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SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Observatoire pluridisciplinaire

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Sri Lanka: from debt default to transformative growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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BNF – France-South Asia, shared heritage online

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

Resources on France and South Asia’s shared heritage.

Power structures and spaces / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

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

The French crown in Ceylon

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

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

French at the court of King Rajasinghe II

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

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

Second French naval expedition to Ceylon

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

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

Published in February 2025

 

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Question – poem in Tamil and English

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

Question – கேள்வி  

Cheran Rudhramoorthy (trans. Anushiya Ramaswamy)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

அடிவளவின் கிணற்றுக்குள்
காலம் காலமாய்ப் புதையுண்டு கிடந்த
பூதங்களும்
இப்போது சிலிர்த்துக்கொண்டு
கிளம்புகின்றன.

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

வெளியுலகின் காற்று வாங்கிக்
குளிர்ந்து போய்விடுகிறது இதயம்

அப்போது
விட்ட இடத்திலிருந்து என்னுடைய
கவிதையைத் தொடங்குகிறேன்

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

நின்று பம்பரம் போலச் சுழல்கிறது

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

1990.

 

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

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

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

 

Note

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

NR

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Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

https://polity.lk/words-to-kill-a-man-and-free-a-man-kanya-d-almeida

 

Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

Kanya D’Almeida

 

In the early months of 2012, I inherited two troves of literature. I had been hunting for one of them for years; the other arrived unsolicited.

The first was an archive of the journalistic work of my uncle, Richard de Zoysa, during his career—cut short by his murder in 1990—as a reporter for the Rome-based Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. 

The second was the unbound, unedited manuscript of an American political prisoner, a former Black Panther named Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz who had been incarcerated in the state of Pennsylvania for nearly four decades.

I was a news reporter myself at the time, employed by the same agency that Richard had been working for when he was killed. I had recently been transplanted from New York City to a desk at IPS’ Washington office, where my bureau chief, an exceptionally sharp, veteran journalist—whose small room on the 14th floor of the National Press Club in DC was primarily occupied by heavy metal filing cabinets jammed with news cuttings and clippings from decades past— kindly allowed me to conscript him into my search for Richard’s dossier.

All my life, Richard had twirled above me like a mobile over a baby’s crib: shifting, wonderful, shadow-casting, and always out of reach. He and my mother, first cousins, had been raised as siblings in the same home. She had witnessed, perhaps more intimately than anyone else, his evolution from a precocious child (whose mind may have bordered on genius) to a kind of cultural titan in Colombo, his presence dominating the stage, his voice crackling through radio broadcasts, his face on television screens reading the evening news—and finally, his byline on the international wire, in dispatches from Sri Lanka.

I had read his poetry and paged through dozens of photo albums documenting his acting career (which began with a very professional adaptation and home production of Hamlet’s soliloquy To Be or Not to Be when he was nine years old) and I had heard stories about stories about stories—but never actually read his journalistic work.

All these articles, I would ask my parents, his colleagues, the Internet—that he was threatened for, followed for, murdered for—where are they?

            Gone? Lost? Scrubbed out?

It was with my excellent bureau chief, both of us huddled over his archaic desktop computer one afternoon, that we managed to extract, from the depths of JSTOR, one of Richard’s pieces entitled ‘Pride Stalks Beneath a Full Moon’. The dateline read “COLOMBO, May 22, 1989”. It was locked behind security passwords and paywalls. While my boss made stern phone calls to the relevant, automated authorities of that impenetrable digital library, I hurled abuse at the screen that kept telling me I lacked the required credentials to access my uncle’s writings.

What we ultimately ended up with—a small cache of articles constructed in the signature IPS style of an inverted pyramid with a buried lede and delivered in Richard’s sparse yet polished prose—felt to me like finding the missing shard in a fragmented family heirloom.

*

A few weeks later (or was it a few weeks earlier?), I received a FedEx envelope containing a 200-page document titled, The Making of a Political Prisoner by Russell Maroon Shoatz. An accompanying note from a recent acquaintance said only that he wished me to review the draft of this autobiography with a view to using it as the basis for a screenplay. The man whose life story was contained in that bulky envelope, my friend explained, was nothing short of jaw-dropping—he’d escaped prison twice in the 1970s, spent over 22 years in solitary confinement, and was a prolific revolutionary theoretician and scholar, revered by The Movement and despised by the authorities who had sworn to preside over his slow death in the Hole. The Hole. Shorthand among prisoners and guards for solitary confinement.

The name ‘Maroon’ was an honorific, a respectful reference to the many thousands of slaves who, on almost every continent, escaped the plantations, formed liberated communities, and lived as free people. His supporters and some of his family believed that a powerful biopic would help to ignite an international campaign for his freedom bid. After all, everyone loves a good story. It would require a significant commitment on my part: to interview Maroon himself, which was complicated by his status as a maximum-security prisoner; and to meet and speak with his tribe—children, comrades, counsel, co-defendants.

I was fresh and green—25 years old, with a ready pen, steeped in American cultural mythology (particularly such vague notions as freedom of speech, or the power of the people, organised and united)—and hungry for meaningful work as a writer.

I was also afraid. The twin revelations of Richard’s past and Maroon’s imagined future—with myself strung between—felt somehow double-edged: the sweet promise that words might be powerful enough to free a man were dogged by the horror that words were dangerous enough to kill a man. 

Both men were stunning writers, in very different ways. Maroon’s chapters read like spoken word, a beautiful language of the streets fine-tuned in the depths of isolation. He grew up in a gang in West Philadelphia, became a community organiser, joined the Panther Party, and stood trial for murder before spending most of his adult life in prison. But his story had no ending, whereas Richard’s seemed to begin at the end—with his own death—and then plough its way painfully backward in time through a dismal chapter of Sri Lanka’s history.

*

All of Richard’s articles I unearthed were published roughly in the first half of 1989 and ceased abruptly on 10 August with the publication of a piece entitled, ‘SRI LANKA: Nearing a Human Rights Apocalypse’. Still, after thirteen years and dozens of reads, the prophetic flavour of that pithy 899-word bulletin sends chills down my spine. The opening paragraphs need little explanation:

Residents of the seaside suburb of Mount Lavinia, three miles from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, were awakened at around 3:00 AM on Aug. 6 by gunshots.

As the night curfew in force throughout Sri Lanka ended one hour later, the bolder ones ventured out of doors. They found the bodies of six youths – five dead, one dying of gunshot injuries – their hands tied behind their backs, lying on the beach.

The injured boy told them he was from Ganemulla, a small town 25 miles from the capital. Mount Lavinia residents say he accused the Special Task Force (STF) – police commandos – of dragging him from his house, bringing him to Colombo and shooting him.

Killings like this happen daily in southern Sri Lanka, where the security forces are hunting down left-wing rebels from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in a major government drive to wipe out what it calls “subversion”.

This, in a nutshell, was Richard’s beat: piecing together, victim by victim, corpse by corpse, the story of the violent insurgency and still-more-violent counter-insurgency that throttled Sri Lanka in the late 80s. And it wasn’t the first time—the piece took its title from remarks delivered in Parliament on 9 August 1989 by the then-opposition leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike, demanding the creation of a parliamentary committee to look into arrests and indiscriminate killings, which had topped 1,000 just that month:

Bandaranaike, who crushed a JVP-led student insurrection when she was prime minister in 1971, yesterday chose to make a distinction between the JVP and the youth who support it in her apocalyptic statement in Parliament.

“These are our future generations. Why have they resorted to violence? Because they have no education — schools and universities are closed, they have no hope of employment, they see injustice and corruption all around them, she declared.

“If you have no answer except to meet indiscriminate killings with equally brutal reprisals . . . You will build up a monster no-one will be able to control”, Bandaranaike warned.

The article goes on to detail the particular horrors of that time, namely the lawlessness that rendered the entire population either victim or suspect, and the rest terrorised into silence:

Masked men travelling in vehicles without license plates were abducting young men from their homes. Human rights activists say most of the “secret” killings are carried out by plainclothes squads from the regular forces. The government closed down schools in Sinhalese areas in June and followed up by sending the military onto southern campuses July 11.

Members of the campus group “Students for Human Rights” say the 250 students taken into custody were the lucky ones.

“Most of those arrested on campus are still alive, although in detention”, says “Kumar”, a spokesperson for the group. “It is when the students go back to their homes that they are in the greatest danger. The local police or military come for them with a license to kill.”

The “tire treatment” is a common form of punishment meted out to suspected rebels. Villagers and townspeople alike have grown used to the sight of bodies smouldering on public roadways, charred flesh indistinguishable from burning rubber.

Other suspects were blindfolded, tied to trees or lampposts, and shot – often after being tortured.

Under Sri Lanka’s harsh emergency regulations and anti-subversion laws, police or military officers can dispose of dead bodies without autopsies and detain anyone for up to 18 months without producing them in court.

“We have filed hundreds of habeas corpus applications (calling on police to produce arrested people before magistrates) but under the law, the government need not do anything about these”, explained human rights lawyer Prins Gunesekera.

Gunesekera says he himself is in danger. He and another lawyer, Kanchana Abeypala, have been placed on an “endangered” list by the human rights organisation Amnesty International after they were warned to stop campaigning against rights abuses.

A third lawyer from the human rights lobby, Charitha Lankapura, was murdered – allegedly by the STF – in early July after returning home from a student demonstration.

Surely, no clearer prologue to his own death could have been written: abducted from his home without charge or warrant, shot, and his body dumped in the sea. No investigation, no explanations. For decades I have listened to my elders talk in circles of speculation as to the causes and culprits behind Richard’s murder—Why? On whose orders? For what?—without ever arriving at an undivided answer.

*

It is tempting to surmise that Richard’s clarity of analysis and reporting were reason enough for the government to remove him. In a dispatch from 22 May 1989, Richard notes:

Pride stalks Sri Lanka today, in a variety of guises. There is the racial pride of the Sinhalese, who make up 70 percent of the island’s 17 million people (mostly Buddhist), as well as the pride of the 1.4 million-strong Tamil minority.

There is also the pride of two fierce militant groups, one Sinhalese and one Tamil; the pride of two armies, one Sri Lankan and one Indian; and the political pride of their governments in Colombo and New Delhi.

He goes on to detail the political manoeuvres required to juggle multiple conflicts, with the government funnelling its armed forces into the “economically underprivileged southern belt” to root out the JVP while simultaneously directing a stream of soldiers to the Northern Province to wage war against the LTTE. All this, Richard notes, while the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF), by order of Rajiv Gandhi, were half-cajoling, half-strong-arming the Tigers to a negotiating table, upon which lay the highly divisive devolution plan outlined in the 1987 Indo-Lanka accords.

“The JVP and the shadowy organisation suspected of being its armed wing (known as the Patriotic People’s Movement or DJV) [are] implacably opposed to Tamil separatism or anything remotely approaching it”, he wrote, adding that on the flip side of the coin, the LTTE remained hell-bent on the creation of a wholly separate Tamil homeland, despite a strong political tide amongst more moderate Tamil forces that would have accepted an agreement for regional autonomy. Richard concluded:

A triangle of power [now governs the country]. If [President Ranasinghe] Premadasa, a shrewd self-taught professional politician, wants his presidency to get off the ground, he will have to deal swiftly with two men who, like him, have simple origins – Tamil Tiger guerilla leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and JVP supremo Rohana Wijeweera.

The actions of this trio will determine Sri Lanka’s immediate future – as well as the fate, in life or death terms, of the country’s 16.4 million people.

It was the kind of journalism I aspired to: clean, clear, concise, and contextual, with a beating heart that seemed able to keep time with the louder pulse of the nation. Nothing seditious or revolutionary. No call to arms. Nothing but a writer’s quiet plea for sanity or humanity to prevail amidst a massacre. It was not, to my mind, the kind of blazing scroll that an artist might—even for the faintest moment—think they’d die for.

The unasked question being, of course, Was it worth it, in the end? These dispatches from Sri Lanka, written in a time of terror, delivered to an international audience that could do nothing to stop the bloodshed—was it worth it? How, really, do you value a human life against the value of his or her work?

Such was the diabolic arithmetic I was being forced to work out in real time as a small team of freedom fighters working on behalf of Russell Maroon Shoatz pressed me for an answer on the proposed assignment of working with a complete stranger to tell his life’s story. I read and reread Richard’s articles, and read and reread Maroon’s letters, which had begun to arrive in my mailbox on Georgia Avenue NW Washington, DC. I observed the words of both men fusing together in unnerving ways. Notions of duty, legacy, and artistic responsibility jostled in my mind with a dull, pervasive anxiety at the prospect of committing myself to a literary work with the highest possible stakes: another person’s life and freedom, and—if I was to follow the mad logic that resulted in Richard’s murder—possibly my own.

“Let’s say I write this book, with a high-security prisoner who’s accused of murder and who calls himself a prisoner of war,” I said to my father, trying to laugh off my deepest fears. “What’s the worst they can do to me? What’s the worst that could happen?”

To which he answered, quietly and without pause, “Deportation. Incarceration. Torture.”

I grieved that response for a long time, perhaps because it was the first time I had truly confronted the fear that the survivors of Sri Lanka’s violence—my own family, myself—carry with them, in their bones. I grieved also for these two men, one who had been killed, and the other who’d been sentenced to a different kind of death, which in the twisted parlance of the American justice system is known as Life. Maroon was serving back-to-back life sentences in solitary confinement. His letters to me were composed in the laboured hand of an old man with a youthful spirit who has been made to stare into the black abyss and see right through it, to the beauty and the hope.

I shared some of Richard’s work with Maroon, and told him, briefly, the story. He wrote back at once, soulful and wise: When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power. It was, in a way, an answer to the question I had not asked, that my family have prowled around all my life, that Maroon had, I later learned, been avoiding and confronting for decades in the screaming quietude of a cage measuring five by seven feet: Was it worth it, in the end?

A year later I met Maroon in person, down in the dungeon of the State Penitentiary at Mahanoy, an all-male prison in rural Pennsylvania, in a visiting room bisected by a sheet of bulletproof glass. Throughout the visit Maroon remained shackled at the ankles and at the wrists, a bright-eyed, ageing, and agile man with whom I would collaborate for 12 years on his autobiography I Am Maroon. He did not live to see its release. It was published, posthumously, on 3 September 2024, nearly three years after Maroon died of cancer.

People often ask my family how we make sense of Richard’s life and death. It was not until I met Maroon and undertook a kind of doctoral degree in American studies under his tutelage, with his supporters acting as my academic advisors and the prisons of Pennsylvania serving as my campus, that I began to understand how legacies work: they must be allowed to live. Nothing finishes a person quite like memorialising them; nostalgia and romanticising will make quick work of whatever is left. Maroon did not suffer from nostalgia—probably because, I always assumed, it’s a deadly disease for a prisoner serving a life sentence. He was a great believer in living legacies. He mentored countless young men who were thrown into the penitentiary alongside him and saw many of them off into the free world while he continued to Do His Time. Dozens have said they regard him as a father-figure, as their greatest teacher.

