase them from natives – and I know of several instances in which negotiations are now going on for the purchase of such lands. If the Crown withdraws its claims definitely and there is no prohibition against alienation, the natives tempted by an offer of ready money will be only too ready to part with what does not really belong to them but to their families, and when their money is exhausted, will become a portion of the vagabond population of the district. Whatever good the planting enterprise may do in the shape of opening land, distributing money and giving employment, it will certainly not counterbalance the enormous evil of a floating and unsettled population such as would inevitably result from the wholesale alienation of village chenas”. In the margin, the Governor Gordon commented: “I agree”.

Price held idealistic views, shared by Gordon, and believed that village economy was still based on a communal principle. His successor Davidson was skeptical: “The question as to the rights acquired by Kandyans, based on the practice by families of cultivating certain specific ranges of highlands, to alienate those lands, is a matter of the gravest importance in this district. The Kandyan customs, in my opinion, did not allow individual members of a panguwa or family to alienate any portion of that range of hills which members had cultivated for generations. The members of the family had a life interest only in the chenas, and it was never contemplated that individuals of the family should have the power to transfer the right to cultivate the soil to strangers, to the detriment of future generations. Now, however, chenas have a money value, and are readily bought for tea cultivation, often without sufficient scrutiny as to the title of the vendors. The temptation to realize the money value of the lands has resulted in families being divested of their highlands for the benefit of a few unscrupulous members, who, at most, only hold a life interest in an undivided share of the range of chenas. The sale of these lands will eventually tend to make the Kandyan villagers landless, and being without trade or means of livelihood and without any predisposition to regular labour – even were it available – they may become a cause of danger to their neighbours and a source of anxiety and expense to the government”[22].

The year 1889 could have been decisive. Kägalla was delinked from the Western Province and linked with Ratnapura, to form the new province of Sabaragamuwa, of which Wace was put in charge. The influence of Saunders was reduced, but the power of the big legal firms of Colombo and of the planter’s associations was too strong to resist: by the initial chena settlement the colonial Government had brought the wolf into the fold.  Wace suggested a new ordinance to prevent the alienation of chena lands, but in spite of a decision of principle taken at a conference in 1889, the ordinance was never drafted in Colombo. The Attorney General, Layard,  in a minute (26.05.1891) wrote bluntly that “no legislation is desirable nor is required, all that is required is that a special deed should be drafted as occasion may require”, in his answer to a long letter written by Wace, who used the Teligama case to plead again for a new legislation: recalling that Ievers had “expressly recorded that his apportionment did not leave the villagers much chena lands and never contemplated the subsequent alienation of the area so allotted by him”, Wace noted that a few years later one third of the village block was already alienated by certain villagers to the detriment of the community. He was shocked at the idea that the Agent “whose duty and desire is to protect the villagers in the enjoyment of the settlements” was required to give a certificate of quiet possession “to the person who has induced a few villagers to break the spirit of the settlement for the advantage (merely temporary to them) of a few rupees”. It is useless to advise the beneficiary of a certificate of quiet possession that he is exposed to an action on the part  of the other villagers “for the land grabber knows perfectly well that the other villagers have not the means or the spirit of cooperation required to take legal proceedings” More generally, Wace considered that “it is no answer to say that the tea enterprise is to the benefit of the villagers who thus alienate their lands ; it is not so, the Kandyan villager will never take the place of the Tamil coolie on tea estates even assuming that the enterprise is of a permanent nature and the very existence and continuity of the village system is weakened and threatened by the evil I complain of (…) I beg that I may be authorized to suspend the issue of certificates of quiet possession for the lands so acquired”. His request was refused in the letter of the Colonial Secretary Swettenham of 5.06.1891. The question of stopping land grabbing was again raised by Wace in January 1892.  Swettenham in a memorandum (10.08.1892), criticized the chena settlement as “a very rude idea, imperfectly worked out without even thinking out the immediate and ultimate consequences” The principle of non-alienation of the village block “found no part of the original plan of the settlement”, and all the plans to give legal retroactive effect to the settlement were impracticable because “the settlements have been loosely made, often in the teeth of considerable opposition” and lacked “the scrupulous regard for fairness which would entitle them to become law without any appeal”. On the question of a new ordinance to forbid further alienation of chena lands, Swettenham put so punctilious and obstructive conditions that they discouraged any serious attempt at rendering chenas inalienable. At the conference held in Colombo in August 1892, the colonial government finally decided not to render chenas inalienable, nor to give retroactive effect to interdiction of sales already effected, but to resettle the lands under the Forest Ordinance and to apply ordinance 12 of 1840[23].

By that time the great legal firms had entered the game, a new governor, Havelock, had replaced Gordon, a new Assistant Agent, W.E. Davidson had replaced Price, and the powerful Kelani Valley Planter’s Association succeeded in imposing its law.

 

*

The detailed land files – some kept at the Kägalla kacceri, others removed to the Kandy repository of the Sri Lanka National Archives, make it possible to retrieve the alienation process in particular villages. The first villages to be affected were close to Ruanwella, where bazaar traders and tavern keepers from the low country were quite active. The Morawatte affair, studied in “Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries”, took place in that area. Another example is that of Mahalla which had been the subject of chena enquiries in 1873 and 1877 and of a chena block settlement in 1879. A.J. Bell (of Hakurugala estate) asked the opinion of the Agent about the purchase of village land; Price “informed him that in the present case the Government would take steps to call in question the right of the villagers to alienate their communal lands. I am glad of this opportunity to express the views of Government in a letter the contents of which will no doubt be made known among the caucus of speculators who are busy in this district”. Finally Bell purchased the lands and Price concluded that “the only sure remedy lay in the confirmation by the Forest settlement officer of all the settlements hitherto made”.[24] At this juncture appeared a land broker who was a well-known figure of the Kelani valley land business of Morawatta fame: “A certain Baron Perera also connected with this matter (he has like Mr. Bell bought a few acres of communal land) presented a petition asking ‘if the villagers might cultivate the lands allotted to them’ (he is not a villager, nor a Kandyan). Having some private information about this man, I read between the lines and told him to go to his lawyers if he wanted advice on the legal question that the land was the villager’s only to use and not to alienate ; and that he had better not come meddling with things which do not concern him”. The four pangu of the village eventually sold the whole of their block, 558 acres, to Baron Perera, who resold them to Bell, and the planter trespassed on other lands, a common behavior in such cases: “wanton damages by Mahalla estate on Mapitigama korala’s lands. The Mahalla superintendent has acted in an overbearing way, rooting up a village plantation without any notice to me or my headmen”[25].

Not far from Mahalla, Wahakula, a large forested Goyigama village located to the west of Ruanwella, was the theatre of extensive land grabbing activities in the late 1880s[26]. The village had been the subject of a chena enquiry in 1877 in which was produced a sittuwa (a donation on ola leaf) registered at Ratnapura in 1872, but later pronounced false, supposed to have been given by Mattamagoda Dissawe in sk. 1734 (1810 a.d.) to Ranatunga Appu kankanama of Wahakula, describing fields, gardens and appurtenances of the gamwasama.

The Wahakula sittuwa

In December 1879, the Assistant agent Ievers made a chena settlement by which the 6 families with 3 acres of paddy only were allowed 100 acres of chena, while large extents of forest were kept for the Crown, and were subsequently sold to a planter. In 1886, a local land broker, Hettirala, started to buy shares of two shareholders against the opposition of the eight others and sold them to the tea planter Thornton: “I am surprised that Ekneligoda Ratemahatmaya has not reported this, as he has strict injunctions to keep me informed. (…)  I know this man Hettirala, he gains his livelihood by buying and selling lands, and this year he has been very busy trying to buy chena lands on all sides from the villagers for transfer to planters (…) Mapitigama and Punahela korales are both aware now of the objections which exist to the indiscriminate transfer of land from the villagers to the planters (…) The case is a good example of the hardship which is entailed on poor and ignorant villagers by the land grabbers, the demand for land being great in the Kelani valley. I propose to the Government Agent that the eight defrauded shareholders should be told to take legal proceedings to oust Mr. Thornton and that a proctor should be retained and the cost being borne by government”. Price was unable to convince his superior at Colombo, Saunders, and Ekneligoda, the chief headman of Three-korales, to support him in the matter of the Crown land rights “but apart from the land there is no doubt that eight of the ten shareholders have been unfairly treated, by the aid of the Chetty land broker and the English purchaser”. Baron Perera and Hettirala were joined by other land brokers, such as Romanis Pieris “a provision dealer and storekeeper, and a man of much influence in the Kelani Valley”, whom Price tried to dissuade to engage in this trafficking. But the defect of the chena settlements was that the term ‘communal land’ was not legally binding to prevent alienation : “The sooner these settlements are legally confirmed the better ; negotiations are going on all sides between speculators in land for tea and village pangukarayo who wish to sell their blocks (or part of them) handed over to them by settlement”.

The case of Atalawa village is typical of an ecologically and socially fragile locality in the same area whose highlands had been sold to planters as a result of the land dealings of Ekneligoda, during the chena settlement operations[27]. In 1879, there were 8 pangu (lineage holdings) in the village, and 16 families, belonging to the Duraya caste (except one Muslim). There were practically no wet paddy fields: the village economy was dependent on chenas and gardens. The Crown asserted its rights to forests and chenas and had already sold 77 acres before December 1879, when the Ratemahatmaya effected the chena settlement, apportioning 350 acres for the Crown (the forest and a block of chenas, which were not surveyed but only “approximately estimated”) and 400 acres for the villagers, without taking into account the fact that some villagers used to cultivate the block taken by Crown and were disadvantaged : the villagers were left to sort the issue by themselves and the so-called settlement was in fact a major factor of unsettlement for village society. Five years later the Crown in the ‘Colombo large land sales’ sold 300 acres to James Gibson, 310 acres being chenas from 11 to 26 years, the rest forest. Gibson was in affairs with M.B. Ekneligoda, and those villagers who had rights in the village block started selling most of their chenas which the villagers who had rights in the block taken by Crown could not do. A part was purchased by one Bawa Lebbe Vedarala (a yunani medical practitioner residing in the village) and by local Muslim petty businessmen from Mattamagoda and Kannatota, established long ago as dealers of arecanut, the traditional major export of the area. Another part was purchased by Ekneligoda himself, who gave the land back to villagers as sharecroppers. A fresh wave of sales (often by women) occurred between 1895 and 1906, and a new land speculator, L.M. Sekku Marikar, trusted the sales, purchasing 65 acres with a view to resell the lands to a planter, which he did in August 1906. The area was much affected by anti-muslim riots of 1915, which were violently suppressed by British volunteers, most of them planters, and in 1931, in the context of the first democratic elections in Ceylon, tension erupted in the area between the superintendent of Atalawa estate and the villagers.   

On the road leading up-country, Yatiyantota was an active bazaar in a central position for the new tea estates opened on chena lands recently sold by the Crown. The case of Garagoda, which has been studied in “Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries”, was not isolated. In the nearby villages of Warakagoda and Polatagama, closely connected, the first cultivated by Duraya and Goyigama people, the second inhabited by Duraya people, land brokers were trying by mid-1888 to offer the village blocks for sale to the planters. The operation and the fight against land grabbers by Price, supported by the governor Gordon, is worth a detailed study: it may be one of the origins of the creation of the new Sabaragamuwa province[28]. This is the area in which Saunders had attempted in the 1860s to repress chena cultivation; it was surveyed and after a chena enquiry (1877) two block settlements were made, at Warakagoda by Ievers in 1879, at Polatagama by Murray in 1880, which decided that the people of Polatagama who used to cultivate chenas in Warakagoda should restrict themselves to Polatagama, and allowed large areas to the Crown. All the villagers did not sign the agreements, and land brokers began to purchase Warakagoda lands from Polatagama villagers for sale to planters in 1888 : Makevitage Baron Perera of Ruanwella, alias Morawatte Baba Sinno, qualified by Price as “head of the land grabbing concern” was reputed for having fought the authorities in the Morawatte case. He acted in association with Hettirala and Sanmugam Pulle “Tamil land broker, Chetti man of Karawanella”. They hired lawyers, C.J.A. Marshall, notary at Awissawella, Ferdinands, proctor at Kägalla, and even the Colombo firm of Julius and Creasy, and “applied to the Surveyor General for a copy of a plan of a chena lot in Warakagoda in view of obtaining from the Crown a certificate of no claim”. Price answered that the villagers themselves should ask for the certificate, and explained that as he had refused to give a certificate to Sanmugam Pulle: “now the interested parties try to get what they want through the intervention of a proctor (…) Certificates of quiet possession[29] for land in a village block of chenas should not, as I think, be issued in any case. In the present instance it is wanted in order to perfect a title to communal land offered for sale to planters”.

Apparently Price was not supported by his superior Saunders, who wrote on the 15th of July 1888, probably under the pressure of Julius and Creasy : “If the petitioner is entitled to receive a copy of the plan on payment of survey fees he ought not to be refused it, simply because he has made a purchase the validity of which only a court of law can settle”. If one reads between the lines, it looks as if Saunders was acting in favour of would be planters and thus protected land speculators. During the following months, Perera, Pulle and Ferdinands regularly and separately repeated their requests. Price commented in his diary: “The land brokers, finding that the intervention of their proctor had been of no avail, addressed themselves to the Surveyor General who answered them to the following effect: ‘the village of Warakagoda was surveyed for the information of Government ; as soon as the Government Agent has investigated claims and granted certificates of quiet possession, a copy of the plan may be supplied on payment of survey fees’. Baron Perera once more turned to Price and asked for a certificate. Price told him to put a statement of his title and wrote in his diary: “Careful circumspection is needed to prevent the alienation of these village chenas, and if once such alienation on a large scale begins or is allowed to begin, there is no knowing where it will end”. His position was supported by governor Gordon who wrote in the margin: ‘this is perfectly true and a matter of great importance’. A few days later “A petition reaches me from Sanmugam Pulle applying for a certificate of quiet possession for certain chenas in the village block. The applicant explains that he presents this petition as Mr. Marshall, his lawyer, and Baron Perera, his agent, both of whom have addressed the Agent on his behalf, have failed to get what is wanted. He states that he has taxation list extracts for these lands, and deeds from the vendors, but recites no other titles. Today a petition from of some of the villagers of Warakagoda (the Vidanelage) who complain that Sanmugam Pulle and others have bought chenas in which they have a share, against their will, and that these chenas are about to be sold for tea plantation, and they ask that sale may be prevented and the vendors may be ordered to prove their rights to sell”. The petition mentioned that “certain persons with the help of Ekneligoda are going to sell the petitioner’s lands”.

What was the role played by Ekneligoda Ratemahatmaya in the affair? On 26.11.1888, being apparently under suspicion, he reported to Price that “I only told them not to buy high lands. I never helped them at any time nor did I connive at their doings”. He recognized that “the signatures of certain Durayas were not taken to the settlement in the first instance (…) they signed subsequently”. He added “David Sinno of Gomaduwa has also purchased land in this village. The statement that those lands were purchased for me is wholly untrue”. In January 1889, Baron Perera had exhausted the resources of presenting petitions to government and of lawyers’ letters and the Agent triumphantly wrote : “I have checkmated him in his nefarious business of buying village chena (generally against the will of a proportion of the shareholders, always to the real detriment of all of them) in order to sell again at a large profit to planters”. But Perera was still active in 1891: “ Baron Perera, the leading land broker, happening to be present, I took the occasion to publicly impress on the people that they must not sell chenas forming part of the village blocks, pointing out the evil results of doing so, and explaining that the Agent would endeavour to satisfy from land at the disposal of the Crown the demands of tea planters”. In December 1890 and then in March 1891, the Vidanelage Govi family petitioned against Pulle, Perera and David Sinno; Ekneligoda again affirmed “I have not bought any land in the village, petitioner was never prevented by me from cultivating any of his lands”, and accused him of false testimony.  In May 1892, the new assistant Davidson compelled Ekneligoda to hold a gansabhava with all the local headmen, but in the absence of Vidanelage who pretended that he had not been summoned and in July, another gansabhava was held, in which the the Vidanelage family was given lands, which were immediately seized for a fiscal’s sale by Pulle who was their creditor.

Finally in May 1894, the actors behind the scene came into the open: the planter W. Mitchell of Degalessa, with the support of the big Colombo legal firm De Sarams, in a private letter on a paper headed Kelani Valley Planter’s Association, asked for a certificate of quiet possession for 299 acres he purchased at a fiscal’s sale of Pulle property; he complained that just after the sale, L.S. de Silva obtained from Polatagama villagers acts of transfer so that he could blackmail the planter; and Vidanelage petitioned to prevent Mitchell from seizing their lands; the Agent advised them to hold on “Mr. Mitchell on paper to the contrary not withstanding”, but could not go further.

William W. Mitchell, already active in 1886 as a purchaser of Crown land, was considered by Price as ‘an eminent member of the land grabbing fraternity’. In 1891 and 1892, he requested the Assistant agent to assist him in obtaining land in Gantune and Neluwakkana, where there were large gardens and practically no forests, and in Uduwe[30]: “Mr. Mitchell writes to ask me in effect to help him in the matter of buying some native holdings which adjoin his Glenalla estate. He requests me to tell him if the men who claim the land are in any way recognized as its owners by Government, and whither receipt for taxes which is sent with his letter would enable them to procure from the Governement CQPs. I reply that the document in question is not a receipt for tax on land in Uduwe, it is an extract from the Service Tenures Register for the village of Kekalapone which lies in a different direction. The land Mr. Mitchell wishes to acquire is part of the block allowed to the villagers of Uduwe for chena cultivation and I decline to its alienation for the purpose of cultivating tea”. Two days later, “Mr. Mitchell writes to me privately to ask me to expedite the issue of a certificate of no claim on the part of the Crown in respect of a piece of land which was bought from some villagers of Teligama. From the Government Agent a letter on the same question. To the Government Agent I send a copy of the particular chena settlement, in the preamble to which Mr. Ievers remarks that his apportionment ‘does not leave the villagers much chena land’. The necessary implication is that he did not contemplate the alienation of any part of it (…) The intention of these settlements was to grant the usufruct only of chena and not the right to alienate it. The Crown has abandoned its claim against the villagers of the village concerned, but taking into consideration the spirit of the dedication, I am inclined to suggest that if all other experience fail, the claim of the Crown should be treated as having revived in case where such land has been transferred to others from the pangukarayo of a particular village”. “Had interview with Mr. W.W. Mitchell, relating to his application to purchase lands from the Crown and from his neighbours. Also his information that villagers had chenaed Crown land near him: on enquiry it proved to be private land. Had also various complaints against him by villagers for encroachment on their lands. He admits an encroachment of 8 ½ acres for which he says he has settled to pay 50 Rs per acre: his experience in the Matara district has taught him how to handle his neighbours making them friends. Most managers merely accentuate by their manners the prejudice with which the villager views the strangers invading their hillsides. I told Mr. Mitchell that I exceedingly objected to his proposal to buy from a Moorman 120 acres bordering his estate for 35 Rs an acre. I pointed out to him that the Moor broker was rendering he villagers landless, and when the money has gone, they would be vagrants, and some of them criminals.”

