DURING THE LATE 19th AND EARLY 20th CENTURIES
By Eric P. Meyer
The following paper completes the previous article on Chena cultivation and its repression in Colonial Ceylon
In the colonial Ceylon context, a settlement is theoretically a contractual decision arrived at between a representative of the colonial government (‘the Crown’) and a claimant, peasant or landlord, or a purchaser from them, recognizing private title to the land claimed or deciding the land to be ‘at the disposal of the Crown’. The ‘contract’ is generally unequal, the power of the Crown being stronger than that of the subject, but the judicial system offers opportunities for the latter to defend his rights. Settlement may be analyzed purely in terms of rational administration, a typical 19th century tendency which led European powers to introduce, instead of undefined customary rights, the concept of absolute property in their colonies after imposing it at home. But it can be understood as a tool legitimizing the appropriation of land by right of conquest for colonial purposes. The concept of land as territory with fixed boundaries, and not as a means of production, was implicit in the ‘Roman-Dutch’ law system imposed by the Dutch on the Low country of Ceylon, but was rather new in the former Kandyan kingdom, although in its border areas, such as the Kägalla district, the situation was more complex. Establishing the legal status of a land involved specific operations: surveying the land, naming it, measuring its area (and not estimating as before its ‘sowing extent’), mapping it, before defining its owner. These operations were never completed on a systematic basis for want of method, means and political will, and they resulted in a mess which suited the interests of the planting industry[1].
The starting point of all that is the policy pursued after the annexation of the Kandyan kingdom and the subsequent rebellion of 1819, at the initiative of D’Oyly, the first British resident at Kandy, to let the people (local and low country) fell the ‘forbidden forests’ (tahansi käle) which served as a bulwark for the Kandyan kings to develop guerilla activities against invaders. Hatarakorale (‘the Four counties’) and Tunkorale (‘the Three counties’) were essential in that respect, located as they were along the shortest route from Colombo to Kandy.
In the Kandyan times, the area was disputed between the Western powers (first Portuguese, then Dutch) and Kandy, and was therefore often depopulated and repopulated. A side aspect of the policy of the Kandyan kings was to employ several categories of ‘low caste’ people (collectively known as Duraya – the name given to their headmen and used as a generic) to guard the paths and to act as porters; among these people were Kande minissu (hillmen), local Hakuru, palm sugar tappers with a good knowledge of the jungle, and Panna living in hilly areas, distinct from Batgama, paddy cultivators attached to royal villages. The area was caste-mixed, the Goyigama being in the majority but many of them belonging to a lower stratum of the caste (naides – the term erroneously reserved for artisan castes by most authors was widely employed in Hatarakorale for Goyigama living in free villages – koralegam – but subject to service) ; apart from the various Duraya and the Goyigama, there were a few Karawa and a few Moor villages, both engaged in trade, a couple of Salagama villages engaged in cinnamon peeling, and a few Berava/Nekati villages usually connected with temple property[2].
In his diary of October 1916, the Assistant Government Agent H.A. Burden, after reading the diaries of his predecessors, wrote[3]: “During the time of Mr. Price and for about 30 years the chief source of worry to the Assistant Government Agents – as is quite apparent from a perusal of their diaries, was the alienation of their chena lands by the villagers and the creation of a landless and improvident class of people. There was therefore a continuous attempt to hedge round the chena settlements with such conditions as would tend to restrict the alienation of the chena lands. One of such conditions was to allow the right of chena cultivation only (…) These precautions have not prevented the alienation of many thousands of acres of chena lands settled in such a way. The attempt to make the Kandyan villager thrifty in spite of himself (sic) is not an undertaking which is likely to achieve much success”
That these ‘abortive’ settlements left deep traces in the minds of the villagers is shown by the note found in the diary of 1937 of the Settlement Officer Jansz regarding the village of Malwana[4]: “A number of villagers of the Batgama caste refused to sign agreements under the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1931. They profess not to be dissatisfied with the settlements offered but are unwilling to put their signature to any agreement. It is a recollection of the position following certain Forest settlements made by Mr. Ievers which they bring forward as reason for their refusal.” In this case as in others, the settlement (actually by Booth and not Ievers) had never been given official sanction.
Successive and contradictory settlements such are those of Dorawaka, Pallegama, and Edurapota resulted in a mess. In Edurapota, which was initially a feudal (saramaru) village[5] “The village was the subject of an informal settlement by Mr. Wace as Assistant Government Agent in 1884. The overlord and tenants repudiated this settlement which had no legal value and Mr. Price settled the village again in 1888 as Forest Settlement officer, which was slightly different from Mr. Wace’s. This settlement was duly proclaimed but owing to some irregularity was declared ultra vires. Proceedings were to be started again but the papers got lost and the villagers received instructions to cultivate any land to which they had title. After that date I find that several blocks of land declared private by Mr. Wace and Mr. Price have been surveyed and sold by the Crown”
The erratic land policy pursued by the colonial administration in the Kägalla district is a clear example of the contradictions of the system, which was actually driven by the wishes of the planters but candidly considered by some naïve administrators to function for the sole benefit of the peasantry.
In the years following the enactment of the ordinance 12 of 1840, government interference was limited to the rare cases when a coffee planter wished to acquire land in the mid-country, which was then considered a second choice compared with virgin up-country land: a kind of rough and arbitrary block division was made on the spot, with little regard to the claims of the local villagers: a typical case is that of Berawila, detailed in a previous chapter on land-grabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district. But there was no systematic attempt to survey and settle all high lands.
By the end of the 1850, the property of lands belonging to temples (especially to the Kandy Maha devalaya in the Kägalla district) was reviewed by Government and surveyed; the title of many lands given to the temples was rejected by the Commission and these lands were appropriated by the Crown, while large areas recognized private could be leased to planters by temple trustees.
By the mid-1860s, when highland for coffee became scarce in the upper districts, colonial administrators such as Frederick Saunders envisioned the forcible appropriation of whole areas in the mid-country on the basis of ordinance 12 of 1840, and this policy was put into practice with much difficulty by his successors (Lee, King, Dowson, Pennycuick) between 1871 and 1877, on the basis of systematic surveys, especially in the Kelani Valley, but it was then found that the ordinance of 1840 was unworkable without the agreement of the villagers.
When Saunders became Government Agent of the Western Province (from 1879 to 1890), an energetic Assistant Agent, Ievers, followed by Murray, Le Mesurier and Wace, backed by the new governor Arthur Gordon (later lord Stanmore) invented a new system of ‘block settlement’ which partitioned highlands on the basis of needs of the villagers and with their agreement (or rather that of their headmen) with little regard to the letter of the ordinance, and in a context of crisis of the plantation industry. The result was to demarcate two blocks of highlands, one which the Crown could sell to planters, the other which was supposed to be reserved for the use of the villagers.
During the next decade, with the growing demand of land for tea, the sale of Crown blocks was soon followed by the sale by villagers of their supposedly inalienable chenas. With the arrival of more ‘pro-peasant’ revenue officers, such as Price, Booth and Davidson, attempts were made to curb the process by applying the Forest Ordinance of 1885 which was not devised for that purpose.
By the end of the century, the southern part of the district (Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama) was practically left to the tea planters, but the administration still attempted to block the development of plantations in the more populous northern part and to enforce the reservations in the upper reaches of the rivers (the Kälerata).
This policy again ended in failure, in the context of a demand for rubber land, and the administration was compelled or chose to legalize the planter’s acquisition of village land by issuing Certificates of Quiet Possession (CQPs) on payment, except in the case of the Kälerata, which was settled with much difficulty under the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 by the Land Settlement Department in the 1930s.
Administratively speaking, the lessons drawn from the failure of the experiments made in the Kägalla district led to the 1897 ordinance and the setting up of the Land Settlement Department. But politically speaking, the whole exercise was doomed from the start by the contradictions of the colonial system, which at the same time arbitrarily vested land rights in ‘the Crown’, encouraged the planter’s enterprise and attempted to protect the local peasantry. In the drama there were three actors with shifting alliances, or rather four because the legal profession acted often independently from the actors it was supposed to support.
Chena surveys and settlements upon wattoru: 1873-1878[6]
The ‘chena question’ became in the early 1870 a major issue in the colonial administration of the Kägalla district ; the policy of Saunders in 1863-64 was a forerunner of what was to lead to a general ‘un-settlement’ of high lands in an area where they were integrated into the village ecology more than in the upper districts. This was the result of a convergence of factors : the new demand for land at mid-elevation by the planters, first of coffee, then of tea (rubber impacted the demand only during the second part of the 1890s) ; the inconsistent interpretation of the land ordinance of 1840 and the extension of älvi (hill paddy) cultivation in the district ; and the ‘victorian’ methods of the colonial administration : this is the period when the first population census was undertaken; the idea of ‘settlement’ became a driving force. But all these attempts at control ended in failure and the result opened the way to a large-scale appropriation of land by outsiders, which impeded in many cases the transformation of highlands into gardens and household plots by the local villagers.
The clumsy attempts at repression of chena cultivation between 1870 and 1873 under Lee and King had led to resistance and near-famine conditions especially in the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama areas as explained in the previous chapter. It was then proposed by the Assistant Agent Aelian King and the Government Agent of the Western province to set up a regular mechanism of settlement based on systematic surveys. The Survey department, a colonial institution linked with the planters, was principally used to demarcate the blocks of lands sold by the Crown to planters, and was reluctant to undertake such an unfamiliar task. The project was started in August 1873 in Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama (the Kelani river basin), beginning with the villages close to the roads accessible from Ruanwella, ‘with a young and inexperienced staff’ made up of private licensed surveyors specially recruited for the task : Kavanagh, Durnford, White, Philip Francis Ondaatje[7], De Silva, Willams under the direction of D.G. Mantell, and later Ondaatje, Ch Patterson, R. Langslow, J.G. Koch, W.H. Mackenzie, under the supervision of W.A.B. Fryers (the son of the Surveyor general…).
In practice, the surveyors were guided by the Ratemahatmaya (chief headman) M.B. Ekneligoda. In a first phase, every plot in cultivation was to be surveyed but this was soon abandoned for a block survey of chenas of different ages without regard to individual claims. The decision was taken “to survey chenas in blocks village by village wherever the chenas of a village are so distributed; to survey chenas of every age recording on the plan the approximate age of each”; and to demarcate rectangular blocks to avoid encroachments, while the real chenas were generally rounded[8]. In addition to the practical difficulties of demarcating the areas, some surveyors were not reliable (Kavanagh was so negligent and troublesome that he was suspended). The Administration reports of the Surveyor General show that while initially the survey was planned lot by lot it was later decided to block survey “for the settlement of such worthless lands”; the ‘rejected temple lands’ were surveyed at the same time with a view to put them up for sale. It became soon evident that survey work was done in the interests of prospective planters, who were connected with the Survey department: in the words of D.G. Mantell “7,000 acres of forest saved from destruction by chena cultivators will be purchased by planters of robusta coffee and of tea and were already visited by several capitalists” [9]. In November 1873, detailed surveys were restarted and Mantell complained of contradictory instructions in a letter to the Surveyor General.
An enquiry by the Assistant Agents followed the survey, but the instructions given were confusing. It was not initially to be a settlement with the claimants, but a decision from above by the administration. In practice, the first chena enquiries of the 1870s made under the Assistant Agents King, Pennycuick and Dawson (actually by the Ratemahatmaya Ekneligoda), and supervised by Saunders, former Assistant at Kägalla and now Government Agent of the Western province, show a strict application of the ordinance of 1840, with the clear intention of reserving as much lands as possible for the Crown with a view to sell them to planters, while recognizing the validity of wattoru (receipts of payment of paddy tax) as proof of ownership. When there were wattoru of less than 20 years (generally dated of the 1860s), the chenas were ‘allowed’. In some cases small chena plots were allowed as appurtenances to paddy fields: Kudagama (Dehigampal) offers an example of a chena enquiry of 1875 by Ekneligoda which appears to take into account the concept of appurtenance[10].
Another procedure was possible “in case of chenas generally possessed simply under claim supposed to be won by repeated occupation: 1. Find the number of families in the village 2. Find the extent of paddy land for each family and taking the admitted proportion of chena to paddy land, apportionate an extent of chena land for the whole village somewhat greater. If the survey be in excess of this, let it be reduced with regard to the adoption of the most well-defined boundaries, or with regard to the reservation of soil best suited for the growth of timber”. But this procedure was rarely followed because it involved an in-depth study which the administration was not prepared to undertake.