As for me, writing together with Maroon, through the bars and over all the hurdles thrown at us—visits cancelled and monitored, our correspondence surveilled, letters destroyed or returned to the sender, threats and lawsuits—seemed like the most sensible way to honour Richard’s legacy in my own lifetime. Mainly because it helped me to do away with that blasted question: Was it worth it, in the end?

Turns out it’s not a question at all, but a slow reckoning with language itself, with these words that are strong enough to kill a man, and free a man. And what emerges from that reckoning is not doubt or unknowing, but a certain certainty, that you have to use words to make sense of them. You have to let them play, let them remake themselves: We are worth more than the ends they devise for us. We live, and live on, because we are worthy of life.

 

Kanya D’Almeida is a writer, and winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is the co-author of I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner, available now from Hachette Books.

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Sustainable Human Development – article

Reducing inequalities for equitable, sustainable human development

Nadeera Rajapakse

Policy Tribune, Vol 1 -Issue 2/ January 2025 The Bandaranaike Academy for Leadership & Public Policy

https://balpp.com/publications/

Policy Brief

Reducing Inequalities for Sustainable, Equitable Human Development

By Professor Nadeera Rajapakse

In the context of the economic (and political) crisis and its impact on individuals, groups, and communities, recovery measures need to address existing structural inequalities for two main reasons: first, because without removing inequalities, widespread economic and social prosperity is impossible, or is at best inequitable and non-inclusive. Second, inequalities are harmful in themselves, not only as effects on economic growth. In other words, like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) highlight [1] , inequality is a standalone goal as well as a cross­cutting issue.

The brief makes policy recommendations aiming for meaningful, inclusive, sustainable economic development in Sri Lanka’s post-crisis context. By meaningful, we focus on people and not only on infrastructure; by inclusive we refer to policies that take into account plural identities, and by sustainable we target long-term goals over short-term profits. By using Amartya Sen’s concept of human development as enhancing personal and collective freedoms alongside GDP growth (1984, 1999) [2] , the recommendations made here aim to address the existing structural weaknesses and inequalities that have been exacerbated by Sri Lanka’s political and economic crisis. Interdisciplinary analysis is essential to take stock of intersecting categories of identity that influence inequalities. We focus on two areas, debt refinancing and the export of low-skilled labour, which are related concerns in Sri Lanka today, with widespread effects on human development.

Debt Refinancing

As a result of authoritarian political decisions on large-scale loss-inducing infrastructure investments and policies, the country faced severe foreign exchange shortages culminating in a debt crisis amounting to 103.8% of GDP as of March 2023 (Dias, 2023). [3] This crisis hit households at a time when many had not yet recovered from the shocks of COVID-19. After struggling through months of shortages of gas, fuel, electricity, medicine and many other essential items, the people took to the streets in protest.

With a change in leadership propelled by the people’s protests, the government’s response was to secure an International Monetary Fund bailout in 2022. In June 2024, the IMF agreed to a 48-month Extended Fund Facility providing the country with immediate access to about US $336 million, bringing the total funds disbursed to about US $1 billion (IMF executive board, 2024). These financing deals were linked to the IMF’s 2023 debt sustainability and requires debt to be paid down through high budget surplus.

Sri Lanka’s debt is held by both foreign and domestic creditors. Foreign creditors have been categorised into various groups [4] , of which we can differentiate bilateral creditors and ISB (International Sovereign Bond) holders and other commercial creditors. Negotiations are underway with bilateral creditors for debt relief, while ISB holders have suggested GDP growth-dependent debt restructuring. This means that debt repayments will be made according to GDP growth rates, with the country expected to pay higher interest rates on estimated future growth rates. Thus, the 28 percent debt concession granted at present could be reduced to 15 percent if growth rates surpass the limit set by the IMF (Kuruwita, 2024). In exchange for this emergency loan, the IMF imposed a series of conditions. Briefly, “further trade liberalization to promote exports and foreign direct investment; labor reforms to upgrade skills and increase female labor force participation; and state-owned enterprise reforms to improve efficiency and fiscal transparency, contain fiscal risks, and promote a level playing field for the private sector” (IMF, 2024).

These conditions along with the GDP-related concessions, calling for a budget surplus, which in turn requires greater inflows of foreign exchange, bring us to the second issue discussed here: Sri Lanka’s highest foreign exchange earner: low-skilled migrant workers.

Export of Low-skilled Migrant Labour

Contributing to 5.1% of GDP, low-skilled women migrant domestic workers (maids) overall remittances surpass earnings coming from tea and garment exports (World Bank blog, 2022). While, on the one hand, remittances are seen as exerting a positive effect on development, poverty alleviation and unemployment (Ratha, 2023), on the other hand, this type of gendered labour is characterised by exploitative and abusive working conditions, the lack of rights, and multiple layers of risk and vulnerabilities. The government has been unable to protect migrant workers and often use restrictions and bans as a way of addressing the dangers they face (Weeraratne, 2022). However, as Amartya Sen’s development framework shows, restrictions imposed on the women’s (and men’s) right to migrate and find employment opportunities only exacerbate the risks. Instead of effectively dissuading them from migrating, restrictions force migrants to seek irregular, informal means of mobility, thus exposing them to even greater vulnerabilities. Just as the IMF emphasises female labour force participation, the lack of alternative employment and of sustainable livelihood options are seen as push factors driving women to seek employment abroad despite the risks.

Exacerbating Structural Inequalities Prevalent in the Country

Inequalities

The IMF debt finance scheme was hailed by many with relief as the only resort for Sri Lanka to emerge from its debt crisis. However, many others spoke out against its debilitating effects on the wider population. The bail out came with austerity measures, including cuts in public spending, steep increases in utility tariffs, food and energy costs, indirect and regressive taxation, limited cash handouts as social security. While we separate inequalities into various categories for purposes of clarity, we insist that these categories overlap and need to be considered as intersecting and compounding factors.

Gender-based inequalities : Due to their unpaid caregiving roles at household level, women often shoulder responsibilities of ensuring families are fed, looked after and educated, even as they face falling wages, rising food, electricity and water bills, precarious and informal employment and lack of access to meaningful social security. Consequently, the current debt refinancing proposals, which prioritise external creditors and ensure re-entry into finance markets, bail out private finance (both local and global) by putting the burden on the workers, and especially women workers – both paid and unpaid. [5]

Domestic debt restructuring has placed the burden on public pension funds, with teachers and nurses, among others, having their pensions slashed. Cuts in public spending on education, health and social security will further aggravate the burden faced by women, but not only: income, age and ethnic origins are also categories upon which inequalities thrive.

Income inequalities: Colombo may look dazzling with its luxury hotels and malls, but the crises faced by working class families tell a different story. Research has shown that the quality of life of working-class families has deteriorated and that they are still battling with everyday expenses. Accumulated bills and shortages have put them in situations of severe debt, compounded by the increases in the prices of essential items, following VAT increases. They are at a “point of no return” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023), taking loans to survive, rather than to navigate one-off shocks. Consequently, reducing inflation and bringing food prices down are welcome, though not sufficient to ensure long-term sustainable growth. Here too women face much of the burden of managing the daily needs of their families and face the pressure of negotiating loans. In a situation where alternative funding is absent, they turn to microfinance and moneylenders (Arambepola, 2019). Thus, understanding the complex and intersecting needs driving households to debt is essential when discussing the regulation of microfinance and informal credit markets.

Age-related inequalities: Older people are particularly at risk during the current situation as a result of underlying health conditions, social and economic disadvantages, and insufficient social protection mechanisms. In addition, the economic crisis led to greater food insecurity and inaccessible healthcare for older people. “Many older people aren’t receiving their full list of prescribed medicines and cannot afford to buy privately. Some have stopped taking their medications altogether, waiting until the drugs are available again. Others are turning to alternative medicines such as Ayurvedic or traditional methods which can only serve as a temporary measure” (Helpage International, 2022).

The domestic debt restructuring also worsens the situation for older people, who tend to either be out of paid work or earning very little and whose pensions and available savings are very quickly used up on food and healthcare. According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2019, people aged 65-years-old and above are the poorest group in Sri Lanka (Department of Census and Statistics, Multidimensional Poverty in Sri Lankan, 2019).

Minority rights-related inequalities: Crises and conflicts tend to exert disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups, which include ethnic and religious minority groups in Sri Lanka, who have faced long-term patterns of discrimination (Hennayake, 2006). The State needs to recognise and remedy human rights violations to ensure justice, safety and security, essential capabilities for inclusive human development and growth (Sen, 1999). Justice is required to address enforced disappearances, land disputes, disenfranchised populations and environmental issues.

Harassment and discrimination on the basis of identity-related issues (gender, sexual origin, sexuality, religion, ethnic origin, etc.) not only impede productivity on labour markets, thus hampering economic growth, but also cause harm to society’s wellbeing (Ariyarathne, 2022).

“Decisions on economic policies must be guided by Sri Lanka’s international human rights obligations, including by ensuring adequate social protection. (…) Sri Lanka’s creditors should provide the Government with the fiscal space needed to realise economic, social and cultural rights” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024).

The failure to protect minority rights and well-being creates a big push factor propelling risky, costly emigration, borne by society at large.

 

“(…) the dominant three foreign exchange earners for the country – garments, tea exports and migrant workers to the Middle East – rest on the efforts of women workers” (Ruwanpura, 2022).

The unforgiving spiral of debt servicing without considering equitable growth: The imperatives of debt service put huge pressures on essential social spending in Sri Lanka, even before being forced into debt default and having to approach the IMF for assistance. Sri Lanka now faces massive constraints even in continuing with earlier social spending levels, much less in responding adequately to the need for greater social protection in the face of the economic crisis caused by debt distress. The lack of professional skills, which would be further widened by reduced public spending, and the lack of imagination in absorbing women gainfully into the economy, along with the pressures to tend to her dependents will not remove incentives pushing women to migrate. However, valuing her work and enabling freedoms to migrate safely and work in decent conditions are feasible policy orientations.

Recommendations

Deprivations are intersecting. Some workers face numerous compounding deprivations stemming from gender and ethnic discrimination, such as women employed in the garment industry and tea-plantation workers, especially those from minority Tamil groups. Policy conditionalities associated with debt relief have rarely shown an understanding of gender dynamics, not recognising the different ways that women and men – across intersectional identities – interact with the economy, as paid and unpaid workers, as household providers, as family members and as citizens (Ghosh, 2021).

Universal social protection “Social security is not charity but a human right of all people. Women’s groups are demanding that universal social security in this time of crisis be made binding and enforceable by law. Without meaningful expansion of social safety nets and increasing fiscal allocation, targeted schemes like Aswesuma will not benefit the millions of families hit hard by the crisis.” (Dias, 2023).

Sri Lanka must move away from targeted social welfare schemes to systems that offer universal social protection, particularly in the context of crises. Targeted poverty reduction schemes have their weaknesses and in Sri Lanka, inefficient targeting as well as outdated eligibility criteria – those for the Aswesuma welfare scheme were developed before the debt crisis – result in many vulnerable groups slipping through the net. The multidimensionality of vulnerability and poverty also needs to be considered, going beyond basic income related criteria. [6]

It should also be recognised that 66 per cent of the labour force work informally, including women who do unpaid domestic care work, so have little access to social protection schemes. Similarly, only 40 to 50 per cent of older people receive any form of benefit such as pensions, provident funds, or cash payments (Helpage International, 2022). Contradictory measures like targeting the already meagre pension funds of Sri Lanka’s wage workers, only exacerbate existing class, gender, and ethnic inequalities. In particular, any requirements of public spending cuts that reduce employment in public services or reduce wages of public workers, should be avoided.

It is unrealistic to expect specific programmes targeted to women/children to undo the damage created by broader macroeconomic policies that reduce employment and livelihoods. Therefore, as far as possible, policies should be universal so as to prevent unjustified exclusion of those already disadvantaged in other ways. [7]

Collective bargaining for women migrant workers

Commodification is a phenomenon afflicting women migrants, by which they are recognised only for the service they provide, and hence low-skilled and low valued (Rajapakse, 2023). The unlimited supply of low-skilled labour from competing sending countries in the face of asymmetric power wielded by receiving countries is a situation that facilitates commodification of migrant labour. Sri Lanka’s National Migration Policy has the protection of workers as a core policy area, which can be made more efficient if sending countries negotiate collectively for their migrant workers’ rights. Turning regional rivalries in South Asia into potential collaborative endeavours, such as the Colombo Process, is imperative (IOM, 2003). [8]

The nature of vulnerabilities as well as the exploitation and abuses that low-skilled workers from the region generally experience is similar despite the differences in their nationalities. South Asian countries need to demand better terms of employment and increased protection for their workers. Most sending countries have ratified conventions and laws aimed at protecting their migrant workers. These are nonetheless ineffectual if destination countries, especially in the Middle East, have not. Developing common solutions, strategies and facilities, such as insisting on domestic work being included in labour laws in destination countries, setting up common safe houses and transit homes in destination countries, in coordination with embassies/diplomatic missions of SAARC Member States need to be done collectively. [9]

Avoiding fiscal austerity

Imposing fiscal austerity measures should be avoided because countercyclical policies are required during the downswing and debt relief measures should be directed towards ensuring such countercyclicality. Regressive indirect taxation measures like value added tax (VAT) that increase prices of essential commodities are anti-poor and anti-women and can inhibit economic recovery. They also have a significant gender dimension for female consumers and producers, since women-run Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) are more likely to be unregistered, and therefore less able to redeem tax payments on their inputs, which are already likely to be more expensive as they are buying on a smaller scale. Instead, the structure of taxation can be changed to focus on more progressive taxation, in particular through equitable taxation of multinationals, taxes on extreme wealth, taxes on financial transactions.

Ensuring equitable labour-market participation

Since labour market participation is often at the core of IMF conditions, especially that of women, the country should take measures to ensure equal wages to men and women in both the public and private sectors. There needs to be appropriate measures for internal debt relief, especially for women-owned MSMEs in informal credit arrangements. It is important consider specific requirement of women borrowers and borrowers from previous conflict-zones who are less likely to have collateral and land titles that provide access to credit. It is also important to recognise the very specific needs of women entrepreneurs, especially with regard to access to inputs and markets. For example, facilitating childcare arrangements for working mothers and migrant mothers. Policies need to facilitate greater associations and unions of women workers, both employed, self-employed and migrant.