Kitulgala was a large bazaar on the road to the Kandy district, where another powerful Chetti trader, Juan Pulle, was busy acting as intermediary for would-be planters, such as M. Rogers, who came to ask Price “in an artless way how he could most easily and securely buy land from natives”[31]. Close to Kitulgala, the village of Teligama had been the theatre of extensive land grabbing operations in 1888-89[32]: Ross Wright (Chertsey estate) after having purchased the Crown block started encroaching on the village block. He then asked the Agent through his lawyer, C.J.A. Marshall of Avissawella, whether or not the block settlement gave the villagers their lands in full property.  Price answered that it was the villagers and not the prospective buyer or his agent who should ask such a question, and noted in his diary that “the elements of this lawyer’s letter in this matter are objectionable and should I think be repressed in a politic manner (…) In all parts of the island where villages adjoin estates the same thing is going on. I think it advisable not to make more informal settlements at any rate in the neigbourhood of estates, or where estates may some day be formed”. The case was brought to Colombo, and after the Attorney General had advised that by the Ievers settlement the Crown has lost its rights on the village block, the government decided that it would give M. Wright Ross the certificate of no claim he was asking for, with the important qualification that “in issuing a certificate to Mr. Ross, warn him that the certificate will not protect him from any possible right of the villagers to eject him”. As mentioned above, W. Mitchell was himself involved in purchases in the same village in 1891-92.

Further south, a Muslim businessman of Colombo, Mohammadu Lebbe Marikar, was the only non-British purchaser of Crown land in the large sales of the Kelani Valley. He then wished to extend his Al Noor Estate by purchasing a part of the village block. Patberiya, a village bi-caste (Goyigama-Vahumpura) of easy access from the Ratnapura road, had been settled by Ievers in 1884: with 22 pangu, 51 families, 21 acres of paddy; and 1,700 acres of chenas; 341 acres were retained as Crown block, sold to M.L. Marikar in October 1886 and 1,365 acres formed the village block. “The number of pangu being so large made a division very difficult”; some Goyigama pangukarayo (Senanayake) lost all their chenas and complained in 1888 that the other pangukarayo refused to give them a share, and Ekneligoda pretended that until then the villagers had not asked for a repartition; a gansabhava convened in October 1888 failed to persuade the other pangukarayo to give a share ; another meeting was held in 1892 in which a compensation was decided, again to no avail. At that point, the pangukarayo had already started to sell their chena rights to outsiders, while the Alnoor estate superintendent encroached on stream reservations to build a factory, and Ekneligoda reported (24.01.1893), that Al Noor estate had purchased village chena land in 1891 from the panguwa which had been deprived of its lands and from Manuel Perera, who had acquired them from a Vahumpura panguwa. In 1897 the same Senanayake panguwa petitioned again: the Assistant agent was ready to recognize that the Crown had not kept its promise of compensation, but its superiors in Colombo censured him, arguing that the petitioners “did not make any protest against the sale by the Crown of the land taken over which seems to indicate that they were content to abide by it (…) I do not see any evidence that the petitioners had any legal title to the land which the Crown sold”. Finally, the Governor himself decided in 1898 that compensation should be given in land, but there was not a single Crown land left in the village…[33]

Near Dehiowita, the proprietors or managers of large estates formed by Crown sales were also busy extending by buying village lands. “Mr. David Fairweather of Kanangama Estate wants 20 acres of the villager’s block for a firewood reserve for his property, and also applies for several other lots which form part of the villager block. He urges that the 20 acres piece is rocky and precipitous forest, and maintains that it would not be unfair to deprive the villagers of this piece of land – apparently because it is not fit for chena cultivation. But he perhaps forgets that the villagers want firewood as much as he does, though for a different purpose – to say nothing of fence sticks. It cannot be”. Kanangama, a large village, located to the east of Dehiowita, was first the subject of a chena enquiry (1877) which allowed the villagers small lots on the basis of a detailed survey, and then block-settled by Ievers  who noted that it contained 308 acres of forest ‘nearly all sold’, 1570 acres of chenas, 30 acres of mudlands. Finally the successive settlements created a mess which was finally exploited by land grabbers and the village lands were entirely sold by the beginning of the 20th century to R.J. Mackenzie and the sale legalized by the colonial administration[34].

 

A freak case: the formation of Yataderiya and Knavesmire estates

The hilly area between the We Oya, Ritigaha Oya and Gurugoda Oya valleys was a remote part of Uduwe korale of Lower Bulatgama, which attracted the attention of planters who were established upstream since the time of coffee estates and had extensively encroached upon the highlands of the local high caste families who were in the process of losing their authority. In the 1870s it was a forested area with good land, a road close by, and coffee estates further up; it was therefore selected by prospective planters of new land for tea when coffee collapsed in the early 1880s. Ievers, the assistant agent in 1885, had foreseen difficult relations between villagers and planters in that area: “Uduwa, Yatideriya, Dedugala, Kekulapone adjoin Genalla, Gangwarily and Rangalla estates, and I am disposed to allow villages a good extent of chena land to form a good ring fence (so to speak) round the villages to prevent encroachments and raids on their gardens from Tamil coolies”. In the north, accessible from Undugoda, the village of Yatideriya had a Goyigama and Vahumpura population, while Diyahitiyawala was a multi-caste feudal village belonging in part to the Ranasinha Mudianselage family who held the post of Uduwe korala. In the south, near Bulatkopitiya, Pilawela, Wiyalapitiya and Rangalla were also mixed caste villages where the Dissanekge family was influent. On the other side of the river, Edurapola was a Goyigama village without paddy fields.  

In May 1886, the Colombo authorities, without informing the new assistant government agent Price, proposed for sale to planters some 6,000 acres in Tunbage, Rangalla, and Yatideriya; on enquiry, it appeared that only Yatideriya was settled, while Tunbage was a nindagama, and the sale was restricted in October 1886 to the Yatideriya lands[35].   The Yataderiya [sic] estate was established in 1889-90 by James Richard Fairweather, and it was extended in January 1891. James Richard Fairweather (1861-1910) and his elder brother David Fairweather (1859-1922) were typical colonial Scottish adventurers, who developed extensive interests in Ceylon[36]. There were thereafter constant incidents between the planter and the villagers: encroaching, cattle trespass, silting, and difficult relations with Tamil coolies. Fairweather had cut a road across village land, which had affected a house wall, felled timber on a land which he has not yet purchased from the Crown, refusing to obey Price orders, and finally succeeding in purchasing it when Price on leave was replaced by Bertram Hill who was in better terms with planters: “ The superintendent of Yataderiya was very anxious to buy a block of 46 acres that lies between his store and the main portion of his estate. The block includes village chenas the owners of which are however unwilling to sell their lands. It would save future trouble if they can be induced to part with it. The superintendent is not a desirable neighbour for them” On his return, Price noted: “M. Fairweather is in the high degree unpopular with his neighbours, and it is quite impracticable to settle the matter out of court. The kacceri has done all in its power to help the aggrieved Sinhalese; it has now retained lawyers and has instituted a case in the District Court, the result of which will I hope bring Mr. Fairweather to his senses”.

J.R. Fairweather was noted for his brutal management and his miserliness. For example, in 1894, the Assistant agent Davidson wrote in his diary: “A bill for one rupee was sent in to the superintendent of Yataderiya in the ordinary course for treatment of a Mr. David who died in consequence of the wounds which he received in his bungalow on the estate at the hands of culprits as yet undetected. The poor man was brought to hospital and died the next day. The superintendent now returns the bill and suggests that I should proceed against the estate of the late Mr. David for the recovery of the amount as ‘he was removed to Kegalle by the orders of the medical officer, the case then being in the hands of the police’. Words fail me. I have paid the miserable rupee myself rather than stoop to argue with people capable of such a suggestion, but the less said the better”[37]. Finally, Yataderiya was rounded to form a very large estate (1,865 acres) comprising 1,118 acres of tea, 740 acres of rubber, and 7 acres of paddy, which was extremely profitable, “earning for its shareholders dividends amounting to an average of 25 per cent, for eighteen years”.

In the early 1890s, J.R. Fairweather was also involved with his associate Gallway in the development of Knavesmire estate, in conditions which caused a serious embarrassment to the colonial administration[38]. The story begins in 1872 with a petition of low caste (Duraya and Henaya) villagers of Rangalla and Pilawela who complained that the high caste Dissanekge family pretended to be the proprietors of Rangalla, Wiyalapitiya and Pilawela on the basis of a forged sannasa. Ten years later, the same Dissanekge began to fell forests to assert their title but were defeated in court in 1884; they contested the judgement which went to the Supreme court, they lost the case in 1887, and their lands were sold at a judicial sale in 1889 to a straw man, who immediately resold them to Ekneligoda, the Chief headman of Three-korales and Lower Bulatgama, before C.J.A. Marshall, proctor-notary of Avissawalla, a well-known member of the ‘fraternity of land grabbers’. Ekneligoda was early involved in land dealings in the area he was administering.

Chena settlements of Rangalla, Wiyalapitiya and Pilawela were made hastily on 4.03.1890 by Price and Ekneligoda, under the pressure of a tea planter, Gallway, who was promised land in that area in exchange for land he gave up in the Nuwara Eliya district: the villagers were allowed 1,000 acres and 420 acres were reserved for the Crown for the exchange with Gallway. 32 villagers of the 3 villages signed the document, including the Dissanekge. But immediately afterwards a petition by the Dissanekge and some Durayas complained that the lands left to them by the division were being cleared by the superintendent of the ‘Galgadiyana’ estate. Ekneligoda reported that these lands were declared Crown “and given to Mr. Gallway” and that a division would be made by holding a Village council meeting to give the Dissanekge in exchange a portion from private lands; this was done one year later and the headmen decided to reallocate the chenas to answer the claim of the Dissanekge with the conclusion : “not a single pangukaraya is a loser”. Then Gallway was accused of having encroached on the village block but Ekneligoda reported that these lands were declared Crown and sold to Gallway. In January 1893, Davidson, the new Assistant agent, asked for a report on the purchase by Gallway from villagers of 24 acres which were included in the Crown block by settlement, but were not given then by the Crown to Gallway, and which the villagers considered private as they remained unsold ; Ekneligoda reported that the Dissanekges, the Badahelas (potters) of Wiyalapitiya, the village headman of Rangalla and the Durayas of Rangalla had sold these lands to Gallway. In March 1893, Davidson met J.R. Fairweather, representative of Gallway, who said he was prepared to buy this time from the Crown the same lands, and he reported to his superior Wace that Fairweather was bona fide and that the aracci and the korala were also persuaded that the lots were private as they had not been sold by the Crown. But Fairweather pushed his demand further and asked to purchase 54 acres from the Crown (instead of 24 acres) and the Agent answered by the negative. These 54 acres were actually sold by villagers to the planter according to a report of September 1893.

The affair became unpleasant at that juncture : the Government Agent Wace insisted that his subordinate Davidson should warn the villagers to return to the estate the money they got for the sale of lands belonging to the Crown, as “to allow the villagers to retain possession of monies recovered by them for sale of Crown land appears a distinct encouragement to evade and disregard the past and present chena and forest settlements (…) I cannot regard it as a matter of ‘no official concern’ and I must beg you to take action to compel the refund of such monies”. The position of Davidson was on the contrary that “the question is one between the estate and the villagers and is officially no concern of mine: I have no legal power to compel restitution.  My contention has been all through that the managers not only of this estate but of several others buy up any native pretentions as a preliminary to pressing the Crown title as well. These things are done by managers with their eyes open. The superintendent of Knavesmire could have seen by a tracing from the Surveyor General office that the land was Crown by settlement”.

The villagers, when asked by Ekneligoda (who was probably involved in the deal), refused to appear and refund the money, except the Rangalla aracci. Davidson then went to Bulatkopitiya (13-14.11.1893) : “A very unpleasant job, much against my will, trying to frighten Duraya villagers with refunding to an unscrupulous estate manager money he paid them for land bought behind my back from the villagers who had no right to sell it as it was Crown land. The Crown is going to sell it and the estate may buy it if it pleases. But I have no power to recover the 400 rupees paid by the estate to the dishonest villagers and I would not try if I had any choice”. During two days, he led his own enquiry, and the truth appeared[39]. The Dissanekge brothers had received only 3 Rs in cash and the rest (18 Rs 87) “in chits on the store, about 3 bushels of paddy”; they could not repay in cash but were prepared to work twenty days each on the estate. The Badahela (potters) admitted to have received 10.75 Rs in cash and undertook to repay. Others had received 8 Rs in cash and some rice, others were old and infirm but also ordered to pay or face prosecution. The gamaracci paid 22.50 Rs under threat of dismissal. Most Dureyas refused the terms proposed, that is free work on the estate.  Finally Davidson wrote that “if the proprietor wishes to recover the money he must do so himself by process of law; I repeat that he deserves to lose it for his superintendent negotiated this transaction surreptitiously: I myself discovered the fraud by an accident”. And Wace agreed to let the matter drop. The affair must have impressed durably the people: according to the local tradition collected by me in 1978 on the spot from a descendent of the Uduwe family, the villagers were paid “with dry fish on the estate store”.

A new light was thrown on the affair when Ekneligoda was replaced by Mideniya in March 1895. Ekneligoda petitioned the Governor saying that he claimed chenas in Pilawela purchased from a fiscal’s transfer but sold by the Crown to Knavesmire. Mideniya reported (22.08.1899) that these lands were those of the Dissanekge which were declared Crown at chena settlement which Ekneligoda signed. As to the subsequent division and repartition of land by gansabhava “no one seems to have observed the decision of the meeting”. In May 1901, there were new encroachments by the estate and by the Dissanekge who had regained power in the village of Rangalla by having its aracci Mohotti, a family member, on their side. Anonymous villagers backed by Ekneligoda and by the late korala Punahela Mudianse accused Mohotti of buying everybody, his power coming from selling arrack in his own boutique. In March1903, one Fernando, carpenter at Bulatkopitiya purchased shares ‘private by settlement’ in Rangalla to resell to Knavesmire, and in August 1906, villagers continued to sell lands out of the village block to Fairweather.

Knavesmire remained a hot spot for the following decades, during the riots of 1915 and much later during the JVP insurgencies. Its acquisition by the State was contemplated in 1938 to settle villagers hemmed-in by the estate; it was purchased in December 1945 for distribution to villagers of Rangalla, Wiyalapitiya and Pilawela, at the initiative of D.S. Senanayake, Minister of Agriculture who wrote in a report (17.05.1946): “The Kegalle district is one in which the sale of Crown land to estates and of private land by villagers also to estates has rendered the district particularly short of land for the genuine needs of the villagers (…) The claims of the villagers – genuine villagers – whether they are of the agricultural class or workers in other trades must receive prior consideration. Reference is also invited to the definition of the Ceylonese as a person possessing a Ceylon domicile of origin”. The Tamil coolies, supported by their union leader Thondaman, refused to quit the estate they were working on for generations. Thondaman declared (4.06.1946): “Knavesmire episode is an indication of things to come. The complete amity and good fellowship that exists between the Indian labourers of Knavesmire and the Sinhalese of the neighbourhood should be an object lesson to the protagonists of communalism who are in power today. It is a crying shame that such an amity on which a united nation can be easily built up is being destroyed. Mr. Senanayake would treat estate labourers and villagers living in mutual friendship as two different entities. His officers evidently under his directions are in search of domicile of origin to create division. Their object is that Indian labourers who have for generations contributed to the development of the country should be kept secluded as estate labourers and transferred as such from estate to estate if work is available, or repatriated across or into the sea.” The controversy dragged on with an attempt to organize a hartal, until Nehru in the name of the Indian National Congress advised Thondaman to drop the matter. The take-over was completed in 1950 with the tea lands on which 175 families were settled[40]

Estates resulting from the land sales of 1886 other than Knavesmire and Yataderiya did not attract similar public attention: in such cases there was at work what contemporaries called ‘a silent revolution’. Among the blocks of chena lands sold by the Crown in 1886 in the Bulatkopitiya area, those of Edurapola, amounted to 1,200 acres: ‘Ederapolla estate’ was thus formed, and the small Gamage local family emigrated and sold in 1896 the 600 acres left to them by the chena settlement but not clearly demarcated. But in this case the transactions were controlled by a member of the family (Appuhami, the Dombepola korala) who managed to sell the same lands to two different purchasers, a low country Karawa ayurvedic doctor and a Muslim bazaar keeper who fought against each other to take possession of the land, while the Crown attempted to assert its title to a portion unsold in 1886.[41]

 

Davidson facing the planters.

When the idealist Assistant Agent Price left the district into the hands of Davidson, he wrote what he called ‘Friendly notes’[42] in which he instructed him to distinguish two parts in the district, one left to the planters – the south, Three-korales and Lower Bulatgama, the other reserved to the villagers – the north, Four-korales: “Restrict further sale of land to Three-korales and keep Four-korales as the Garden of the East – with a prosperous peasantry untainted by the civilization [sic in text] of Scotland and Mincing Lane”. The dualistic theory which was at work at the village level in the system of chena block settlements imagined by Ievers, was translated at the district level in the system imagined by Price to protect the traditional values embodied by the peasantry.

Davidson, who was a modernist and a realist, shared his concerns but questioned his assumptions[43]: “My predecessor strongly held that the remedy for the present evil lay in legislation ‘to prevent the alienation of holdings intended to be communal’. Although I sympathize with the spirit which led him to advocate this course, and although I apprehend the difficulties that may arise with a landless and indolent peasantry, I cannot see my way to recommend legislation to restore the communal character of village holdings after the practice of alienation has been countenanced for so many years in the Supreme Court of Ceylon. No legislation can at this stage in my opinion arrest the progress of the decay in Ceylon of the communal village system, where that system runs counter to the temporary interests of the villagers and the interests of the European element, and I am disposed to think that when the process of transition be past, with its misery and attendant crime, the Kandyan villagers will develop into as honest and industrial a race as the Sinhalese of the Europeanized portions of the southern province, or the Tamils of the Jaffna peninsula. Meanwhile I advocate that the Government should not countenance the alienation of the village lands and should refuse to make surveys or grant Certificates of Quiet Possession [CQP] to purchasers, and thus devise a means to make the transitional stage between the old time Kandyan usage and the Europeanization of the hill country as slow and gradual as possible”.

In his diary Davidson was more straightforward in arguing against the granting of CQPs[44]: “Let it be granted that the Crown is not directly concerned, and that the survey (for CQP) gives remunerated occupation the Surveyor General Staff (planter’s motive). The object of the planters is to get a title deed from the Crown. It is true the Crown certificate is of no value in itself. But it is notorious that whereas the borrowing power of a whole sheaf of native title deeds is nil, yet the mere appearance of a Crown certificate gives so respectable an air to the document that the banks will make advances on them (…) Hence I maintain that no encouragement should be given to purchases from villagers by the estates and that, when a CQP is asked for, the Agent should refuse to certify it for survey if he finds out that it is applied for merely to strengthen the estate title. I could name a dozen estates off-hand which are now negotiating to get CQPs under these conditions. It does not matter to them what belongs to the people”.