Regarding ‘old’ gardens, for which there were no tax receipts because they were not cultivated with älvi, the practice was to give a Certificate of Quiet Possession on compulsory payment of survey fees : see for example in the village of Kahanawita, lot 2237 “Old garden more than 50 years, fully planted. Certificate of no claim will be granted on payment of survey fees. Advertise if not paid” (signed Saunders). Arbitrary decisions were frequent, under the influence of the chief headman, as in the case of the small village of Degalatiriya, near Undugoda, where claims to chenas were ‘rejected’ in 1873 for want of a sannasa, in spite of the village being registered as a nindagama. The decisions were delivered in an abrupt way, like those of the Temple lands commission, without taking into account the position of the villagers: they were not in the nature of settlements. A question constantly raised in these chena enquiries was that of the ‘new gardens’ which were created as an answer to demographic growth. When there were wattoru for the chena on which the garden was created, the land could be allowed as private but when there was no tax receipt (for example for rejected temple lands), the administration usually demanded the sale at half improved value. The files of the ‘chena cases’ kept in the Kägalla kacceri show a systematic refusal by the authorities to recognize the rights of the villagers in the case of recent transformation of chenas into gardens, and the theoretical assertion of Crown property over most of the chena areas. But the system was soon found to be not only unjust, but also unworkable.
In December 1873, it was also decided to select special headmen to look after chena cultivation, and the Assistant Agent Dawson, successor of Aelian King, published a series of rules relating to their role in distributing licenses and seizing crops “illegally raised on Crown lands” – an unworkable bureaucratic mechanism[11]. These headmen were selected with the idea that they would act in surveyed villages. But further correspondence in 1874 admitted that “the appointment of these headmen has not prevented or checked forest clearings to any extent”, and that their authority ran parallel to that of the regular headmen, which complicated things[12]. The administration reports for 1874 and 1875 are quite clear on the impact of the repressive policy which had become much harsher with the progress of surveys[13]: “The people compelled by a strict enforcement of the orders of government to abandon to a great extent the cultivation of chenas, gave more attention to their fields”. “In Pata Bulatgama, there must have been a scarcity of food, but it was relieved, I hear, by emigration to the neighbouring coffee estates of much of its adult population during the year, and so avoided calamity. The cultivation of high lands in this division should I think be liberally regarded.”
Regarding the settlement work, the same reports noticed that “the people have not responded willingly to the notice of government to attend and prove their claims. Very many absented themselves and their claims were in consequence rejected”. Pennycuick in the report for 1876 noted that the progress of the survey was too slow and that settlement was often difficult owing to confusion in names ; it is only in the report for 1879 that his successor Ievers considered that, with the help of Ekneligoda, the chena enquiries were accepted and even sought for by the villagers. The poor quality of the surveys sometimes gave rise to contestations by the villagers: the case of Kappagoda sales in 1872 is very typical[14]. In this ‘rejected’ temple village inhabited by Duraya and Muslim villagers, some of whom had sold their lands to a certain P.G. Fernando mudaliyar, the surveyor had included as Crown lands for sale paddy fields and gardens “because he could not take the proper bearings”
A regular difficulty was absenteeism of the claimants, especially of Duraya villagers as in the case of Dannorukanda; they were supposedly ‘noticed in advance’, but as the notice was delivered by high caste headmen, one can suspect that it was often not properly done: then the land was declared Crown and these headmen were in a position to point them to planters and pocket benefits for themselves: this is probably how Ekneligoda (and later Mideniya) became affluent. It is quite clear that corruption was the result of colonial interference in land matters, and not the cause of poor performance of the administration in land matters. The case of Narangala, a remote Panna village in Pata Bulatgama, settled by Dawson in 1874, is an example of the repressive policy pursued by the administration and of the resistance of Duraya villagers: Vikrampedige Goma petitioned against the chena headman who failed to notice him : because he was absent for the enquiry, the rocky highland adjoining his paddy field “never sown with paddy but with amu seed which is used by the meanest and poorly class of people every two or three years” was taken to the Crown. This chena had been converted by him into ‘peasant’ coffee: proof of the enterprise of these villagers living in contact with planters of the Dolosbage district; finally the enquiry was reopened and the land was given to the claimant on payment of ¼ share. Another case of resistance in the same area was that of Badahela (potters) and Vahumpura villagers of Pilawela and Rangalla: they opposed the claim of a high caste clan, the Dissanekge, who pretended that the highlands of these villages belonged to them on the basis of a sannasa. The document was found by the Courts to be a forgery, but it is the Crown and not the villagers who appropriated the lands which were subsequently sold to a planter[15]
Many high caste villagers were not better treated, especially along the road leading up-country along the Kelani river where early purchases by colonial administrators and by low-country traders were frequent: in Gomanduwa, a small Goyigama village near Yatiyantota (“2 pangu, 5 families, only 6 pelas of mud land”), most of the chenas were declared Crown in the 1877 chena enquiry and many gardens were sold at half improved value: “the land to the south of the road belongs to Mr. Anstruther (…) who is said to have bought it from Mr. Power who bought it in 1841” (Both these gentlemen were government servants). Another village in the same area, Karawudeniya, a rejected nindagama, has been sold by the Goyigama to Moors after a dramatic flooding.
In a critical analysis of these settlements on wattoru[16], the Assistant Agent Ievers posted at Kägalla in 1878 reported that the extent to which title was shown was only a small proportion of the whole chena area, impossible to locate and broken in small patches: the settlement was on paper, and assented to in so far as the villagers knew it was not put into practice. “I believe the existing system to be absolutely useless as a settlement” The report gives an history of the chena surveys, (first chenas were surveyed separately, then range by range), and describes the procedure: “on the day of the enquiry, all the claimants being present, I proceed to decide what chenas are private property and what are Crown (… ) the burden of ownership lies on the claimant, he may show title in four ways : by producing sannas, by producing deed of gift or purchase giving a prescriptive right, by custom which gives an appurtenance of highlands to a paddy field, by proof of payment of tax within 20 years ; practically only this fourth proof is adduced (…) but the full tax is hardly ever paid owing to the venality of the assessors who underassess the extents actually cultivated (…) When the claimant gives notice that he is about to clear a chena, the Ratemahatmaya permits him to clear the extent given in the list, but the claimant then goes and clears as much as he pleases and wherever he pleases, as the village headman is sure not to make any objection, or if he does, his scruples are easily removed (…) Nothing remains but an elaborate settlement on paper (…) If by chance the Crown is sufficiently ill advised to go to law, a recent decision of the Supreme court (…) will send the defendant triumphant to his village” “The present survey is quite unremunerative (…) The land declared Crown cannot be put up for sale, mixed up with private land (…) The present system is fruitful in irritation and an objectionable feeling of insecurity and unsettledness among the people, who finds the chenas which they believe to be theirs partly ‘become Crown’. The Crown decides against their title but cannot enforce its own possession (…) To decide according to the strictest letter of the law has proved useless and has only been acquiesced in by the people because the decision has been a dead letter and allows them to do as they please.”
Chena block settlements, or the contradictions of ‘dualism in action’.
Ievers was the first in the district not to restrict himself, like his predecessors, to legal considerations, and to devise a form of planning taking into account socio-economic factors (a process later formalized by the Land Settlement Officers as ‘mapping out’). He was initially supported by Layard, Government Agent of the Western province, and later by Gordon (later Lord Stanmore), Governor of Ceylon from 1883 to 1890, but Saunders, who succeeded Layard, was rather skeptical: “all this money and time are absolutely thrown away unless the agreements are made legally binding”[17]
Ievers experimented his plan in the remote village of Welihelatenne[18]: “I admit that the claimants can show title to a very small portion of the chenas, that in fairness they must be given sufficient for the support of their families and that consequently, the Crown will allow them more than they can show title to. I proceed to find out how many families there are in the village, the extent of paddy lands and gardens, and the extent of the chenas. From these data I decide what extent of chenas they should be allowed, taking everything into consideration. Where paddy fields are very few and comparatively unfertile, the people must of necessity cultivate chenas, but it should be the object of government to restrict such to the narrowest limits. After the agreement is signed by the headman and the family heads, the Crown block is demarcated”. The settlement of Hatnapitiya (Tunkorale)[19] provides a precise example of calculation of villagers’ needs in a small Goyigama village of the Panawal korale: 7 families have 3 acres 20 perches of irrigated paddy and a chena area of 825 acres; each family needs 2 pelas a year of chenas x 10 years (the interval between two cultivations) x 7 families = 140 pelas = 280 acres, considered as ‘a most liberal allowance’: the balance of 545 acres is taken as Crown land.
The difference between the early ‘settlements’ on wattoru and the new chena block settlements imagined by Ievers are clear from the case of Paradeniya[20], a small village with 14 houses, one Goyigama panguwa of 4 families and one Vahumpura panguwa, near Mattamagoda. Paradeniya was settled three times: under the old chena enquiry system by Pennycuick (7.07.1877); under the block chena settlement system by Ievers (24.04.1884); under the Forest settlement system by Booth (26.05.1893). The detailed settlements lot by lot in the first settlement show the results of a settlement upon wattoru, which decided to be Crown all the highlands even those regularly cultivated such as owiti (wet valleys) because owiti and chenas cultivated with amu and kurakkan did not pay taxes ; even coconut gardens of less than 5 years were declared Crown ; coconut gardens of less than 20 years growth were also settled at half improved value. In the block settlement made by Ievers seven years later, it was decided that “a block of 127 acres in the north will be sufficient as the Crown land in this village”, and the rest was allowed to the villagers; this was confirmed nine years later in the Forest settlement.
The major innovation was to divide village land into two blocks, with the idea to give the Crown the possibility to sell a compact part of the village highlands to planters: the ideology behind the move was that of ‘dualism’[21]. Ievers was still of opinion that the object of government was “to restrict chena to the narrowest limits and prevent the hitherto desultory and nomadic cultivation”. He thus justified his plan: “Land is now in much request and is daily becoming more valuable in the Tunkorale, applications are numerous, as the soil and climate are eminently suitable for tea, liberian coffee and cocoa. Several estates have already been opened and are very promising. But land remains tied up, owing to the present impossibility of settling the native claims, and planters will not purchase small isolated pieces”. That this consideration was always in the background when settlements were made on these lines is clearly shown in the diaries, as in the example the Patberiya settlement[22] : “I took as Crown block a piece of about 200 acres divided off from village on east by Gomala Oya and adjoining the Crown block at Hatnapitiya. The two together make a fine compact block of about 750 acres which will be very valuable some day for tea”. In the margin, the Governor Gordon, who read the diaries before returning them to their authors, wrote: “good”.[23]
But the settlement process imagined by Ievers, which requested the acquiescence of the villagers, soon ran into problems. The vivid details given in his diaries show how difficult it was to explain to the villagers the rationale of a system of settlement imagined from above which was so much at variance with the land practices of the Kandyan peasants: “It takes at least three hours patient talk and reiteration before a village settlement can be made and the same points and explanations gone over and over twenty times before they really understand”[24]. In practice Ievers was assisted by M.B. Ekneligoda, the Ratemahatmaya of the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, whose integrity was soon suspected by the villagers. A major problem arose in villages where the settlement deprived certain pangu[25] of the area in which they used to cultivate: “pangukarayo would disagree between themselves and if they decline to accept a compact block of chenas in place of their small scattered pieces scattered all over the village mixed up with Crown land, the officer making the settlement could not compel them”. There was a basic discrepancy between the actual chena practices (varying according to localities) and the rational system of surveys and establishment of property rights implied by the colonial logic. The Ievers settlement system totally ignored the fact that in many large villages, each panguva used to cultivate chenas in specific ranges, and that no collective decision by a gansabhava (village council) always convened by high caste chiefs often opposed by coterie rivalries could be imposed.
Ievers was replaced momentarily by Baumgartner, who mentioned that chena surveys had been stopped when he took over. He added: “The apportionment of the private block among all the claimants was left to be settled by the Ratemahatmaya and the village council (…) In not a single instance has the Ratemahatmaya of Tunkorale been able to effect a settlement owing to the refusal of those in possession of the block assigned to the villagers to give any share of it to others. In the case of 27 villages referred to him, he had to report in September 1881 that in every instance there were people who objected to a division, the very people who had signed the agreement at the time of the enquiry. There being no legal power to enforce the written agreements, it was useless attempting any further settlements”[26]. Other unresolved issues were the question of mortgages or leases on lands included in the Crown block, of people who had not signed the agreement returning to the village, and more generally of the arbitrary and extra-legal character of the settlement process, which could not be legalized by an ordinance. The result was again that the authority was jeopardized and that only the hard fact of plantation clearing would enforce these paper settlements.