Considering debt cancellation

Scholars have pointed to the possibility of debts unpayable being cancelled. Debt justice movements across the developing world have urged for the cancellation of all unsustainable and illegitimate debts in a manner that is ambitious, unconditional, and without carrying repercussions for future market access. Past cases show how reducing debt stock and debt payments allow countries to increase their public financing for urgent domestic needs. The IMF’s Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), which measures sovereign vulnerability to sovereign debt stress, must incorporate SDG financing needs, climate vulnerabilities as well as human rights and gender equality commitments into its methodology (Ghosh, 2021). Sri Lanka is strengthening ties and membership with the BRICS and this is an opportunity to suggest greater solidarity, cooperation and stronger governance: in other words, opportunity to discuss alternatives to ultraliberal, competitive, market-based economic policies.

Strengthening Justice and Human Rights

It is essential to strengthen Sri Lanka’s Human Rights framework in order to enhance the freedoms of every person by repealing discriminatory laws (for example, 365 and 365A of the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, which criminalise same sex intimacy) and ensuring that the country move away from a military state by repealing the prevention of terrorism act. (Rajasingham Senanayake, 2011). Overall, in keeping with the goal of greater accountability and governance, stakeholders and experts need to be continuously included in participatory, deliberations on decision-making, laws, truth and reconciliation commissions and anti-corruption efforts (Orjuela, 2008).

Conclusion

We need to break the vicious spiral: because there is more power given to external creditors, maintaining investor confidence and avoiding the risk of capital flight are priorities underpinning all macroeconomic policies. As a result, public spending is further curtailed to make sure eventual capital flight can be absorbed without expanding the budget deficit. Consequently, there is lower social security and greater deprivation for many categories of people. Therefore, countries like Sri Lanka, with the greatest need of social protection for its most vulnerable categories of people, spend the least amount on it through public expenditure, which is, on the contrary directed towards debt servicing. [10]

Acknowledging that broader development depends on equitable development and considering the detrimental effects neoliberal policies have exerted in Sri Lanka, Sen’s idea of finding the middle path – combining the advantages of liberal and open economic systems with strong welfare and social protection policies and governance – offers alternative possibilities. Finally, the struggles for debt justice and overall economic justice need to be linked to the struggles for equality and freedom.

Notes

  1. SDG 10 Reduced inequalities: “Inequalities based on income, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, class, ethnicity, religion and opportunity continue to persist across the world. Inequality threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth. This, in turn, can breed crime, disease and environmental degradation. We cannot achieve sustainable development and make the planet better for all if people are excluded from the chance for a better life”. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/inequality/
  2. “The Capability approach judges individual well-being not in terms of goods consumed nor in terms of utility satisfaction, but rather on the realized functions, i.e., the set of alternatives a person has”. In Sen’s words, it is a “perspective of freedom in a positive sense: who can do what” (Sen 1984, 376).
  3. Political crisis because: “This latest round of ‘odious debt’ in Sri Lanka was created by an authoritarian and corrupt government, led by a President who initially fled the country rather than take responsibility for the economic catastrophe he unleashed. If the Pandora papers are anything to go by, a former President and an entire corrupt family clearly accumulated personal wealth at the expense of Sri Lankan people. This is an economic catastrophe that was enabled and facilitated by highly paid financiers at places like Blackrock and other private investment firms, which now hold almost 35% of Sri Lankan external debt. Their windfall profits during a global pandemic indicate the extent to which they have profited at a time of human misery” (K Ruwanpura, 2022). Also, it has been termed odious debt because “much of it is odious debt used to extract funds by both global creditors and local elite, without using it in the interests of the broader citizenry” (Yukthi, 13 May 2024).
  4. “These creditor groups are the Official Creditor Committee of official bilateral lenders (co-chaired by France, India, and Japan), who hold $5.8 billion of Lankan debt; the China Exim Bank ($4.2 billion); other Official Creditors (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan – $0.3 billion); ISB holders ($14.2 billion); China Development Bank ($3.2 billion) and other commercial creditors (under $0.2 billion)” (Kuruwita, 2024)
  5. Amartya Sen refers to the “social technology” that enables the economic system to function thanks to the invisible contribution of women performing unpaid work (1991). $10.8 trillion – the total earnings of women’s unpaid care work as reported by Oxfam (2020)
  6. “According to the UNDP report on multidimensional vulnerability of Sri Lankans, as many as 12.34 million people in Sri Lanka (55.7% of Sri Lankans) are multi-dimensionally vulnerable, and yet only 2 million households have been selected as beneficiaries under Aswesuma” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023).
  7. “In the 2023 budget, the Government allocated LKR 539 billion for defense and public security while household cash transfers and food relief (which includes all the key social welfare programs such as Samurdhi, allowances for elders, disabled, kidney disease, school meal programs and nutrition programs for mothers and children) was allocated LKR 187 billion. Sri Lanka continues to remain one of the countries in the region that spend the least of its GDP on social welfare” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023).
  8. “The Regional Consultative Process on Overseas Employment and Contractual Labor for Countries of Origin in Asia or the Colombo Process aims to provide a forum for Asian labor-sending countries to (…) Share experiences, lessons learned and best practices on overseas employment and contractual labor; Consult on issues faced by overseas workers, and labor sending and receiving states, and offers practical solutions for the well-being of overseas workers, particularly the vulnerable overseas workers; Optimize development benefits from organized overseas employment, and enhance dialogue with countries of destination; and review and monitor the implementation of the ministerial recommendations and identify further steps for action” (IOM, 2003)
  9. “(…) SAARC countries, including Sri Lanka, have been in a search to find broader regional groupings that are capable of meeting particularly their economic objectives in a sustainable manner. These have included joining organizations such as the BIMSTEC and the IORA. Sri Lanka has most recently sought membership of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)” (Colombopage quoted in Ariyasinha, 2023). There are increasing calls that Sri Lanka seeks the membership of the BRICS – the group of emerging economies (Ariyasinha, 2023).
  10. “(…) comparing debt service payments to core social spending (covering expenditure on education, health and social protection). In upper middle income countries, just under half of the amount of social spending was spent on debt service, but in lower middle income countries (where such spending is all the more required) the debt service payments were more than social spending. Shockingly, in the low income countries, debt service payments came to 171 per cent of social spending! These are not just the poorest countries, with significant proportions of absolutely hungry people, but also the most climate-vulnerable countries, which are already experiencing a range of climate-related shocks that affect ordinary people” (Gosh, 2023).

References

Arambepola, C. Romeshun, K. 2019, Debt at My Doorstep: Microfinance Practices and Effects on Women in Sri Lanka, Centre for Poverty Analysis

Ariyarathne, Kaushalya, 2022. Impact of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis on LGBT+ population Employment, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, UK, January

Aryasinha, Ravinatha, 2023, A ‘Global Order’ in Flux: Challenges and Opportunities for Sri Lanka. Lakshman Kadirgama Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies.

Colombo Urban Lab, 2023. Borrowing to eat. The Impact of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis on Colombo’s working class poor. September

Department of Census and Statistics. 2019. Multidimensional Poverty in Sri Lanka. www.statistics.gov.lk/Poverty/Staticallnfor

Dias, Prashani. 2023. Expert’s Take: Six ways Sri Lanka’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security will support women during crises, UNWomen, Thursday, 8 June

Ghosh, Jayati, 2023. The International Financial System and Women’s Poverty. Background paper for CSW68 Expert Group Meeting | UN Women – Headquarters

Ghosh, Jayati. 2021. Gender concerns in debt relief, IIED, London. Helpage International, 2022.

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis hits older people hard – an urgent call for action Hennayake, Nalani. 2006. Culture, Politics, and Development in Postcolonial Sri Lanka, Lexington Books, Oxford

ILO, 2014. SAARC commits to helping migrant workers, https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/saarc- commitsDhelping-migrant-workers

IMF Executive Board, 2024. IMF Executive Board Concludes 2024 Article IV Consultation with Sri Lanka and Completes the Second Review Under the Extended Fund Facility. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/06/12/pr-24214-sri-lanka-imf-concludes-2024- article-ivDconsultation-completes-2nd-review-under-eff

IOM, 2003. Regional Consultative Process on Overseas Employment and Contractual Labor for Countries of Origin in Asia (Colombo Process). https://www.iom.int/regional-consultative-process- overseasDemployment-and-contractual-labor-countries-origin-asia-colombo-process

Kuruwita, Rathindra, 2024. “Sri Lanka’s Debt Restructuring Deal: Economic Relief or Creditor Windfall?” The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2024/07/sri-lankas-debt-restructuring-deal- economic-relief-orDcreditor-windfall/

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024, Sri Lanka: Transformational changes needed for accountability and reconciliation – UN report. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press- releases/2024/08/sriDlanka-transformational-changes-needed-accountability-and-reconciliation

Orjuela, Camilla, 2008. The Identity Politics of Peacebuilding: Civil Society in War-Torn Sri Lanka. Sage Publications.

Rajapakse, Nadeera. 2023. “Women Migrant Workers and Market Forces: Toward an Inter­disciplinary Representation of Female Labor Migration,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, volume 41, pages 3-25, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Rajasingham Senanayake, Darini. 2011. “Is Post-War Sri Lanka Following the ‘Military Business Model’”. Economic and Political Weekly, April 2-8, Vol. 46, No. 14, pp. 27-30

Ratha,                     Dilip.                    2023.                      Resilient                                Remittances,         IMF.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/B2B-resilient-remittances-dilip-ratha

Revollo, P.E. 2020. Time to Care: Methodology note. Oxfam. https://www.google.com/url? sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstrea m/handle/10546/620928/rr-time-to-care-methodology-200120-

en.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjk4PjJ_rGJAxVVRaQEHTvhOKIQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3epYjJj4 vVyW pH5VH3vZmv

Ruwanpura, K, Muchhala, B, & Rao, S. 2022. Gendering the debt crisis: Feminists on Sri Lanka’s financial crisis, https://developingeconomics.org/2022/12/02/gendering-the-debt-crisis-feminists-on- sri-lankasDfinancial-crisis /

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf

Sen, Amartya. 1991. On Ethics and Economics, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

Weeraratne, Bilesha. 2022. Good Riddance to the FBR: What Next to Increase Migrant Remittances to Sri Lanka? Jul 04,https://www.ips.lk/talkingeconomics/?author=42,

Yukthi 2024, YUKTHI Calls for Rejecting the Recent Bond Deal, https://yukthisl.org/yukthi-calls- forQrejecting-the-recent-bond-deal/

Yukthi, 2024, A platform for working people in Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. 13 May.

https://yukthisl.org/debt-justice

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History – Archive of memory

https://www.archiveofmemory.lk

“The Archive of memory seeks to reflect on 70 years of Independence by focusing on the perspectives and experiences of ordinary Sri Lankans. Each story pivots around a specific object which is in turn associated with a personalized story that is linked to a significant event in Sri Lanka’s political, economic or social history”.

Some extracts:

சிலேட்பென்சில்

நான் பிறந்தது இரத்தினபுரி மாவட்டத்தில் ஆனாலும் எனது பாடசாலை வயதிலான பழைய ஞாபகங்கள் நிறைந்துள்ளது கேஹெலேள்ளையிலாகும். என்னை தத்தெடுப்பதும் நான் குனுமுள்ள பாடசாலையில் சேர்வதும் அங்கே. என் ஆருயிர் நண்பனின் பெயர் பிரபாகரன். 1957ம் ஆண்டு யூத்தத்திற்கு முன்னைய காலக்கட்டத்தில் அந்த பெயருக்கு எந்தவொரு விசேஷமும் இருக்க வில்லை. எனக்கு அவன் தமிழ் என்றே தெரியாது. எனக்கு அவனை ஞாபகம் வரும் போது அவனின் இடது காதிலுள்ள ஓட்டையே ஞாபகத்துக்கு வரும்.

நாங்கள் நாலாவது தரத்தில் படிக்கும் போது எலார – துடுகெமுனு போரை பற்றி படிப்பித்தார்கள். கதை முழுதாகவே கெமுனுவின் கோணத்தில் இருந்ததால் எம்மவர்கள் அனைவருக்கும் எலார ஒரு வில்லனாக தெரிந்தார். எங்கள் ஆசிரியர் கெமுனு இளவரசரின் சிறுவயதில் நடந்த மறக்கமுடியாத ஒரு அனுபவக் கதையூம் கூட கூறினார். இளவரசனின் தாய் விகார மகா தேவிஇ ஒரு நாள் இளவரசரை பார்த்து ஒரு கேள்வி கேட்டாராம். “இவ்வளவூ இடம் கட்டிலில் இருக்கும் போது ஏன் சுருங்கி நித்திரை கொள்கிறாய்” என கேட்டபோது இளவரசர் பதில் அளித்தாராம்இ “வடக்கு திசையில் பர தெமழுஇ தெற்கு திசையில் ஊமை கடல் என்று.

வகுப்பிற்கு பிறகு நாங்கள் வழமைபோன்று விளையாடுவதற்காக வெளியில் சென்றௌம். எங்கள் வகுப்பில் ஒரு மாணவர் பிரபாகரனுடன் சண்டை பிடித்தமையால் பிரபாகரனுக்கு கல் துண்டால் குத்தினான். அந்த கல் துண்டு 6 இஞ்சி உயரமானது நாங்கள் கல்லால் எழுதுவதற்கு உபயோகித்த பென்சிலாகும். 1977 ம் ஆண்டு தமிழ் விரோதத்திற்கு பிறகு பிரபாகரன் குடும்பத்துடன் ஊரை விட்டு போய்விட்டான். அத்துடனே எனக்கும் அவனுக்கு இருந்த உறவூம் எங்களை விட்டு சென்றுவிட்டது.

பாரக்கிரம நிரியல்ல,
கேஹெலேள்ளஇ திவூலப்பிடி

 

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කොහු ලණු

මට මතක හැටියට මේ හතලිස් හතේ අටේ විතර. හැම සඳුදාම උදේට මම උණවටුනේ ඉඳන් ගාල්ලේ මහින්දෙට ඉස්කෝලේ යන්න බයිසිකලෙත් එක්ක මහ පාරට බහිද්දී ලුසී හාමි අක්කා කියන වයසක අම්මා මට මුණගැහෙනවා. ‘අනේ මහත්තයෝ හාල් සේරුවක් ගන්න කීයක් හරි දෙන්න’ කියලා මගෙන් ඉල්ලනවා. ඉතිං මට කෑමක් ගන්න ගෙදරින් දුන්න සත විසිපහ එයාට දෙනවා. ඒ කාලේ හාල් සේරුවක් සත විසිපහයි. වාසනාවකට මගේ පන්තියේ ළමයි විවේක වෙලාවෙදි මට වඩේයි ප්ලේන්ටියි අරන් දෙනවා.