Several papers appeared in the Colombo newspapers in July 1893 commenting and criticizing Davidson’s administration report, arguing that “it would be hardly just and honest for the Government to refuse surveys and deeds of quiet possession whilst all along acknowledging that it has no right to prevent the village owners from selling”. Davidson reiterated his belief in progressive change[45]: “I believe that the present reckless alienation of village land for tea cultivation will make its own cure speedily, for in some instances I believe that European purchasers have, under misrepresentation, purchased land with unsecure titles from the villagers. The vexation and expense caused to these purchasers in having to defend their title or to buy off claims will serve as a deterrent to others who may wish to acquire land at a trifling cost on a risky title”.

Two years later, Davidson found that sales of village lands had increased instead of cooling down, for a simple reason: “Tea estates can no longer expand by the purchase of Crown land. So they expand by the purchase of native holdings. I do my best to stop it, but no lessons will deter the planter from taking the risk and no consideration of the future welfare of the native who sells his land will stop either the purchaser or the vendor”. He annexed a list of Kelani Valley planters who had come to ask for CQPs : Smith for Walpola (Sapumalkande), Wright for Maha Oya and Pelellegama (purchased entirely from private holders), S.L. Harries for Kahanowita purchased entirely from private holders, Tottenham for Dickella/Digalla as addition to previous estate, Dankin for Aludeniya purchased entirely from private holders, Grigson for Densworth addition to previous estate, Hayes for Maldeniya addition to previous estate. He added a few planters who purchased village lands in Four-korales (“ Mr. Price hoped to keep the Four-korales for the Kandyans but where there is profitable investment for the Europeans and cash down for the natives nothing will stop expansion”) : L. Stuart for Dampelgoda, W.L. Strachan for Debatgama, T.N. Orchard for Udagoda, Golledge for Ettie in Udumagama.

In January 1896, Davidson seemed resigned: “I believe that, do what we will, the whole of the Three-korales will shortly be a sheet of tea with gardens and a few silted up paddy fields interspersed”. “Planters are keen on getting more land; as there is very little Crown land going, they are buying right and left from the villagers and giving good prices too, 30 Rs and forward for chena! Unfortunately it is not always the original village owner who gets this. He has often been previously cajoled out of it by some of these low country sharpers at anything down to Rs 8 an acre or even less. However the extension of tea is without doubt fastly increasing the general prosperity. The Three-korales, which was the poorest division of the district, is fast taking its place among the richest”. “The Three-korales, owing to the upheaval of all titles to land arising from the enhanced value of chena lands, is the busiest and most responsible rata in the Kandyan country. The Ratemahatmaya there, Mideniya, knows exactly what to do, and does it with industry, tact and judgement. Twenty years ago, a villager got no value on his highlands, now they are worth 40 Rs an acre. The temptation to realize a large sum on a land he still has no use for is tempting. Yet they most of them realize the horror of being landless and déclassé. I have often discussed with them the misery of the transition stage between their present un-monied ease and the Europeanized condition of the Southern province where each man has to work for his living. But a great deal of lands is nevertheless changing hands and going to tea cultivation and serving as such to maintain large numbers where few could get a living before. The Ratemahatmaya consequently has 200 petitions which he dealt with while I have been away, settling rival titles amicably and blocking fictitious claims. In this work the Forest settlement is of great benefit, though of course by defining Crown and private titles it directly conducts to the alienation of private lands by clearing them of Crown claims” [46]

But in his official report he insisted on the necessity to restart Crown sales to prevent village sales through Ceylonese speculators[47]: “With a view to supplying the demand for land from European investors, a class of native speculators has arisen, who secure a profit in buying up doubtful titles at low figures and reselling some of them at high prices (…) I would point out that 412 native deeds conveying title to 116,323 acres of native lands in parts of Three-korales have been registered during 10 months in 1896 (…) The total in native hands within that area does not exceed 60,000 acres (…) The average price, is 1.64 Rs per acre, when it is known that Europeans would pay 50 Rs per acre (…) Enormous extent of business transacted at the Kägalla Land Registry Office arising from these wild speculations in village lands: number of deeds registered : 6,485; of properties affected (sold or mortgaged) : 12,003; amount secured by mortgages: 1,712,032 Rs ; value of properties transferred by sale: 2,386,405 Rs (…). Beyond illustrating the activity in the land market, these figures are of little value for in many cases lands are overvalued for the sake of ostentation, and in others undervalued to avoid stamp duties. I estimate that over 10,000 acres or so of village land have passed into European hands during the year 1896, fully 9/10th of it being in the Kelani valley. The nominal extent of land bought up by speculators for sale to Europeans must exceed 150,000 acres but very little of it has really changed hands. Where the vendors were not in possession the land brokers have in many cases retransferred the lands to their vendors. The speculative mania has been stamped” [This was wishful thinking: the retransfers were a tool to fortify title.]

By the end of 1896, with the gradual extension of the alienation of village lands to the north of the district, which had been partly settled by Booth under the Forest Ordinance (see previous chapter), the relations between Davidson and the planters reached a critical point. In October, he issued a circular printed in Sinhala and distributed in the villages. The original text is not available but only its English translation; it reads as a defense and illustration of the traditionalist/dualistic view of village life and could have been written by Price[48]:

“In the Four-korales there are as many Kandyans as the fields will grow food for. Therefore there should be no strangers introduced. If you sell your chenas you will lose part of your food supply, and the rest of your food supply will be destroyed through the fields being silted up from the drains in the highlands. If you sell your chenas, you will lose your lands and will some day soon have to work as daily labourers for other people who have obtained possession of your lands. You are happy now because you have only to work for yourselves to provide yourselves with sufficient food. When you lose your lands you must work as daily labourers and must always work whether you wish to or not, and/or whether you are well or sick; for if you do not earn your wages you will starve. You will be cheated by kanganis who will keep back part of your wages or who will get you into debt by giving you advances on high interest. When once you have got into debt you will never escape: as, if you go away, you can be brought back on warrants. Furthermore, your children will learn the vices of their masters: you will see your children learning to drink strong drinks and to fight and to swear. They will copy the vices of the Europeans and not all their manly virtues. So, do not be persuaded to sell your lands but keep your ancestral lands to yourselves and let the Four-korales remain what it has always been, the most favoured garden of the Kandyan provinces. There is plenty of room for tea plantations in the Three-korales and up in the hills where there are no paddy fields and only a few villages”

Davidson commented in his diary: “I hope it may help to stop the reckless sale of village land in the prosperous and thickly populated Four-korales ; we have no need of tea plantations here ; they do good where the land is not settled or fully occupied, but the harm they would do is infinitely greater than the good”. The circular attracted the attention of the pro-planter Times of Ceylon newspaper which argued that land sales would liberate the villagers from the grip of the moneylender, and that it gave a false image of the labour relations on the estates and thus discouraged the villagers from taking employment on the plantations. The Governor then requested an explanation from Davidson who answered that “Agents commissioned to buy lands have penetrated into every village: and what is already taking place on a small scale, if it were not checked, would assume in a few weeks huge proportions. In proof of which I am prepared to prove that titles to more than 100,000 acres of village lands has changed hands within 6 months of this year in the adjacent divisions of the Three-korales, Sabaragamuwa and Kurunegala. The harm done in Four-korales would be greater than that caused elsewhere because the soil already carries a heavy population which maintains itself on the produce of its own fields and chenas, and there is practically no waste land”. Davidson explained that he “decided to issue warnings (1) to the members of the Kelani Valley Planters Association not to buy lands without bringing their intention to my notice and without a certificate of no claim from the Crown (2) to the notaries not to execute deeds conveying more than 50 acres of lands on titles based simply on the assertion of hereditary possession (3) to the villagers not to sell lands. The Governor Ridgeway (who had succeeded Havelock in February of the same year) censured Davidson, considering that while the intention was good, Davidson had used an unproper language referring to planters and kanganis.

Davidson in his diary insisted on his good relations with the planters: “ I met Messrs. Forsythe, Steward, Jones, Kingsford, Brace, Raffin and Oliversand. Despite the press attacks on my conduct in a recent incident, my social relations with the Kelani Valley planters remain as excellent as they always were (…) I shall be curious to see if there is any manifestation when the Kelani Valley Planters Association (KVPA) meets (…)  It is odd considering the abuse reported in the Times to have been showed at me at the meeting of the KVPA of 7 December, that the only communication received by me subsequently should convey the thanks of the Association to my letter”. He recapitulates his actions and underline their results : 18 applications for Certificates of Quiet Possession in the case of Kelani Valley purchases covering 6,000 acres, “letter from Mr. Golledge giving up the attempt to buy behind my back (this attempt was the most serious) and pay directly “30 Rs per acre to those villagers who have spare lands”; notaries being warned, “ the whole land broking middlemen business is at a standstill and one at least of the two notaries will be broken over glaringly bad cases: now the villagers petition for the Certificate and get it readily if they want to sell, and the Certificate just make their lands worth ten times as much” . He recognized that he “greatly appealed to the prejudices of the Four-korales villagers, judging that common sense appeals would not win against the chink of rupees, and that the tone of that appeal was indiscrete and was deservedly censured”. Davidson considered that that his action succeeded in arresting to extension of the land grabbing activities out of the Three-korales ; he added – wishful thinking – that henceforth “now that the mania has subsided, and the methods to be adopted in transfers are recognized by both sides, the extension of the tea industry will proceed on sound lines, only chenas the clearing and opening of which will not destroy the fields, will be sold; only the chenas which the village vendors really own will be sold, only chenas which the pangukarayo in gansabhava decide to be more than they want will be sold, and when sold the chenas will realize 30 Rs per acre, not the Rs 1,71 they did average. The price realized will go to those who really own the lands which are sold. The purchaser will not have to buy off half a dozen different claimants later. The peasantry will still have their fields and arecanut groves as their main source of subsistence and can increase their income or not, as they like, by working on the neighbouring estates and in practice, the Europeanization of the district which we cannot arrest will be made as slow and as easy as possible”.[49]

In July 1897, Davidson was replaced by Bertram Hill and the tone of the official correspondence became purely factual, listing village sales, the names of middlemen, and showing the extension of their activities to the north of the district. Hill commented the lists by these words, which signed the defeat of the interventionist policy of his predecessors: “I am not of opinion that any action is necessary”. In 1897, 8,000 acres “were sold to middlemen or capitalists for tea, and there is no reason to doubt that vendors are as reckless as ever in disposing of lands to which they have insufficient title” and in 1898 “7,500 acres of chena land have been sold by the villagers and 80 acres of gardens, in many cases land was disposed of to which vendors had little or no title”. By the beginning of the 20th century, the demand for tea land in the Kägalla district slowed down: “sale of lands by villagers have been rare” [50]. One of the successors to Hill, E.B. Alexander, produced another piece of wishful thinking (or hypocrisy), praising “the success of the policy pursued by the previous Assistant Government Agents in preventing the villagers selling their lands and jealously resisting the invasion of European capital and the immigration of Tamils, Moormen and Low-country men. It has prevented the swamping of the Kandyans and gave them time to develop their resources gradually. I don’t think that even a boom in rubber would make them fool enough to sacrifice their possessions now”[51]. Actually the rubber boom of the beginning of the century did just that, and the result was a wave of Certificates of Quiet Possession. The power of the plantocracy was to prevail over the attempts of the administration for the next thirty years.

 

Kelani valley planters and the Certificates of Quiet Possession (CQPs) until 1913[52]

In 1897, under the Governor West Ridgeway, to replace or rather supplement the ordinance of 1840, a new Waste Lands ordinance had been enacted, which eventually led to the establishment of a Land settlement department with extensive powers. The failure of the Kägalla settlements was one of the motives for the new legislation, others being the urge to curb the rise of the land grabbing activities by Ceylonese planters, and the provocative attitude of the former civil servant Le Mesurier who played the game of the land grabbers to ruin the authority of government. An added element was that with the abolition of the paddy tax in 1892, it would be impossible in the future for älvi (hill paddy) chena cultivators to prove title to highlands by the production of wattoru. “Since 1890 [sic] the tax on all fine grain has been abolished and ord. 12 of 1840 sect. 6 can no longer be used as a test of private right to chena land. It has been customary here to admit the right of villagers to clear chena under 20 years of age when they can prove that they have paid tax for a certain portion of them. Clearings of chenas under 20 years of growth are not reported to the kachcheri. Mr. Booth in his settlements allowed three times the extent shewn in the claimants’ wattoru as private to make up for the absence of wattoru for amu and kurakkan [millets]”. The local agents pleaded for a settlement of the district with the new tool at their disposal: “obvious advantages would be gained by defining once and for all the at present vague and debatable limits of Crown rights (…) The findings of the Assistant Government Agent or the payment of a fine is no evidence of the Crown title in a civil proceeding and even the admission of a claimant would not bind others, for villagers frequently dispose of a chena to which they have a real or imaginary right to planters and low country Sinhalese speculators who have not the Kandyan’s respect for the law (…) The policy of systematic settlement has long been recognized in this district. Mr. Booth has been engaged in work in Beligal korale and Kelani valley as a Forest settlement officer. Mr Ievers and the other AGAs have made settlements of whole villages. Questions of title arise daily and the same Crown is gone over again and again (…) Unless a special officer is detailed for duty in this district, the complete settlement will be the work of years; a beginning should however be made, and the existing policy continued under the protection of the new ordinance”[53].

However the colonial administration was unwilling to apply the new ordinance to the Kägalla district: on a mild interpretation one might justify it because it was too late to control village land sales, and because enquiries at the village level would be time consuming ; I would rather suggest, on the basis of the documentation available, that it was avoided because it would affect British planters and expose the profits derived from the mechanism of land speculation, in the context of the rubber boom which impacted a large area comprising the west of Ratnapura district, the east of Kalutara district, the whole of the Kägalla district and the borders between the Kurunegala and Matale districts.  The process of acquisition of village highlands for the planting enterprise was subsumed under a profitable business of appropriation of land value by a succession of intermediaries. When the stakes were high, huge profits could be cashed, but it required the concurrence of influential legal firms to obtain certificates from the administration which could enable the entrepreneurs to float big companies on the London sterling market: only the British-funded managing agencies were able to do that. The CQPs enhanced the value of the land and gave the estate openers access to the British share market. They were therefore eagerly sought after, with the assistance of local and Colombo lawyers. These ‘settlements by CQP’s[54] were therefore preferred as a novel manner of obtaining lands by planters after the failure of the block chena settlements and the forest settlements, in a context of heavy demand first for tea, and in a second phase for rubber land.

The settlements under CQPs in the Kägalla district dealt after 1897 with three categories of village lands purchased by outsiders: 1. lands of the village block recognized as belonging to villagers under chena settlements;  2. lands allowed for chena cultivation by villagers under forest settlements; 3.unsettled lands. A first series of CQPs concerned lands purchased to extend the estates sold by the Crown for tea in the late 80s and early 90s in Three-korales and Lower Bulatgama. A second series concerns lands sold in the Four-korales, most of them in Beligal korale, especially during the first rubber boom (first decade of the 20th century). The last series concerns the sales in the Kälerata after 1910, but in that case the system was generally replaced by settlement under the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897, and monitored by the Land settlement department.

The history of the systematic and massive use of the CQPs as a mode of settlement with planters who had purchased land from villagers started with the outcome of the Davidson circular affair: he advised the Kelani Valley planters who had purchased village lands to ask for CQPs. A list of the CQP demands in the district at the date of January 1897 was prepared, covering 7,889 acres[55]. Some ‘openers’ were more active than others in the game: J.A. McAlistair for Pannila-Imbulpitiya and Urapola (1,140 acres), J. Patterson for Polpitiya and Punugala (630 acres) and Seymour Luce Harries, a close associate of W. Forsythe, who had purchased lands in ten villages, with a total of 2,513 acres, forming the Sapumalkande group; Kahanavita (123 acres), a block settled village, entirely sold, Hatnagala (355 acres), Lakmana (400 acres), a nindagama of the decadent Eheliyagodas totally dismembered later between Yogama estate (J.P. Anderson), Rangegama estate, Woodend estate, Panawatta (464 acres) a part of Udaramba which was the subject of ample information and was block settled, Talapitiya (241 acres) not settled, Dikella (83 acres), Kudagama (208 acres) another Eheliyagoda nindagama, Uda Yogama (173 acres) block settled by Ievers, Maha Oya (210 acres), Walpola (256 acres) block settled. 

A section of the administration objected to the easy delivery of CQPs. The Surveyor General wrote to the Government Agent Sabaragamuwa in 1899[56] : “In many cases, applications for CQPs are not bona fide, the real object being to secure Crown land and I therefore trust that some checks will be provided on applications for survey of this nature”. At the same time, the rationale behind the Forest settlements of Booth was questioned by the authorities in the case of Bambarabotuwa, Madampe and Gilimale villages (located in the nearby Ratnapura district) where a quantity of chenas were sold from 1901 onwards, after the Crown had abandoned its rights to highlands in former gabadagam by letter of 14.05.1897. In October 1903, the Controller of Revenue F.R. Ellis (1849-1915) underlined the urgency to decide on the issue in the Ratnapura district where the demand for land was enormous. He considered that by the decision to allow chena cultivation the Crown lost its authority on land, keeping a purely theoretical ownership of high lands and could no longer prevent the villagers from disposing of their chena lands, and that the Forest settlement blocked any attempt at permanent cultivation : “No house can be built, no garden can be made, the chena if irrigable cannot even be converted into a paddy field. A chena it is, a chena it must remain (…)  The settlement is an effective and complete bar to improvement of any kind”.

The new governor, Henry Arthur Blake (December 1903-July 1907) undertook to review the land policy of his predecessors in the context of a booming demand of land for rubber cultivation. He expressed his opinion in a minute (9.12.1903) which can be considered as a master text of the colonial policy: “It appears to me that the question to be first decided is: do we wish to encourage or to repress individualism? The village system seems to me so far as I can judge by the reading of these papers akin to collectivism, and the proposed reservation of Crown lands with chena rights is as Mr. Ellis points out a bar to all progress. I do not know enough practically to offer a valuable opinion, but it appears to me that the speculator is a bugbear that loses its stems on close examination. What if he does buy the land for a song from a village community? He takes the land out of the unprogressive system of primitive civilization and endorses it with the magic of individual ownership. Without cultivation it is useless to him and it may be expected that permanent crop will take the place of the wasteful exhaustion of the communal system (…) No matter how produced, I think each additional cacao or coconut tree is an addition to the wealth of the island, and even though the speculator may disproportionately prosper, the island at large is a gainer”.

His subordinates were more cautious. The Colonial secretary (Im Thurn) made the following comment: “We do nothing to prevent the speculator from acquiring the land legitimately. It is only his illegitimate acquisition of land, say from one member of the community, to which we object. Moreover even legitimate acquisition on anything like a large scale would saddle us with a peasantry unattached to any land, which is always a bad thing”. Ellis added: “What H.E. says is quite true (…) Two questions however have to be considered : 1- the speculator, if he cannot purchase the villager’s chena at a nominal figure, will buy Crown land at a fair price : the Crown thereby secures a double advantage : it promotes progress and increases the revenue which is devoted to the advancement of the island in other respects; only one of these ends is attained by allowing the purchase of chenas 2- why do we give the villager a chena ? because his paddy field is insufficient to provide him and his family with maintenance ; what then will the villager do when the speculator has obtained possession of the village chena ? he must either undergo the privation from which the chena was intended to forestall him, or he must cultivate Crown chenas either with or without permit, most probably the latter ; he may be prosecuted and punished, but we have already seen in the North Central Province how formidable passive resistance may become ; the only way of avoiding this is to discourage for the present at all events the sale of these lands (…) If the sale of these lands are recognized, speculators will begin to buy in the whole waste land of the island ; only a small portion will be cultivated, the rest will be held on the deeds executed until the price of land rises and they will be sold at a large profit”[57].