Returning to the district, Ievers in his report for 1882 defended his plan saying that “the conflicting claims of the villagers and the Crown had been arranged in 71 villages, 15,020 acres recovered as Crown property, and already 1,977 acres sold ; the villagers with a few unavoidable exceptions are satisfied with the settlement (…) capital is attracted into the country and barren wastes of jungle are formed into flourishing tea estates. During the year under review, I have only made settlements where the villagers asked me to do so, or where the planters applied for tracts of chena land partly claimed by the villagers”. In the first settlements effected by Ievers after 1883, he explained his method to the Governor Gordon, as in the case of the village of Pannila: “In making chena settlements one of two courses must be pursued : 1. To treat all claims from the strictly legal point of view and only admit title to such lands as it can be shown that the customary tax has been paid within 20 years or by virtue of a Crown grant or sannasa [It is how Dawson and Pennycuick worked]. 2. To treat the claim upon a communal basis and give a fair share to the pangukarayo, defining accurately the limits of the communal lands. I have made the chena settlement of this district upon the latter basis as I consider the former to be inequitable, and the villagers in fact in almost every case have agreed to my settlement (…) It is to avoid constant disputes between the villagers and the Crown claims, where neither can definitely say “this is Crown” or “this is communal land” that I have made these settlements, and the system has worked very well. If the agreement be cancelled, each man must produce his wattoru before the Ratemahatmaya, after giving notice to the chena headman of the extent he means to clear, and if he clears more than what appears in the wattoru, he is liable to prosecution if he clears any jungle over 20 years old ; and in fact the want of settlement gives rise to constant worry and annoyance both to villagers and headmen and the Assistant Agent”[27].
In his Administration report for 1884 the new Agent Wace made a case for pushing the settlement of the district[28] : “The definite settlement of village claims has too long be deferred already, to the great damage of Crown lands and the demoralization of the villagers (…) Government rights are necessarily in suspension as long as such claims remain undecided and the private capitalist is shut out as he is between two claimants he does not know with which to deal. The wealth of this district is in its gardens and highlands and it is a policy attended with loss both to the Crown and the public to neglect any longer the definite land settlement of their district. I would commence with Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, where villagers are chiefly dependent on älvi for food supply, and where the demand for government land is greatest.”
But when a village was large, multi-caste, divided between rival families, and prospected by would-be planters, such as Pannila, it was difficult to reach a settlement[29]. As early as March 1872, Goyigama villagers had petitioned the Governor against the first wave of chena repression and the answer of the colonial administration was: “the petitioners be informed that there is no intention to interfere with their property in chena and that they are perfectly at liberty to do as they please with their own. It is necessary however to impose a check on the promiscuous occupation of crown lands and the wanton destruction of timber for worthless purpose, and with this view, chenaing any such land without a license cannot be permitted”. Twelve years later, Ievers undertook to settle these chena lands and reported: “Pannila is a large village with flourishing fine gardens and people in good sort ; but mud land in this korale is very little (…) Great difficulty in making settlement : 7 pangu, 26 families, 1555 acres : 20 acres of paddy, 69 acres of garden, 1191 acres of chenas, 273 acres of forest ( 3 large pieces in the east), so to preserve them I took a block of about 200 acres (actually 354 acres) surrounding them. Had to talk for about 2 hours before I could get a few recalcitrants to sign agreement. These settlements whenever they are made legal should be sufficient if 4/5 of the pangukarayo agree. I now have to get unanimity and this entails great loss of time in talk before they can be convinced.” “The 837 acres allowed as private was divided between 3 gamwasam and the Vahumpura panguwa; one of the gamwasam received 500 acres and none of it was taken to the Crown. On the other hand, one of the gamwasam was entirely taken to the Crown. As a compensation, when the 350 acres of the Crown block was settled under the WLO, 37 acres was allowed out of the Crown block to the gamwasama entirely taken”. But the representatives of the Mahagamarallage alias Mahagamwasama panguwa “of the class known as village proctors”, who would lose 8 amunam in the division out of the 11 amunam of chenas they claimed, refused to sign the settlement. In their petition of 27.09.1884, they affirmed that their right to cultivate chenas as members of a high caste family who rendered feudal services was registered in a lekammitiya, that they paid tax at 1/14 for their chenas, that they could not pay survey fees. They recalled that in 1872 being obstructed in the cultivation of their chenas they petitioned the governor and apparently obtained satisfaction. The Governor Gordon commented on this report: “I quite agree with the principle enunciated in this very clear and full report, and am anxious that these communal chenas should be established if consent can be obtained. But a general consent is necessary to the working of the system successfully. I do not agree except in a very restricted sense with the opinion expressed in the minute of 1872 and the villagers should be made to understand that while the chenas may be ‘their own’ to use, they are not their own to alienate”. The end of the story, according to the Kägalla kacceri file, is characteristic of the failure of the process of settlement in this case. In 1887 the gamwasama panguwa petitioned again and the new Assistant Agent Price reported that “cases of this description have frequently occurred in these unformal settlements which provide for the decision of all disputes by a reference to a gansabhava. If the petitioners are unable to obtain redress in that manner, they must wait till the Forest Settlement Officer deals with Pannila”. In November1889, Price reported on another petition of the Mahagamarallage panguwa which complained that a larger area of chena lands was taken from it than from other pangu; the Agent considered that there was a real grievance but that the expression of their hardships was as usual in a petition largely exaggerated. In 1896, Pannila Mahagame Appuhami re-petitioned and said that in any case the panguwa would cultivate these chenas taken by Crown. This time, the Vahumpura panguwa made a similar request, recalling that they had signed the settlement on the condition that they would be given other lands. In reports of 28.03.1896 and 19.05.96, the new chief headman Mideniya confirmed what they said and “failed to settle the dispute” even by holding a gansabhava. Shortly afterwards (12.06.96), the Assistant Agent Davidson wrote to A.J.R. de Soysa, a well-known land speculator: “I have been informed by certain villagers of Pannila that it is your intention to buy from a dismissed aracci of Pannila, Punchirala, a range of the village chenas. These chenas were especially reserved with villagers for chena cultivation. It is to my personal knowledge that the distribution of chenas based on this settlement has been made impossible in its operation by the ex-aracci Punchirala, and the deprivation of their shares of this chena is calculated to turn some of the villagers into vagrants and thieves” But Punchirala meanwhile sold on 25.08.1896, to various intermediaries (KDJ Perera and S Velayden Chetty about 150 or 200 acres, and 280 acres to Thomis Appu, another shopkeeper), and Davidson wrote to them that the sale was invalid; they waited until a change of Assistant agent and in September 1906, they resold the lands to two British planters, G. Talbot and L. Bayly, who asked the government for a Certificate of Quiet Possession in April 1907.
In the case of Morawatte, a village located close to the town of Ruanwella, the situation was still more complex because influent planters, local land brokers, and a possibly unscrupulous civil servant were involved[30]. The first settlement had been made in 1879 by Ievers, but “in defiance of their agreement and subsequent decisions of the gansabhava, the villagers who were in possession of the village block declined to allow any portion of it to those who gave up their lands to the Crown (…) It seems that some village proctors among them have advised the others to resist”. These Crown lands made up of numerous small lots were sold by auction by the Assistant Agent Le Mesurier in December 1885 and were aggregated to form Ruanwella estate. The purchaser was T.N. Christie, the chairman of the Ceylon Planter’s Association from 1885 to 1888, who had been previously in affairs with Le Mesurier. One of these lots was an old coconut garden erroneously included in the survey, another a new garden which the villagers failed to keep to themselves, trying to bid against Christie. In spite of petitions against the sale, Christie attempted to take possession of the land and tried to obtain from government that the adverse claims be compensated and silenced; the offer was refused by the villagers: they were supported by a contractor formerly employed on the estate, called Baron Perera, who bought their rights and fought in court ; then government asked Christie to desist after being reimbursed, which he refused “because it will impair the value of his estate”. Cases ensued which were won by the villagers. Meanwhile Christie, himself a land speculator, had resold half his estate to one Mrs. Drummond-Deane in 1887. They both brought the affair before the Colonial Office in London and were finally awarded handsome damages. Le Mesurier was later accused of being the real owner and Christie a figurehead.
In 1884, block settlement was undertaken in Beligal, a section of Hatarakorale (Kiraweli and Kandupita pattu)[31]; population was denser, chenas lands were more scattered and the planters were less pressing to obtain fresh land than in Tunkorale. The project soon ran into difficulties. Some land had already been sold or appropriated by the government, as in Pindeniya, (21.04.1884). In Nikapitiya the village obtained all its remaining high lands in view of the fact that most its chenas had been seized and sold by the Crown after the Temple Lands commission. When the paddy land was extensive and chena land was not, all the chenas were recognized private on the principle of appurtenance (Digogedara, 2.04.1884, Bopetta 7.04.1884). When Crown blocks were demarcated they were generally much smaller (Kiridena, Epalotutuwa, Kinigama, Kanatuwawala, Harigala, 22-23.04.1884; Naranwatte 17.05.1884). When fields, gardens and chenas were mixed, settlement was difficult and might be abandoned (Tambadiya, Kanatuwawala, Kinigama: “any block settlement would be very difficult. I think none is necessary and the Crown claim to chenas might be abandoned as the extent of high land in proportion to mud land is not excessive”. “I do not think any block of Crown chenas can be formed in this village. There is no forest in the village nor in adjoining villages. I would recommend that claims be allowed.” In Lahupone the settlement was abandoned until 1893. All these villages were inhabited by Goyigama and Vahumpura peasants, who cultivated chenas separately: block settlements created problems between the two groups as in Epalatotuwa, where the Vahumpura panguwa felt discriminated against by the decision of the gansabhava, saying that they had lost 17 acres in the process, while the other pangu have benefitted.
The case of the large village of Maha Pallegama (25.04.1884), populated by Goyigama and a few Vahumpura peasants, was singular: on the basis of the former status of the village as royal , “the people desire a settlement to have the chenas alotted to them without Crown claim” ; and indeed on the appurtenance basis all chenas could be recognized private. In this and the neighbouring villages Kuda Pallegama (entirely Vahumpura), Udagama, and Pelpita, Crown blocks of about 50 acres were carved out but the settlement was finally abandoned.
Disputes between owners and tenants made settlements impossible or difficult in formerly feudal villages such as Malwana (24.09.1884), a large nindagama given by the British to a Kandyan chief who collaborated with them after the 1818 rebellion, and later purchased by another collaborator, Edward Wijesinghe, who had usurped the prestigious name of Molligoda and was not recognized as landlord by the Batgama peasants. A similar situation prevailed in Edurapota (29.10.1884) given by the British in 1821 and resold to a Low-country Christian mudaliyar, C. Perera Samarasinghe: the settlement was constantly contested because the tenants (Goyigama and Vahumpura) and the proprietor were at war: “From time to time the tenants have shown themselves very obstructive and have repeatedly refused to obey the decisions of the gansabhava on the division of the village block (…) The landlord wrote a letter formally repudiating the agreement of 1884. Both tenants and landlords being decided in their determination not to observe the terms of the settlement, the Crown may also disown it”[32]. Even in small high caste ‘simple’ villages with 3 pangu only, such as Basnagoda, settled by Ievers in 1879, the situation could be very tense. One of the three pangu had lost ‘its’ chenas included in the Crown block which was sold and the other pangu refused to let it cultivate chenas in ‘their’ range of highlands. As late as 19.07.1898, the chief headman Mideniya failed to solve the dispute, which lasted since 1884.