දවසක් මම වෙරළ දිගේ ඇවිදිනකොට දැක්කා ලුසී හාමි අක්කාගේ පැල්පතේ අක්කා කොහු අඹරනවා. ඉතිං මම ලඟට ගිහිං ඇහුවා ‘ලුසී හාමි අක්කේ ඔයා කොහු අඹරනවානේ ඇයි එහෙනං මගෙන් හැමදාම සල්ලි ඉල්ලන්නේ’ කියලා. ‘අනේ මහත්තයෝ අත ලේ යනකම් අඹරලත් මුළු සුමානෙම හම්බවෙන්නේ 2.50යි.’

මම කොහු ලණු ගන්න මුදලාලිව හොයන් ගිහිං ඇහුවා කොහු ලණු ගාල්ලට විකුණන්නේ කීයටද කියලා. 7.50 ට. පස්සේ ගාල්ලේ කොම්පැනියට ගිහිං හෙව්වා. ඒගොල්ලෝ ඒවා විකුනන්නේ රුපියල් 16කට. එතනින් පස්සේ මම කොහු කාර්මිකයන්ගේ සමූපකාර සමිතියක් හැදුවා. ගමේ කොහු අඹරණ දුප්පත් ගැහැණු 80 දෙනෙක් විතර සාමාජිකයෝ වුණා. තාත්තා සල්ලි ටිකක් දුන්නා. අපේ බාප්පා කෙනෙකුට කියලා කොහු අඹරන්න පොඩි මඩුවක් හැදෙව්වා.

ඉතිං මං ජීවිතේ මුල් වතාවට කොළඹ ආවේ අපේ සමූපකාර සමිතිය ලියාපදිංචි කරන්න. නිදහසින් පස්සේ පත් කරපු මුල්ම ආණ්ඩුවේ සමූපකාර හා ස්වදේශ කටයුතු ඇමති අබේරත්න රත්නායක මට ඉස්සෙල්ලාම මුණ ගැහෙන්නේ එතනදි.

පස්සේ කාලේ මම නාලන්දා විද්‍යාලයේ උගන්වන කාලේ ශිෂ්‍යයින් එක්ක එකතු වෙලා ශ්‍රමදාන ව්‍යාපාරයක් පටන් ගත්තා. අපේ පළවෙනි වැඩසටහන සිද්ධ කලේ කුලහීන ගම්මානයක් වුණ කනතො`ඵව ගමේ. සර්වෝදය ශ්‍රමදාන ව්‍යාපාරයට අඩිතාලම වැටෙන්නේ එතනදි. ඒ ගමේ ගැහැණුන්ට ගමෙන් එළියට යනකොට හැට්ට ඇඳගෙන යන්න තහනම්. ඒ මිනිස්සු දානේ අරගෙන පන්සලට ගෙනිච්චහම හාමුදුරුවෝ දානේ බාරගත්තේ නැහැ. ඒ මිනිස්සු දානේ ගල උඩ තියලා ආවේ. පස්සේ ඒවා බල්ලෝ කනවා.

කොහු කාර්මිකයන්ගේ සමූපකාර සමිතියෙන් පටන් ගත්ත මගේ වැඩේ පස්සේ ගම්මාන 15,000 ක කුල පීඩනයට, දුප්පත්කමට, සූරාකෑමට විරුද්ධව සටන් කරන ව්‍යාපාරයක් බවට පත්වුණා.


ඒ. ටී. ආරියරත්න
මොරටුව

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Saree pota

I was 8-years old during the bheeshana kalaya (time of terror), in 1988. Most schools were closed though mine opened for a few hours per day to teach us Maths and Science as the management thought they were the most important subjects. I hate these two subjects to this day because of that! We couldn’t wear uniforms to school and were also drilled on how to take cover under our desks, in case of an emergency. In the night, we would often hear gunshots and the elders would speculate how many had been killed and where their bodies might be found the next day. One day, I was accompanying my mother to a parent-teacher meeting in school when she suddenly covered my eyes with her saree pota (fall) and asked me to pinch my nose tightly. It was a beautiful morning; the sun was shining and people were going about their routines but through her diaphanous, rose-patterned saree pota, I glimpsed several young men burning on a pile of tyres. This was the first time I had seen anyone naked, let alone dead.

Nayana (pseudonym),

Panadura

 

 

 

NR

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Cinéma sri lankais – “Sheysha” au Grand Rex

We are delighted to announce the screening of the film “Sheysha”, directed by Isuru GUNATHILAKA, taking place on Sunday, March 23, 2025, at 5:00 PM at the Grand Rex VIP Hall in Paris.

The film features an exceptional cast, including Chandana Wickramasinghe, Umali Thilakarathne, Yohan Jays, Nalin Pradeep Uduwela, Thilina De Silva, Samantha Kumara Gamage, and Malkanthi Jayasinghe.

Event Schedule

  • Doors Open: 4:00 PM
  • Screening Starts: 5:00 PM

Ticket Categories

  • Standard Tickets: €25
  • VIP Tickets : €35 (includes a glass of champagne, Sri Lankan delicacies, priority access without queuing, and premium seating with excellent visibility).

Where to Book Your Tickets

  • Online: https://www.helloasso.com/associations/sri-desi-dance/boutiques/sheysha-movie?_gl=1%2a1qww69y%2a_gcl_au%2aMTc3NDUxNDk3NC4xNzM1NDg4NjUz
  • Sara’s Kitchen, 77 Rue du Poteau, 75018 Paris
  • Bon Voyage Agency, 33 Rue Philippe de Girard, 75010 Paris

About the Film
Produced and directed in 2023 by Isuru GUNATHILAKA, Sheysha celebrates the rich traditions of Sri Lankan dance and delves into the intricate family dynamics intertwined with them.
The film has earned two prestigious awards:

  • Best Dance Film at the Cannes World Film Festival “Remember The Future” (2024), marking a historic first for Sri Lankan cinema.
  • Best Debut Director at the Ciné Paris Film Festival (2024).
    Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating Sri Lankan art and culture. We look forward to welcoming you!

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New publication: History of Women’s Health in Sri Lanka

A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka
Darshi Thoradeniya,
Orient Black Swan, 2024
 
Book launched held at ICES (International Centre for Ethnic Studies):
 
Sri Lanka gained prominence in international policy circles as an apparent ‘success story’ in the initial two decades of its independence. Crucial to this perception is women’s health, given its central importance to the indicators of decreasing population growth rate and decreasing mortality. However, how have individual women’s bodies fared within the twentieth-century Sri Lankan stories of development?

Through an examination of the history of women’s health in this island nation, A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka sets out to answer this question. Darshi Thoradeniya traces women’s health from the initial days of birth control and family planning, to development and population control, to militarization and financialization of women’s bodies. Questioning this ‘success story’, she shows how women’s bodies were framed around the notion of social reproduction for the nation-building project of post-independence Sri Lanka.

Through meticulous research, interviews, policies and advertisements, and oral narratives, the author highlights how the Sri Lankan state made use of women’s health, while at the same time silencing women’s corporeal experiences.

She argues that even though women’s health serves the state-building project and women’s bodies serve the nation-building project, women were neither subjects nor objects of these two projects. Women’s reproductive bodies were, rather, the ground for a complex and competing set of struggles on population, family planning, development, modernization and ethno-nationalism of post-independence Sri Lanka

This book will be a valuable addition to the fields of public health and public policy, history, women’s studies, history of medicine and the sociology of medicine.”

https://www.ices.lk/event-details/a-critical-history-of-womens-health-in-modern-sri-lanka

 

 

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Perspectives on history in Sri Lanka – Herstories, Everystory

https://theherstoryarchive.org


“This archival project is first of a series of Sri Lankans’ histories that focuses on mothers from the South and North. It highlights their strength in the face of adversity, and their hopes for their children’s and Sri Lanka’s future. Mothers are guardians of their family history. They are the pillars of strength upon which a family is built. As such, this project chooses to archive mothers’ stories, thereby recording the story of an entire family.

Copyright © 2013 Herstories project”

 

https://theherstoryarchive.org

https://www.youtube.com/@HerStoryArchives/videos

Everystory

“Empowering Voices and Inspiring Change

Everystory Lanka (formed in 2018) is a Sri Lankan-based feminist collective focused on storytelling and knowledge sharing. We use creative practices, mixed media, panel discussions, and more to create this space. We believe that stories and knowledge come in all shapes and forms, and it is within this complexity and potential for creativity that we engage.”

https://everystorysl.org/aboutus

Everystory – Day in the Life Trailer
 
 
Everystory, in collaboration with the Embassy of France to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, presents A Day in the Life series – an audio-visual campaign that captures the everyday resilience of women in Sri Lanka who have shaped or been shaped by the country’s political, cultural, and social contexts.
In its pilot edition, launched in the spirit of the 2024 French Olympics, the series follows three Sri Lankan sportswomen through their day. From training sessions to balancing domestic responsibilities, careers, or education, we delve into their reflections on life, the challenges and politics of their practice, and the moments that inspire them to keep moving forward.
Stay tuned to our socials and YouTube as we share their stories.
 
Everystory, ශ්රී ලංකාවේ සහ මාලදිවයිනේ ප්රංශ තානාපති කාර්යාලය සමඟ සහයෝගයෙන්, රටේ දේශපාලන, සංස්කෘතික, සහ සමාජ සන්දර්භයන් හැඩගැස්වූ හා ඒවායින් හැඩගැස්වුනු, ශ්රී ලංකාවේ කාන්තාවන්ගේ එදිනෙදා ඔරොත්තු දීමේ හැකියාව ග්රහණය කර ගන්නා ශ්රව්ය-දෘශ්ය වියාපාරයක් වන A Day in the life වීඩියෝ මාලාව ඉදිරිපත් කරයි.
2024 ප්රංශ ඔලිම්පික් උළෙලේ ආත්මය තුලින් දියත් කරන ලද මෙම වීඩියෝ මාලාවේ නියමු සංස්කරණය ශ්රී ලාංකික ක්රීඩිකාවන් තිදෙනෙකු ඔවුන්ගේ දවස පුරා අනුගමනය කරයි. පුහුණු සැසිවල සිට ගෘහ වගකීම්, වෘත්තීන් හෝ අධ්යාපනය සමතුලිත කිරීම් දක්වා, අපි මෙහදී සොයා බැලුවේ ඔවුන්ට තම ජිවිත පිළිබදව ඇති ආවර්ජන, ඔවුන්ගේ ක්රීඩා පුහුණුවේ තිබෙන අභියෝග සහ එහි දේශපාලනය, සහ ඉදිරියට යාමට ඔවුන්ව පොළඹවන අවස්ථා පිළිබඳවයි.
අපි ඔවුන්ගේ කථා අපගේ සමාජ ජාලා සහ යූ ටියුබ් වලින් බෙදා හරින විට රැඳී සිටින්න.
 
எவ்ரிஸ்டோரி இலங்கை, இலங்கை மற்றும் மாலைதீவுகளுக்கான பிரான்ஸ் தூதரகத்துடன் இணைந்து, எ டே இன் தி லைஃப் என்ற தொடரை வழங்குகிறது – இது ஒரு ஒலி-ஒளி ஊடான பிரச்சாரம் ஆகும், இது இலங்கையின் அரசியல், பண்பாட்டு மற்றும் சமூக சூழல்களால் வடிவமைக்கப்பட்ட அல்லது அவற்றை வடிவமைத்த மகளிரின் தினசரி வாழ்வை பதிவு செய்கிறது.
2024 ஆம் ஆண்டின் பிரெஞ்சு ஒலிம்பிக்ஸின் கருப்பொருளை பிரதிபலிக்கும் வகையில் தொடங்கப்பட்ட இதன் முதற் பதிப்பில், வீடியோ தொடர்கள் மூன்று பெண் இலங்கை விளையாட்டு வீரர்களின் அவர்களின் அன்றாட வாழ்க்கை வழியாக பின்தொடர்கிறது.பயிற்சிகள் முதல் வீட்டு அன்றாட பொறுப்புகள், தொழில் மற்றும் கல்வி ஆகியவற்றை சமமாக சமாளித்தல் , அவர்களின் வாழ்க்கை, அவர்களின் நடைமுறை
Producer – Thadini Liyanage
Cinematographer – Yoshitha Perera
Sound engineer – Bhanu Ekanayake
Editor – Sandaruwan Abesinghe
Music composed and produced by Hania Mariam Luthufi
Santoor – Marilia Pilti
Viola – Marton Kopcsik
Voice – Hania Mariam Luthufi

https://www.facebook.com/Everystory.SL/videos/4765506710341119

Reading list from everystory:

https://everystorysl.org/blog/september-2024-narrative-reading-list-on-girlhood

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Sri Lanka is the only country in South Asia that has some political hope: Jayadeva Uyangoda

A lengthy interview of Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda on the future of democracy in Sri Lanka published in Frontline:

https://frontline.thehindu.com/world-affairs/sri-lanka-presidential-election-2024-politics-npp-jvp-sinhala-economic-crisis-democracy-corruption-south-asia/article68897944.ece

Exhibition – Rooted. History of Malaiyaga Tamils

https://www.sundaytimes.lk/241013/plus/keeping-memory-alive-the-exhibition-on-malaiyaga-tamils-shows-the-need-for-justice-573767.html

Keeping memory alive: The exhibition on Malaiyaga Tamils shows the need for justice

Sunday Times
 

A fistful of earth tied to a corner of a sari pallu hangs as one of the exhibits in the old Matara courthouse. This display was recreated by Sujata, a welfare officer at Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya, inspired by a story among the Malaiyaga community. During the forced repatriation of Malaiyaga Tamils from Sri Lanka to India in the 1970s and 1980s, some women would take soil from the land of their birth, Sri Lanka, to in effect consecrate temples they made in India. This speaks of the powerful emotional tie to the country from which they were forcibly uprooted. This precious earth from a kovil was believed to have curative properties.

At a time when colonial histories are being widely re-examined and historical narratives energetically contested across the world, the Malaiyaga Tamils have mostly been confined to a footnote. ‘Is the tea plant a tea bush or a tree?’ asked Velusamy Weerasin-gham, who was moderating a discussion on the Malaiyaga community last weekend in Matara, part of a series of events curated by the Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory around the exhibition, ‘Rooted: Histories of the Malaiyaga Tamils’. Some say a bush. But it is a tree, he corrects them, making a broader point.

“The Malaiyagam is symbolic of this. The colonial Raj and majority communities pruned the plant aggressively to extract the maximum yield, but, if given the right conditions, we can also blossom into a healthy tall tree,” he says. The term ‘Malaiyaga’ means ‘from the hills’ and was introduced in the 1950s when they were still referred to as ‘kallatoni’ or illicit boat people. The term Malaiyaga acknowledges their roots to the land.

The singer T.M. Krishna in an article in late September recounted meeting a young Malaiyaga Tamil writer who regarded the long-used official categorisation of Indian-Origin Tamils “as a bane; (that) only placed them in no-man’s land.”