During the following years, Ellis continued to deprecate the easy issue of CQPs[58]: “the only safe title is that based on purchase from the Crown. Cases in which land has been bought from villagers must be decided on their own merits but it is not as a rule intended to issue CQPs. Government does not feel called upon to supplement the titles which capitalists have considered sufficiently strong to justify investment as the land has probably been bought under its value on account of the weakness of the title”. But the pro-planter lobby – the Planter’s Association, the big Managing agencies and firms of lawyers – successfully stifled the move, probably with the support of governor Blake. In any case, the aim of the colonial administration was no longer to prevent land sales by villagers, but to make the planters pay to the exchequer a share of the value of the land by raising the requirements for issuing CQPs.

In Kägalla, the Assistant government agents who succeeded Hill, especially E.B. Alexander, had close relations with the planters and were ready to encourage rubber development without objections: “In Three-korales and Lower Bulatgama, Mr. L. Bayly is negotiating for the purchase of 400 acres of private jungle at Lewalla, and Mr. Harries has bought 400 acres near Deraniyagala, 100 acres at Walpola and 150 acres at Mahinkanda for rubber cultivation. The private title in all these cases is sound. The Ratemahatmaya reports that there is a large demand for land suitable for rubber cultivation”[59]. Vaughan, another agent, wrote in 1906: “In every part of the district except in Galboda and Kinigoda, considerable extents of high land have been sold by the villagers to planters for rubber cultivation, and will no doubt effect a marked change in the ordinary Kandyan village. The villagers have not as yet taken to selling their fields and gardens, and so long as they do not part with them, the replacing of the chenas by rubber estates will I think on the whole prove beneficial” [60].

The attribution of CQPs was simple when the chena settlements had recognized as private all the highlands of a village. Near Patberiya, the Vahumpura hamlet of Kotunna[61], recognized entirely private by Ievers settlement, was sold by villagers, share by share, in 1896-1898, to the usual group of land speculators, Karpen Chetty, Don Salomon Appuhami, K.A.D. John Perera, and C.J.R. Marshall. They asked for a CQP in late 1905, and resold in November 1906 to the Durampitiya Rubber Company. The government admitted 179 acres as private by settlement, but asked payment for 72 acres not covered. The Assistant Agent Stevenson in a comprehensive memo on the attribution of CQPs in the district (27.11.1907) pointed out that it was the rule to charge only 10 Rs an acre for CQPs “where the AGA is satisfied that the transaction is bona fide and where the consideration paid is thought as adequate (but) it is only recently that cases of chena lands sold by villagers to European planters have been taken up for settlement and CQPs issued on payment of 10 Rs an acre for Crown claims. Before 1905, the practice here was to recommend issue of CQPs for all chena blocks without any payment”.  

When the chena settlements were more complex or when there had been no settlements, the colonial administration, willingly or not, took the side of the planters rather than of that of the villagers. We give here the details for some of these villages, in which were often involved three leading planters of Atulugam korale, William Forsythe, Seymour Luce Harries, and J.P. Anderson. In that area, the sparse population was often settled in small villages dominated by one lineage belonging to the Goyigama caste, considered since the time of the kings as land owner, so long as it rendered  services such as clearing the roads, hosting and feeding the Dissawe (provincial governor) in visit, and assisting in the elephant kraals. Such a domain was called gamwasama and its chief, the gamladda or gamarala, could employ pelkarayo to cultivate his chenas, and got only a very small proportion of the crop, but the pelkarayo had not to perform any service to him as in a nindagama. The special status of the gamladda was recognized by the other villagers and the headmen, as being the result of a will of the Dissawe, but there were no formal documents, and the colonial administration was at a loss to define the rights of each claimant. Most of these villages, such as Udarambe, Walpola, Wattegedara, Maldeniya, Digala, Pannila, Kehelwala and Udabage, were located at the periphery of the large blocks sold for tea plantations after the block settlements of Ievers, many had not been settled, and they attracted the greed of land speculators, especially of S.L. Harries, who employed as middlemen tavern keepers and bazaar traders.

Udarambe (Uda Arambe) and Panawatte[62] were two small Goyigama villages on the south bank of the Kelani Ganga. Land sales to planters started early, in 1874, and the Pennycuick settlement of 1877 allowed many chenas to the villagers, who sold them with the connivance of local headmen. In October 1897, S.L. Harries who had acquired before the notary C.J.A. Marshall of Avissawella 453 acres of land (actually, shares) from various low country, Kandyan and Muslim middlemen, asked for a CQP from Bertram Hill, the successor of Davidson. Harries pretended that according to the villagers, the whole village of Udarambe had been settled ‘by Ievers’ as private, while the village of Walpola had been taken by the Crown (and later sold to the planters).  In a private letter (26.10.1897) written to his ‘Dear Hill’ he asked him to lend him the local chena plan (which was refused). In a second letter (7.03.1898), he told his ‘Dear Hill’: “Do you think you can arrange to get me one CQP for the whole lot, Panawatte and Udarambe? They all join each other and there should be no difficulty as regards Udarambe as it is entirely chena lands. I wish you could help me in this matter as my partner Mr. Forsythe is going home in April and is very anxious to have all the deeds fixed up before he leaves”. ‘Going home’ was the grand affair of these colonial entrepreneurs whose business it was to have their plantations taken up by sterling companies with unassailable deeds…

In April 1898, he asked for a further CQP for 66 acres already planted in tea in the locality of Panawatta. In June 1898, the chief headman Meedeniya reported that Udarambe was not a settled village contrary to what Harries pretended, and the CQP was refused because the plan was inexact. In December 1900, Harries wrote again to his ‘Dear Hill’ to ask him to expedite the CQP: “I want to get it very much before I go home in January and if you can hurry it up for me I shall be greatly obliged to you. Do please try and let me have the CQP this month without fail [in text] as the non-receipt of it may very seriously inconvenience me. I am sorry to trouble you but if you can do this for me you will really be doing me a very great favour and I trust you will arrange it for me.” He insisted in a last letter dated 16.12.1900: “Mind in those hard times one does not get a chance of a sale every day, and if I don’t get a CQP I shall lose my chance of selling”. Hill finally wrote to the Government Agent and the Surveyor General in favour of Harries.

Between 1905 and 1907, A.B. Smeaton (who succeeded Harries), acting for the Panawatte Tea and Rubber Company, added a request for a further CQP concerning a series of lands (431 acres including a few acres of gardens) in Panawatte already planted in rubber which were not included in the first CQP; they had been sold by the same middleman, Kolonda Kader Thamby, with the usual numerous sale and resale of shares to fortify title, effected between 1.06.1895 and 7.11.1905, in most cases before C.J.A. Marshall.  The middleman had himself acquired some shares of the land from the Gamarallage people of Udaramba who were indebted to him. The CQP was supposed to extinguish the claims of those villagers who had not or pretended not to have sold their shares.

Walpola[63] was a small Goyigama hilly village of Atulugam, between Dehiowita and Deraniyagala, which had been sold to the Sapumalkande estate after having been settled by Ievers, partly by the Crown, partly by the gamladda who claimed a portion of it as a gamwasama. Village chenas were sold by the gamladda family from 1891 onwards to Kader Thamby, who resold to Harries. In 1906, the Agent, Stevenson, proposed to give him a CQP on very easy terms. Six years later Smeaton, successor to Harries at Sapumalkande, purchased land from Kader Thamby who had got it from the gamladda, before the notary C.J.A. Marshall, and although all the shares had not been purchased, the CQP was given free of charge….

Pelellegama [64], located close to Udarambe was settled by Pennycuick in 1877; the village lands (25 acres) were not demarcated from the Crown lands (78 acres) and the villagers had not respected the settlement: “they regularly cultivated the chenas, and obtained wattorus for land before declared Crown”  S.L. Harries wanted to extend his Maha Oya estate: he employed a Muslim, Ana Lebbe, as intermediary, and purchased “all the village”. Ellis wrote in a memo dated  2.12.1904 : “the case is a typical one and the same procedure can be adopted when the circumstances are similar (…) it was impossible to protect the Crown land (…) there was no correspondence between the plan with dotted lines of Pennycuick and the actual extent (…) It is I think worth taking some trouble to meet Mr. Harries views because he has adopted the course which is desirable that all planters should adopt before buying lands. Sales by villagers have been checked if not stopped, settlements have been completed, Crown land paid for, and the present case shows that planters are prepared to take up a fair and reasonable attitude. This should I think be encouraged in every way”. In this case, the government decided to give him not a CQP, but a Crown grant without guaranteeing the title against the village claimants : 25 acres gratis, 78 acres at 10 Rs an acre, and forest at 20 Rs an acre  “it is understood that you undertake to settle native claims to any portion of the area in question”. Harries, not content to be given this Crown grant, tried to evade the payment of survey fees (180 Rs) and the government answered that the private plans were often ‘grossly inaccurate’. He sold his estate in 1906.

Wattegedara[65] was another gamwasama, close to the small Deraniyagala town, purchased by S.L. Harries. The Controller of Revenue, Ellis, considered the case as a test in his attempts to control land grabbing in Atulugam korale and led himself the inquiry in November 1904. The testimonies of the villagers give a precise image of the peasant economy and society. According to Ellis, it is the issue of CQPs on easy terms by the Assistant agent Vaughan “which started the whole business”. The village was unsettled; it had been founded in the 18th century by two brothers in law who married two daughters of the local gamarala. Their sons either married in binna (uxorilocally) or in polyandry. Their descendants at the third generation sold their shares in 1895, and some left the village. The middlemen, Domingo Perera and Joseph Peris, resold to K.D. John Perera who resold to S.L. Harries, while Bastian de Silva sold to another planter, on the basis of an arrangement of 1897. Harries, with the support of Mideniya, the chief headman, argued that the special status of a gamwasama gave to its owner the full property of its highlands, while Ellis considered that the Crown had retained its rights, and asked Harries to pay for the lands.

Padugama[66] was another a small unsettled village where S.L. Harries purchased land for Polatagama estate: the village  (172 acres including 34 acres of forest, 6 of gardens, 3 of owitas) was sold to him by Edwin Francis Mapitigama (then korala of Galboda) at the rate of 40 Rs per acre, and the CQP was issued to the planter at the rate of 10 Rs per acre for the areas not covered by wattoru. But villagers who had planted trees on supposed Crown land in the same village were required to pay at half improved value between 25 and 100 Rs per acre.  When the Settlement department took up the area in 1933 the village was “extensively planted up in old rubber by estate companies and there is not much land left to settle”. The double standards of the colonial administration are evident, and CQP just like the previous systems of settlement was open to corruption especially because the correspondence between the wattoru and the actual lands was, like in the first chena settlements, ascertained by headmen and kacceri clerks who could be bribed to expedite the matter, to admit forged wattoru, or to alter a decision[67].

Further south, Pukunuwala[68] was a very small Goyigama village in the interior of Panawal korale, in the heart of what was to become one of the largest estates of the Kelani Valley, the Pambagama alias Sunnygama group. Its alienation to planters became the subject of several cases involving W. Forsythe and big planting interests. Contrary to Pelellegama, the village was not settled under the chena settlement nor the forest settlement. Pambagama estate began to purchase it in 1898 from the Ranwila Vidanelage family and a CQP was issued in 1900 without serious enquiry. In further reports, it appeared that Ekneligoda, the former chief headman, and the decayed aristocratic Eheliyagoda family were involved from the beginning together with various other middlemen. In 1917 the final purchasers of Pukunuwala (the Pambagama estate and J.P. Anderson for the Panawatte Tea and Rubber company) were refused a CQP by the Settlement officer Fox, who criticized the laxity of the local administration (report dated 10.09.1917):  “Settlement of large extents of land in the Kegalle district should not in my opinion be recommended except after personal inspection of the lands by the Assistant Government Agent (…) He has not carried back the title completely to the original title by inheritance as desired by government (…) the planting of rubber began in 1912, that is before Panawatte Tea and Rubber Estate had any interest in any of the lots (…) Neither the Government Agent nor his assistant has made out any case for settling any part of the land to Mr. Anderson”. He concluded that it was unadvisable to recommend the settlement of these lands to J.P. Anderson, and asked for the detailed notarial deeds to check the extents given in the documents. After years of litigation, in which the interests of the planters were defended by the legal firm of De Sarams, the Controller of Revenue was compelled to accept a settlement: in a letter dated 10.03.1919,  he wrote to the Colonial secretariat: “About two weeks ago, Mr. W. Forsythe, who has recently returned from England and is the principal director of the Sunnygama Co., interviewed me on the subject of his claim which is now being dealt with in the District court Kegalle 4944. Mr. Forsythe stated that it was not his wish that his Company should litigate with Government and suggested that the question of a settlement should be considered. From the Solicitor general I learnt that the evidence was not at all favourable to the Crown case. There are wattoru which cover portions of each of the 4 chenas involved”. As a result, Forsythe had an interview with the Controller of Revenue, the Settlement Officer and the Solicitor General, and of course in such cases, a gentleman agreement was found and the case was dropped…. Finally out of the 64 acres, 56 were sold by government at 75 Rs per acre [the villagers had been paid about 24 Rs an acre] “It was understood that this settlement is in no way to act as a precedent to the settlement of other claims either by Mr. Forsythe or anyone else but that each such case must be settled on its own merits”.

Dulgalla, Narangalla, Denawakawatta, and Kendawe, in the Bulatkopitiya area, were solid Duraya villages whose chenas, regularly cultivated, but interspersed with small forested areas, had been admitted private in various settlements by the end of the 19th century[69]. With the rubber boom of the early 20th century the villagers progressively abandoned chena cultivation and sold their lands to a middleman (Arnolis Baas) who acted for the planter R.H. Brodie, linked with Finlay Muir and Aitken Spence firms, and locally represented by the lawyer Philip Ondaatje; there were more than 100 notarial deeds. In 1908-1910, a CQP was asked for 758 acres, but as all the shares had not been purchased and as the wattoru produced covered only 100 acres, the government was unwilling to give a certificate. The investors in London (The Doolgalla Rubber Estates Ltd) became nervous and asked De Sarams to intervene, and the Crown finally refused to deliver a CQP but instead delivered a grant in January 1914 with a special provision refusing to guarantee the purchaser against possible claims of a third party, for the sum of 9,268 Rs. This form of settlement distinct from the CQP system became frequent when the legal status of the land had been entangled by numerous sales. The administration attempted to compel the planters to purchase all the shares and protect the weaker members of the village society.

In the same area, Lewala, Wegalla, and Welatuduwa were also Duraya chena villages totaling 2,362 acres, which had been settled by the Booth Forest settlement. Three years before, in 1889, Wace, as Government agent Sabaragamuwa, had attracted to these villages the attention of W. Forsythe who was himself connected with J.P. Anderson[70]. In their reports on the forest settlement (5.04.1892 and 8.08.1892), M.B. Ekneligoda and L.W. Booth established that “the Crown does not claim any of the chenas in those villages, the growth of jungle on which is less than 20 years; the chenas belong to the villagers and have been cultivated by them and by their ancestors for generations”. The control was limited to the small patches of forest scattered all over the highlands, and to älvi cultivation (taxed at the rate of 1/14th when notice was given in advance, or 1/10th if not). The villagers were submitted to services in the time of the Kandyan kings, but since the British accession they were owners of their lands without any conditions, as in any koralegama. They had proved title to 1,305 acres of chenas and owitas, 95 acres of gardens and 53 acres of paddy fields, so that only 908 acres of scattered forests were reserved to the Crown by settlement. As a result, the situation was not conductive to the formation of a large estate in compact block from Crown sales, but as all the chenas had been recognized private, and as the attention of land speculators had been attracted to the area, the villagers began to sell their highlands to J.P. Anderson, before any survey was done, so that it appeared that about 100 acres of reserved forests had been planted with rubber in 1899.  In the highlands of Urumiwela, another Duraya village close by, 600 acres were similarly purchased through a Muslim middleman by William Forsythe and planted in 1902.  Between 1899 and 1903, the case was shelved, and when it was reopened it appeared that a part of the so-called forest was in reality chena with tax receipts. In August 1908, a CQP was applied for by J.P. Anderson with the project of integrating Lewala and Urumiwella lands into a group (1,081 acres), and the certificate was issued at the pressing request of Anderson in April 1910 on easy terms: as a result, the Grand Central Rubber company was incorporated in July 1910[71].

 

The struggle between the planters and the administration over CQPs (1913 to 1926)[72]

The above mentioned cases must be understood in the context of a shift in the land policy of the district: with the support of the Land Settlement officers and the Controller of Revenue, two Assistant Agents, Codrington (July 1911 to July 1914) and Burden (July 1914 to July 1917), attempted to clear up the backlog of CQP cases, in a context of pressure exerted by the demand for rubber land in the populated areas of the district. Most of the new plantations partly or entirely made up of village chenas since the beginning of the century were located in Four-korales, and after the Crown decided in 1916 to cease selling land, there was a further rush to purchase village chena lands, which continued until 1927 [73]: “There is a great demand of land for rubber planting but there is very little Crown land available for sale. Large areas of unsettled chena lands and lands allowed for chena cultivation are being bought by capitalists with a view to obtaining a settlement with the Crown. Numerous complaints have been received from the villagers with regard to these purchases. It is not an unusual thing for a capitalist to buy up a few shares of land and then clear the whole land. The only remedy is a vigorous campaign of block survey and settlement, but unfortunately (sic) this does not seem likely to materialize in the near future”.

In a memorandum dated 4.09.1913, Codrington listed the plantations in the Four-korales “owners of which should be called upon to produce deeds” : Arandara Estate (Kottepola, Boyagama), Ambanpitiya estate, Asideniyewatta (Balapane), Higgoda (Lahupone), Markville (Alawatura), Atale estate, Puspane estate, Panane estate,  Pallegama estate, Mayfair (Algama), Etna estate (Etnawala), Barrington (Kempitiya), Yatiwela, Kovilakanda (Mahantegama), Mahaganga (Dodantale), Mattamagoda, Kannatota, Algoda, Denakantota, Gonagama, Maragalla, Hendagama, Debatgama estate, Gankorahene estate (Makure), Paranagama, Uduangama, Gantune, Yatideriya estate (Wadiyakanda, Kudelanpota), Dickella and Godapollawatta (Paragammana), Loolpola estate, Narangalla estate, Hatbawe (Rambukkana). The three largest estates made up of village lands in that area, Madeniya (Dorawaka), Golinda (Haloluwa) and Karandupone, were not mentioned in this first list. They appeared later in the list made by Burden in 1916 of pending cases, with the names of the legal firms involved:  Kempitiya (167 acres, De Sarams), Digala (111 acres, De Sarams), Karandupone (231 acres, De Sarams and Ondaatje), Lewala (60 acres De Sarams), Walpola (152 acres, De Sarams), Kapuella (236 acres, Whittals), Berannawa (217 acres, Ondaatje) , Golinda (337 acres, Ondaatje), Bodawela (126 acres), Udahenkanda (345 acres, De Sarams), Meneripitiya + Patberiya (226 acres, Whittals).