Pata Bulatgama differed from Tunkorale. In these narrow valleys going up to the former Dolosbage coffee estates of the Kandy district, the impact of the plantation system was felt before 1870, and the connivance between the colonial administration and the planters had deprived the locals of the control of their highlands. In the upper Ritigaha Oya valley, a declining aristocratic clan (Ranasinghe Mudianselage) still exerted its authority, but highlands had been sold by the Crown to Dolosbage coffee estates (Gangwarily, Glenalla, Dedugala, Kelvin, Doteloya). The whole area (Dedugala, Yatideriya, Tumbage, Kekalapone, Udapota) was claimed by the Mudianselage extended clan, which held the post of Uduwe korala and possessed a sannasa for the whole valley. Dedugala was a remote Goyigama village, possibly originally Vedda; a large part of the land was rocky chena or patina (grass land). There were three pangu, two belonging to the Ranasinghe Mudianselage clan (Ihala walauwa, Pahala walauwa) and one Mullilage. Kekalapone was a large, mainly Vahumpura village situated above Dedugala, which was registered as a nindagama belonging to the Ranasinghe clan, with 8 nila (service) pangu and 12 families. After initial Crown sales in the late 1860s, the Gangwarily planter, Drummond, had attempted to grab Dedugala and Kekalapone village lands to extend and ‘round’ his estate. In January 1876 he wrote a letter to the Assistant Agent Dawson, asking to enter into possession of a land adjoining his estate but claimed by Dedugala Ranasinghe, arguing that “in a governmental point of view, no doubt the land is much more valuable in my possession than in the hands of the natives; for I will cultivate, they will not. In the like manner, the natives put in a claim for a considerable portion of the present estate, but Mr. Worthington did not recognize their title to it some seven years ago”. At the chena enquiry of Dawson in 1876, it appeared that the survey contained errors, that the surveyors had made no enquiry from the headmen, and that the genuine sannasa of the Uduwe family was interpreted as covering only a part of the land: “the korala claimed the greater part of the Gangwarily estate on the same sannasa, but his claim was disallowed”. Again in 1884, Drummond “applied for 278 acres as a free grant”; the Assistant Agent at the chena settlement recommended that “half the remaining chena (of low growth) be allowed to villagers and the rest (old chenas and forest) be marked off and sold (…) These villagers deserve to be liberally dealt with, as in Gangwarily are included several old gardens and one paddy field, all of which with the surrounding chenas and gardens were sold by the Crown in 1868 or 67. Some small compensation was given for the paddy field but none for the gardens”. The governor Gordon asked in the margin of the diary: “How this came about?” The Agent answered that he was unable to find the papers relative to this sale, and concluded: “I am disposed to allow the villagers a good extent of chena lands to form a good ring fence (so to speak) around the villages to prevent encroachments and raids on their gardens from the Tamil coolies – even at the sacrifice of a little more land than usual in these cases. At Dedugala and Kekalapone their need is so considerable as so much was sold to Gangwarily estate in 68 or 69”. In 1885, when the settlement enquiry was held, Kekalapone had 11 acres of paddy, 37 acres of gardens and 128 acres of chena “the remaining lands in this village have been sold to Gangwarily”. The Assistant Agent Wace concluded : “I do not think it advisable to take any portion in this village for Crown, lots 388 and 389 are the only large lots left between the village and the estate” [33].
In 1884 the planters’ demand was in full sway and Wace was constantly pressed for land[34] : “It will be observed that these settlements have reserved for the Crown a very considerable extent of so-called forest and chena lands (…) The question now is how much of this land may be offered for sale? That it will sell well to tea planters is certain. I have received several applications for land for tea estates and am continually being pressed for information (…) It should be remembered that the village chenas (and many tea estates already opened) adjoin these portions reserved for the Crown, and that consequently it is difficult to protect them as in spite of the settlement they will assert a claim by wattoru or even cultivate without claim (…) So much land has already been sold in these villages that together with the private lands of the villagers it is impossible to secure any considerable unbroken extent of Crown forest, and I therefore submit that it is desirable to offer the remainder for sale. The question is one of pressing importance to this district which already enjoys the reputation of being the best suited for tea cultivation in the island.”
Chena block settlements made under the Ievers system in Atulugam and Panawal korales allowed the Government to sell large blocks of chenas and forests to planters in the 1880s, resulting in the creation of a large planting district generally known under the name ‘Kelani Valley’. In the process, the solidity of the Crown block was rarely questioned, while that of the villager block was constantly jeopardized by the problems of redistribution between the pangu. This situation contributed to the sale by villagers of their chenas to neighbouring estates, generally through middlemen such as contactors, bazaar traders and tavern keepers.
A typical case was that of Hinguralakanda, a bi-caste locality located close to the pioneer tea estates of the Kelani Valley at the limit between Panawal and Atulugam. Wace was unable to effect a settlement, because part of the chena area “adjoins the estate 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 for tea estates. This village is also divided into two castes, Vellala [Goyigama] and Jaggery [Vahumpura], and this makes any joint possession difficult”. This complex Hinguralakanda settlement made Wace to suggest the legalization of the chena settlements under the new Forest ordinance: “it would further prevent the alienation of village chenas. It often happens now that after settlement the villagers decide to whom a land shall belong and they sell it off to outsiders. The title is weak, but the Crown having withdrawn its claim the purchasers are willing to risk a claim by anyone else, whereas in a settlement under the new ordinance the village portion would be reserved for village chenas and its alienation effectively prevented. Nor would the reservation affect the right of the Crown to sell any of the portion reserved to it, for the government can always withdraw the reservation either wholly or in part”[35].
The judicial system of Ceylon appeared as obstructive to the colonial administrators. In their Administration Reports[36], Wace and Price had insisted on the necessity to legalize settlements and render impossible the sale of shares in the chena block without sanction by other community members and the administration: “Under present circumstances it is impossible to entirely prevent the sale of such lands to those who are interested in the cultivation of tea. It is equally difficult to obviate the hardships which the poorer class of shareholders in such lands frequently suffer in consequence of sales which may have been effected without their knowledge or against their will”. As long as a villager can sell his share “the chief object and benefit of the chena settlement policy will be lost. It has been due to the settlement work pursued so steadily in the Kägalla kacceri during the last ten years that the district has advanced so rapidly and that the villagers themselves have so largely benefitted by the introduction of European capital and the opportunities afforded them of estate labour. But the conditions under which such settlements were made must be observed if the same advance and prosperity is to be continued. If the result of the settlements is to enable the villagers to deprive themselves and the village of their highlands allotted to them for one purpose for the immediate attraction of a few rupees, their agricultural condition will hardly be ultimately improved. All that is necessary is to pass an enactment that land so settled shall not be alienated except with the consent of the whole village and the Crown”. Chena settlements were perhaps adapted to the period before the tea boom but “will not stand the scrutiny of the law courts”.
Davidson, a new Assistant Agent, took a slightly different position in 1892[37]: “My predecessor strongly held that the remedy 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 which may arise with the landless and indolent peasantry [sic], I cannot see my way to recommend legislation to restore the character of village holdings after the practice of alienation had been countenanced for so many years in the Supreme Court of Ceylon. No legislation can at this stage arrest the progress of the decay of the communal village system, where that system runs counter to the temporary interest of the villagers and to the interest of the European element (…) When the process of transition be past, with its misery and attendant crime, the Kandyan villagers will develop into an honest and industrial race as are the Sinhalese of the Europeanized portions of the South or the Tamils of the Jaffna peninsula. Meanwhile I advocate that Government should not countenance the alienation of the village lands and should refuse to make surveys and grant Certificates of Quiet Possession to purchasers, and thus devise the means to make the transitional stage between the old time Kandyan usage and the Europeanization of the hill country as slow and as gradual as possible”. The alienation of lands from the village block will become the main preoccupation of the administration and eventually lead to the Waste lands ordinance of 1897, which will be the subject of another study.
The aim of the settlement was to obtain land for planters without ‘legal uncertainties’ and in this it succeeded, but it failed to preserve village interests. It is when planters who had acquired Crown blocks started to extend their lands by purchasing in the village block that the settlement was contested. These purchases were later legalized by the Government conferring Certificates of Quiet Possession under the pressure of the planters and of their legal advisers, actually nullifying the work done by his own agents. Another weakness was that these settlements were conducted with meagre means, very quickly: the British agent visited the village with the headmen and decided in an abrupt way to cut into pieces the village land. As soon as these intelligent peasants or some of them, the so-called village proctors, began to understand the game, they started to contest the colonial authorities with its own arms – the legal apparatus.
A new system of chena settlement under the Forest Ordinance[38]
A Forest ordinance had been enacted in 1885 following the report on forests of Ceylon made by a member of the Indian forest service, D’A Vincent, who had pointed the difficulties of working the ‘chena survey’ whose object was “reclaiming large areas of Crown land which have been cleared for chena and in which individual proprietary rights have grown up under ord. 12 of 1840. The land originally either communal or Crown, is now cut up by plots claimed in individual right, and although the joint area of these claims may not be 1/10th of the whole, in the interest of the Crown and to permit of the land being sold, it is desirable to come to an equitable settlement with individual proprietors” but it requires the unanimous assent of the villagers and “has only the sale of land as an object” and not forest conservation.[39]
To overcome the shortcomings of the Ievers system, a new Assistant Agent, Price, proposed in 1886 to undertake the chena settlements on a new legal basis, using the Forest Ordinance of 1885 instead of the Ordinance of 1840, following a suggestion made by his predecessors Le Mesurier and Wace[40]. It could prevent the alienation of village chenas: “under the present system it often happens that directly Crown has withdrawn its claim, the villagers decide to whom a land shall belong and they sell it off to strangers. This was of course not the intention of these settlements. The lands should be, as laid down in a minute of H.E., ‘the villagers to use but not to alienate’. The title is weak but the Crown having practically given a Certificate of Quiet Possession, the purchasers are willing to risk the very remote chance of any other villagers ousting them by due course of law”. In June 1887, Price wrote to Saunders, his superior in Colombo, to expedite legalization of the chena settlements on the basis of the Forest Ordinance, but Saunders was not prepared to press the matter, probably because it would freeze the land market, contrary to the wishes of the planters with whom he was closely connected. The first attempts at applying the Forest Ordinance to the old chena settlements were made by Price in Edurapota in November 1887, and his diary was annotated by the governor: “I think this is a most excellent suggestion if there is no legal impediment”. Price was nominated as Forest Settlement Officer (26.10.1888) but nothing official was done because the Forest department opposed it, considering that it was a misuse of the ordinance to allow chena cultivation instead of protecting the forests[41].
The Forest Ordinance of 1885 had been enacted to constitute Forest Reserves in the still uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited parts of the island. In the Kägalla district, the only area which could be considered to correspond to that definition was the eastern part of the Atulugam Korale, commonly called Kälerata (Forest country). The initial plan was to give villagers the right to cultivate chenas in certain areas under the control of the forest administration, but not the right to alienate these areas: “The demand among Europeans for land in the Kelani Valley has caused much interference with village interests and the sale by villagers of chenas which should be theirs only to use and not to alienate is open to grave objection (…) Indiscriminate sale of Crown land is open to grave objection but a judicious sale of the chenas which are the property of government is to be desired (…) Investors are determined to have land in the Kelani valley and if they cannot buy it from the government they purchase it in fragments from the Sinhalese. The result of such transactions is disastrous. Native brokers make it their business to acquire the chenas of the Kandyan villagers who rapidly dissipate the purchase money and eventually become vagrants”. The same message was repeated in 1887, with the precision that the main victims were the shareholders who had not sold their shares, and Price began to put his idea into practice, and extend its application to other districts as well: “The people of Digala asked for a chena settlement. But I pointed them that in view of the obstructive action of the people of Morawatta, Garagoda, and other settled villages, I was not prepared to make any more informal settlements which could not be legally enforced”. The announcement of a new settlement must have raised an alarm among the population, once again. In his diary the Agent mentioned that he had to tour his district to allay the fears of the villagers : “All that the government wants is settlement (…) They must not conclude that because they may not be able to prove title they will therefore be mercilessly deprived of all means of cultivation and subsistence (…) I think that the distrust which the enquiries of the Forest Settlement Officer have, I am told, created in the past, will now disappear”[42].
The Forest Department considered that it was not his job to make chena settlements. Initially the aim was to form a forest reserve in the upper reaches of the Kelani Valley basin – the east of Atulugam korale, above Deraniyagala, unsurveyed and unsettled. It is only in early 1887 that after a lot of evasiveness a captain Walker had been posted as Forest Settlement Officer in Three Korales. He was tasked to report on which chena rights could be admitted in the reserve: he proposed to base them on wattoru, but the Agent considered it should be extended, as amu and kurakkan were not taxed, on the basis of population. He raised a series of questions regarding the use of wattoru which underassessed the extents actually cultivated, the existence of joint ownership (which was denied by the Assistant Agent who wrote: “Chenas are never held in common amongst different pangu; the tenure which the Forest Settlement Officer calls as communal I should define rather as tattumaru – rotating”), using the example of Ballahela village, and the position to take in the case of sales to outsiders : “The people seem to have sold their property or any title or claim they may have had to it for a mere trifle and then left the village for good. In many instances the vendors are dead.”[43]. Price suggested that the ‘Forest settlement’ should be done by the Agent himself and not by a Forest officer, and that the chenas of the village block should be declared by him ‘village forests’ at the disposal of the village community, and those of the Crown block ‘lands at the disposal of the Crown’; he added that people could object that “the intention of the chena settlement was to hand over to the villagers an absolute and unconditional right to the village block” but that in his opinion the holdings were considered as “communal and beneficial only”. At that point, the Government Agent of the Western Province disagreed and considered that it was not proper to deny full rights of highland property to individuals : “there can be no doubt that for years in the Kandyan districts persons have been allowed to hold them absolutely and they have feely exercised a right to dispose of them by sale”.