Inevitably, while viewing the exhibition, debates sometimes arose with members from the majority community over the term ‘plantation workers’ or ‘estate workers’ to refer to the Malaiyagam. A panel at the exhibition duly addressed these issues, going back to derogatory terms used for the community and how it is necessary to change. Even today, many people in Sinhala and English use ‘wathu demala’ or ‘estate Tamils’.

The idea of holding an exhibition to mark 200 years of the arrival of the Malaiyaga Tamils was conceived by CHDM in late 2022. The first recorded effort to introduce Indian labour on plantations here was in 1823.

Collaborating with the Institute for Social Development and the Tea Plantation Workers’ Museum and Archive in Gampola, CHDM was able to display artefacts such as the kambili (blanket) and thappu (frame drum) that represent a sense of belonging for the Malaiyaga Tamils. A session with leading Malaiyagam academics and professionals provided feedback on the exhibition’s framework, especially to highlight the community’s own efforts to demand rights as opposed to being viewed as passive victims. With the support of ISD, CHDM joined a workshop in Hatton in March 2023 with poets, journalists, teachers, public servants and activists and documented their memories of these objects.

Last weekend, a group of young cultural artists from Nawalapitiya performed with the thappu. This drum was used by the first migrants to ward off wild animals as they made a perilous journey of 150 miles to tea plantations, carrying bundles of tamarind rice and basic provisions that suggested they expected the journey to be much shorter. Thappu player Moses Suresh, 28, and the others in his group are former students of the Kandaloya Tamil Maha Vidyalaya, whose inspiring principal is Yatiyantota Karunagaran. The school actively encourages students to embrace Malaiyagam cultural heritage, learning folk songs and organising street dramas.

Suresh and his friends are completing their university education at the Eastern University in Batticaloa, a huge achievement given that members of the community still struggle to be on par with national educational attainment levels. When they light-heartedly demonstrated beats of a deity-possessed man, the deity delivered a message through the medium: “It is your…duty as educated youth…..to preserve…..this heritage for the future.”

Voices of the community such as Karunagaran were presented through an audio-visual installation to reinforce that Malaiyaga Tamils have also risen to become lawyers, award-winning writers, engineers, businessmen and tea-tasters.

In taking the exhibition to Nuwara Eliya, Colombo and now Matara over the past year or so, we have seen that it evokes a range of emotions. One person, aged 65, said sounds could also trigger haunting memories; Oppari Kochchi, or the lamenting coach, was the sound of steam engine trains that was associated with the painful separations of families due to repatriations to India.

The overwhelming response, however, was that many visitors were not aware that the histories of the Malaiyaga were so intertwined with the history of the nation. A young Malaiyaga woman wrote, “I was born and raised in Sri Lanka but stuttered with tears to learn about my ancestors’ journey. Even though they tried so hard to give us a good life, we are still in the same hardships.”

Another visitor to the Colombo exhibition put it, “We are aware of slavery in terms of what happened in Britain and America, but our history books have nothing to show what happened on our own soil.” CHDM hopes to take the exhibition to more cities, including Jaffna, in the next few months.

One huge positive is that in 2024, the community will have the option of identifying themselves as Malaiyaga Tamil on the Sri Lanka census for the first time. But, the need for societal change has a long way to go. Almost two-thirds of the Malaiyagam still live in line rooms, originally constructed during the colonial period with a single source of water and communal latrines. Land distribution measures for the most part were not extended to the community. Groups from the community are in conversations to include their history in textbooks. A public apology by both India and Sri Lanka for the forced repatriation would be a step towards redressing historical wrongs.

Coincidentally, protest posters bearing slogans from earlier years to recent times were placed along the judge’s seat in the Matara courthouse, a metaphor for the community’s continued need for justice.

(Johann Peiris works for the Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory and was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition)

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World Development – article “Lives in Exile”

World Development
Lives in exile? Perspectives on the resettlements of Sri Lankan refugees in
Tamil Nadu, India

Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud

This article looks at subjectivities and regimes of homing from a position of liminality and questions the placements dynamics displayed by Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu, India. Based on long-term and longitudinal fieldwork conducted in Keezhputhupattu refugee camp near Pondicherry between 2010 and 2023, this study analyses the experience of the refugees, which combines a “know-how” that they have developed due to a life in exile since 1983, which is linked, among other things, to a sometimes well-developed diasporic network; and a restrictive agency that has been granted to them by the Indian and Tamil Nadu authorities, which places them in a regime that is intended to be exceptional. The results of the study are significant and show how families spanning three generations may reproduce their new normalcy and negotiate their lives.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24000998

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CHENA (slash-and-burn) CULTIVATION AND ITS REPRESSION IN COLONIAL CEYLON by Eric P. Meyer

“Asking villagers to desist from chena cultivation is much the same as asking them to starve to please government”

John George Fraser, Ceylon Settlement Officer, diary, 16.02.1902.

 

Chena (slash-and-burn) cultivation is commonly regarded as characteristic of the dry zone of Sri Lanka; its technical, economic, and social features have been analyzed by anthropologists doing field studies in that area, such as Leach, Yalman, Brow, Kloos and Spencer, the best informed of them all; most of them allude to the repressive policy pursued by the colonial raj against chena (so vividly pictured by Leonard Woolf in The Village in the Jungle), and to the discourses and myths used to justify it, especially by contrasting chena  with paddy cultivation.[1]

The purpose of this study is to complete the analysis by focusing on chena cultivation in the wet and intermediate zones of the island (Central, Uva, Sabaragamuwa, North Western provinces and the northern fringe of the Southern province), mainly during the period 1830-1930. This is the area and the period in which plantation economy reached its maximal development, eventually wiping out chena cultivation, which was vital for the peasant economy before plantation growth. It is possible to argue that repressive practices and discourses aimed at chena cultivation in the dry zone originated or at least took their compulsive strength in the experience of chena repression to make room for plantation growth elsewhere in the island. Repressive attempts were passively or even actively opposed by the peasantry; this policy may be analyzed as a major failure of the colonial administration, always creating discontent and sometimes famine conditions. In a further study, the focus will be narrowed to the emblematic Kägalla district.

 

Economic and social aspects of chena cultivation in the wet and intermediate zones

“All have not watered land enough for their needs, that is, such land as good rice requires to grow in; so that such are fain to sow on dry land, and till other men’s fields for a subsistence.  These persons are free from payment of taxes; only sometimes upon extraordinary occasions, they must give a hen or a mat or such like, to the King’s use: for as much as they use the wood and water that is in his countrey. That is if find the duty to be heavy or too much for them, they may leaving their house and land be free from the King’s service, as there is a multitude do, and in my judgement they live far more at ease after they have relinquished the King’s service than when they had it.”[2]. The situation described by Robert Knox by the end of the 17th century was still valid two centuries later: the contrast between state control and taxation of settled wet paddy cultivation, versus freedom and tax evasion of unsettled highland cultivation, is a structural feature of the wet and intermediate zones of Sri Lanka.

I shall first try to draw a picture of the Ancient agrarian regime, which is of course an artefact and should not make us lose sight of the very real changes which occurred during the 16th to 18th century period. But one can call it ‘Ancient regime’ in view of the ‘Revolution’ which followed. In this system as it prevailed in the wet and intermediate areas controlled by the Kotte and later the Kandyan kingdom, the availability of space and the diversity of resources made it possible for the peasant to minimize risks ; this does not mean that the village was self-sufficient or that the system was working smoothly: except in out-of-the-way areas of the dry zone, a certain amount of trade contributed to the balance of rural economy: areca nuts, jaggery (palm tree sugar) and various garden produce were bartered for rice, fish, salt and textiles.

 

A vital or a minor resource? The place of chena in ‘Ancient regime’ economy and society.

Contrary to a common view, chena was not a minor or subsidiary resource in the wet and intermediate zones, but was central to the survival of large sectors of the peasantry: their choice of chena cultivation was rational in socio-economic terms in a context of limited population, space availability and resource diversification. This is the kind of rationality which is branded the ‘safety-first’ approach by J.C. Scott in his analysis of the subsistence ethic of the Asian peasantry.[3] 

The flexibility of the system resided in the ability of the peasantry (and especially the young people), to mobilize peripheral resources in case of need. And chena cultivation was the major resource of that kind, certainly more than forest as such. The problem raised by Jayawardena and Roberts is one of quantification: they argue that these resources “were only of marginal utility to Kandyan village ecology”[4]  By marginal, they seem to imply unnecessary; my view is that in a context of scarce, irregular and diversified resources, marginal means necessary. Besides, there were several categories of villages, some in which chena was the major resource for all the inhabitants at all times, others in which it was complementary, but nonetheless necessary to specific categories and/or in specific circumstances. Spencer convincingly suggests that the general under-reporting in official and ethnographic literature of chena cultivation results from the convergence of colonial dislike for its lack of accountability and the cultural valuation of the sole paddy cultivation by the Sinhalese[5].

‘Chena villages’ were not found only in the dry zone, where the local conditions make irrigated paddy cultivation dependent upon irregular weather or elaborated hydraulic techniques. They were also common in the wettest parts of the south-western hills, where marshy or narrow valleys could not be properly ‘asweddumized’ (= converted into irrigated paddy fields). Sometimes älvi  (hill paddy) was sown for two years in owita (unirrigated wet land at the bottom of valleys); afterwards millets and other fine grain were cultivated for a couple of years, and the owita was left fallow as grazing ground for three years.[6] More often hill paddy was cultivated in highland areas where moisture was sufficient and the cultivation cycle could be as long as 10 to 20 years.  Älvi was sown the first year in June and reaped in December (sometimes paddy seeds were mixed with millet or oil plant seeds);  millets or yams were sown the second year, then wood was allowed to grow for a decade or more.[7]  The pattern was typical of Kukul and Pasdun East, on the border between Ratnapura and Kalutara districts; of Atakalan, Hinidum and Morawak on the border between Ratnapura and the Southern province; and of the vast area south and west of Sri Pada, in the Ratnapura and the Kägalla district, where it was called Kälerata (the forest country).

In these sparsely populated localities made up of small scattered hamlets, chena cultivation with hill paddy provided the only source of grain, but it was supplemented by hunting, food gathering (fruit and honey) and kitul (sugar palm-tree) tapping. The enquiries of the settlement officers in these areas (upper Kelani valley hamlets and villages of Gilimale and Bambarabotuwa in the 1890s, Kukul korale in the 1920s) together with descriptions such as those found in the diaries of the Assistant Government Agent Ievers for 1884  and in the memoirs of Frederic Lewis, provide a wealth of information on the local ecology and society of these areas.[8]

A good half of these villages were inhabited by members of the Vahumpura caste (often locally called Kande minissu – people of the hills).[9] Under the service system imposed by the Kandyan kings, they were required to provide jaggery sugar  and cakes (hence their other name: Hakuru) and more generally cooked food, and occasionally to act as bearers and soldiers guarding the hill passes; although fully integrated in the caste system (in the upper strata of the lower castes) and now proud of their Buddhist identity, this community had some features similar to those of the Indian Adivasi and could possibly claim the same antiquity as the more celebrated Vedda. Some chena villages were inhabited by high caste people (some of them being locally called Vedda) and others by members of lower castes such as the Panna Durayi (pastoralists and grasscutters, initially distinct from the Padu who lived in large irrigated paddy villages, with whom the Panna were later amalgamated under the name Batgama)[10].

Chena villages were characterized as such by the peasants and distinguished from rice villages[11]. Among several typical cases in Ratnapura and Kägalla districts one can quote the locality of Bambarabotuwa studied by Fred Lewis: “an instance of what happens when there is a limited population and an unlimited land supply, which being out of sight was out of control”: the absence of State interference and inaccessibility being added factors: peasants were close to a food-gathering economy, settlement in hamlets was sparse and unstable and the only paddy fields “in reality were only swamps roughly turned into paddy lands”[12]. Gilimale, immediately to the west, had more diversified resources owing to the presence of small paddy fields, to the trade linked to Sri Pada pilgrimage, and was characterized by the presence of a seigneurial family. However when settlement was effected, the Settlement Officer defined the village ecology as follows: chena are indispensable, there are no paddy fields, no estate employment, no money to pay for individual settlements: “they seem to have no idea beyond chena…what they want is to be allowed to chena as heretofore”. In the Kägalla district, the villages of Atulugam east, the area close to Adam’s Peak, called Kälerata, and of the Uduwe korale, close to Dolosbage, were practically devoid of paddy fields.[13]

But the most common type found in the Kandyan hilly areas and in the lowlands of the Kurunegala district was the ‘mixed farming village’: there, chenas were associated with gardens and irrigated paddy in variable proportions according to the local ecological conditions. The necessity of chena cultivation in combination with wet paddy, although less evident than in the former category, was generally recognized  and the legal concept of ‘appurtenance on a 3 to 1 basis’ (a highland area three times the acreage of the irrigated area) was later constructed by the British to cover what was initially the acknowledgement of a technical complementarity; but a careful distinction must be made between highland areas close to the paddy fields, which were necessary to wet paddy cultivation itself (pillewa), or for dwelling and growing vegetables (gedarawatta), and the chena  area itself. According to the Assistant Settlement Officer Hunter,  “appurtenances” only included pillewa  and owita , and  “in a large number of cases the claimed chenas are claimed by people who are not paddy field owners, and that calling these as appurtenant to paddy fields is to deny the claims of persons who are not field owners (…) one might as well say that chenas are appurtenant to gardens”.[14]

The colonial administration taxation policy produced a mass of official documents which could have biased the knowledge of agrarian economy. In 1880, a general review of the taxation of crops other than wet paddy was done[15], which showed that only älvi was always taxed, other dry grains being taxed only in North, East and South provinces, and in the Kandyan provinces only when cultivated on Crown land. In the North Western Province in 1880, the Government Agent, Allanson Bailey, distinguished regularly cultivated untaxed chena lands, and chena exceptionally cultivated for älvi, which were taxed. In areas where älvi was regularly cultivated, a detailed analysis of the wattoru (tax registers), such as those for the village of Pannala in the Kägalla district (1858-59 to 1889-90) yields similar results: some large henyaya (chena tracts) were cultivated each season, while others appear only two or three times.          