The Kägalla lawyer Philip Ondaatje (himself the owner of Godapolla estate) had been entrusted by the proprietors of several estates, including Karandupone and Golinda, to represent them, and he discussed the matter in April 1914 with Codrington and Thaine (the Government Agent of Sabaragamuwa). In continuation of this interview, he defended in a letter of 9.04.1915 arguments which Albert Alfred Wickremesinghe, another local lawyer, the proprietor of Madeniya estate, later developed in a booklet published in 1924[74]: “The rights of the villagers in chena lands, provided that they have not developed into forests (i.e. where growth on it is over 20 years) have been recognized since the British occupation of the Kandyan districts. For instance in this district, the majority of land cases heard and decided in courts are suits in which the title to highlands or chenas are in issue (…) Further, on writs issued from the courts, chena lands belonging to judgment debtors are seized and after due notice and publication sold in satisfaction of writs. Thereafter fiscal’s conveyances are granted to purchasers under the hand and seal of the Government Agents. It cannot therefore be urged that these adjudications (…) are in respect of lands to which suitors have no title (…) In this district, the Government has recognized the rights of the villagers and estate proprietors by acquiring the same for public purposes (railway lines, hospitals…)” “The title to most estates in this district will be found to be partly by purchase from the Crown, and partly by purchase from the villagers, the Crown generally putting up for sale forest lands by public auction and when they have been acquired by estates, these estates proceed to buy up intervening blocks of highlands or chenas which government has not put up for sale by reason of these lands belonging to or being in possession of the villagers”. Ondaatje omitted to mention the case of estates made up exclusively of village lands, such as Golinda, Madeniya and Karandupone. He quoted the Administration reports of Hill, Vaughan and Alexander as a recognition by the administration that “when chena cultivation can be proved within the last 20 years the land is allowed as private”, and added that in some districts the soil being not favourable to the cultivation of älvi, and the other grains not being taxed (“by some oversight or mistake”), no wattoru were available to prove title under ordinance 12 of 1840; with the abolition of the paddy tax in 1892, the ordinance of 1840 became invalid: “the abolition of the tax has the unforeseen and immoral effect of confiscating to the Crown all the highlands and chenas in the Kandyan provinces after a lapse of 20 years after 1892”. He finally asked what proof of possession could be accepted in lieu of wattoru “on behalf of the estates noticed and also Golinda and Karandupone estates”. The Assistant Agent answered that he was not prepared to reopen the question.

Then the legal firm De Sarams, acting for the Managing Agency Whittalls and Co, sent a letter (3.05.1916) recalling the arguments of Ondaatje, requesting the administration to give them CQPs under the same conditions as heretofore and criticizing the publication in the Government Gazette of ‘Sale and Settlement’ notices (which might encourage “possibly frivolous and vexatious claims, the enquiry into which may delay and embarrass the issue of CQPs.”), adding that the question of the relations between estates and third parties was not the affair of Government. In his diary, the Assistant Agent Burden recognized the contradictions of the land policy[75]: “The whole difficulty of chena CQP settlements is due to the fact that it is not possible to decide what are Crown and what private chenas without a survey (…) If government insists on its own legal rights it will make estate owners very shy of opening up fresh chena lands and therefore the development of the district will be severely prejudiced (…) There is one aspect of the question which is of some interest : the fact that the estates buy up many hundreds of acres of chena lands paying the villagers a fair price [sic] before applying for a CQP prevents any contest or disagreement between government and villagers regarding the chenas which the Crown may be found to have a legal right to (…) In view of the complicated state of the chena question (…) coupled with the desirability of encouraging the opening up of chena lands in permanent cultivation, it is expedient that the terms of settlement offered be no harsher than they have hitherto been.”

In his official report (15.08.1916)[76], Burden reviewed the general question of private chenas from the legal point of view, stating against Ondaatje that a fiscal sale transferred no property right but the debtor’s title, good or bad, and that it was too late to argue against the non-taxation of amu and kurakkan. He added critical remarks regarding the laxity of CQP settlements with the planters: “it would be natural to expect that the Crown claims would have been more strictly enforced. This however was not the case and I find [in settlements] prior to 1905 that the fact that chena was under 20 years of age was considered sufficient grounds for allowing private title”. Until 1905, CQPs were given out without reference to the central authorities (i.e. the Controller of Revenue and Colonial Secretary), and on the simple testimony of the chief headmen, who had all facilities to influence the result. After that date, the ordinance 12 of 1840 was adhered to and the planter made to pay about 15 Rs an acre for chena lands without taking into account the fact that the growth was under or above 20 years. But the ordinance was not clear regarding the date of the cultivation and the proof of limits. The wattoru lists were discontinued only in 1911, although the paddy tax was abolished in 1892: “It was clearly wrong to admit these lists after 1892. After the repeal of the tax there was no incentive to put in false extents as cleared. These lists after 1892 therefore show larger extents than the earlier lists. Now these recent wattoru are no longer accepted, and when chenas of the same name appear more than once only one wattoruwa is recognized as proof, while in the older CQPs all the wattoru were added of whatever date! The equivalent to one amunam is now 4 acres and not 8 acres as formerly (…) In 1878 at the time of Mr. Ievers report the value of chena lands was only 2 Rs per acre; with a chena land at this price, strict settlement was not a matter of importance. But with chena lands at 40 Rs per acre, it is obvious that a lenient settlement may mean considerable loss to revenue”.

Lahupone village provides a documented example of such a laxity in the delivery of CQPs, by the exploitation in this case of the flaws of the Forest settlement, which had recognized 255 acres of chenas and gardens as private on the basis of wattoru, but had failed to demarcate its boundaries[77]. Between 1902 and 1905, Vaughan, the Assistant Agent, who considered that “the best way of dealing with these old settlements awaiting final proclamation is to survey merely the unclaimed land and proclaim it”, had sold two small plots to the well-known land speculator and estate opener D. Fairweather, who asked him what was the status of the surrounding lands; he answered that they were all private, and on the basis of this assertion Fairweather undertook to purchase them to form the Higgoda rubber estate which became the property of the Kegalle Rubber Company, a director of which was W.W. Mitchell (now Sir William) another big planter above mentioned in several cases, and the representative of the mercantile community at the Legislative council.  In 1912-1913, Codrington on the basis of the deeds which covered areas outside the 255 acres allotted to the villagers, proposed to make the estate pay at the rate of 100 Rs an acre for the excess lands. At that stage Mitchell interviewed Booth, then acting Colonial Secretary, and Fox, then Settlement officer, to challenge the rate, and during his enquiry at Kägalla in April 1913 Fox was shown by Ondaatje the letter written by Vaughan in 1905 “which must have encouraged the predecessor in title of the Company to buy from the villagers the land for which the Crown now demands 100 Rs an acre”. As a result the CQP was issued at 15 Rs an acre… but the authorities were not concerned with the rate payed to the villagers.

In the case of Kempitiya estate[78], opened by two speculators, Hawke and Siebel, in the 1890s, and sold in 1911 by them to a company, Hatbawe rubber estates Ltd, the Settlement officer Fox demanded that the lands be put up for sale instead of being given a CQP, because the wattoru produced were forgeries and all the rights of the shareholders had not been purchased. The legal firm De Sarams argued that “the Crown is not concerned in any question that may arise as to title between third parties and the Company” and that “the means for ascertaining [villager’s] claims by the advertisement of the Company’s lands constitutes a slander of the company’s title (…) The company claims a right to have a CQP granted upon due enquiry, but without any suggestion or invitation to third parties to put forward what may be frivolous or/and vexatious claims leading also to unnecessary delay”: the company needed a quick CQP to fortify its title and complete the payment to its vendors.

Meneripitiya[79], a large Batgama village located at the limit of Panawal, was the theater of an intense speculation which led to the formation of a plantation belonging to the Grand Central Rubber Company.  The land broker was a Muslim, Lebbe Sinna Podian, late town aracci of Parakaduwa, the large local bazaar, and the acts were certified by Marshall. In order to obtain a CQP, the services of De Sarams and Ondaatje were required, but the administration was reticent to deliver the precious sesame.  In a letter dated 5.11.1912, De Sarams wrote: “All the deeds are deposited in safe custody at a bank here; the deeds are several thousands in number”: a precious collection! The case dragged on and was finally submitted to the Settlement Officer by letter of the Government Agent of  Sabaragamuwa (25.06.1919) “in view of the tricky attitude taken up by this company which asks for a concession and then interprets a proposal made by the Government Agent discountenanced by the Controller of Revenue to grant them more favourable terms (…) all the Ratemahatmayas will be instructed to report forthwith with any clearings of chena lands made by this Company so that prohibitory actions may be taken against them forthwith. They will also report whether they are undertaking any negotiations for the purchase of chena lands in your district”. The Settlement Officer Fox answered (5.11.1919): “Each case must be dealt with on its own merits. When the Pambagama case was settled it was stipulated that the settlement was not to be treated as a precedent for the settlement of other cases”. The CQP was finally issued at 100 Rs per acre.

Boralankada[80] was a sparsely populated hilly Vahumpura village (700 acres) which had been chena surveyed in 1877 but had not been settled nor included in a forest reserve. It became the hunting ground of several land grabbers trying to build up title by purchasing shares from the various members of the Manannalage family, descendants of the founder of the village. A CQP was asked in 1897 by a local planter, Smeaton, to whom a Muslim middleman offered 71 acres adjoining his estate, but there was an adverse claim which led the planter to apply for another CQP in 1905, by the intermediary of Marshall, the notary and proctor of the Kelani valley planters, while a third party, a Sinhalese entrepreneur, Simon Baas, tried to encroach on the same lands. A second attack was led on a larger scale by J.C. Mitchell (Sir William’s son) of Degalessa estate for the Sapumalkande rubber company. He employed in 1914 as land broker one Aron Fernando of Karawanella to purchase land belonging to the Manannalage family, but over a disagreement Fernando instead sold the lands in 1916 to a local Muslim, S.M. Mohammadu Lebbe, who asked for a CQP which was refused by the administration in 1921. The case was finally taken up on behalf of J.C. Mitchell by A. A. Wickremesinghe, the Kägalla lawyer, who in November 1923 produced a detailed report based on a complete genealogy of the Manannalage family showing the shares of each member, and on an exhaustive list of some 40 land transactions by them to several successive outsiders with the object of ‘fortifying title’ and resulting in a jungle of intertwined acts.

The case of Berannawa signaled the decline of the CQP system of settlement. Berannawa was a small village of chena cultivators up in the upper We Oya valley, surrounded by the Dolosbage/Yakdessa estates. (Kandaloya, Halgolla and others). It was populated by people locally considered as Väddas and the name of the country, Yakdessa, points to its place in the representation of the region as the abode of demons [81]. These peasants were free from any service to the kings, provincial governors and local chiefs, because the area was of little economic and strategic value, and they could keep their high status of hunters and forest people. The village was registered in the Service Tenures Register as a gamwasama, (a nindagama without services), although it did does not appear in the lists of the Commissioner, and was later considered as a koralegama. The case was taken up in 1912 by the erudite Assistant Government Agent Codrington, who relied on the Settlement Officer Fox expertise rather than that of the chief headman Mideniya before giving out a CQP[82]. Two planters, Arthur Watt and W. Russell Scott had requested a CQP for 263 acres purchased from the villagers “for an adequate price”, upon wattoru which after enquiry by the Ratemahatmaya were considered to cover half the area, 133 acres. The sale was realized through two intermediaries who purchased from villagers and happened to be minor officials: Hendryk Appu (a low country man), aracci of Dombepola, and Brampi Appuhami, registrar, and Ondaatje was employed by the planters to sort the case and collect wattoru. The Land Settlement Department insisted in a long exchange of correspondence on personal inspection and checking of the Ratemahatmaya’s reports; this being done the area covered by wattoru was reduced to 82 acres: the difference was therefore the profit expected by the planters. Mideniya apologized, explaining that it was a ‘clerical error’.

 

The formation of Karandupona, Madeniya and Golinda estates

The formation of these large estates in the populated and easily accessible parts of the Kägalla district at a relatively late date raises a series of questions, which the documents available cannot entirely answer. In each case, it appears that the erratic administration of the land legislation, and the failure of the Booth Forest settlement, opened the way to the appropriation of extensive areas with the concourse of astute lawyers, and that the long delays in making surveys and taking up the CQP applications resulted in a sort of settlement by prescription.   

Located close to Kägalla town, Karandupona estate[83] was started in 1898 on about 300 acres of land sold by the Crown, to which 230 acres were added later through purchase from villagers. Uda Karandupone village had been a thorn in the side of the successive local administrators since the 1870s: originally a nindagama belonging to the ancient Elapata family which had lost its feudal authority, inhabited by numerous Vahumpura and a few Goyigama families, its highlands had been extensively chenaed, escaping government interference. When the Crown attempted to assert its rights to forested areas under a settlement arrived at in 1888-89, it met with the stiff resistance of the villagers led by their headmen (“a set of regular lawyers”), who refused to agree to the proposals of the Forest settlement officer Booth to exchange lands to constitute two blocks. The final settlement in 1894 allowed 247 acres to the villagers and reserved 206 acres for the Crown but as these were “scattered in small blocks all over the village and are for that reason not worth reserving, those adjoining the streams may be kept but the others might be sold”. This was done before 1898 and the estate was formed with lands purchased from the Crown in Kägalla, Uda and Palle Karandupone and Attanagoda, to which were added private lands from these and other villages such as Diwela, a former royal village. The estate tried to obtain a CQP in 1911 through its legal adviser Ondaatje, then left its demand to expire and in 1922 the administration, desirous to get rid of this tangle, admitted that the plantation company had prescribed over any possible counterclaims and requested it to pay for its title only in unsettled villages.

Madeniya group (about 1,140 acres) was principally formed by the sale of the Dorawaka village lands which had been affected by contradictory settlements (see my paper on Kägalla settlements). Dorawaka was originally a very large, prosperous and densely populated gabadagama (royal village) whose muttettu (reserve) lands had been sold by the Crown after 1833, while the tenures had been recognized the property of former tenants, belonging to the Batgama caste. The villagers regarded their chenas as their property and until the Ievers settlement the colonial administration had not interfered with chena cultivation, but considered that in former royal villages, the highlands still belonged to the Crown and attempted to tax älvi crops at 1/10th instead of 1/14th in the district. In the same area, Maha Pallegama village had a similar history and a plantation had been opened with the tolerance of the administration: “as the settlements proceeded on different lines, there has been considerable confusion since, practically all the highlands in the village having been chenaed. My predecessors Mr. Alexander and Mr. Vaughan both recommended that the Crown claim in this village should be waived” [84].

Madeniya was the first large estate of the district opened by a Sinhalese lawyer, Albert A. Wickramasinghe (1877-1941), who was involved from the start in land speculations and acted not as a middleman, but as a prospective landowner.[85] He was only 29 years old when he started purchasing village lands in Dorawaka, at a judicial sale in 1906. These chena lands were in the eastern part of the village which had been declared private in the first chena settlement by Le Mesurier but not in the following settlements. Strictly speaking, the subsequent Forest settlement by Booth affirmed the Crown property of the chena lands in gabadagam, subject to a right of user by the villagers, and if followed it would have prevented the village sales; but the slack attitude of the colonial authorities who failed to demarcate the Crown lots, and to proclaim the settlement, nullified the intentions of Booth. A CQP was asked by Albert A. Wickramasinghe for 800 acres of lands in March 1907, and the Assistant Agent suggested to give a CQP only after receiving the plans approved by the Surveyor General and checking if all the shares had been purchased, on payment of a flat rate of 10 Rs an acre for chena lands, the forests being assessed separately: “Mr. Wickramasinghe agrees to this and I think that such a settlement would be very satisfactory as far as the Crown is concerned, for in view of the settlements already attempted the Crown would be in a unsatisfactory position if we went to Court”.[86] But in 1911 the survey department rejected the plans; afterwards, “several abortive surveys were made and the new plans were only received in September 1918 ; they cover 900 acres, which with the exception of about 20 acres of forest, were all chena at the time of the application. They are now nearly all planted”. In his practice as lawyer, Albert A. Wickramasinghe was in touch with Philip Ondaatje who was entrusted by most planters to represent them for their CQP applications, and he published in 1924 a book in which he systematized a theory of land tenure opposite to that defended by colonial administrators such as Codrington:  “No Crown chena lands ever existed or exist now in the Kegalle district (…) Whatever lands held by the Crown must be forest and cannot be chena”[87]. The situation remained untouched for years, when finally a survey was made in 1926 and the plan issued in 1929 by Jonklaas, a private surveyor. Dorawaka village was the subject of an inquiry by the Land settlement department in 1933.  At that time, there was practically no highland left in the village; the Madeniya group comprised 733 acres in Dorawaka itself, 228 in Makurugala, 198 in Tennehena, 23 in Warakapola, 159 in Ebidi/Rabidigala, 133 in Kongoda, and apart from rubber and tea it included about 21 acres of paddy and almost 100 acres of gardens, which was a very unusual situation.[88]   

In a previous article[89], I have analyzed in detail the history of the micro region, south of Kägalla town, where Golinda estate was carved out by the early 20th century, and my field study in 1979 tried to elicit the villager’s view of the process and the role played by different families of the five villages involved (Haloluwa/Getaberiya, Damunupola, Atugoda, Talewala and Malawita); I shall focus here on the formation of the estate itself, which had been entirely made up of village sales piece by piece, and on the role played by land agents in the process. The first official chena surveys were made in 1880-1881 in Malawita and Talewala by Philip Francis Ondaatje, then chena surveyor, at the demand of two British planters, for 67 and 28 acres; these lands were sold by the Crown much later, in October 1886. In 1884, the Assistant agent Wace applied for a survey of Damunupola, a registered feudal village claimed by Haloluwe Kiri Banda, which he thought could not be in entirety the property of an individual, for want of a sannasa; a judicial sale of Banda’s property (including the services of the tenants), for debts to a Chetty had been held in 1873[90]. This demand produced an exchange of correspondence with the Surveyor General, who was reticent to undertake a task which he thought unremunerative if it could not lead to a Crown sale: the affair was given publicity by the unusual quotation of the case in the Administration report of the district for 1888, and one can suspect that a land grabbing operation was already in the making. At the same time the land market in the area was dominated by the activities of Appuhami, a headman belonging to the Renapane family hailing from a nearby village, who purchased at fiscal sales some of the paddy fields of the Haloluwe family;  in the 1880s he was active in extending chena cultivation on forests which the administration wanted to preserve; he did so openly and the case was given a large publicity in 1891-1893 when it was brought by the Assistant Agent to the local court and went up to the Supreme court[91]: “Renapane Appuhami concocts bogus deeds giving himself Crown forests. He then clears, crops them. His position is very strong. The Supreme court is so strong against the Forest ordinance that convictions cannot be sustained before it in appeal”. For this case, the government retained the services of Philip Ondaatje, then advocate, who was to become its regular opponent in further land cases in the area and may have been initiated by this very exercise… During that period, three members of the Haloluwe family (Kiri Banda, Punchi Banda and Ukku Banda) started purchasing shares of village lands; their land grabbing cautious strategy was managed or supervised by Ondaatje from the beginning: they undertook also to purchase from the Crown several small patches of forest, from 1895 to 1905. By these legal as well as unofficial purchases they accumulated a capital of scattered lands which added to the Damunupola lands they considered as their ancestral possessions, which were however claimed by the Crown and by their former Duraya tenants who had ceased to recognize their lordship. According to the testimony of the villagers collected in 1979, there was ‘a gentleman from Kägalla’ (Ondaatje) who in association with Ukku Banda went round the villages to gather wattoru and obtain deeds of purchase of chena lands.