But in 1889, the Governor decided to de-link the Kägalla and Ratnapura districts from the Western province and create a new province, Sabaragamuwa, with Wace as Agent: the explicit intent was to reduce the distance between the administration and the people, and the implicit object was to remove these districts from the influence of Saunders[44]. At that juncture, the repressive policy was found to be unrealistic and practically abandoned. In the words of Wace: “Since 1815, the private title of villagers in highlands has been enjoyed without interruption and in every part of the Kandyan provinces chena lands have changed hands repeatedly on notarial deeds; it has been held by the Supreme court that the payment of tax constitutes a good title against the Crown, and wattorus establishing proof of such payment could be produced for the greater part of the chena lands in these settlements. I believe myself that this individual right among members of each pangu existed in village life even under the Kandyan dynasty, and that it was recognized even in gabadagam”. Communal lands should be settled on villagers “strictly prohibiting the alienation of such lands to other classes or for other purposes. I have repeatedly pointed out how greatly Kandyans have suffered from the failure of their coffee gardens; if in addition they lose their chenas they will certainly have no visible means of subsistence left and will become vagrants, and a serious burden on the general community, as soon as the small sums acquired by the sale of their chena lands have been consumed.”[45]
In 1892, it was decided to assign to a member of the Civil service (and not of the Forest department) the task of expediting the Forest settlement of the Beligal korale. L.W. Booth was appointed in June 1892, and his instructions were to abandon the block principle and settle according to the ordinance of 1840. 18 villages in Kiraweli east (a section of Beligal) were selected; 16 were already block settled and there was in this district a tendency to repudiate these settlements (for example in Elamaldeniya and Narangoda). All these villages had a population belonging in majority to the Vahumpura caste and formed a compact block, on the western side of the Gurugoda Oya, north of Salgala monastery, 5×2 miles, 4,800 acres of forest and chenas. Another group of villages was added later on the eastern side of the Oya, in Kandupita south, around Pindeniya, a multicaste area (Goyigama, Vahumpura, Batgama) with several plumbago pits. Most of these villages had been block-settled on the basis of surveys made north of Ruanwella and they were already eyed by land speculators, although they were not considered fit for tea cultivation, and the Crown blocks had not been alienated; in almost all these villages the Crown block was less than 100 acres. In the first series of villages (Kiraweli east), the aggregate area was 5,161 acres, with 175 acres of gardens, 201 acres of fields, 3,297 acres of village chenas, 1,259 acres of Crown chenas and 229 acres of Crown forest.
The systematic work of L.W. Booth was first hailed by the colonial administration as a great success but eventually ended as a major failure. The Assistant Agent commented favourably on the advance of the surveys in his diary[46]: “The decisions are fair: there would be no appeals; they follow very closely the chena settlements (identical in 13 cases, very different in 4 cases where the chena settlement was flatly rejected). About 2,800 acres are the absolute property of the Crown, the Assistant conservator of Forests must have his say; I suggest 1/10th as village forest, 2/10th sold for village gardens, 3/10th sold in large blocks for estates, 4/10th reserved for timber supply”. But the Conservator of forests in a letter of 22.06.1894 wrote that it was not the job of a Forest Settlement Officer to advise concessions to villagers but the job of the Revenue Officer. The Administration Report of the Kägalla Assistant Agent for 1896 still described it in optimistic terms: “During the years 1893-1897, Mr. L. W. Booth settled in this district an extent of 70,644 acres, settling finally I hope the long continued disputes between the Crown and villagers over an area equal to 1/6th of the whole extent of the district. A permanent settlement of this nature followed by a block survey is one of the greatest benefits to all parties which the government has ever carried through. One appeal only was taken from Mr. Booth decision, and his decision was upheld in the Supreme Court. The universal acceptance of his settlements is the highest testimony to the fair and liberal spirit which characterizes his work.” The following year the picture was less optimistic: “It is most important that the work of the settlement officer in Beligal korale and the Kelani valley should be completed. The boundaries between the Crown and private chenas still remain to be demarcated before the necessary proclamations can be published. Beligal was settled in 1895 but only 22 out of the 46 villages have been proclaimed under the Forest Ordinance”[47]
The Forest settlement soon ran into difficulties in Beligal korale[48]. Between December 1894 and March 1895, the settlement was contested by petitioners who after accepting the chena and forest settlements: “allege that they have not enough to live upon”. Upon enquiry, the Government agent found that “it is not the limited extent they demur to as much as the arbitrary location of the highlands at points which do not suit their convenience or are not in keeping with their tradition”. Contrary to the situation which prevailed in Atulugam, in the densely populated area of Beligal, each panguwa cultivated chenas in specific areas and the settlements failed to recognize that practice. The high proportion of Vahumpura caste villagers, who had a tradition of fighters and were more than others dependent on chena cultivation, may have contributed to their resistance. Their discontent was increased by the high-handed attitude of the surveyors, who misunderstood the tracings made by Booth and cut into chenas in cultivation, as in Hinwella (petition of 29.05.1895), while the villagers themselves might have ignored the delimitation of the Booth settlement in opening their chenas. The Agent eventually decided that they could cultivate their chenas “irrespective of the lines now being cut by the chena surveyors”. “To my thinking the method pursued in giving effect to Mr. Booth forest settlement in this district has been injudicious (…) The fundamental error has been in construing Mr. Booth tracing as absolutely accurate (…) The villagers throughout the settled area have upon legal advice from Colombo deliberately proceeded to clear all land on which the growth was less than 20 years, whether decreed to them or not, in order to have possession on their side”. Booth recognized that “the villagers will not consent to take their lands in solid blocks and I must admit on consideration that the Government Agent is right in saying that I probably exceeded my powers in so arranging them thought it did not occur to me at the time”.
According to the Assistant Agent Davidson, these villagers were manipulated by “mischievious advisers” and undertook willfully to cut chenas in the Crown sector in Narangoda, Kurunegoda, Welhella, Kiwuldeniya and Elamaldeniya: “The villagers throughout the area have upon legal advice from Colombo deliberately proceeded to clear all lands upon which the growth is less than 20 years, whether decreed to them by the Forest Settlement Officer or not” “The stupid [sic] villagers instigated by designing persons and encouraged by the consistency with which the Supreme Court sets aside all convictions under the Forest Ordinance have cleared these lands to see whether the Crown can maintain its own rights. If the Crown fails, the villagers will fell every stick of forest which has been reclaimed from chena clearing for the last 30 years and under the good of a consistent policy which has curbed promiscuous clearing”[49]. Davidson sought the assistance of the renowned advocate Bawa to defend the Crown: “the issues are very serious ; there is a risk of an organized attack on the settlements not only in the Beligal korale, but also in the Three Korales ; the benefit of the policy of the last 18 years, which has led to a marked afforestation of the hills bordering the western province, will be swept away if we fail to secure a conviction. The villagers have organized a fund and will be represented by the leading lawyers of Colombo”. Among the lawyers involved was the young advocate Aelian Ondaatje, who was to become a staunch adversary of the colonial administration in land cases: he argued that a land having been cultivated three times during the last 30 years gave the cultivator a presumption against the Crown.
The hostility of the villagers focused on the surveyors as had been the case in the first decades of estate development up-country. The Surveyor General received petitions and the district surveyor of Sabaragamuwa, Snowden, wrote in a report to his superior who annexed it to his letter to the Government Agent of Sabaragamuwa (23.11.1895): “the surveyors cut trenches through standing hill paddy and this occasioned a great outcry ; so to pacify the natives I gave it up with the understanding that they cut the trenches themselves where indicated when the paddy is harvested. The natives had no objection to my surveying the boundaries but they said after I had finished that they would clear where they liked. They would not touch the forest but the chenas belonged to them and nothing will induce them to give them up to government. They have employed counsel in Colombo who advises them to say that when signing the agreements on 18.11.1880 they were under the impression the land was being consigned to them”. At the beginning of 1896, tension increased and the administration forced chena cultivators to pay the ‘ground share’ (1/5th) to the Crown, in Welhella, or prosecuted and forcibly removed the crops (in Kiwuldeniya).
By the end of 1896, it appeared that the survey plans were no longer valid for a legal proclamation, that the lack of cooperation between the settlement officer and the surveyors was fatal to the exercise, and that the cost of detailed surveys could not be recouped by the sale of small lots to enterprising villagers, as Wace was contemplating in 1895. Finally, most of the Beligal settlements were never proclaimed. The Surveyor General proposed in October 1902 the abandonment of these ‘useless surveys’: his department was obviously unwilling to do any other survey than block surveys of forests, and in January 1903, the Agent answered to the Surveyor General: “It appears to me unnecessary to survey and define on the grounds the limits of each separate chena”.[50]
After these successive, often contradictory, and never legalized settlements, the situation was in an incredible mess in many villages of the Kägalla district: “A certain block of chena was declared Crown, another private; the pangu whose lands were declared Crown were compensated by lands of other pangus out of the private block. When the people who had thus received lands had planted them, the original owners took a case against them and ejected them. The original owners of the Crown block then began to clear the Crown block”. In other cases, two or even three successive settlements did not fit with each other: the villagers followed neither and no further settlement was possible, as in the case of Amitirigala (a Vahumpura village) where the original owners of the village chena block ejected the people who had been settled in ‘their’ lands and the latter then fell back on their original chenas. In 1905, dealing with what remained of the ‘old settlements’ and connected intractable land cases in the village of Paradeniya above mentioned, the Assistant Agent Vaughan concluded: “The sooner the land is sold the better”[51] .
The final failure of these various settlements was due to the fact that they contradicted the legal system, that they depended on the honesty and diligence of headmen, and that they could not resist the pressure of the land demand of the planters coinciding with the sudden shift from coffee to tea, and later to rubber. One may even consider that they were self-defeating, in that they attracted planters close to the village. It resulted in a pressure exerted by the planter’s interests in favouring, first block settlements to obtain continuous blocs of lands sold at cheap prices by the Crown, in the line of what was done up-country during the coffee days ; and secondly in purchasing through intermediaries lands in the village block by asserting the rights of alienation by the villagers. As soon as the Crown had sold its block to the planters, the villagers saw no reason why they should not sell their block as well.
The case of Dorawaka[52]
Colonial land management in Dorawaka village offers a typical example of what Swettenham, a member of the governor’s staff, called ‘chena un-settlement’. Dorawaka was a very large and prosperous ancient gabadagama (royal village) in Kiraweli section of Beligal, disputed for centuries between the hill country kingdoms and the low country kingdoms and subsequent colonial powers. It is said to have been depopulated in time of war and repopulated by Duraya (Batgama) people after having been degraded and deprived of its original name of Mawatagama (‘Village of the road’). These people were settled by the kings on the land to cultivate paddy, carry burdens and act as foot soldiers and the village was organized to furnish rice, coconuts and arecanuts, under the control of high caste officers. It was especially prosperous, well-watered, with excellent coconuts and extensive chenas. According to the thombo (land roll) of 1614, there were then 100 amunam of paddy (26 for the muttettuwa (royal domain cultivated by the Duraya) 1 for the vidane (high caste overseer), 31 for 15 Duraya families, 18 ½ for 30 service coolies, 6 ½ for 4 dancers, 3 for 4 lascarins (soldiers), 10 ½ for 11 natives (i.e. Goyigama, living in the separate hamlet of Ganegama), and each of these categories had coconut and arecanut gardens. The leading Duraya family (Meragal) had a sittuwa (written act) from the time of the last Kandyan king. After the British accession, the muttettuwa was sold to locals, and paddy cultivation was still controlled by the high castes in 1861. During the chena enquiries of 1871 and 1874, “people represented that they considered the chenas theirs and paid tax for älvi at 1/14th rate” and highlands were therefore “allowed on long possession”, without being demarcated. But these enquiries began to unsettle the ancient order, and in 1876 the Goyigama accused a Duraya family of “possessing Crown land called Bulatwatte – formerly the property of the Kandyan kings – without paying tythe to government, by planting coffee, coconut and plantain”.
In 1880 the village was surveyed, and in July 1885 it was settled for the first time by the Assistant Agent Le Mesurier who found that it contained 190 acres of paddy, 137 acres of gardens, 1,000 acres of private chenas and 964 acres of Crown highlands: “After a long and troublesome debate, the villagers at last agreed : I gave them 1000 acres for their chenas and confined them to the western side of the village”. This settlement did not meet with universal approval, the representatives of some of the pangu refusing to sign the agreement because these chena tracts were too far from their houses. According to a report written 20 years later, “the greater majority however of the pangukarayo accepted the arrangement and chenaed or converted into gardens the lands allowed as private; on the whole however the settlement was unsatisfactory as some pangu had not been fairly treated”.