The necessity of chena cultivation has to be understood both in economic and sociological terms. If wet paddy crops failed owing to bad weather, pests or other troubles, chena cultivation of millets in yala season (April to July) season was the only means to tide over until the next maha season (September to February). Some villages were mixed caste localities, where the lower castes had a limited access to irrigated paddy land and relied more than the high castes on highland cultivation. Moreover, specific groups of any caste had a limited access to irrigated paddy: especially young men and women while paddy fields were in full control of the elder generation; widows or separated wives with children returning from their husband’s village; also people who had lost their rights through indebtedness, family feuds and disputes with more powerful neighbours: these categories could rely on chena cultivation for a couple of seasons. Among these groups, it is likely that women played a major role in dry grain (especially kurakkan) cultivation, while paddy (including älwi) was a male occupation[16]. Another factor was population growth resulting in minute (and usually mortgaged) shares of paddy land, which led enterprising and individualistic people to turn to a form of cultivation where interference by family members or the usurer was not similarly felt.

Chena therefore acted as a safety valve, which prevented a breakdown in the village socio-economic balance, and eventually allowed the peasants to postpone the decision to migrate.

 

Technical and quantitative aspects

Identifying patterns is insufficient to assess the actual role of chena cultivation in the Ancient Regime. But any attempt at quantification is hampered by the paucity and unreliability of general statistics: a slightly better information is available for the 20th century only and can document the gradual disappearance of chena cultivation; it is therefore impossible to quantify the contribution of chena cultivation to peasant resources[17]. Blue book statistics on millets are pure guess, and paddy tax data on hill paddy must be used with care, tax evasion being much more frequent than in the case of wet paddy cultivation[18]. Taxation records suggest that hill paddy cultivation was extremely variable from year to year: as an example, for the period 1852-1878 in the Kägalla district, the data shows peaks (in 1859, 1866, 1873 and 1876) which might be explained by weather conditions favouring älvi cultivation, and a minimum for the period 1867-1872, which is connected with the period of maximal repression as we shall see later.[19]

At the local level, a study of tax receipts checked on the spot by the settlement officers shows that älvi  cultivation was undertaken on a regularly recurrent basis in the large potion of the village highlands, and exceptionally in other parts which were left untouched for longer periods or were usually cultivated with untaxed millets: this does not mean that the latter were ‘unnecessary’ chena  fields.

Slash-and burn cultivation operations in the dry zone have often been described: cutting, firing, digging with mammoty (hoe), sowing, second digging to cover the seeds, fencing and watching. They were the same in the wet zone, except that the interval between cutting and firing was much longer, and that some care was taken to leave tree belts on the slopes to prevent soil erosion.

An analysis of crop timing in the Kägalla district[20] confirms the major differences between hill paddy (älvi) and kurakkan millet: the former was cultivated in maha season (July to February) like irrigated paddy: it was therefore a substitute for irrigated paddy ; kurakkan was cultivated in yala (March to August) only and was therefore complementary with paddy (hill or wet); but amu (another kind of millet) could be cultivated in maha as well. A combination of paddy (hill or wet) and different millets and other chena crops could keep the peasant busy all the year round. Amu and kurakkan therefore acted as a survival crop: contrary to hill paddy, they were not taxed, they grew in a few months, they might be cultivated at shorter intervals than älvi and might follow älvi on the same field; these millets, rather than hill paddy, were the poor people’s crop. They were usually sown mixed with various other grains or pulses, which were ripe at different periods and minimized the risk of loss. The difference between garden and chena laid in the permanent or temporary character of cultivation but the same crops could be found in both, especially spices, vegetables and roots. And even in the Ancient regime, commercial crops were not unknown in temporary fields: tobacco and ‘peasant’ coffee were often cultivated, especially on Uva highlands, but early in the 1840s, “tobacco cultivation has almost entirely disappeared since the natives have been prevented from encroaching upon the Crown lands”[21]

 

Chena cultivation: individualistic? collective? egalitarian?

There is a certain amount of imprecision or even contradiction in the literature on chena cultivation as a social activity. Colonial authors used to describe it as a communal form of cultivation, because they could not discern rights of ownership but only rights of user, and that according to their European experience, individual enterprise was equated with property rights: they viewed chena areas, like pastures, as a local equivalent of the British commons. According to R.E. Lewis, “the work is generally conducted by the inhabitants of the village together, who share equally in the produce; the women do their share of the work in weeding and harvesting, also in carrying the brush off the land to be used as firewood; the labour of two men will produce sufficient for the subsistence of three persons”. On the other hand, many ethnographers who studied dry zone villages analyze chena cultivation as a rather individualistic activity, based on the work force of the nuclear family in opposition with paddy, a definitely social activity, involving “the intricacies of ownership”.[22] Of course there were there were local variants, and in the dry and intermediate zones the ‘wheel chena’ communally organized around a central place was the dominant model. Another explanation of the contradiction could be that in the course of time chena lost its communal character: this is the position taken by Codrington who notes that the claims to individual chenas ‘above the mountains’ appears by the 18th century in the Kägalla district: according to the lekammitiya of Dedigama village, each panguwa has a number of chenas attached to it but without names or extents”. “In the Kandyan coffee districts, ignorance of the real tenure has led individuals being allowed to encroach upon the common property to so large an extent, or even to sell portions of it to coffee planters and other outsiders, that there are probably very few villages in which the common right has not been almost entirely extinguished”[23] (Administration Report of Davids for 1871, Nuwarakalaviya district). This situation still prevailed in the Ratnapura district (villages of Bambarabotuwa, Gilimale and Nagoda) and in the Kälerata by the end of the 19th century – with the difference that the colonial taxation and legal system attempted to introduce rigid categories in a basically flexible practice. When the colonial officer L.W. Booth settled the remote village of Miyanowita, he noticed: “In no single instance has payment of tax been proved for any defined potion of land, the wattoru [taxation lists] give no boundary, each entry merely states the name of the chena, its cultivator, and the quantity of grain sold; each chena is undefined in position and extent, varying in the latter respect at each successive cultivation as the wattoru show”. And almost 50 years later, in the same area, chenas were still held in common[24]

In the South-west, the tracts of temporary fields (henyaya) were organized according to pangu (territories belonging to a lineage) : “In the Ratnapura district a man does not say: ‘I claim Batahena because I had a chena there 5 years ago’ but ‘Batahena lies within the boundaries of my panguwa, my father claimed 1/24th share of the panguwa, therefore I claim 1/24th share of all the chenas in the panguwa”.[25]   Cultivation in the 1840s is described as collective by R.E. Lewis, but it must be understood as collective inside the same lineage: of course when a small village was inhabited by members of only one lineage, cultivation was fully collective.  “Chenas are never held in common among different pangu, although they are frequently so possessed by the various offshoots or families of one panguwa. The tenure which is called communal I should define rather as tattumaru (rotating right of use)”[26].  When a henyaya was cultivated by somebody from outside the lineage, the rights of user of the local family were recognized by the payment of a very small rent (1/20th), later evolving towards the classical 1/4th ande system; if these outsiders permanently settled in the village, they might have either remained tenants, or be given their own highland tract, according to the power relations they had with the original family[27].

In the wet zone the general model in the larger villages was that particular areas were cultivated by particular lineages:  the difficulties encountered by highland block settlements bear ample testimony to the fact (see next section). A detailed analysis of chena cultivation in a very large former royal village of the Kägalla district, Dorawaka, where the original Batgama population had remained on the spot, yields the following results: there were two very large henyaya where a majority of the families cultivated, and some of which were in the 1880s in the process of conversion to gardens; and three smaller tracts where some of the families had supplementary rights.  But in other villages the pattern seemed quite anarchical, at least in the eyes of outsiders who described chena as “scattered all over the villages”. The case of Ampe is quite significant by comparison[28] : Ampe was also a royal village with low caste tenants at will (maruveni) and a few Govi families to manage the estate in the time of the kings: the fragile socio-economic fabric was disrupted by the fall of the monarchy and outsiders, mainly Muslim, came in, asserted property rights and ousted most tenants: the result was that there being practically no established lineage in the village, cultivation was on an individual basis and chena fields scattered, but nevertheless strictly controlled and eventually taxed.

In the hilly district of upper Uva, it seems that chenas were individually appropriated and were fenced with stone walls, even by the beginning of the 19th century, but on closer examination it appears that in these particular areas cultivation was almost permanent, with rotation on a three years basis. And in the North Western province, at least in the 1930s, “the pangu system was not prevalent and chena had to be separately located”[29]

Finally, chena cultivation was certainly more egalitarian than wet paddy cultivation in a context of availability of land and lack of outside interference: it was undertaken by the household, on land accessible to all the members of the community, with minimal capital requirements. “It provides few opportunities either for monetary profit or for the elevation of one villager above his fellows”, according to Brow[30]. But caste distinctions and power relations were reproduced in chena cultivation: in the example of Anhettigama, a village in the Kälerata, the dominant lineage could cultivate chenas anywhere in the territory, while lesser families were assigned specific chena areas. In other cases, outsiders were allowed to cultivate chenas belonging to villagers giving them a share of the crop[31]  Moreover, its dependence upon the good will of authorities (especially in the colonial context) diverted a part of the resources obtained from it to the benefit of headmen and others: to please the colonial authorities, headmen reported ‘illicit’ chena clearings of rival families and of powerless villagers, especially those of low castes.

 

Chena as a space of freedom

Chena cultivation was not only an answer to ecological and economic conditions. It also represented a specific mode of social life, where certain groups could find a recognized space. It was an unbound and changing zone, an area of temporary dwellings, with no stable property and family relations, as opposed to the defined, bounded, policed paddy-cum-house area.    

It is extremely significant that chena cultivation was an un-ritualized activity: R.E. Lewis rightly emphasized that contrary to paddy cultivation, kurakkan and other dry grain cultivation was performed without any rite. In a sense, it was a kind of forest cultivation and as such can be understood in the context of the traditional opposition in Indian thought and rituals between grama (village) and aranya (forest), bound and unbound, so nicely analyzed by Charles Malamoud.[32]

In the chena temporary relations could take place. There young couples could be made and unmade: in the traditional Kandyan villages, the practice of trial unions was common, and such unions were described in a typical sentence: geniyek henata geniyanava (to take a woman to a chena)[33].

Chena cultivation was perceived as a fringe activity between gathering and producing, in constant contact with the jungle, a dangerous but rewarding enterprise which required residence on the spot for purpose of watching against predators.  In chena cultivation, young men could work together, family control over resources was minimal, it was therefore a means to escape from the intricacies of paddy land subdivision. It was also exempt from rajakariya  (king’s service): the refuge for people who tried to shake off the burden of taxes and services, as suggested by Robert Knox quoted in introduction. It was unpoliced, beyond control of the higher authorities – the king and his superior headmen, and therefore the refuge of outlaws or of ordinary villagers in periods of trouble (this is well documented for the 1817-1818 period, and again in 1848, during the anti-British rebellions). It is not clear whether the kings discouraged or not chena cultivation, except in tahansi käle (forests reserved for strategic purposes) in which it was expressly prohibited.

Conversely it was the major area where the arbitrary power of local families could be asserted either against the policy of the State or over the lesser peasant families, who had to bargain for cultivation rights. In ninda (feudal) and temple villages, access to chena was at the pleasure of the lord, while in villages of the royal demesne (gabadagam/bisogam) it was controlled by the vidane (steward). But in freehold villages (koralegam), the majority, it could become a stake in power rivalries between local families, inasmuch as it was less defined than the paddy area, and therefore easier to forcefully control. As soon as the colonial authorities attempted to check chena cultivation, power relations of village families with nominated headmen became the key to have access to highlands.

But chena was also a temporary area which could be converted into permanent gardens – the first step in village expansion process. In a sense, it could be argued that paradoxically it was more dynamic and evolutive – in other terms more modern – than paddy cultivation. In any case, it was the economic, social and political safety valve of the Kandyan peasant regime, which gave it a certain amount of flexibility. It was soon to become a major target of the British colonial policy.

           

Chena as evil: colonial discourse under the British Raj  

 

Chena cultivation epitomized everything the Victorians considered as evil: unrestricted freedom as opposed to responsibility; desultory, temporary and nomadic as opposed to settled activity; laziness as opposed to exertion; imprecision as opposed to visibility. All the available evidence suggests that, in spite of ecological, financial and ‘moral’ justifications, the main motive behind the repression of chena cultivation in the wet and intermediate zones of Sri Lanka under the British raj has always been the demand of land by the planters; in the dry zone, where the planters had no stake, the protection of timber reserves was another factor. The British colonial administration created a legal frame after 1840 with the presumption of Crown property of all uncultivated and temporarily cultivated lands, while before the coffee boom, Turnour, a colonial authority in the matter of Kandyan customary laws, still considered that highlands were private, except reserved forests and highlands of former royal villages.[34]

The Administration Report of the Government Agent of the Southern Province for 1872 is typical of the colonial discourse: “In an oriental and uncivilized country, it is incumbent on the rulers to think for the people and to exercise in some sort a patriarchal sway over them. In no way is the necessity for this shown more than in interposing to protect for them their native land and to prevent its being ‘reduced to a desert’. The objection to chena cultivation may be thus summarized: it is wasteful; it engenders a nomadic and improvident habit among the people and retards civilization; it is ruinous to the general welfare of the country; and it is in reality but a poor means of support, for though the crop produces from 20 to 40 or 80 fold, the grain is so extremely small that the produce is of small bulk” [35]. In 1884, the Agent at Puttalam wrote (note the implicit relation between laziness and women and children’s work):  “Chena is a lazy kind of cultivation in which women and children take part, it introduces lazy habits, the work is easy, the crops are large and the result is a supply of poor indigestible food”.[36]

Chena was branded the lazy man’s crop.  The myth of the lazy native was general throughout the colonial milieus of Asia and Africa[37].  In the Ceylon case, it was  deeply entrenched in the mentality of the planting community, that viewed chena as typical of the native Kandyan laziness as opposed to the energy displayed by the European-cum-Tamil estate production. In 1867, in a critical pamphlet, a Burgher journalist, Leopold Ludovici, denounced the myth of native apathy afloat in colonial circles, quoting governor Robinson [38]: “The wants of the native population of the island are few and easily supplied by an occasional day’s work in their own gardens or paddy fields; their philosophy, their love of ease and indolence, or their limited ideas – whichever may be the real cause, render them perfectly content with what they already possess, and it is therefore futile to expect that they could by any mere outlay of government money, be ever brought to supply with food an immigrant population [the Tamil coolies], whose presence in the island is mainly rendered necessary by their own apathy” Ludovici then analyzed the racial component of the myth and its power implications: “the acknowledged value of his [the planter’s] enterprise to the country gives him such an importance in the eyes of the government as to qualify him to assert his claims with an amount of self-confidence unattainable by a native” . He suggested that the myth was connected with the experience of the European himself and his fears: “Even the European in this country soon yields to the enervating influence of the climate (…) and he soon enough takes to the fashion of damning the climate and speaking of the natives as a lazy apathetic race(…) This belief in native apathy has become fashionable, it has had a prescriptive existence of above half a century and the members of government seem to cling to it as a venerable article of faith in their code of political science”