In 1905-1907, the applicants for small patches of forest Crown lands in the various villages were no longer Kandyan villagers, but a British planter, C.D. Hunt, and in 1908 his successors, Fellowes and Harper. To these piecemeal lands were added a quantity of chenas purchased from villagers, including the Haloluwe family. Fellowes and Harper opened in March 1912 an estate which they called Golinda [92]. Philip Ondaatje, acting for the planters, immediately asked for a CQP. But it took eleven years to settle the matter, which involved the collection of a huge amount of documents, a voluminous correspondence and belated surveys. The planters were influent enough to make the Colonial secretary instruct in 1912 the provincial and the district agents to expedite the matter in spite of the absence of a survey: “Golinda estate is entirely made up of lands purchased from natives. To effect the formation into a Company, a clear title is required (…) As the Surveyor General cannot undertake a survey of the area without very serious detriment to his other work, and as it is not desirable that an application of this nature should be met by Government with a mere expression of its inability to give the required information, the Controller of Revenue suggests that the Assistant Government Agent should make as careful and minute an enquiry as possible without a survey into the respective rights of the Crown and the villagers with a view to arrive at an approximate valuation of the claims of the Crown. When this has been done, it may be possible to arrange with the promoters of the Company for its purchase by them of the Crown rights and thereafter to issue to them a CQP”. The provincial agent, E.B. Alexander, strongly pro-planter, wrote to his assistant Codrington at Kägalla in February 1913: “I gather that the Company is anxious to get a Crown title quickly. I should not waste much time over tax receipts (…) The one thing to be careful about is that the villagers have not any claims which are averse to the estate; if they have, the Company should settle with them before Government can settle with the Company”. Codrington informed him of “that the existence of a private plan was concealed by the estate when asking for CQP” and was censored by his superior for the tone employed in his letter. Codrington had an uphill task described two years later in the diary of his successor Burden[93] : “The estate was in a frantic to get a CQP, as a company was in process of formation, and through their representations, my predecessor had to cover the whole ground and make a report as to the probable settlement, in the absence of the Surveyor General’s plan. This he did relying on the estate plan. I have now to go over the whole ground again with a plan issued by the Surveyor General. All this land is now planted up with rubber, and there is nothing to distinguish the land purchased from villagers from the land purchased from the Crown. However with the assistance of the individual who acted as intermediary between the estate and the villagers when the lands were purchased, considerable progress was made.” Meanwhile, the Duraya villagers of Damunupola had petitioned against Haloluwe Ukku Banda, accusing him to claim a share of the lands they were going to sell to the estate, and other villagers followed suit, while the estate purchased several other chenas without including them in an application for CQP. Thus tea and rubber flourished everywhere in the area, while the legal status of the lands was in a total mess.

With the disruption caused by the world war and the riots of 1915, the case was shelved. In the early 1920s there was a certain number of pending cases of CQP, including Golinda, and an ultimate attempt was made by the Kägalla agent to settle them[94]: “Mr. Philip Ondaatje came to see me in connection with several pending land matters. During the rubber boom many chena lands were bought up in this district by estates and CQPs were applied for. Many of these cases have dragged on for years and at the present time the estates are not so anxious to obtain certificates. In the meantime however the lands have been cleared and planted and in some cases the rubber is now over 25 years old. A plea of prescription will doubtless be set up if the Crown waits much longer before asserting its claims, though whether that plea will succeed in the case of lands which were originally chenas is open to doubt. I have unearthed many files which have been sheltered of late years and am endeavouring to get these claims settled by degrees, but the work which has to be faced is too much for my present staff”. In June 1922, the administration requested Ondaatje to furnish a list of the lands correlated with the deeds of purchase and the official survey plans of Golinda. He answered that “it is not possible to reconcile or identify the names and extents of lands appearing in the CQP plan with the names and extents of the chenas purchased by the estate on their several title deeds, nor do the blocks as they appear on the CQP plan correspond either in name or extent with the original title plans on which the lands were purchased”. The kacceri land clerks were directed to connect these documents with the wattoru copies for about 100 chenas, but concluded that wattoru were useless because they were not certified. Finally a list of 50 lands was advertised in the Ceylon Government Gazette (20.10.1922), and the 1st of March 1923, the CQP was issued for 338 acres, at 20 Rs an acre for the 270 acres for which the purchasers could not prove private title, and free for the 68 acres covered by tax receipts.

But this settlement covered less than 30% of the estate, which according to the Ferguson’s planting directory finally consisted of 689 acres in tea and 484 acres in rubber: this means that the colonial administration turned a blind eye to the ulterior transfer of lands to the estate. E.B. Alexander who had then been promoted Controller of Revenue made the following comment: “this is a piecemeal settlement but better than none at all (…); in view of the long possession by the claimants, I consider the price per acre fair”.  The result was in any case quite remunerative for the estate company, with a capital subscribed of 81,275,000 Rs, which distributed handsome dividends in the 1920s (22% in 1924, 40% in 1926, 15% in 1928)[95].

The patchy collection of 37 Golinda estate deeds still kept in the estate office in 1979 show that Ukkubanda was paid a commission on most village sales, plus batta (allowance) of 1 to 1.50 Rs a day, or sometimes a measure of rice, and that Philip Ondaatje supervised all the sales, which span a long period, from 18.09.1894 to 8.10.1919 for the main portion of the estate, but extend until the end of the 1920s for Atugoda village. The amount paid was 10 Rs an acre in the beginning but rose to 45 Rs for the last sales. According to the testimony of Kiri Ukkuwa, an old villager born around 1900, whom I interviewed in 1979, the first Atugoda sale was in 1915, he himself sold in 1928, Ondaatje acting as legal adviser and one ‘Wanumara Nilame’ (a nickname for Ukkubanda, meaning something like the forest killing squire) as middleman, getting 12 Rs and a bushel of rice per month. But all the villagers did not sell all their lands: some Duraya families in Atugoda and Damunupola resisted the temptation of easy money, transformed their chenas into vegetable and fruit gardens and invested in the purchase of lands still available the profits obtained from the sale of these products on the Kägalla market after the second world war.[96]

 

The formation of estates in the Kälerata and the end of the CQP era.[97]

Atulugam korale east, alias Kälerata (Forest Country) was the last area to be engulfed by the growth of estates. After 1910, there was little other land available elsewhere in the district, the system of settlement by CQPs was being replaced by the strict procedure of the Land settlement department which intervened for the first time in the Kägalla district, and with the rubber boom Ceylonese investors were looking for land. The major part of the area had been settled by Booth in the 1890s under the Forest ordinance, and in many cases, a right of user, but not of ownership, had been recognized to chena cultivators on the highlands: neither the Crown, nor the villagers, could alienate them to planters. Land speculators were looking for devices to circumvent the rule. Mideniya Adigar who assisted Booth in settlement operations was best placed for the task, in association with lawyers such as Ondaatje and Wickramasinghe, and they obtained the implicit or explicit support of a section of the colonial administration, led by E.B. Alexander, acting Colonial secretary in 1926.

The question was raised at the Colombo level and led to a tense exchange of correspondence[98]. The Controller of Revenue Jackson wrote to Alexander in July and September 1926 about the problem of the lands allowed by Booth for chena cultivation but not alienable, which had been planted in rubber after alienation by villagers: “the question of these settlements under pressure of land hunger often presents considerable difficulties (…) The outside speculator who comes in should be charged full value. Claimants who are descendants of the chena rights holders should receive liberal terms for the purchase of the soil rights, or where for any reason they are unable to purchase, they may be allowed a small extent free of charge”. In November 1926, Brown, the Assistant at Kägalla raised the case of an investor in Magala village who “asked what attitude government would take up if the chena rights of the villagers were bought up ; this information is naturally required before any money is spent in negotiations made with the villagers”; he recalled that the usual way of dealing with such lands was for the Crown to sell them under the Waste lands ordinance (WLO) of 1897, and said that “if any radical change in the policy of government is contemplated, I consider it advisable to give the matter wide publicity in the form of a press communiqué”. In forwarding this letter to the Colonial Secretary, the Controller of Revenue wrote : “I think Government should take the line that it will discountenance all traffic between outside speculators and villagers in buying up such chena rights (…) These lands were set apart for the villagers to ensure that their needs were sufficiently protected. It was specially laid down that the chena rights should not be alienated without permission. The available Crown lands in the district have been alienated to such an extent that if these chena reserves too are bought up by capitalists, the villagers will have no other area to meet their needs”. Alexander retorted: “I know Sabaragamuwa well. A press notice will be absolutely futile. It might deter one or two honest men who, as proprietors, would treat the villagers decently. But it will deter no one else. I believe that it is true that there is not an acre of Crown land suitable for rubber up to the top of Adam’s Peak that is not claimed upon some spurious deed. The villagers themselves have become speculators. The only thing that could have prevented these spurious claims and wholesale speculation was early settlement under the WLO, but the boom in rubber since 1904 caught the government unawares”. Brown argued in answer that “in the past, the custom has been for the Crown to take up the position that rights to the soil could be purchased for ½ value of the bare land by anyone who could prove he has bought the chena rights of the villagers (… ) The Crown took action which extinguished villagers’ chena rights. The position which I gather government wants to take up is that the Crown will not alienate its rights to the soil and when land is used for purpose other than chenaing it becomes entirely vested in the Crown (…) The Crown formerly abetted, it now intends to prevent traffic by outsiders in such land. This complete change should be widely published in order to deter would-be bona fide purchasers of chena rights. Unless this is done, persons who, considering past customs, would look for government assistance in obtaining good title, would unexpectedly find themselves baulked by their former ally”. In January 1927, at a conference held at the demand of Alexander, with Jackson and the Settlement officer, “it was agreed that nowhere in the Forest ordinance of 1885 was there any provision to preclude successful claimants of chena land from transferring their rights by sale or otherwise”, that the rule followed by the Settlement department was to consider claims on their own merits, and that a press communiqué would be counterproductive. In forwarding his reply, Alexander blamed the terms used by Brown as “entirely inaccurate, wholly unwarranted and grossly improper”, but his assistant took the defense of Brown, saying that “it was a bona fide description of the position as it appeared to Mr. Brown and not being in any sense a public pronouncement and that the point which he wished to make was quite a legitimate one”.

*

Before 1900, the hilly upper valley of the Magal Ganga and its tributaries, above the small bazaar of Deraniyagala, along the ancient path to Sri Pada, was largely forested, with very few paddy fields, and scarcely populated. The main valley was occupied by the Maliboda nindagama belonging to the decayed Eheliyagoda family and by the Magala village, while the southern valley (Miyanawita Oya) was a Vahumpura area, and the northern valley was Goyigama ; in the hills to the north of the Magal Ganga there was a group of betel-delivering (bulatgam) very poor Panna Duraya villages (Pandaha, Haradaha, Panakure, Hingurana).

The whole area was hardly administered, until various commissions and settlement operations decided to ‘reserve’ it but at the same time ‘opened’ it to outside influences. The Kälerata being difficult of access had been spared by the large land grabbing activity of the tea planters in the 1880s. It was selected by the Government to experiment the Forest Ordinance of 1885 because it was largely forested: the idea was to form a Forest reserve where “the government decided to sell no land whatever and to remove gradually and judiciously any squatters who may have entered it”[99]. In 1894, the governor Havelock, in reply to a deputation of Kelani Valley planters, had pledged that the Government would not sell more land for tea cultivation in the Kelani valley, both for ecological and economic reasons: “It is true that there is a large reserve, in extent I think about 30,000 acres, but it became the fixed policy of my predecessor, and I think that it was a very wise policy, that these reserves should be kept inviolate and that the Crown should not sell a single acre of it. At present that is the firm intention of government. Of course I cannot answer for what my successor may do, but as long as I am here I think you may rest assured that the Government will not part with a single acre of the Kelani valley reserve”.

However the Booth Forest settlement, started in February 1894 and completed in March 1897, attracted the attention of the planters and of various intermediaries. Booth, in his manuscript report on the Kelani Valley Reserve (§ XVI), anticipated land sales by villagers for plantations and mentioned advances made to the Eheliyagoda family for the purchase of Maliboda nindagama[100]. The chief headmen Ekneligoda and Mideniya made themselves acquainted with the minute details of the area because they acted as translators and they became involved as intermediaries or even actors in covert land transactions. In 1897 Davidson, Assistant Agent at Kägalla, produced a report for the new Governor West Ridgeway, which argued in favour of the sale of 4,000 acres of Crown lands now that the work of the Forest settlement officer was almost over, leaving 26,743 acres for the Crown, 15,095 acres allotted for chena cultivation, and 7,523 acres private (including the Maliboda nindagama)[101] He considered that forest should be preserved only at elevations above 3,500 ft (1,066 m), and that Crown land sales in the thinly populated Kälerata would protect the heavily populated Four-korales from speculation and ecological disaster, and develop a backward zone. The Executive Council decided to effect the sale, against critical comments by the Colonial Secretary (“The custodians of Kegalle used not so much to favour the introduction of European influence and associations in this markedly native district (…) The absorption of villager’s lands will still go on by those desirous of extending existing estates”) but with the support of the Governor (“I am altogether opposed to any grandmotherly policy as regards tea in the shape of restrictions”). Finally the sale was postponed in June 1898 “in view of the depressed state of the tea industry”, and the question was again raised in June 1899 although the opening of such a large area “followed as it is almost certain to be the case by the opening of a large extent of private land in the same locality” would lead to environmental consequences.

Meanwhile in August 1898 the indebted Eheliyagoda family had proposed his Maliboda nindagama for sale and Bertram Hill, the Assistant agent, commented[102]: “Messrs. Davies and co. of Colombo offer for sale some 5,000 acres in the Kelani Valley suitable for tea. 3,000 acres are in the Kegalle district at Maliboda, 14 miles from Dehiowita, and no road. No one is likely to buy the land at any price”. The situation changed during the next decade. In 1904, the Kägalla Assistant E.B. Alexander – notoriously pro-planter, described the Kälerata in his diary: “A beautiful but poverty-stricken district now. The people have very little to eat. Rice and salt are luxuries. The villagers own large tracts of chena land. There is a good story of a man who owned 1,000 acres being bought up for default of payment of road tax: he was ordered to pay 3 Rs, he could not find it, he would have gone to prison but the headmen subscribed the amount among themselves. In the not very distant future this country promises to be the center of a large rubber growing district: and Mideniya Ratemahatmaya has already selected the site of the future race course! There are over 20,000 acres of Crown forest lying idle. Wanted a road, or a navigable river to them, or preferably both.”[103]

The sale of 5,000 acres of Crown lands (in 250 acres lots) of the Kelani Valley reserve, suggested by Davidson in 1897, was held in Colombo in October 1905 and February 1906; the decision was taken in view of the new rubber boom; the upset price was low: 15 Rs per acre, and after bidding the lands were sold at 25 Rs per acre; the lands, of easy access, were located near Deraniyagala, at Munagala, Udabage, Lassegama, Kehelwala and Muddagala; most of the purchasers were Europeans, notably William Wilson Mitchell[104]. Some of these sales were muddled by the imprecision of the forest settlement and the manipulations of the headmen, as in Udabage[105]: a wooded lot was allowed as private by settlement but never used as chena by the villagers who believed it was Crown forest; Mideniya therefore recommended the sale of this lot by the Crown as had been done in a Colombo land sale of 1906 for a similar lot in another village sold to the planter Anderson. The Agent refused to put up the lot for sale as the same Mideniya had reported that the villagers had not enough chena lands and that there were wattoru for the land. Then the lawyer Marshall acting for Anderson asked in May 1908 whether the Crown had any claim to the land adverse to that of the ‘Udabage korala’, and the answer was that it was Crown land: therefore it could be sold, which was done in May 1909, against the protest of the villagers.

As could be expected, Crown sales were followed by village sales, first of lands recognized private by settlement, and later of lands reserved for chena cultivation. Lassehena estate[106] is a typical case of the first configuration: 207 acres had been purchased from the Crown in 1906, and 300 acres from villagers before 1908 “via an enterprising land broker, an ex-aracci”, but their status was not clear enough to justify a CQP, and an intermediary, H.O. Weerasooriya, asked the administration if a chena land allowed for chena cultivation by Forest settlement could be sold by the villagers. The case was still pending in 1937 when the Settlement department took it up and Archdale, the planter, lost 80 acres sold by the villagers for which they had no title. His reaction is thus reported in the diary of the assistant settlement officer: “After being informed by Mr. Archdale that his knowledge of land law, thanks to a number of settlements made on him by CQPs, was considerably greater than my own, I politely intimated that I was not prepared to discuss the matter further (…) the mentality of the gentleman in question is something new in my experience”.

The same intermediary, Weerasooriya, was involved in land dealings in the hilly village of Magala in the upper valley[107]. In May 1910, he wrote to the Colonial Secretary, with certified copies of the Booth settlement, “inquiring whether the Crown had any claim to the extent of 1,400 acres in Magala dealt with in the 14th § of his judgement (i.e. allowed for chena cultivation). If this extent is allowed to the claimants, I beg to inquire if a certificate to that effect will be granted to them. I am informed by them that in respect of the following lands which had been excluded in favor of the claimants in another inquiry similar to that, the Crown granted documents disclaiming any rights on the part of the Crown: 1. Lassegama lands taken by Lassehena estate; 2. Kosgahakande and Yatiwala taken over by Mr. Mitchell of Digalessa estate”. The Assistant agent reported: “it is true that CQPs have been issued in respect of such lands set apart for chena cultivation at Kosgahakanda and Yatiwala (…) 702 acres and 56 acres in the former, 10 acres and 261 acres in the latter. In the case of Lassegama no actual grant of CQP has yet taken place but my predecessor has admitted private claims to a large extent of chena land and was prepared to apply for a CQP on suitable plans being furnished by the claimants”. In 1922, the Assistant agent at Kägalla mentioned “Petitions of villagers of Magala and Yatiwala who have illicitly cleared many acres of Crown jungle notwithstanding the fact that the Forest settlement officer set apart for their use over 700 acres of chena land in each village in 1896. The fact is that they have sold to capitalists and landgrabbers the greater part of the land which was allowed them for chena cultivation and are now chenaing crown jungle which being entirely virgin forest brings them in good crops”. These sales continued in 1926, as shown in the correspondence above quoted of the Kägalla agent with the Colonial secretariat. When the Settlement officer Cocks inspected the village in 1935, he unearthed the speculation process: “A large purchaser of land, U.L. Siriwardena of Deraniyagala, has entered into an agreement to transfer a large extent of land in this korale to Mr. Van der Poorten, who has not appeared in the enquiry. In view of the size of the claim and of the extent of land involved, I decided to postpone the settlement to April 8th in Colombo (…) The claimant who has purchased large areas in Atulugam east and is bound by an agreement to transfer them to a capitalist, refused the settlement offered and it will be necessary to refer his claim to the district court”.[108]

The sale of the large Maliboda nindagama gave a decisive impetus to the plantation conquest of Kälerata and had a ripple effect. Mideniya, who had been bestowed the title of Adigar by the British administration, was behind the scene of land speculation in the Kälerata and had acted as middleman in the sale of the nindagama: he was entering the narrow circle of the elite through the marriage of his two daughters which was very expensive in terms of dowry. At the Forest settlement, James Eheliyagoda had claimed Maliboda, Pallepansiya and Ranwala as his nindagama. In the words of Booth, “The Ratemahatmaya Mideniya is anxious that an amicable settlement be arrived at. He says both he and the korala of Atulugam when giving evidence stated that Maliboda had always been considered a nindagama and dealt with as such, no taxes recovered from any of the chenas”. Out of the 3,535 acres of the nindagama, 735 were already admitted private, 773 were high forest, and Eheliyagoda accepted that 500 acres be reserved for the Crown in the north of Rangala, the rest (1,527 acres) being admitted private, including Piliwala and Potdenikanda hamlets. Maliboda estate was opened in 1918 on the lands admitted private by the Forest settlement[109] but “there is the question of the nindagama tenants. The estate has bought the whole village and while not willing to give deeds to the tenants for the lands occupied by them, has no intention of evicting them” “the people of Maliboda renewed their complaints against the superintendent of Maliboda Estate of depriving them of their ancestral lands”. Two hamlets, Ranvala and Telhitigala had been absorbed in Maliboda estate between 1911 and 1921, and between 1931 and 1946, the population had shrunk from 72 to 49.