In March 1890, a second settlement, orthogonal to the first, was effected by Price, giving the villagers the northern lands, closer to the houses of the Durayas, about ½ of the village to the south being taken as Crown property; but it was immediately contested in a lengthy petition by a few Goyigama cultivators of chenas living and chenaing in the southern part ; Price commented : “It is impossible to find boundaries to suit everybody, the very small minority must give way for the general good”. According to the report above quoted, “this was a good settlement, and met with approval among nearly all the villagers, only 2 pangu out of 36 refusing to sign the agreement. There is little doubt that matters would have been satisfactorily arranged on the basis of Mr. Price settlement, but unfortunately another settlement was undertaken under the Forest ordinance. By this settlement, about 1,600 acres were allowed to the villagers to practice chena cultivation, and the balance 500 acres made up of isolated strips throughout the village was set apart for the Crown. The portions taken by the Crown under this last settlement were never demarcated, and at present hopeless confusion reigns”
This third settlement made by L.W. Booth as Forest settlement officer at the end of 1893 and detailed in a report of January 1894 was based on the proved claims to chena and actual practice of the 83 different family groups. And what emerged was that the villagers had from time immemorial “chenaed in all directions of the village” [53], over an extent calculated as 1,358 acres : “This it is submitted is by no means an excessive quantity of chena for the [increasing] population, 785 in the last census, while the settlement of 1890 was on the basis of the census of 1881, only 674 persons. The village being a gabadagama, I have held that only well-established gardens of long possession and regularly cultivated fields are the absolute property of the people, and that their interest in the highlands is limited to a right to practice chena cultivation upon them, the soil of such lands belonging to the Crown. The effect of this is : 1. That the people cannot sell such lands belonging to the Crown or in any way dispose of their rights to do so ; 2. That several pieces of chena which have been planted as gardens [26 acres] are the property of the Crown subject to the planter’s interest on them”. Booth clearly stated that point 1 preserved the communal character of the village chenas, and that point 2 could evolve in full property of the newly planted gardens “on payment of survey fees or other easy terms ; this liberality will lend to secure cheerful acquiescence in the settlement, a very desirable object, and to encourage industry in bringing waste land under regular cultivation.” Booth recognized that “the settlement had not done much to secure valuable property for the Crown but [it is hoped that] it will put an end once for all to the frictions between the authorities and the people which have existed for such a long time past”.
This Booth settlement was severely criticized by the Controller of Forests in a letter to the Government Agent of Sabaragamuwa (21.06.1894), in which he pointed out that its result was to reserve an infinitesimal area as Forest reserve : “This settlement cannot honestly be called a Forest settlement (…) and I would again suggest that the Forest Ordinance be used only for bona fide forest purposes. In 1885, half of the land was given over to the villagers to destroy, and in 1890, half of the remaining half was likewise conceded to them, and now the depredation over ¾ of the area not having proved to be sufficient, some fresh areas out of the remaining quarter have been opened out to them. Speaking generally, Mr. Booth settlement report appears to be more the proposal made by an advocate on behalf of his clients – the villagers – than those of an impartial judge, dealing with the claims of both sides. He also makes proposals which are not part of his business regarding the sale of certain lots of land to people who have lately started illicit cultivation (…) and states that there can be no objection to the villagers helping themselves to fence sticks etc.”. The Assistant Agent Price recommended “that no proclamation be issued at all; let the required demarcations be effected at once, let the large blocks be subdivided into small lots each ranging from 5 to 10 acres roughly, let the assistant conservator of forests cut out all the available fuel. And I will then offer for sale the whole Crown land in the village with the exception of lot 6674 ½”.
The Booth settlement affirmed the principle of Crown property of the chena lands in gabadagam[54]. It recalled that in the early days of British rule, “nilakarayo had no paraveni right in their pangu but were maruveni tenants removable at pleasure (…) The nilakarayo were from time to time chiefly between 1819 and 1826 relieved of the duty of cultivating the crown muttettu fields which were either farmed out or sold by the crown, and their fields were subjected to tax in lieu of such services. By the present time, hereditary rights have come to be practically conceded in the case of regularly cultivated fields and well-established gardens, but not in the case of waste and highland chenas which have not been under continuous cultivation. The Crown has never abandoned its claims to such lands (…) and has often asserted it (…) For the above reasons I find that all highland chenas in gabadagam are lands at the disposal of the Crown”. But the slack attitude of the colonial authorities who failed to demarcate the Crown lots, and to proclaim the settlement, nullified its intentions. We shall study in a further chapter how this state of things attracted a land speculator, Albert A.Wickramasinghe, who purchased the village chenas to form Madeniya estate around 1906, how this estate became the subject of constant recriminations by the villagers, how violence often erupted between villagers and estate workers, and how the factory, especially during the insurgency of 1989.
Forest settlement in Pata Bulatgama
The area, especially its Uduwe division, had attracted the attention of the colonial authorities at the time of Saunders and had been the theater of the first movement of discontent in the 1870s when the administration attempted to repress chena cultivation, with severe food shortage as a result. Twenty years later, another attempt was made, this time under the Forest ordinance, and under the pressure of the planter’s demand of land. In the diary for November 1871, the area between Bulatkopitiya and Welihelatenne was described as “almost continuous chena with here and there a forest or an occasional arecanut grove”. Already in 1874, a series of chena cases were instituted in Wegalla and Welatuduwa and on enquiry by the Assistant Agent Dawson it appeared that many chenas had been transformed into gardens five to seven years before; the chenas were allowed by Dawson ‘on account of long possession’; a few areas had been purchased by Muslims but their presence remained marginal. Wegalla, Welatuduwa and Lewala were three localities on the southern bank of the Ritigaha Oya: here subsistence depended on the cultivation a few paddy fields and of extensive chenas and gardens producing arecanuts and betel leaves (hence the name of bulat gam – betel villages) by peasants belonging to the Panna Duraya caste.
The Forest Settlement file of Lewala (including the other two villages), dated 8.08.1892, offers a detailed analysis of the history of these bulat gam and of chena cultivation practices in that area[55]. Detailed information is given in the statements of the Ratemahatmaya Ekneligoda (5.04.1892), confirmed by Uduwe korala Punahela Mudianse and in individual cases, for example that of Mutugalpedige Unga Duraya (n° 49). The first characteristic is that “the Crown does not claim any of the chenas in those villages, the growth on which is less than 20 years. The chenas belong to the villagers and have been cultivated by them and their ancestors for generations”. Chena cultivation until 1873 was totally free without having to ask permission, and since that date, älvi was taxed at 1/14th when permission was asked, and at 1/10th when it was not “as a punishment but not because the Crown claimed the chenas”. “In the time of the Kandyan kings the occupants of lands in these villages were liable to be called upon to supply adukku (provisions) to the higher chiefs when travelling, to carry messages and render other services; they had also to attend when called upon to work in Kandy to collect timber, to supply guards etc. Since the British accession, such services have been abolished and the people in such villages have possessed their lands absolutely as their own without any condition”. “In the time of the Kandyan kings, some of the lands in the koralegam were paraveni (hereditary), and others were held on the condition of performing services but since the accession, no distinction has been made in koralegam between paraveni and service lands, all the lands possessed by the villagers are now paraveni”. The peasants had therefore acquired full land rights and their personal status was the same as that of high caste villagers. Gardens, owita, and pillewa regularly cultivated were never taxed, chenas when cultivated with älvi at long intervals were taxed; untaxed “amu and kurakkan chenas belonged to the villagers”. Owiti were often transformed into gardens.
In the final settlement of the three villages by L.W. Booth in 1892, out of a total of 2,362 acres (302 lots claimed by 113 persons), 95 acres of gardens, 53 acres of paddy fields, 1,305 acres of owiti and chenas were recognized as private; 908 acres were “at the disposal of the Crown, out of which provision will have to be made for village forest, supply of timber and other forest produce”, but this Crown land was scattered in small parcels and impossible to make into one block and therefore difficult to sell for estate development.
In these villages, chenas were individually cultivated and possessed. The case of the Mutugalpedige panguwa in Lewala shows the structure of an extended family farm: out of a total extent allowed after settlement of 66 acres, the panguwa possessed three permanent irrigated paddy fields (kamburu) totaling 2 acres 1 rood 9 perches, three recently irrigated paddy fields (asweddum) totaling 4 acres 1r 8p, one threshing floor (kanatiya) of 2r. 19 p.; two gardens with houses totaling 5 acres 2 p.; three fields cultivated at short intervals (2 to 4 years) with amu and kurakkan (owiti) totaling 4r. 29 p; and seven chenas totaling 40 acres, cultivated with älvi every 12 or 13 years, or with other grain at shorter intervals like the owiti, including 5 acres left fallow for more than 20 years.
In the same area, the villages of Tunbage and Urumiwala had similar features, while Panawitiya had a Goyigama population. The extensive chenas of all these villages were coveted by planters established further south. The private correspondence between Wace, the Government agent of Sabaragamuwa, and Forsythe, one of the pioneer planters of the Kelani valley, bears testimony to the influence exerted by the planters on the colonial government[56]:
W. 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. 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.
In the decade following the Forest settlement, the planters laid their hands on the area. Intermediaries were already at work in 1892: Moor traders (Lebbe Marikar) who had purchased land from villagers and planted extensive gardens (coconuts, arecanuts, banana) ; village headmen and the chief headman Ekneligoda himself who had purchased land from the Durayas ; even the Vidane duraya Devatapedige Pina (village headman of the Duraya caste) was busy “getting people to sell him their shares including the other shareholders shares”. The Lewala estate was created on 200 acres of village land and 40 acres of Crown land by the notorious land speculator J.P. Anderson (of Glassel estate) with Marshall of Avissawella as notary and Saibu Lebbe of Mattamagoda as middleman, for the Grand Central Rubber Company, in very dubious conditions[57] : the Forest settlement had not been respected, the survey was made after the settlement. In 1899 there was already an encroachment of 99 acres on reserved forest which had not been clearly demarcated by the survey department; actually it was found that that area included old chenas covered by wattoru and that there were only 16 acres of forest. There was a further extension of area clearings of about 150 acres. The company asked for a Certificate of Quiet Possession through the advocate Aelian Ondaatje and the legal Colombo firm of De Sarams in February 1907: “the estate has encroached upon a considerable portion of Crown land; some of the lands encroached upon have been unreserved and sold by Crown. There is nothing for it but to unreserve the rest and sell them to the estate at a high figure” concluded the Assistant Agent of Kägalla (11.02.1907) who advised to sell the forest land not covered by wattoru (37 acres) at 200 Rs per acre, which was raised by the Colonial Secretary to 400 Rs an acre, that is half improved value (15.04.1910).
The case of Garagoda
The Forest settlements were unable, for want of legal strength, to solve the problems raised by previous settlement, especially the sale of chenas from the village block to planters. An early and typical case is that of Garagoda village, a Tunkorale locality very close to Yatiyantota, with a mixed Muslim and Goyigama population, which had been settled for the first time by Ievers in 1879: out of 1,046 acres, 800 acres had been taken and sold by the Crown to establish Degalessa estate and the remaining 246 acres left to the villagers were composed of fields, owitas, gardens and chenas.
After enquiry held in May 1892, the Forest settlement officer Booth reported on the intractable situation created by the block settlement and subsequent sale to the planters[58]: “The villagers successfully established their title to their chenas (by wattoru at private rate of 1/14th) and the records of the chena settlement effected from 1879 to 1886 show that these areas were admitted as private by settlement”. But the villagers as elsewhere in the area undertook to sell lands from their village block to the nearby plantation : “The idea of those who initiated the Forest settlement was not to obtain a reserved forest proper, so much as to procure the apportionment of the chenas among the villagers for communal purposes and so prevent their alienation to the proprietors of the adjoining tea estate. This object was no more attainable than was a reserved forest. The Forest Settlement Officer has no power to take away any private land from their owners and redistribute them (…) This is not the first attempt that has been made to arrange the possession of the land in Garagoda according to a preconceived ideal. There was first the chena settlement of 1879 which considerably curtailed the extent of chenas previously possessed by the villagers. By it several lands which had formerly been enjoyed by a portion of them were declared Crown property and afterwards sold as such, other lands possessed and claimed by other villagers being assigned to them in lieu of those taken away. The original possessors of the lands so assigned in many cases refused to make room for the incomers, and this gave rise to a good deal of discontent which is still simmering and to many disputes among the villagers themselves (…) Next, and probably due to the unsatisfactory state of matters subsequent to the chena settlement, came in 1888 the Forest settlement of Mr. Price who attempted to arrange the possession on a satisfactory basis on the lines of the chena settlement ; his efforts however proved abortive, and the settlement effected by him was cancelled. (…) The present settlement had done nothing to effect what are the legitimate objects of all such undertakings (…) It has tended to revive the old discontent which followed the chena settlement of 1879 and has raised vague hopes that in some way or other the lands then taken away were about to be restored or compensated for (…) The settlement will perhaps also tend to hasten the process of alienation by the villagers of their lands to the proprietors of the adjoining Degalessa tea estate, which it was wished to prevent. The latter will certainly be now more ready to purchase village lands than they would have been if the villagers had not been publicly put to the proof of their title and had not successfully established it”.