Although field observers were well aware of the difficulty of the task of chena  cultivation, the myth was so deeply rooted that it survived the failure of the policy it tried to justify. As late as 1911, the governor Mc Callum, who made efforts to help the planters get Sinhalese labour, minuted as follows on the proposal by Leonard Woolf, then Agent at Hambantota, that chena cultivation should be allowed in his district[39] :“It is the proper policy of government to discourage the chenas, which has only been the means of bringing up our people in an atmosphere of idleness and dependence of the government, while the ruin to the country has been incalculable… If chenaing is prevented everywhere and in every province including Uva, there will be no need of villagers leaving one district for another except to find work; and if they only work instead of spending idle life, depending on government and damage to Crown land, it is immaterial whether they are in one district more than another” 

Chena cultivation was also viewed as a dangerous activity by a class of vagrants as opposed to the tightly controlled estate coolies  : “The love of a wandering life which it engenders is one of the greatest evils and we shall never improve the character of the people till we induce them to settle on their legitimate property and devote their energies to a more permanent cultivation in gardens and paddy fields”[40] A typical description is found in the diary of the Assistant Settlement officer Davies for the dry zone village of Talewatte[41]: “The people were a miserable lot, spoilt by unlimited opportunities of chena. In several cases, I found coconut gardens allowed to go to ruin, because the people preferred to cultivate unlimited Crown chenas instead of keeping their permanent cultivation in order (…) It is rather much to expect a villager of the type of this part of the country to observe the present regulations for obtaining land. He has to travel to Hambantota, to fill up a form of application, always done through a petition drawer, and has to deposit his fees with the prospect of having the lot put up for sale in two or three years, when he may get it, or as it is probable any other bidders are around he may not. If he still wants land he can get his fees back and repeat the performance (…) It is no wonder he prefers to take what he wants and pay up when he is found out”

            This discourse was similar to that on the poors/vagrants in 19th century Europe, with the same arguments and the same object: repressing chena cultivation for developing plantations was the same thing as enforcing industrial discipline among fresh unsettled migrant workers. But it was given a further emphasis linked to the spectacular features of slash and burn cultivation represented as a criminal activity carried on in the heart of forests, practically a form of arson or of theft of government property. This kind of pre-ecological discourse was common in 19th century romantic as well as positivist literature: for romantics, the forest was sacred. For example, the French writer Blanqui gave an apocalyptic description of slash and burn (brûlis) cultivation which he compared with a volcanic eruption.[42] 

The opposed myth, that of ‘noble’ paddy cultivation, attained its full development with the nationalists who never attempted to rehabilitate chena  cultivation, except for polemical purposes[43] Paddy and chena cultivation were considered as antagonistic and mutually exclusive: suppress the second and you will develop the first by diverting peasant exertion to paddy. In the North Western Province, the abandonment of many villages was attributed to the neglect and breach of tanks, and concomitant development of chena cultivation: the question whether slash and burn cultivation was the cause or the effect was not seriously considered[44].

In the wet zone, accusing chena of ecological disruption was an easy means to shift the focus from the responsibility of plantation growth in the same process. Chena, destructive of forests, was supposedly disruptive of ecology, and especially the cause of repeated droughts: the equation of drought with fire was obvious; the imagined sequence was chena cultivation > disappearance of forests > droughts > failure of paddy > increased recourse to chena.

In the view of the colonial administration, chena cultivation which was generally an untaxed activity brought little or no money to the exchequer; it was  wasteful, unproductive, technically backward, a primitive form of exploitation.       Chena cultivation was considered as a collective activity based on the feudal idea, and the ‘progress of civilization’ based on the development of individualism was the rationale behind the whole colonization process. In all cases, the moral discourse of the raj was used to legitimize a repressive policy and offset its disruptive impact.

On the contrary, a few traditionalist civil servants defended chena cultivation together with feudal structures, such as J.F. Dickson in 1870[45]: “If a comparison be made between service villages and any adjoining village held by peasant proprietors and not liable to service, the results will be in favor of the former. This is admitted on all hands and is attributable in a great measure to the greater security the service tenants possess from the settlement of the village boundaries in reference to the hen (chenas or commons), which, though cultivated in the most rude and primitive way, are of the utmost value to the poorer classes (…) In the hill country, every field has its appurtenant hena and in some villages the peasants live entirely on the produce of their hen, but it is often difficult to determine where the private hena and the Crown forest begin. The peasant constantly try to encroach on the Crown forest, while the Revenue Officers in their anxiety to preserve the boundaries of the Crown property occasionally lay claim to and stop the cultivation of private hen (…) To refuse to allow the cultivation of hen altogether is often to condemn a whole village or district to starvation. And yet this has been attempted at times, in complete ignorance of the real state of the case. On one occasion, the temporary administrator of the government publicly told a deputation that the government was determined to put down chena cultivation, as the chena plant was a most obnoxious weed which exhausted the soil and so on. Fortunately the deputation did not understand English, and the interpreter failed to explain the reasons of the temporary Head of the government.”

 

The colonial repressive policy and its impact until the end of the 19th century

 

Under the Dutch domination, which affected only the coastal areas, the policy concerning chena cultivation was erratic. As soon as shifting and even garden cultivation impinged on cinnamon collection, the authorities put pressure on the peasants: “The V.O.C. justified these restraints by the arguments that slash and burn agriculture would lead to soil exhaustion; that the clearing of land for chenas would inevitably result in the destruction of cinnamon plants; and indeed that cinnamon seeds scattered by winds and birds would not take root in chena lands cleared of their forest cover” While some governors, such as Van Imhoff, encouraged garden cultivation, others, like Van Loten and Schreuder “ordered the destruction of peasant holdings, gardens in particular, if the cultivator could produce no legal title”, and displaced villages to make room for cinnamon. Peasant resistance eventually led his successor Falck to ease the pressure and set up a kind of cultivation system encouraging cinnamon plantation on a part of village lands.[46]

During the first decades of the British domination, the official policy was laissez-faire or even encouragement of chena cultivation for strategic purposes, so as to ‘open’ the country and destroy the forest belt used by kings and later by rebels for guerilla attacks. In the words of a local chief of the Kägalla district[47]: “The government had observed on many instances the rebellion people had concealed themselves in forests, it is therefore thought that it is a good method to allow to cultivate them into chenas and did so, the Kandian people then entered into all the preserved forests and cultivated them into chenas even the part of Kadugannawa forest and several others have cultivated and now claim their private property.”

Before 1840, there is not a single document suggesting any excessive tendency to ‘illicit felling’ of forests. Forest administration, which is always repressive, was inexistent. Revenue administration was not really concerned. Älvi (dry paddy) was theoretically taxed since 1818 in the Kandyan provinces, and millets were taxed only in the Matara district. But it was done quite unsystematically: as suggested by Ron Herring[48], expropriation of surplus from chena was unremunerative and never insisted upon.  At that time, ‘waste land’ (except for highlands situated in ex-royal villages –  gabadagam), was tacitly or expressly recognized as private property by most British Officers, including Turnour who was to become by 1840 a firm advocate of chena  control. There were no definite rules, and this very imprecision became an insuperable obstacle in the eyes of the would-be planters: hence the famous ordinance 12 of 1840.

The period of 1840 to 1860 saw the rapid development of coffee cultivation on a large scale by British planters, first on former chena lands which were already ‘opened’, then on virgin forest land at higher elevations: the belief that former chena lands were unfit for coffee cultivation became general among the planters by that time. During that period, legal appropriation was followed by unsystematic repression. The ordinance 12 of 1840 (framed by the Turnour) established a legal presumption of highland property in favour of the Crown, with the possibility to assert private title through production of Kandyan grants (sannas), British grants, or proof of payment of tax (i.e. proof of älvi cultivation since only paddy was taxed: this worked to the detriment of millet cultivators). The purpose of the ordinance was to give clean titles to the planters, in the areas where they developed their estates: for example in Uva, the repression led to the abandonment of tobacco cultivation on chena, and in nearby Walapane, according to the testimony of  villagers, while before the coffee era they cultivated kurakkan, maize and chillies, “the Crown afterwards claimed the land and sold it to be converted into estates, all was claimed except a small extent bordering the villages, but these chenas are not fertile as they have to be cleared after intervals of two to three years”[49].

However the ordinance was never systematically applied before the 1860s. See for example what the Matale agent wrote in his report for 1853[50] : “Forest the natives know they have no right to fell. But every man had his chena and the natives cannot understand and never will understand that all chenas with respect to which the evidence required by ordinance 12 of 1840 cannot be adduced are the property of the Crown. Sannas were only granted to families of consideration, yet the owner of almost every paddy field however small claims his chena, and I have never yet met with satisfactory evidence of boundaries of chenas. The only taxable product of chenas within the Kandyan provinces is älvi. On many chenas älvi is never sown but kurakkan. The accident of situation therefore makes the difference. While the law remains as it is, every agent must know that it is utterly impossible to protect the right of the Crown as it should be protected for every headman himself possesses tracts of such chena lands”. According to the Matale agent in 1859, the legal claim of the Crown was not insisted upon:[51] “When it is proved that on many successive occasions the same land has been cultivated even with crop which pay no tax, then I believe government has invariably or almost invariably withdrawn all claim.”

In specific occasions, the arbitrary power of the raj and its local agents could be pushed very far under the pressure of influent planters connected with colonial administrators. A typical example is found in the comments of the Kägalla kacceri mudaliyar (translator for the local British agent) on the validity of älvi tax receipts for a low caste village, the chenas of which that very agent was about to illegally purchase under the name of a friend, to establish a plantation, in 1863: “A practice exists among the natives to cultivate high lands as well as low lands either forest or jungle for anda share which was occasionally done without the knowledge of the owner…At the time of harvest if a person happens to claim the cultivated land…the cultivator quietly gives the claimant’s share of the produce, but in case he finds no claimant (which generally happens when the land is Crown property) and as the headman neglects to report on such matters to government except when called for, the cultivator fraudulently endeavours to establish his claim…and when once taken a receipt on produce he finds no difficulty afterwards to maintain his claim. Therefore I think having tax receipts such as these which are imperfect or possessing once or twice the produce of a chena land by a native would not sufficiently bar the claim of the Crown to a high or chena land if no documents as gifts or transfers written on olas (which were formerly held as valid as notarial deeds are now) were produced in proof of having possessed and devolved from the father to the son” [52]

Some Revenue and Judicial officers were conscious that the implementation of the ordinance was unjust and unpractical. According to the Agent in Kandy, “in their desire to do their duty [i.e. implement the 1840 ordinance], I do not hesitate to say that not unfrequently a grave injustice is done to an individual by the Agent or his headmen”[53]. In the view of Bailey, another Agent who wrote detailed reports on the issue: “the only source of discontent among the Kandyans is the uncertain tenure on which they hold chena lands (…) Every year this fruitful source of litigation swells the work of the courts and the wealth of the proctors (…) This state of confusion is to be attributed to the fact that the law and the custom regarding chenas are diametrically opposed”. In a further report, Bailey rightly defined the legal status of chena as different from that of paddy ownership and characterized the British legal policy as follows : “We appear at once to have done away with the subtle distinction between the right to cultivate and the title to the soil”[54]. Gillman, the district Judge of Kurunegala in 1867, recognized that “ without desiring to add unnecessarily to the vexed question of chenas in this country (…) in a case between the Crown and a claimant in certain parts of this district, it is all but impossible as the law stands for the claimant to have even a chance of gaining his case (…) Grants and sannases are very rare, chenas are rarely ever cultivated with tax paying grain in this district, the claimant is therefore almost absolutely shut out from proof of his title, the only title he holds being possession in such cases”[55].

It was then suggested by some administrators that the ordinance of 1840 could not be strictly enforced and that chenas could be allowed as appurtenance to private paddy fields[56]: “The chena question is one, the settlement of which retards the advancement of the country, from the uncertainty of title – created by the ordinance of 1840 in great measure. It might be settled to some extent by a waiver of claim by government to high land adjoining paddy fields, in proportion of 3 acres of the former to 1 of the latter, provided some slight evidence could be adduced of the owner having had such appurtenances to his property. All other highlands should be declared the property of the Crown, save upon production of sannas or title; [if no survey is effected] authority might be given to rent out chenas claimed by the Crown at a rate of 3 or 4 shillings per acre (…) this arrangement would in itself determine many claims”

The years 1855 to 1864 saw the beginnings of a systematic anti-chena policy, which started in the Batticaloa district, on the east coast. At that time European interests were anxious to secure coconut land there and after settling on the coastal line they may have imagined that they could extend coconut cultivation further inland in chena areas[57]. According to an official, the Auditor general, “repeated complaints of the extensive and wanton destruction of valuable Crown forest lands for the purpose of chena cultivation have reached the Government from the European settlers and others, and it seems expedient that some measures should be adopted to discourage and repress a practice so injurious to the interest of the Crown and comparatively so profitless to the people.” The local agent decided to tax chena produce at one half instead of 1/10th as usual. He was supported by his superior, Morris, but censored by the governor Ward, who wrote the following minute: “If the people of Batticaloa were not the most quiet, orderly and submissive people in the world, the conduct of the Agent must have produced and would almost have justified open resistance to his measures, which appear to me to combine the most characterized imprudence with the grossest injustice. For a nominal increase of land revenue Mr. Morphew has sacrificed the character of government for good faith and plain dealing upon which depend all its relations with the people (…) what one gentleman would scorn to do in dealing with another and could not do without vitiating his bargain, cannot be done by the Queen of England – and it is in her name that we are acting in dealing with a dependent people”. But Morphew was later exculpated, and Morris in his successive posts in the Southern and the North Western province imposed on his subordinates an extremely repressive policy.  

After 1864, repression of chena cultivation depended upon the land requirements of the coffee and later tea planters, who began to abandon their preventions against chena lands for want of fresh forest land, especially in the Kägalla district, but also in Ratnapura, Matara, and later in the Kurunegala and Matale districts. It depended also upon the personal predispositions of the successive governors and the ability of planter’s pressure groups to influence them. Most repressive governorships were those of Hercules Robinson (1865-1872) and much later of Henry Mc. Callum (1907-1913). Among subordinate administrators, a majority was following a repressive policy, some of them in a quasi-military manner such as Saunders and Morris, but a few tolerated or even defended chena cultivation, either by realism or by traditionalism.