The nindagama lands which had not been sold to the Maliboda estate had been purchased to form another estate, Dabar. The Settlement officer, Stace, visited the place in 1930 and wrote in his diary[110]:  “The villagers of Piliwala and Potdenikanda, which are part of Maliboda nindagama, had complained that the superintendent of Dabar estate, Mr. Smurdon, was cutting down all the old gardens and demolishing their houses to plant rubber on the sites. I found numerous old gardens completely devastated and one or two village houses demolished. In one place I noticed an old garden about 1 ½ acres in which there was a villager’s house. The estate had enclosed the house with barbed wire, leaving about 2 perches for the man to live in and including the rest of the old garden in the estate with the apparent intention of cutting down. The whole village presents an appearance of systematic destruction. I have never seen such a thing before in any other part of the country”. The Assistant agent at Kägalla had received a petition and “referred the villagers to their legal remedy”. The chief headman of the Three-korales, the son of Mideniya Adigar, was just as evasive: “His father Mideniya Adigar was the vendor of the nindagama to the estate (…) he believes that the estate has no title to the old gardens”; in Colombo, Mr. Maddox, manager of Harrison and Crossfields, the agents for the estate “believes that the estate is entitled to the old gardens, he says they have taken disclaimers of title from some of the villagers”. Stace made a confidential report to the Governor “on the subject of the extraordinary proceedings of Dabar Estate. One of the difficulties is that either the whole or some of the area was admitted private by the Forest settlement officer many years ago, but I doubt whether Government can sit doing nothing in a matter of this kind.” The Assistant agent at Kägalla answered that “it is difficult for the Crown to interfere in this case as all the lands in this wasama were admitted private by the Forest settlement officer. However I think the Company can be persuaded to give up a block of about 14 acres on the estate boundary where those who have lost their gardens can settle. The present claimants appear to be squatters of less than 10 years standing and have therefore no prescriptive title. The company’s legal title appears to be sound enough and any concession that is made will be purely on compassionate grounds”. Next year in May 1931, the Assistant settlement officer Northcroft inspected Piliwala and Potdenikanda and drew a different picture:  “there are numerous village plantations of rubber, cinnamon and tea besides the usual areca and jak gardens (…) there is ample chena and practically no sales to outsiders” ; he however took the testimony of villagers complaining of being hemmed-in by estates: “a large number of claimants stated that the deeds on which they relied were missing. On further enquiry I discovered that some enterprising individual had collected all the available deeds and was hawking them around with a view to selling them to an estate company. However nothing has come of the transaction, probably owing to the slump in rubber and tea (…) There has been some heavy selling and there are a good number of more or less landless villagers”[111].

D.S. Senanayake, who was in charge of agriculture and lands in the government established in 1931, decided in 1935 that the tenants of Maliboda nindagama evicted by Dabar estate would be settled on the other side of the river Magal Ganga, at the cost of Dabar estate, in lands belonging to Pandaha village[112]. The result was described by a settlement officer: “Allotments have been cut out for them, they have been generously treated. This treatment however seems to have had the effect of encouraging a number of other squatters from other villages to effect similar encroachments in the south east of the village. The extent of these encroachments came as a shock to me. Either the intruders will have to be ousted altogether which would entail at this stage a good deal of hardship, or the encroachment will have to be systematically surveyed and settled”. Another result was that the very poor original inhabitants of Pandaha, who belonged to the Panna Duraya caste, were thus deprived of a part of their lands, and they were at the same time pressed by land speculators (U.L. Siriwardena of Deraniyagala acting for A.J. Van der Poorten, represented by Aelian Ondaatje, Philip Ondaatje’s brother) to part with their chena rights in the rest of their village: the burden of land hunger was thus passed on to the weakest. When the settlement officers visited the village between 1937 and 1939, they remarked that “there seems to be very few men of ripe age in the village, half the villagers have parted with their rights, for what return seems extremely doubtful, most of the deeds being of ‘consideration already paid’. A woman vendor on one deed, consideration shown 200 Rs, informed me that she got 3 Rs only. I am inclined to think she was telling the truth”. The speculator, U.L. Siriwardene, who had purchased the rights of user to chena cultivation allowed by the forest settlement to the villagers for a trifle sum, tried to obtain from the administration the recognition of an extensive domain…

In the northern part of the Kälerata, the opening of Noori estate was also the result of the land grabbing activities of Mideniya and Van der Poorten[113]. According to the diaries of the Assistant agents at Kägalla “A land declared Crown by final order under Waste Lands Ordinances appear to have been purchased by Mideniya Adigar from a private party without any enquiry into the vendor’s title (…) The present case shows inexcusable neglect on the part of the chief headman”. The Adigar was acting as agent for and was indebted to the well-known land speculator, A.J. van der Poorten. He had purchased from villagers 968 acres in Dodawatte, Basnagala and Mudagala (which later formed the Noori estate), had mortgaged them to Van der Poorten, and was “endeavouring to obtain Crown title in order to sell to a Company. Most of the land was allowed by the Forest Settlement Officer for chena cultivation to the villagers and their descendants; it is extremely questionable whether any particular villager had the right to sell any portion of it”. But in 1927, the Agent showed a singular leniency towards Mideniya: “The whole affair is merely a financial speculation on the part of the Adigar, who has already I am informed sold the land to the Colombo merchant Adamalee (…) I came to the conclusion that if the 1,000 acres claimed by the Adigar are settled on him there will still be ample land left for the villagers. They as a matter of fact are making little if any use of the land in their possession. They can make all the money they want by an occasional spell of work on the estates”.

The valley of the Miyanowita Oya, in the south of the Kälerata, was occupied by the village of Miyanowita, and by the kandegama of Kosgahakanda made up of a very large number of hamlets. Miyanowita was a multicaste village, looking like a temple village but not registered as such[114]. It came under the forest settlement scheme and the lands declared crown but allowed for chena cultivation were described as “allowed to the villagers” rather than “allowed for chena cultivation” by Mideniya when a CQP was issued in 1916 for a small extent to the benefit of a Colombo Burgher investor, Rosslyn Koch. Miyanowita estate was formed under the auspices of Mideniya by 1925: “The sale to the Company of these lands (part of which fall within the area originally tentatively reserved for the Colombo water supply) was negotiated by Mideniya Adigar. I hear that he is now thinking of extending similar operations to Magala. At present one estate, Kosgahakanda, belonging to Mr. D.R. Wijewardena [Mideniya’s son-in-law] has already been opened within this area on land allowed on CQP some years ago. There are also within the area village gardens and large extents of land allowed for chena cultivation”. Ondaatje was looking after the Miyanowita affair and the company expected to get a CQP for a paltry sum, 10 or 15 Rs an acre…But a third party appeared, a speculator who had bought land shortly before with a view to bleeding the company. When Miyanowita came within the enquiry of the Settlement department in 1937, “about half of the village was already planted in tea by an estate company who obtained a settlement by the Assistant Government Agent 4 or 5 years ago (…)  practically all the area claimed by the temple and I suspect a considerable area in excess of that had been sold to outsiders”.

Kosgahakanda, whose inhabitants, of Vahumpura caste, lived on the sale of jaggery and betel leaves, was also the theatre of land speculations following the Forest settlement. A large village (273 inhabitants in 1931, 60 families), it had only 7 acres of paddy but 223 acres of garden, mainly planted in kitul (sugar palm trees). It had been settled by Booth with the help of Mideniya, and in 1904 a CQP was applied for based on a “transfer from natives, executed in 1896 but only recently sent to the kacceri, covering 1,100 amunam of land or 5,500 acres. The survey of the village shows a total extent of 2,528 acres. There is something wrong here (sic)”. The claimants, D.G. and T. Perera, obtained a CQP for a portion of the village in November 1905, and the land was transferred to D.R. Wijewardena, the press magnate of Colombo, who married Alice, one of Mideniya’s daughters, in 1916.  The Kosgahakanda estate contained 335 acres of tea, 24 acres of rubber. But the Kägalla agent noted that there were still large gardens and chenas available in 1927: “This is one of the few remaining areas where good land is still to be had for planting, and it is receiving plenty of attention. It is all unsettled land [?], mostly claimed chena, and is suffering the usual fate of such land in this district i.e. the village claims are being bought up by capitalists and the land cleared and enclosed. The only remedy is for the whole area on both sides of the Deraniyagala Oya to be taken up by the Settlement Department. In another year or two it will be too late, and hundreds or even thousands of acres will have passed into private hands”. Ten years later, when the Land settlement department finally took up the village, the prediction had become true. In the words of Ingledow, the settlement officer, “All the lands appear to have been sold outright and the original owners have left. The proportion of outside speculative claimants appears roughly to be about 1 to every 15 villagers. Sales prolific. Some of the outside claimants had no idea whatever what or where their lands were and knew nothing of the source of title. While one is glad to help an ignorant villager who is in difficulty about his title, it seems rather off the mark that the settlement officer should be expected to act as a consulting lawyer for such claimants who can well afford to pay for legal advice (…) To several of these I put it plainly that I was here to adjudicate on a definite claim and not to try to ascertain for them what their claim was”. In the margin of the diary, the Minister of Agriculture D.S.Senenayake – himself a close associate of D.R. Wijewardene, commented: “it may be better to do both”[115]

*

The years 1927-1931 represent a turning point in the history of land appropriation by the plantation sector. The initial push was given in 1927-1928 by the recommendations of a land commission convened by the governor Clifford and comprising Ceylonese nationalist representatives, which reviewed the policy followed under the Waste lands ordinance of 1897: the stress was put on hereditary rights of the villagers to highlands, and on the need to protect them against foreign outsiders;  a preferential treatment was requested for middle class Ceylonese investors instead of big capitalist firms, but the foremost place of the plantation sector in the economy was upheld: the Ceylonese bourgeoisie had indeed invested in coconut, and to a lesser degree, rubber plantations. The impact of the great depression reshuffled the cards: the demand of new land for plantations collapsed and the slump led to the closure of a number of estates, especially those owned by Ceylonese who could not repay the debts incurred for the acquisition of lands;  but it is the village population which was worst hit: it could no longer sell its highlands to outsiders, and it lost the employment which the people who had sold their highlands could obtain on the estates. Finally, the representative system established in 1931 opened the way to a complete overhaul of land laws, taking land matters out of the hands of the Revenue Officers and headmen and introducing a sort of land planning at the village level. These developments will be the subject of further articles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Administration Report (AR) Kägalla(Kä) 1867 p. 19; AR Kä 1881 p. 24A

[2] Diary Kä 12 .12.1885

[3] Diary Kä 17.05.1884

[4] AR Kä 1884, p. 22-23A; Diary Kä, 11.11.1884 (Wace)

[5] W. Forsythe in Times of Ceylon 11.02.1937

[6] Diary Kä January and February 1886; AR Kä 1886 p. 145A

[7] Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA) 6/7333, SLNA 6/795, diary Kä 1.10.1888

[8] Diary Kä, 26.05.1886 and 15.07.1886

[9] Diary Kä, 16.06.1886

[10] Diary Kä, 21.07.1886, 26.04.1887, 28.01.1888, 7.07.1893, 7.03.1887, 25.03.1890

[11] Diary Kä, 14.11.1889, 7.01.1891. The letter of Forsythe to Wace is kept in the Kägalla kacceri records (Panawitiya file)

[12] Diary Kä, 8.07.91, 25.07.1891, 13.05.1891, 26.02.1892, 10.06.1892

[13] Diary Kä, 26.02.1892, 14.06.1892, 1.08.1892; also 4.08.1899 

[14] Diary Kä 3.06.1893 

[15] Diary Kä, 14.07.1891, 25.05.1892, 10.06.1892 

[16] Kägalla kacceri records, Udapota village file, 17.02.1877 ; Diary Kä, 7.07.1893

[17] Diary Kä 20.11.1885, 17.01.1886, 7.02.1886

[18] Diary Kä 16.10.1894 and 7.03.1895

[19] AR Kä 1885, p. 167A-168A

[20] Diary Kä 26.03.1885 and 13.08.1885; see also William Forsythe memoirs (Times of Ceylon 11.02.1937)

[21] AR Kä 1886, p. 147A-149A

[22] AR Kä 1892, p. J6

[23] SLNA 65/173

[24] Diary Kä, 6.05 – 24.06 1886

[25] Diary Kä, 28.07.1886, 8.09.1886, 10.09.1892

[26] Diary Kä, 2 and 5.10.1886, 13.12.1886, 15.07.1887; Kägalla kacceri records, village file PP98, 4.12.1879

[27] Kägalla kacceri village file; Diary Kä, December 1879, November 1884, January 1885, September 1931; SLNA 65/958 (24.10.1884); SLNA 30/514

[28] Diary Kä, 24.06.1888, 3-14.11.1888, 17.01.1889, 21.01.1891; AR Kä 1888 p. 49A; Kägalla kacceri village records, chena settlement files PP 78 and 115; SLNA 30/572; SLNA 65/173. There is a local lore in two different versions regarding these two villages : “Warakagoda belonged to Dehigampal korale until one day 27 heads of cattle belonging to king Rajasinha I of Sitawaka were drowned in the We Oya, in consequence of which he gave to 9 durayas of Polatagama [Lower Bulatgama] the village of Warakagoda, transferring Badullawala to Dehigampal korale as compensation for loss of territory” (SLNA 6/10989 RN014496, G.A. Sabaragamuwa to Colonial Secretary, 18.09.1897) “The durayas of this village carried the palanquins of Dodantala Dissawa. There is a tradition that when the Sinhalese kings were reigning at Sitawaka, when it was represented to the kings that the cattle of Polatagalma were washed down, permission was given to the villagers of Polatagama to put up a cattle shed on the land now known as the village of Warakagoda” (SLNA 30/572, Ekneligoda report 25.11.1888).

[29] A Certificate of Quiet Possession (CQP) or Certificate of no claim is an official document issued by the colonial administration attesting that the Crown does not claim the ownership of a particular land.

[30] Diary Kä, 30.01.1886, 8-10.01.1891,01.1892, 5.09.1892, 19.04.1894

[31] Diary Kä, 25.06.1886

[32] Diary Kä, 2.11.1888 to 21.08.1889, 10.01.1891, SLNA 65/173 (minute of 5.12.1890 and exchange of letters between the Colonial Secretary and the Government Agent of Sabaragamuwa), SLNA 30/519, Administration report Kägalla 1889, p. J28.

[33] Kägalla kacceri records, village file Patberiya, SLNA 30/424, SLNA 30/482, Diary Kä 3.11.1891

[34] Diary Kä, 15.04.1891, Kägalla kacceri records series A, 25.10.1882, SLNA 30/502.

[35] Diary Kä, 18.03.1885, 26.05 – 15.06. 1886, 11.10.1889, 20.01.1890, 24.04.1890

[36] The detailed biography of David Fairweather is offered as a sort of colonial model in Arnold Wright ed., Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, Colombo 1907, p. 875-877: “In the circumstance of this gentleman’s career we have brought into striking prominence the spirit of enterprise and adventure which has contributed so much to the success of the great planting industry of Ceylon”. After an experience in Assam, he contributed to popularize the cultivation of tea in Ceylon, but left the island to lead an exploration in east Africa, launched enterprises in South China and Java, before returning to Yataderiya.

[37] Diary Kä, 26.04.1894

[38] SLNA 30/573, 30/471; Diary Kä, 12.11.1872 and March to December 1893; Knavesmire is the name of a marshy waste land where the gallows were erected in the city of York…

[39] Kägalla kacceri, Rangalla village file, penciled notes of enquiry, 14.11.1893 ; Diary Kä, 13.11.1893

[40] CO54/988/4, file 55569/14; Kägalla Kacceri Records, Land file LK 154. See also the autobiography of S. Thondaman, Tea and Politics, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa 1994, vol 2, p. 26-30.

[41] SLNA 30/444 and 496 (especially report of 9.07.1907)

[42] SLNA 30/2246, undated manuscript. Ferdinando Hamlyn Price (1855-1942) was described by Leonard Woolf as “a terrific snob”; while in Kägalla, he built for himself a walauwa, tried to uphold Kandyan traditions and behaved as an aristocrat. Walter Edward Davidson (1859-1923) was a brilliant administrator and man of action, an independent mind, who ended his career as governor of New South Wales in Australia. He resented the meanness of the colonial administration and he wrote in his diary (21.07.1895): “I have been treated harshly in several matters lately, and I wish I had never entered the Ceylon Civil Service, and I shall leave it as soon as I can afford to do so”

 

[43] AR Kä 1892, p. J6

[44] Diary Kä, 3.12.1892

[45] AR Kä 1893 p. J12-13; Diary Kä, 25.08.1895 

[46] Diary Kä 3.01.1896, 18-19.03.1896

[47] AR Kä 1896 p. J16

[48] Diary Kä 30.10.1896; SLNA 59/178, RN 015233/96; Times of Ceylon, 17.11.1896.

[49] Diary Kä, 25.11-31.12.1896

[50] SLNA 6/10983, 10988, 10989. Administration Report Kägalla 1897 p. J11, 1898 p. J12. The diaries for 1897 are missing from the Archives.

[51] AR Kä 1902 p. J19, Diary Kä 4.12.1903

[52] There is an extensive documentation available on the subject: 1. at the general level, voluminous ‘pending files’ of the Colonial secretariat including correspondence, reports and decisions of the administration: SLNA 65/1187 and 1288; Land Settlement Department Records, file on ‘Land settlement work of F.R. Ellis’; SLNA 30/868 ‘Crown rights to chenas sold by villagers and planted up by capitalists’. 2. At the local level, all the certificate of quiet possession cases kept in the SLNA 30 series.