The subsequent history of the lands is given in the diary of the Assistant government agent Price under the caption ‘Nabboth Vineyard’[59]: “Mr. Wilkins of Degalessa Estate has written to ask for ‘a little information with regard to a small block of land adjoining his property which was settled some years ago upon a native, who is now willing to lease it to Mr. Wilkin’s company ; the company is helpless in the matter without a plan or tracing of some kind’ so Mr. Wilkins says ‘help us in the matter by letting me have a tracing of your office plan or even the number of the lot’. Not so. I reply to the effect that the usufruct of the land to which Mr. Wilkins refers was conferred on the Gallatgamage pangu of the village of Garagoda, that no right of alienation was implied in the grant, which was made for the purpose of chena cultivation ; that a revision of the entire settlement is required ; that blocks of chena land are not given to the villagers with the view of their being alienated for purposes of tea cultivation.” The estate however continued to press the administration as is very clearly shown in the following entry of the diary for 5.09.1892: “Had interview with Mr. Mitchell, manager of the Degalessa estate, relating to his application to purchase lands from the Crown and from his neighbours. Also his information that the villagers had chenaed Crown land near him: on enquiry it proved to be private land. Had also various complaints against him by villagers for encroachments on their lands. He admits an encroachment of 8 ½ acres for which he says he has settled to pay 50Rs per acre. His experience for very many years in the Matara district has taught him to handle his neighbours making them his friends, he says. Most managers merely accentuate by their manners the prejudice with which the village views the strangers invading his hillsides. I told Mr. Mitchell that I exceedingly objected to his proposal to buy from a Moorman 120 acres bordering his estate for 33 Rs an acre. I pointed out to him that the Moor broker was rendering the villagers landless, and when the money has gone, they would be vagrants, and some of them criminals.”
Several other cases of forest settlement resulted in the rapid alienation of village chenas in spite of the restrictive condition allowing villagers to cultivate but not to alienate. A later example is that of the Mahabage Forest Settlement (1896)[60], a Goyigama village located to the north of Kitulgala, close to the abandoned coffee estates of Yakdessa. In February 1897, three months after the settlement, three middlemen acting for the aracci of the nearby town of Kitulgala, Juan Pulle (a Chetty land speculator who tried to pass as a Kandyan under the name of Mudianselage) started to offer village lands to a planter (Protheroe, superintendent of Ingoya). In 1904, the Ceylon Tea Plantation Company acquired the land, which had been allowed for chena cultivation: according to the report of Mideniya, the chief headman “this was communal land, and the original owners thereof, possessing some more communal lands, have set apart for each some definite land out of the communal property” and his subordinate the korala had signed an attestation to the effect that “there was no dispute to the land, either from Crown, or from his villagers to his best belief and knowledge”. A few years later, Mideniya, who had assisted Booth in the Forest settlements as Ratemahatmaya of Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama and was therefore well informed of the situation in these villages, became himself a land speculator specializing in the sale to planters of these chenas allowed for cultivation by a Forest settlement which had not been given legal authority.
The ambiguities of forest settlement in the ‘Kelani Valley Reserve’[61]
In remote areas with extensive forests and limited land speculation, such as the west and south of Adam’s Peak (called Kälerata), the Forest settlement could have succeeded in reserving forest areas while allowing villagers to carry on subsistence cultivation on highlands, realizing the wishes of the governors Gordon and Havelock. But the ambiguities of the colonial policy which at the same time wanted to protect the peasant society and ecology, and to promote modernity and planting interests, and the dependence on headmen for settlement enquiries, resulted in a failure to fulfill the initial project.
After the short-lived attempt of settlement in Atulugam by Captain Walker in 1887, another forester, W.H. Clarkson was posted, this time to settle the large hilly villages Bambarabotuwa Gilimale, Eratne, Morahela and Madampe in the Ratnapura district, with the project of protecting the Kaluganga valley. He wrote in his memo dated 26.08.1889 “the general maxim is that there can be no such thing as a right to a wasteful and destructive user of another’s property”. His successor Frederick Lewis, in his memoirs[62], recalled the unpopularity of the Forest officers: “The nature of my work was of a character that was intensely displeasing to many classes of people : to the natives I was a constant source of irritation as I hindered him greatly with his chena cultivation when I found the forest destroyed; to the land speculator I was an unmitigated nuisance because I thwarted his designs as I knew too much to suit his particular book; to the illicit plumbago miner I was to be more hated than the plague; to the timber trader particularly disliked the way I insisted on his having a permit to remove timber; to the planter I was obnoxious because I did not agree with him that it was right to cut down forest that did not belong to him about which he thought ought to”. The findings of the Forest Settlement Officer were generally disregarded, and these areas of the Ratnapura district were engulfed by rubber estates during the first decades of the 20th century.
The forest settlement of the upper Kelani valley could not be started before 1896, as Booth was busy with the Beligal korale villages. Meanwhile the governor Havelock, in answer to a deputation demanding the extension of the Kelani railway, had declared in 1894 that there was no Crown land to sell in that area and that regarding the reserve “it became the fixed policy of my predecessor, and I think it was very wise policy – that these reserves should be kept inviolate and that the Crown should not sell a single acre of it. Of course I cannot answer for what my successor may do”. Two years later, the planters launched a fresh offensive and the Government Agent of the Sabaragamuwa province explained to the new governor Ridgeway that Havelock was under the pressure of up-country planters who feared that the extension of low country producers would overstock the market, adding that “the result which these gentlemen feared has not been prevented for the attraction of large profits has merely caused investors to buy land from the native owners instead of from the Crown”; a change of policy was possible if the Forest settlement was sped up.
A series of 34 villages was taken up for settlement by LW. Booth assisted by Mideniya Ratemahatmaya in August 1896, and completed in February 1897. The forest settlements distinguished private lands, crown lands subject to the right to practice chena cultivation, crown lands on which this right was strictly limited, crown lands on which this right was disallowed but on which villagers had the use of water and right of way, and forbidden crown lands.
Contrary to Ievers, Booth followed ordinance 12 of 1840; even when there were wattorus paid at ‘private’ rate, when the extent could not be ascertained, he rejected property rights and allowed the right of cultivation only, as in the case of Nakkawita, a small Goyigama village on the Maliboda path on the Magal Ganga : regarding the chenas, “the claim to the soil has not been established (…) but the claimants have established their right to practice chena cultivation [which] has been permitted from time immemorial and must be allowed to continue (…) The right above admitted is common to all the claimants, their heirs and successors, and may be exercised by them individually” [63].
In March 1897, the Assistant Agent Davidson after the completion of the Booth settlement raised the question of the 26,743 acres now at the disposal of the Crown[64]: “the announcement of the intention of Government to sell Crown land (…) will tend to check the large purchases of private land, and may lead to a suspension of any further alienation of land now by Kandyan villagers”; in his opinion forest must be reserved above 3500ft (1066 m.) for ecological reasons, but can be felled at lower elevations: the Kelani and the Ritigaha are already silted and unnavigable, the We Oya will soon be bordered by estates, only the Sitawaka and Gurugoda are yet unexploited; in any case, a railway will replace the water way “and the vested interests in the boat trade are trifling”; and the possibly of floods inundating the lower Kelani basin is possible but not likely to occur. In other terms, Davidson was ready to sacrifice Gordon’s project of Kelani reserve in order to ‘develop a backward area’. His arguments were based on a dualistic view: in order to save the colonial capitalist enterprise it must be limited and concentrated in specific zones; in his view, the Hatarakorale had a balanced and self-sufficient peasant economy which might be preserved, and the only means to do it in the colonial system as it was, was to channel the capital towards the Tunkorale: “this district has 165,000 persons on 420,000 acres; of this total 115,000 live in one half, the Hatarakorale, and 50,000 in the other half (the Tunkorale). It is manifest that in an agricultural country with no townships of any size a population of 350 to a square mile is as much as agricultural land can bear, it being remembered that there are no industries and no pauperism and that the soil produces all that the peasantry depends upon. It is manifest that if that peasantry alienated much of its holdings, it will be left untrained to support itself by the fruits of its labour for others. If an outlet is not given to capital elsewhere, this peasantry will yield to inducements to sell its holdings, and such is the lies of the country of the Hatarakorale that the clearing and draining of the high lands will lead to the destruction of the low-lying lands which are now paddy fields. I hold it to be a very strong administrative argument that capital should be led elsewhere, and whither it could be better led than into that poor country where excluding the 28,000 imported Tamil coolies the indigenous population is still so meagre as to represent only 64 persons per square mile. And more so in the Kelani valley with 4,481 persons, 50,000 acres and 26,743 acres for the Crown”. He therefore proposed to sell 6,379 acres (4,000 acres immediately) from the reserve or nearby, all in the vicinity of Deraniyagala, and detailed the lands village by village, giving time to the investors in London to prepare for the acquisition. As regards the sale of the lands allowed to villagers, the policy of Davidson was also dictated by the same dualistic approach[65]: “In the Hatarakorale where the population is numerous, long settled and well to do, I have used my personal influence and checked almost altogether the alienation of village chenas. In the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, i.e. the Kelani Valley where the population was sparse and underfed, I contented myself with vigilantly guarding the Crown interests and impeaching on all occasions the folly of selling for less than the ultimate purchaser was willing to pay, i.e. something between Rs 25 and 50 per acre. Furthermore, I stopped persons of family and consequence from alienating their family holdings without special sanction from me”
On 16.03.97, at a discussion on the subject held at the Executive council, the Colonial secretary wryly remarked that “the custodians of Kägalla used not so much to favor the introduction of the European influence in this markedly native district (…) The absorption of villager’s lands will still go on by those desirous of extending existing estates”. But the governor Ridgeway declared: “I am altogether opposed to any grandmotherly policy as regards tea in the shape of restrictions in order to protect existing forests. The Treasurer, Lee, who knew Kägalla in the 1870s, commented that “It is only since the prohibition of chena cultivation that the trees were grown up upon these lands and they are now, I understand, covered with heavy jungle, but when I knew the country 25 years ago, there was little or no forest on it. It was all chena”. It was decided by the Executive council in June 1897 to wait until the railway was decided upon. In June 1898, the project was abandoned: “in view of the depressed state of the tea industry at present, it would be well to indefinitely postpone the sale”. But in June 1899, Booth, then in charge of Sabaragamuwa, considered that in view of the rise in tea prices it might be time to resume the project, but that if the land was not demarcated no sale could take place.
The Forest settlements were never legalized, for want of political will, and because the judiciary system opposed it: “The findings of the Forest Settlement Officer are too vague for any definite action to be taken (…) I am in worse position than if no settlement had been made at all”, wrote Bertram Hill, the successor of Davidson[66] The only possible solution would have been another resettlement under the Waste Lands Ordinance (WLO) which had been enacted in 1897: “What I want to do is to be able to proclaim in one notice all the chena land and forest and waste land in one village. There would then be absolutely no difficulty in making a settlement and there would be some hope of getting the whole district settled”. “I shall now proceed to settle the district village by village working from north to south”. Five years later, nothing had be done: “It would be advisable to have many of the former settlements in this district resettled under the Waste lands ordinance. The proclamations under the Forest Settlement Ordinance are so imperfect that no court would uphold them, and besides the Supreme court has held that the decision of a Forest Settlement Officer under the Forest Ordinance is not binding as to title”.
The failure of the Kägalla successive settlements is one of the origins of the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1897, and the lessons of the experience framed the future land policy of the island. At the level of policy making, while initially the ordinance was presented by Governor Ridgeway as a means to give the Crown more land to sell, the Colonial office requested him to rectify the position and present it as a tool to prevent “the growing practice of villagers unable to resist the temptation of a little ready money, to sell chena land, and even gardens and homestead, for some trifling sum to middlemen, who now roam the country with purses in their hands tempting the people to sell their inheritance, and thus veritably transform a population of landowners into a proletariat of wage earners”.[67]
Meanwhile, as the settlements were not given legal strength, the lands allowed to chena cultivation but not alienable began to be treated as villager’s properties and eventually offered for sale to planters by various intermediaries, including Mideniya. A typical example is that of Malalpola, close to Halgolla Estate[68]: “The villagers have sold all their land to Halgolla estate and now have the impudence (sic) to claim the Crown lot. They will not withdraw their claim and must be referred to court”. In 1924, the Agent at Kägalla concluded[69]: “Most of the lands in this district allowed for chena cultivation in the 1890s have now been planted up and are the subject of partition cases, fiscal’s sales, testamentary actions, etc.” The situation was discussed by the end of 1903. The outcome was the publication of a circular which opened the way to what could be called the system of settlement by Certificate of Quiet Possession in the case of former settlements. One should note that it was not proposed to use the ordinance of 1897. A few ‘WLO enquiries’ were held in specific localities of the south of the district such as Welangalla and Udapota, but these localities which had been settled under the old chena settlements were already encroached by planters. In Welangalla, a multi-caste village, the ‘village block’ of Ievers settlement had been partially sold through the usual speculators (Kader Thambi, Velaiathan Chetty, K.D.J. Perera) to Fern Lands Tea Company, represented by proctor Marshall of Avissawella. Marshall attempted to effect an unofficial settlement of private lands of the village parallel to the official settlement by the Revenue Officer and with the consent of him. But they met with the opposition of an old woman who refused to sign an agreement “in spite of the objurgation of proctor Marshall” – a late case of peasant resistance.[70]
To understand the failure of the Booth settlement, one must take into account a series of factors: the imperfection of the surveys and their discrepancies with the findings of the Forest settlement officer; headmen interested or corrupt who pointed the boundaries; the usual lack of professionalism of the surveyors, their frequent hostility towards the villagers and partiality in favour of the planters; the Forest and the Survey departments the last to be relied upon for a pro-villager policy as they were the most repressive in the matter of villagers rights; the skeptical, hostile, or lackadaisical position of the administrators who were posted after Booth.; and the rubber boom of the early 1900s which led to a new burst of land hunting.
Settlements in the Kägalla district had been undertaken with the Ievers project of establishing a dual economy at the village level, protecting the traditional village sector by admitting chena cultivation and fostering the development of plantation economy. They concluded with the Davidson project of establishing a dual economy at the district level, protecting Hatarakorale, the “garden of the East”, and leaving Tunkorale to the European tea planter’s rule. Both projects failed because in the colonial context the power and attraction of the plantocracy surpassed the authority of the Raj. We shall study in the next chapters how the local administration attempted to clean up the mess in the Kägalla district by distributing Certificates of Quiet Possession and how the new Settlement department attempted to curb the speculative activities of rubber and coconut planters, most of whom were members of the rising Ceylonese national bourgeoisie, who were not as powerful as the European planters.
[1] See Ian Barrow, Surveying and Mapping in colonial Sri Lanka, 1800-1900. New Delhi, O.U.P., 2008
[2] E. Meyer “Historical Aspects of Caste in the Kandyan Regions, with particular reference to the non-Goyigama castes of the Kägalla District” Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 40, (2015) pp. 21-54
[3] Sri Lanka National Archives (hereafter SLNA) /30/37, diary of the Assistant Government Agent at Kägalla (hereafter Diary Kä) 3.10.1916
[4] SLNA, diary of the Settlement Officer (hereafter Diary SO) 28.06.1937
[5] SLNA/30/37 Diary Kä 29.08.1916
[6] The question has been briefly treated by Michael Roberts in History of Ceylon volume III p. 129-130, who describes the chena survey of the 1870s, without giving any information on the further settlements which were attempted for about 30 years
[7] The fact that Philip Francis Ondaatje (1860-1938), elder brother of Aelian Ondaatje (1874-1942) was chena surveyor for a long time strongly suggests that the work of the survey department contributed to start the whole land grabbing business in Kägalla. Philip Francis was the father of Philip Mervyn, an alcoholic planter, and the grandfather of Philip Christoph the Canadian billionaire and of Michael the novelist, who recalled his childhood in Kägalla in his novel Running in the Family. Lawyer specializing in land cases, Aelian Ondaatje (whose Christian name was that of the Kägalla Agent at his birth), married an English woman who had inherited a share in an old British grant in Nuwara Eliya, and he pursued the claim against the government. He was behind most of the land litigation in Kägalla after 1900 and opposed the government policy of restricting plantation development in Hatarakorale.
[8] Administration Report (hereafter AR) of the Surveyor general 1873 II p. 14; Diary Kä, 7.09.1873
[9] AR Surveyor general 1875, app. L, p. 11; 1876 II p. 10A-11A.
[10] These ‘chena cases’ are available in the ‘village files’ kept in the Kägalla kacceri records, series Y and Z (consulted in August 1979). The cases quoted in the next pages are all taken from these records
[11] SLNA 30/612, 8.12.1873.
[12] These headmen were still in existence in 1886, when Price wrote to Saunders that the system “only added to the difficulty of the question” because the village headmen rejected on them their responsibility and vice versa.(Diary Kä 28.10.1886) ; but Saunders answered that they should be retained « and absorbed into the ranks of forest rangers » ; as soon as the Sabaragamuwa province was created, Price reiterated his demand, which was accepted by the GA Wace in 1889.
[13] AR Kä 1874 p. 23-24 and 1875 p. 65-66:
[14] Diary Kä, October 1872
[15] Kägalla kacceri records, chena case Narangala, and Diary Kä, 12.11.1872 and 31.01.1887.
[16] AGA(Assistant Government Agent) Kägalla to GA (Government Agent) WP (Western Province) n° 916, 12.12.1878 as annexure to Burden report, SLNA 30/868; same report a draft in the Kägalla Kacceri records together with the chena settlement files.
[17] AR WP 1879 p. 21; letter GA WP to the Colonial Secretariat, 15.02.79.
[18] Settled on 29.08.1878 “without special enquiry into the claims to chenas and gardens” ; resettled under Forest settlement but a lot of land had been sold to Lavant estate and according to the diary (8.01.1893) “this village has been a good deal cramped by the sale of the large Crown block in this village and around it”
[19] Diary Kä, 1.04.1884, Chena file Hatnapitiya at the Kägalla kacceri (see also copy annexed to Burden report 1916)
[20] Kägalla kacceri records, Paradeniya file, PP 91
[21] Later theorized by Julius Hermann Boeke (1884-1956) in Dualistische economie. Leiden 1930
[22] Diary Kä, 3.04.1884
[23] When Gordon became Governor in December 1883, he compelled his provincial and district agents to keep a diary which was to be sent to him and which he read and annotated personally. These diaries are therefore much better kept than the previous diaries, and provide a fascinating source to observe the day to day administration of the district; note that Ievers could speak fluent Sinhala and was interested in the sociology of Ceylon (he later authored a Manual of the North Central Province)
[24] Diary Kä, 1.4.1884. (village of Uda Yogama)
[25] A panguwa (plural pangu) is a share of the village territory belonging to a group of families having a common ancestor or common caste affiliation and common economic interests or/and service obligations; its members are called pangukarayo. The term gamwasama (plural gamwasam) is employed for a high caste panguwa and may cover the whole of a village if it belongs to the upper Goyigama caste.
[26] AR Kä 1881 p. 25A-26A
[27] Kägalla kacceri records, Pannila village file, and Diary Kä, 3.04.1884
[28] AR Kä 1884, p. 22A-23A
[29] Kägalla kacceri records, village file Pannila ; Diary Kä 1884 ; SLNA 33/2497 (‘Forest settlement in the Kägalla district’)
.
[30] SLNA, Diary Kä (Le Mesurier), 15.01.1886; CO54/610 Governor to Colonial Office, 5.11.1893
[31] Diary Kä for April – May1884
[32] Diary Kä, 23.06.1887
[33] Diary Kä, 18-19.03.1885
[34] SLNA 65/ 958, letter 829, 30.12.1884 Wace to GA WP
[35] Diary Kä 26.03 and 13.08.1885
[36] AR Kä 1888, p. 43A, 1889 p. J28, Sabaragamuwa 1890 p. J2, 1892 p.J4
[37] AR Kägalla 1892 p. J6
[38] SLNA 65/ 173 ’Forest Settlement in the Kägalla district’ ; SLNA 65/ 958 : Kelani Valley Forest Reserve ; SLNA 45/1866,67,68,69,70. (for Beligal settlements) ; SLNA 65/1187 (on the failure of the Forest settlements) ; Land settlement work of F.R. Ellis (Land Settlement Department Records). SLNA L205/1926 : Forest settlements
[39] Sessional paper 43 of 1882, § 65
[40] Letter AGA Kä to GAWP, 13.08.1885; Administration Report Kägalla 1886 p.147A-149A
[41] Diary Kä, 12.12.1887 and Administration reports Kägalla, 1889 and 1890
[42] Diary Kä, 19-21.02.1887
[43] SLNA 65/ 958 ‘Kelani Valley Forest Reserve’: letter of Walker to Colonial Secretary, 31.01.1887, and letter of Price, AGA Kä.to GA WP, 5.03.1887
[44] Saunders was distrusted by Gordon, who wrote in a private letter to the Colonial Office (CO54/653, Stanmore to Lucas, 9.03.1898): “My reasons for distrusting Sir Frederick Saunders’ judgement it is unnecessary to state. It may suffice in this connection to say that as Government Agent of the Western Province, when that province included Sabaragamuwa, he was always in favour of placing the harshest and strictest interpretation of native land claims, except indeed in a few cases where he showed singular indulgence.”
[45] SLNA, 65/173, Forest Settlement in the Kägalla district, report by Government Agent Wace, 30.01.1889
[46] Diary Kä, 19.05.1892, 28.07.1893
[47] Administration reports Kägalla 1896 p. J9, 1897 p. J11
[48] It was the subject of a quantity of reports and correspondence collected by the administration: SLNA, 65/ 1167, see also SLNA 45/1867, 45/1868 and 45/1869 (Davidson report, 8.10.1895)
[49] Diary Kä, 4.04.1895, 9.04.1895, 31.08.1895, 12.09.1895, 10.04.1896, 5.06.1896
[50] Diary Kä 5.06.1902, SLNA 45/1870, correspondence between the Government Agent Sabaragamuwa and the Surveyor General, October 1902 to January 1903
[51] Diary Kä 3.01.1905, 18.01.1905, 15.05.1905
[52] Diary Kä, 10.05.1871, 27.07.1885,20.03.1890, 3.03.1906, 4.03.1907; SLNA 45/1866; Land settlement department records, Dorawaka file, Booth report (annexure to letter of GA Sabaragamuwa to Controller of forests, 22.01.1894); Kägalla kacceri records files Y2/46 and Y99, Old chena plan PP269 (1880); “Kiraveli Pattuwa 1614”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Ceylon Branch 36:4, 1947
[53] Five Duraya pangu in the North West corner, three Duraya pangu in a small tract in the East, the majority of the Duraya pangu cultivating a very large undivided area in the East, the rest of the Duraya pangu cultivating a large tract in the South West, and the Goyigama cultivating a smaller tract in the West.
[54] ‘Findings on the question of title to highland chenas in gabadagam’, Land Settlement Department Records; another copy as annex to Burden report in SLNA 30/868.
[55] Lewala Forest Settlement, Kägalla kacceri record room, series Y
[56] Loose documents included in the unnumbered Panawitiya village file, Kägalla kacceri record room.
[57] SLNA 30/510 (CQP series)
[58] Kägalla kacceri record room, Forest settlement report by L.W. Booth, 19.05.1892
[59] Diary Kä, 2.05.1891 and 5.09.1892
[60]Mahabage Forest settlement (1896), Kägalla kacceri record room; SLNA 30/434; SLNA 30/480 (Certificates of quiet possession, Mideniya report, 22.05.1905)
[61] SLNA Colonial Secretariat 65/ 958 brings together the correspondence relating to the proposed Kelani forest reserve from 1884 to 1898; Report on the Forest settlement of the Kelani valley reserve, original signed by L.W. Booth, Kotagala, 9 April 1897, kept in the Kägalla kacceri record room in the series called ‘Booth Settlement’ together with the different case studies of each village; Kelani valley Forest settlement Register, SLNA 45/1726; for the Kaluganga project, Administration Report Sabaragamuwa 1889 p.J4.
[62] F. Lewis, Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon, p. 224-225
[63] SLNA 30/868, Burden report, 15.08.1916; the chenas of this village were eventually sold to a land speculator, Van der Poorten, with the help of Mideniya.
[64] SLNA 65/958, report 04251, 12-13.03.97; see also Executive council paper 680/97
[65] SLNA 65/178, RN 012857, Govt Agent Sabaragamuwa (acting) to Colonial Secretary, 3.10.1896
[66] Bertram Hill, Davidson’s successor, in Diary Kä 15.06.1898, 14.10.1898, 13.03.1899; 21.04.1903
[67] SLNA, 65/1187 (GA to CS, 26.11.1903, circular n° 4 (12.01.1904); CO54/639, Ridgeway to Chamberlain 349, 15.10.1897
[68] Diary Kä 24.09.1900
[69] Diary Kä, 22.08.1924
[70] Village file Kägalla kacceri, 30.11.1878 (Ievers settlement); Diary Kä 10.10.1905, SLNA 30/509 (6.02.1907).
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