[53] SLNA 6/10988, encl. to Government Agent Sabaragamuwa to Colonial Secretariat, 30.08.1897; SLNA 6/10990, exchange of correspondence between AGA Kä, GA Sabaragamuwa and Colonial Secretary 29.07.1897.

[54] The administrators used themselves the word ‘settlement’ instead of CQP, as in AR Kä 1912 p. I24.

[55] SLNA 6/10983 (Minute paper 02392/97)

[56] SLNA 30/462, SG to GA Sab, 6.03.1899. Surveys for CQPs by private surveyors are constantly criticized as most unsatisfactory in the successive administration reports of the Surveyor General (1923 p L17, 1924 p. J9), but the recourse to private surveyors is the result of the shortcomings of the survey department; the major private agency involved in CQPs is the Moratuwa Survey Agency headed by Charles Peter de Silva

[57] SLNA 65/1187

[58] SLNA 65/1074, Minute by Ellis on a letter of the planter Malcolmson to Governor, 10.08.1904

[59]  AR Kä 1903, p. K21. E.B. Alexander became President of the Ceylon Association in London after he left the Colonial service.

[60] Diary Kä 31.03.1906 (in 1906, there was an outburst of CQP direct demands by planters, rubber planting being maximal, followed in 1907 by a recourse to lawyers)

[61] SLNA 30/482

[62] Kägalla kacceri records PP106 ; SLNA 30/447, 491, 497, 518 ; diary Kä 17.04.1893

 

[63] Kägalla kacceri village file (PP 118 chena settlement 3.11.1877, report 15.05.1879), SLNA 30/505 and 542; diary  Kä 14.02.1884

[64] Kägalla kacceri records village file PP117, SLNA 30/448, SLNA 65/1352 (Harries land claims), and Land Settlement Department Records, Ellis settlement work : Harries claims.

[65] SLNA 65/1352 (Enquiry held by Ellis, 27.11.1904, memo 03318/1905, Executive Council minute 245/1905), and SLNA 30/449

[66] SLNA  30/495, Ceylon Government Gazette 31.07.1908, Diary ASO Northcroft, 7.04.1933

[67] SLNA 30/564, 18.09.1922, minute by the AGA: “There is plenty of evidence that the late land clerk has endeavoured to hookwind my predecessors into granting and recommending CQPs for Crown lands”

[68] SLNA 30/451, 30/550 and 30/552

[69] SLNA 30/508, 30/564

[70] Kägalla kacceri records, Lewala forest settlement and Wegalla settlement; SLNA 30/ 510 (Lewala estate CQP); Diary Kä, 9.03.1902, 11.02.1907

[71] The history of the Grand Central is given in T. Villiers, Mercantile Lore, Colombo, Ceylon Observer Press, 1940.  It was the first large scale transition from a rupee to a sterling company and the largest rubber enterprise in Ceylon. In 1904, J.N. Campbell discussed with J.P. Anderson, manager of the Panawal group, the perspectives of rubber development. “They decide to acquire a large tract of land suitable for development and they set to work to form a syndicate made up of the following gentlemen: J.N. Campbell, Joseph Fraser, W. Saunders, W. Forsythe, E.J. Weatherall, Tim Bayly, J.P. Anderson. Carson was the managing agency; by the mid 1910 ‘the concern had become so large that a flotation in London seemed desirable: in July the company was floated with capital of 1 ½ million £, the largest rubber concern in Ceylon; in 1912 it absorbed Weganga co., Southern Ceylon co. and Durampitiya Estate.”

[72] The main source is SLNA 30/868 ‘Crown Rights to Chenas Sold by Villagers and Planted up by Capitalists’. This is a file kept in the Kägalla kacceri following the request to produce their deeds, addressed by Codrington in 1913 and his successor Burden to the owners of new estates in the Four-korales, and the subsequent management of these affairs for the planters by Philip Ondaatje, A.A. Wickremasinghe and De Sarams.

[73] Diary Kä 8.09.1916 ; AR Sab 1916 p. I7; AR Kä 1926 p. I24, 1927 p. I29

[74] Albert A. Wickremesinghe, Land Tenure in the Kandyan Provinces, Colombo, Mahajana press, 1924.

[75] Diary Kä, 28.12.1915, 6.02, 25.07 and 12.08.1916

[76] In SLNA 30/868

[77] Kägalla kacceri records, village file Lahupone, settlement of 12.07.1893, Diary Kä (Vaughan) 23.06.1902, SLNA 6/814 : Letter Vaughan to D. Fairweather 5.06.1905, Diary Settlement Officer Fox 17-29.04.1913 ; SLNA 65/1187

[78] SLNA 30/544

[79] SLNA 30/545

[80] SLNA 30/445, 30/453, 30/578; see also my “From Landgrabbing to Landhunger: High Land Appropriation in the Plantation Areas of Sri Lanka during the British Period.”  Modern Asian Studies  26, 2 (1992) pp. 321-361.

[81] Diary Kä 27.04.1913 (Codrington): “M. Russell Scott tells me that when he came there 15 years ago the people lived often in caves; one old man still does so. It is one of the Vädda villages mentioned in the Kohomba Yakkunkankariya”. See G. Obeyesekere,  The Cult of the Goddess Pattini,  p. 304-305, quoting Kohomba Kankariya by C. E. Godakumbura, Colombo 1963, p. 90-91, where the ‘calling of the Väddas’ specific to Four-korales tradition enumerated the names of the villages from which the Väddas must come to participate in the devil ritual.

[82] SLNA 30/478

[83] SLNA 30/537 and 422b; Diary Kä July – August 1893 and April 1894; Kägalla kacceri records, Uda Karandupone Forest settlement file (1894)

[84] Diary Kä, 9.05.1907 cf. ibidem, 10.05.1871

[85] Born in Kägalla in a Catholic family, educated at Kandy, Colombo and Calcutta where he studied law, he became proctor in 1901. According to Winston Wickramasinghe, Albert’s son, in an interview I had with him in 1978, his grand-father Don C. Wickramasinghe, a notary public, had directed the attention of the young Albert to the documents of the Forest settlement kept at the Kägalla kacceri. Albert became a member of the anglicized Sinhalese bourgeoisie who invested in the plantation economy, and a moderate supporter of the nationalist movement in 1915  (he published a booklet on the 1915 riots); he was close to D.S. Senanayake but he failed to enter the political arena; a rich man, he built for himself a magnificent walauwa in Kägalla.

[86] Land settlement department, Dorawaka file, list of 99 deeds purchased by an intermediary, Egodawatte Araccilage Don James Perera Appuhamy (from December 1905 to April 1906); at a subsequent judicial sale (19.05.1906) for an amount of 20,000 Rs before the British District Judge Davies the deeds were transferred to Wickramasinghe; SLNA 45/1886 correspondence between Kägalla and Sabaragamuwa, 12.07.1906; Diary Kä 4.03.1907, 16.09.1918

[87] A.A. Wickramasinghe, Land tenure in the Kandyan Provinces (Colombo, Mahajana Press, 1924); compare with H.W. Codrington, Ancient Land Tenure and Revenue in Ceylon (Colombo, Government Press, 1938)

[88] My visit to the spot in 1978 elicited the following information: Madeniya had been the subject of constant recriminations by the villagers recalling the manner in which the lands had been grabbed, and violence often erupted between villagers and estate workers. The estate lands were squatted on, and in 1971 the rubber factory was occupied by the insurgents who established their headquarters there, and burnt down when they left ; then the estate was taken over by the State and the management was catastrophic ; violence continued during these years, and the Tamil school was burnt down in 1977.

[89] Gamperaliya (village upheaval) in the Kägalla district, https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/1354

[90] Ceylon Government Gazette, 1.02.1873, p. 147

[91] Diary Kä, 23.07.1884, 19.11.1888, 22.08. and 30.11.1892, 3.07.1893

[92] Survey department records, Chena plans 300, 218 and 219 (Malawita and Talewala); Sabaragamuwa  Preliminary plans 48 and 2428 (Damunupola), 727 and 1149 (Haloluwa), 1321, 1348, 1358, 1366, 1367 (Talewala, Haloluwa and Malawita); SLNA 30/615 (Chena case Haloluwa 1893-1898); SLNA 30/540 (Golinda CQP file)

[93] Diary Kä, 27-28.10.1914

[94] Diary Kä 17.07.1922

[95] SLNA 30/540 (Golinda CQP file); Ceylon Government Gazette 20.10.1922, p. 1366; Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory for 1937, p. 814

[96] The resulting upheaval of village society is described in Gamperaliya (village upheaval) in the Kägalla district, https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/1354. I hope to publish later the full file of documents and interviews connected with the Golinda estate and its surrounding villages which I collected during my fieldwork (summer 1979); some of the documents kept in the estate office may have disappeared after 1989.

[97] Kelani Valley Forest Settlement Register (SLNA 45/1726), Report on the Forest settlement of the Kelani Valley Reserve and village cases (Kägalla kacceri records); SLNA 65/958 ‘Kelani Valley Forest Reserve’; Settlement diaries and reports of the Land Settlement Department in the 1930s

[98] Ceylon Secretariat file L205/1926

[99] Government Agent Western Province to Colonial Secretary, 16.12.1884 in SLNA 33/2476; Booth to the Government Agent  Sabaragamuwa 24.04.1893 in SLNA 45/3161

[100] ‘Report on the Forest settlement of the Kelani Valley Reserve’ (in Kägalla kacceri land records)

[101] ‘Projected land sale in the Three-korales’ 12.03.1897, Executive Council minutes 04251, 16.03.1897 in SLNA 65/958 ‘Kelani Valley Forest Reserve’

[102] Diary Kä, 15.08.1898,

[103] Diary Kä, 19.01.1904

[104] Diary Kä 30/03/1905, 26/02/1906

[105] SLNA 30/574

[106] SLNA 30/533; Diary SO Jansz, 6.05.1937, ASO Ingledow, June to October 1937:

[107] SLNA 30/533 and SLNA 30/431

[108] Diary Kä, 11.09.1922; Colonial secretariat file L205/1926; ASO Cocks, 14.01.1935 to 8.04.1935; A.J. van der Poorten was a Belgian planter-businessman who had settled in Ceylon by the end of the 19th century and married a Kandyan lady.

[109] Diary Kä 1.02.1918, 16.07.1918

[110] Diary of SO Stace, 18-25.02.1930; Diary Kä, 10.04.1930

[111] Diary of ASO Northcroft, May 1931, February 1932, April 1933.

[112] Diaries of SO, 5.09.1935, of ASO Cocks, 6.03.1935, of ASO Ingledow, 11-13.10.1937, 10.01.1938, of ASO Wijekoon, January 1938. Pandaha and Haradaha were two villages where, under dalamura tenure, the Duraya inhabitants had to deliver five and four thousands of betel leaves – hence their names.

[113] Diary Kä 4.06.1923, September to December 1925, 11 January to 22 June 1927, 15.09.1931. In 2013 Noori estate was the scene of a murder of the manager and great violence in the surrounding villages was unleashed by a local goon with political affiliations, who ruled the area as a private kingdom; a similar state of affairs prevailed in Maliboda (Daily Mirror August 2013)

[114] SLNA 30/557; Diary Kä 19.02.1925; Diaries of ASO Northcroft, 8.07.1932 to 27.03.1933 and Ingledow, 12.01.1937

[115] Diary Kä,  23.12.1904, 1.07.1905, 23.12.1904, 19.02.1925, 22.04.1927 

Question – poem in Tamil and English

https://polity.lk/question-cheran-rudhramoorthy-trans-anushiya-ramaswamy

Question – கேள்வி  

Cheran Rudhramoorthy (trans. Anushiya Ramaswamy)

 

The moon, shredded, hangs on
the fence; midnight.
Yama’s messengers,
who rend lives,
tread on the falling leaves.

Demons buried in the well
in the corner of the backyard
brace to emerge now.

On this night that dissolves in grief,
without losing to slumber,
I pluck my heart and
place it on the table.
The table trembles from
the loud groans dripping with blood.

The heart cools
in the external breeze.
I begin my poem from where
I had stopped.

I have never been grappled
by a poem, like today.
This poem wandered about
in the open space for a long time.

The very beginning of the
poem is a question;
A question about
friends who were murdered,
friends who disappeared.

This poem, born out of
a question,
leaves me suddenly;
As unwoven words and
passion, unstructured by the brain,
outpour,
this poem departs—

It goes around the two-storey house
that lies in the dark,
unwashed even by the full moon;
angrily slams the ancient doors
now locked,
listens intently from beside
the tightened windows.

It melts near the blood stain
smeared on the outer wall,
searches the voices of grief
still clinging to the tall trees;
in the nights,
it follows footprints
on the seashore;
gets drenched in blood
amid the Pandanus thickets.

It wanders over the waves,
prodding the overturned corpses;
Looking for eyes among the
corpses without eyes,
faces amid the corpses
without face,
it is enraged.

It stops hesitantly on a
single slipper thrown
into the street,
the glasses tossed
on the doorstep,
the overturned bike lying
on the street corner.

It is puzzled, unable to comprehend
the reflection in the marble eyes of babies,
born after their father’s death;
carrying the tears of the mothers,
it stumbles and falls down.

Under the gallows,
above the graveyards,
in the corners of camps,
on the tables,
near the pen that is open now,
like before,
in the unfinished lines of a letter,
on the pictures hanging from the wall,
clothes scattered in the room,
the flowerless Portia trees,
the wet Palmyra,
on a single flower on the hair,
it spins on like a top.

In the wind and the expanse,
the closed iron doors,
guns that leak smoke,
the poem slams and asks,
what happened to our children?

நிலவு கிழிந்து தூங்குகிறது
வேலியில்
நள் யாமம்;
உதிர்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கும் இலைகளின் மேல்
நடந்து திரிகின்றனர்
உயிர் திருகும் எமதூதர்.

அடிவளவின் கிணற்றுக்குள்
காலம் காலமாய்ப் புதையுண்டு கிடந்த
பூதங்களும்
இப்போது சிலிர்த்துக்கொண்டு
கிளம்புகின்றன.

துயிலில் தொலையாது
துயரில் கரையும் இன்றைய இரவில்
இதயத்தைப் பிடுங்கி
மேசைமீது வைத்துவிடுகிறேன்
குருதி சொட்டச் சொட்டப்
பெருகும் அதன் ஒலிக் குமுறலில்
கொஞ்ச நேரம் நகுங்குகிறது மேசை.

வெளியுலகின் காற்று வாங்கிக்
குளிர்ந்து போய்விடுகிறது இதயம்

அப்போது
விட்ட இடத்திலிருந்து என்னுடைய
கவிதையைத் தொடங்குகிறேன்

இன்றையைப் போல
என்றைக்கும் ஒரு கவிதைக்காக
நான் உழன்றது கிடையாது
வெளியில்
நெடுநாளாய் அலைந்தது இக் கவிதை

அதனுடைய ஆரம்பமே
ஒரு கேள்விதான்
கொல்லப்பட்ட நண்பர்களைப் பற்றி
காணாமல் போன நண்பர்களைப் பற்றிய
ஒரு பெரிய கேள்வி அது

கேள்வியில் பிறப்பெடுத்த
இந்தக் கவிதை
திடீரென்று என்னைவிட்டுப் பிரிந்துசெல்கிறது
நெய்யப்படாத வார்த்தைகளுடன்
அறிவால் நெறிப்படுத்தப் படாத
மிகையுணர்ச்சியும் சேர்ந்து
பிரவாகம் எடுக்க
இந்தக் கவிதை பிரிந்து செல்கிறது

பௌர்ணமி நிலவிலும்
ஒளி தோயாமல் இருளில் கிடக்கிற
அந்த மாடி வீட்டைச் சுற்றி வருகிறது
இறுகப் பூட்டப்பட்டிருக்கும்
அதனுடைய பழங்காலக் கதவின்மீது
மூர்க்கமாக மோதுகிறது
இறுகிய யன்னல்களுக்கு அருகே சென்று
உன்னிப்பாகக் கேட்கிறது

வெளிச் சுவரில் தெறித்திருக்கும்
குருதிச் சுவட்டருகில் நின்று உருகிறது
வீட்டின் வெளிப்புறம்
ஓங்கிய மரங்களில்
இன்னும் ஒட்டிக்கொண்டிருக்கும்
அவலக் குரல்களில் தேடுகிறது
இரவுகளில்
கடற்கரையில் காலடிச் சுவடுகளைப்
பின்தொடர்ந்து செல்கிறது
தாழம் புதர்களுள் ஒளிந்திருந்து
குருதியில் நனைகிறது

அலைகளுக்கு மேல் அலைகிறது
அவை புரட்டிவிடும் உடல்களைத்
திருப்பித் திருப்பித் தேடுகிறது
கண்கள் இல்லா உடல்களுக்குக்
கண்களையும்
முகம் சிதைந்த உடல்களுக்கு
முகங்களையும் தேடிச் சினக்கிறது

தெருவில் வீசப்பட்டுள்ள
ஒற்றைச் செருப்பின்மீது
வீட்டுப் படிகளில் வீசியெறியப்பட்ட
மூக்குக் கண்ணாடிமீது
தெரு முனையில் புரட்டி விடப்பட்ட
மோட்டார் சைக்கிளின்மீது
தயங்கித் தயங்கி நிற்கிறது

தகப்பன் தொலைந்த பிறகு
பிறந்த குழந்தைகளின்
பளிங்கு போன்ற விழிகளில்
எதிரொலிப்பது என்ன என்று தெரியாமல்
குழம்புகிறது
தாய்மாரின் கண்ணீர்த் துளிகளை
ஏந்திக்கொண்டு செல்கையில்
தலை குப்புற வீழ்கிறது

தூக்கு மரங்களின் கீழ்
புதைகுழிகளின் மேல்
முகாம்களின் கோடிப்புறங்களில்
மேசைமீது இப்போதும்
அப்போது போலவே கிடக்கும்
மூடப்படாத பேனையருகில்
முற்றுப் பெறாத கடித வரிகளில்

சுவரில் தூங்கும் படங்களில்
அறையில் சிந்தியிருக்கும் ஆடைகளில்
பூவாத பூவரசுகளில்
ஈரப் பனையில்
ஓரக் கூந்தலின் ஒற்றை மலரில்

நின்று பம்பரம் போலச் சுழல்கிறது

காற்றிலும் வெளியிலும்
மூடப்பட்ட எல்லா இரும்புக் கதவுகளிலும்
புகை கசியும் எல்லாத் துப்பாக்கிகளிலும்
அறைந்து கேட்கிறது
எங்கள் குழந்தைகளுக்கு என்ன நடந்தது?

1990.

 

Cheran Rudhramoorthy, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Windsor, is an academic, poet, playwright, and journalist.

Translated from Tamil to English by Anushiya Ramaswamy, professor in English, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, USA.

Image source: https://bit.ly/4hPRvmy

 

Note

Original poem in Tamil published in: Cheran. (2000). Nee Ippozhuthu Irangum Aaru [The River You Are Now Descending Into]. Nagercoil: Kalachuvadu Publications.