By the 1880s, a powerful argument boosted the control of chena cultivation under the governorship of Arthur Gordon, later Lord Stanmore (1883-1890) who, reversing the policy of his predecessors, gave the priority to the preservation of forests. This is analyzed by Frederick Lewis, who was at that time employed by the Forest department[58]: “At the time there was an idea in Government circles that much might be done to lessen the enormous loss of land involved in what is called ‘chena practice’. Thousands and thousands of fine forest land had been destroyed by this wasteful culture that year after year was increasing. It had long been known that the area of regularly cultivated land  was entirely out of proportion to what was in chena, and it was also becoming plain that the people who wasted the country in this way were only too ready to sell to land speculators the very land that they had destroyed”

The case of the Kägalla district is best documented. Even before the development of plantations, timber merchants from the low country (especially Karawa carpenters from Moratuwa, Kalutara and Grandpass) pushed highland cultivation for speculative purposes in the Kelani river catchment area, which was quite close to the active south-western coast. A new burst of repressive policy developed by the end of 1864, with the passing of an ad hoc new ordinance against illicit timber felling, which coincided with a growing demand of highlands by planters for coffee cultivation: in the words of the acting Governor, “it was found that encroachments were made in the very depth of forests which were tolerated if not encouraged by the headmen of the place, and frequently it was only by accident they were discovered”[59]. The detailed source of this statement is to be found in the diary of the Assistant agent for Kägalla, Frederick Saunders[60]:

“As I rode in the Three Korales (the southern part of the district) it appeared to me strange that with so much fine timber forest, so easy of access, not one application for a permit to fell government timber had been made at the kachcheri since I had held office (…) But as  I penetrated further the reason was apparent. The jungles on all sides bore traces of having been from year to year ruthlessly destroyed. Chenas of all ages – of 30, 20, 10 years and of today are seen cut out of the center of blocks of virgin forest presenting an appearance of wasteful destruction such as Batticaloa in the worst days of chena clearing never exceeded. To every enquiry I received the same reply, that in the Three Korales forests and chenas were all regarded as native property”.

The diary includes a collection of documents relating to this affair:  reports by three headmen: Ellawala, Mapitigama korala, Uduwe korala, list of chena permits issued by the Dissawe, enquiries on the spot, translation of olas, and report by Saunders to the Government agent of the Western Province. Mapitigama stated that “Timber felling had always been permitted and the Dissawe was in the habit of giving permits to whoever applied without any reference to him or the other koralas”, that “it is customary to apply for permits to Dissawa when the timber has already been felled”. Ellawala (who was a close collaborator of the British) stated that “in the Four korales and Saffragam lands of this description are generally considered Crown property, unless there were parties who claimed them under special grants”. He hinted that timber was purchased by the rest house keeper of Yatiyantota and a Muslim, Mamalla Marikar. Uduwe korala (who belonged to the dominant local family) gave a complete list of people involved in timber felling, village by village, pointing out that most lands were abandoned chenas whose owners sold the timber to intermediaries, except in the case of the Kendawe/Tunbage duraya, Marasinghe Unga, who explained that he went to Colombo twice a year to sell about 10 timber logs.

The villagers were summoned at Ruanwella in December 1864 and they stated that their chenas were private (this was actually recognized 30 years later by the Forest settlement) and were sold and purchased before notaries (Meeragalge Gunaya said he owned 60 amunam of chenas and 1 ½ amunam of paddy and cultivates 1 or 2 am. of chenas each year). Uduwe korala himself recognized he owned a chena in Yatideriya. It is quite clear that in that particular area – the Uduwe korale, the Duraya population had customary rights on highlands recognized by the dissawes: they were not given written documents by the powers, but oral recognition; and the new headmen, collaborators of the British, such as Ellawala volunteered to deny these rights to please their masters, while old local families, such as the Uduwe, were compelled to do so.

Saunders decided to repress chena cultivation in order to control the sale of timber to low country carpenters and furniture dealers, and to reserve high lands for sale to coffee planters ; at that stage, there was no question of settlement, but just the harsh implementation of Ordinance 12 of 1840: “ I have now given the most stringent and positive orders that no permits whatever shall be granted to remove timber from private lands without reference to me, and have directed that no chenas whether claimed as private or not should be cultivated without notice be given to the kacceri and permission received. Some decided steps should be taken to settle and register all the native chenas in the Three Korales”. Saunders prosecuted timber fellers, among whom one Moratuwe Puran Appu and one Muslim figured prominently, together with a number of Duraya people employed as ‘shareholders in cutting’. He tersely concluded: “This species of cultivation must be put a stop to”, adding: “some new estates are being opened and are said to be doing well. I think all this land will soon sell as coffee land and I shall strongly recommend its being at once surveyed”. It was apparent that the headmen (and their head Eheliyagoda Dissawe, who ran the Three Korales as his personal estate, just like his predecessor Mattamagoda) were involved in the traffic and in the habit of distributing permits to remove timber without reference to the kachcheri. Saunders concluded: “The large and remote districts of Three Korales and Lower Bulatgama should no longer be left under the sole control of the Dissawe (…) Without sufficient local supervision the exertions of a local Assistant Government Agent are almost useless and I again beg to recommend that a Ratemahatmaya may be appointed.”

A similar policy was initiated by the Agent of the nearby Ratnapura district, Birch, who mentioned that the villagers “claimed as paraveni the entire highland, chena or forest within the limits of the village”. This was not new: already in 1840, in a petition dated 3 November 1840, the local headmen had insisted on the dependence of the inhabitants on chenas dreading “in the event of the ordinance being enforced, no less than the actual horrors of famine” Birch argued that the extension of kurakkan cultivation was due to its not being taxed, and proposed to tax all the chenas. He decided to check the tax receipts himself instead of relying on headmen.[61]  A few years later Saunders was posted at Ratnapura and after noticing the discontent created by his repressive policy he changed his mind (at that time, the planters began to consider that it was much easier to buy chena lands from villagers than from the Crown):  “Much dissatisfaction is caused throughout the district by the suppression of chena cultivation, a proceeding which operates with greater hardship owing to the non-settlement of native claims to waste lands…Indeed I consider it would be better at once to surrender the presumed right of the Crown to all chenas or waste lands other than forest, say over 20 years old, rather than allow this uncertainty to exist, an uncertainty under  which no man knows what land he may safely buy, sell or cultivate”[62]  A way out of the uncertainty of title was of course what could be called settlement by sale to the planter.

In spite of these repressive fits, until 1870, the practice in the Kägalla district, or at least in its southern part, was not to interfere with chena cultivation where trees were under 20 years of age and admit the land as private[63]. But in 1870, upon orders from above, a new systematic offensive was launched against chena cultivation. The renewed attempt at strictly enforcing the ordinance of 1840 in the Kägalla district and controlling chena cultivation was linked with the new demands of the planters: Aelian King, one of the Agents, was a regular visitor of the planters, like all his predecessors: he mentions in his diary (28 June 1873) that “he often visited Whitham, the Narangalla planter, for private business”. The actual working of the chena policy in the Kägalla district was largely an affair of persons: the turnover of Assistant Agents left a large power to the chief headmen who remained in charge for long periods, especially in the Three-Korales[64]

 

The attempts at restricting chena cultivation immediately met with resistance of the villagers. In 1871, the Agent, Lee, pointed out to his superiors the dangers of such a policy[65]: “Dissatisfaction is felt among the people at the action taken by me (under orders) with reference to hén (chenas). The ordinance of 1840 vests the title to these lands in the Crown, unless the claimants are able to produce a sannas or grant. The entire cessation of hén cultivation would lead to dire distress in several parts of the district and in Three-korale especially, where the paddy fields are few and not productive. I therefore arranged that licenses should be granted on application, and that a tax of 1/10th should be levied, 1/14th being the tax on private lands. The people however appear to consider that they have acquired a title if they have cultivated the land once or twice within the past fifteen hears, and they decline to accept any compromise. It cannot be denied that the people feel strongly on this subject, and are dissatisfied with any action which tends to weaken their hold on the hén. I do not think the lands are worth the discontent, and recommend that the claims of the Crown be entirely abandoned. By so doing, the Crown would lose perhaps a little by way of royalty on plumbago, but would gain much in the hearts of the people”. In a letter dated 30.08.72, Lee explained the opposition he encountered in applying the instruction of his superior given in a letter of 27.04.1871 : “I have warned the people that they must take out licenses for chena cultivation, and told them that I cannot admit their right to chena unless they can produce sannas. As I reported to you by letter of 21.05.1872, the people altogether declined to consider that chenas are Crown property, and they will not take out a license for cultivation of chenas which they deem theirs”. Lee added that on inspection in Atulugam korale and Pata Bulatgama, the chenas cleared appeared as landu [woods and bush resulting from the regrowth after chena] and not forest. Finally, on 19 September 1872, in reply to a petition sent by ‘certain inhabitants of Atulugam and Panawal korales’ who complained of their chenas being deemed Crown property and taxed at 1/10th, the Governor “informs the petitioners that there is no intention to interfere with the cultivation of chenas, where undoubted proprietary rights exist, but that in every other case, persons cultivating chenas without license will do so at their risk”[66].

 

In the Ratnapura district, a similar offensive was launched in 1872[67]: “The principal subject which engaged my attention was the pernicious system of chena cultivation which has been destroying the district and demoralizing the people leading to encroachments and litigation  (…) The question has to be dealt with cautiously as a great portion of the chena land was claimed and had been held from time immemorial as appurtenances of paddy fields. Even in royal sannas and grants the names of the fields only are mentioned, although 6 times the extent the extent of high lands is generally granted as appurtenances of the fields described. The ill effects of this uncertain tenure encourage encroachment and litigation (and) affords a means of extortion by headmen, whose services must be secured whether the land is Crown or private”. 

In both districts, uncertainty and discontent were widespread. Upon the orders of the Government Agent of the Western province, the Assistant Agents of Kägalla and Ratnapura issued a circular on 5.09.1872, which was supposed to allay the fears of the people and laid down the policy to be implemented by the headmen:

  1. No tax on fine grain
  2. No Crown chena to be cultivated without license
  3. Private chena cultivated with älvi taxed at 1/14th (except in proclaimed villages)
  4. The question of private right will be dealt with liberally. Lands generally to be treated as private when cultivated regularly and at stated intervals.
  5. Forcible entry on Crown land promptly prosecuted and crop confiscated
  6. Licensed chena taxed at 1/5th for paddy and when exceptionally allowed to be cultivated with fine grain to be subject to a moderate rent in money
  7. Attention of headmen specially directed to the necessity of discouraging fine grain cultivation on Crown property, especially in the neighbourhood of forests and on land fit for coffee cultivation
  8. No license on forest land
  9. Necessity to cultivate wholesome food.

In the Kägalla district, the sudden publication of these instructions and of another circular issued to headmen warning them to be very careful in the matter of chena, and that they will be held personally responsible for any illicit clearing, “caused general dissatisfaction. The very liberal treatment which the question is receiving [proof of tax paid within 20 years of the time of the claim being made ; recognition of the principle of allowing appurtenances to mud lands] is gradually dispelling this feeling in the Four Korales, but in the Three Korales, where the inhabitants are less capable of understanding the action of government, and more thoroughly dependent upon this kind of cultivation for subsistence, there is still and will be for some time much discontent”[68].          Chena restriction resulted in severe shortage of food in some areas. This was recognized by the administration but its effects were minimized during the following years[69].

 

Aelian King, who took over the administration of the Kägalla district in September 1872, tried to lay the blame on his predecessor, while insisting on the unreliability of the headmen[70]: “Ekneligoda Ratemahatmaya had instructions from Mr. Lee, who evidently misapprehended the meaning of certain correspondence on the subject, to suffer no chenas whatever to be cultivated without a license from the kutchery and to give the people to understand that a tax of 1/10th would in every instance be exacted”. He therefore in November 1872[71] tried to reassure the chena cultivators and reported that all the chiefs had applied to him on the subject and that there was “a good deal of misconception about the intentions of government”. In order to cool down the public spirit, he proposed to tax the chenas at 1/14th as in previous years (that is at the ‘private’ rate), reserving “the right to reclaim any chena which he may hereafter deem to be the property of government”, and reported to his superior in Colombo, who answered (letter of 9.11.1872) that he had decided to send a surveyor to Three-Korales “to define the limits of such lands as have been generally treated as the common lands of the villagers of that district” and come himself to Ruanwella next month “to initiate a settlement on the principles of the annexed memorandum which you will in the meantime follow as closely as possible”.

 

King was no less repressive than Lee, if one judges by his ‘Memo for the information of each Ratemahatmaya and Korala in the Kägalla district’, of May 1873[72] : “You are hereby warned to be more than ever careful of the Government rights in the matter of chenas throughout your charge. You will send me at once a list of all the chenas being cleared in your jurisdiction and you will carefully report in the case of each as to whether the land belongs to the Crown or to private parties. You will be held personally responsible in cases where you report that the Crown has no right”. An annexure gives a form on which must figure “the name of fields of which chenas are respectively claimed as appurtenances” – this clearly excludes recognition of the property of chenas in village with no or little paddy fields. In his diary from October 1872 to August 1873, one finds several cases of land (including in the town of Kägalla) proclaimed Crown after very summary enquiries. In 6.07.1873, in the case of Alagalla lands, he wrote that “prescription by virtue of intermittent assertions of right as in chenaing and regular cultivation and occupation is different”.

In the Ratnapura district, Atherton, the Assistant Agent, published a victory bulletin which is a piece of wishful thinking [73]: “I am glad to report that the rules proclaimed last year to prevent the destruction of forests have succeeded beyond my expectations”. He then described the lamentable state of things in the Kukul korale, which according to him had become, after ages of chena cultivation, “an unfruitful wilderness which barely supports the few people who exist in it, a sickly useless set like the land they inhabit [sic]”. In the same breath, he mentioned the existence of a large untouched forest at the northern boundary of the district “in every way suitable for coffee and tea cultivation, soil fair, climate pleasant…At present it is the hunting ground of the Galagama villagers who collect large quantities of horn, honey and bees wax.” His next report was more explicit: “There are valuable and extensive tracts of forest which in a few years would realize high prices when the lands in the center of cultivation are exhausted. With a view to their preservation I have put a stop to chena cultivation in their neighbourhood to prevent the depredations committed some years since in the Kukul korale. It is no hardship to the natives who have sufficient lands surrounding their villages, which on account of their being frequently cleared are unfit for coffee cultivation and would only grow cereals.”

Aelian King was instrumental in giving visibility to what he called ‘the chena question’. The ‘chena question’ was discussed at length in the Administration Reports of Kägalla for 1872 and 1873, and the correspondence between the Government Agent of the Western Province and his assistant at Kägalla between September 1872 and February 1873 was published as sessional paper for the information of the Legislative Council[74].  Aelian King began his reports with descriptions on the model of those of Saunders during the previous decade : “The reckless and defiant system in which chena clearings are carried attracts the attention of every traveler (…) the frequent and often audacious encroachments under cover of a chena claim (…) The government is here to a considerable extent at the mercy of its headmen, and frequent changes in the higher and more responsible officers of the Crown afford the greatest facility for gradual and insidious annexations of this sort  (…)  The headmen as a rule endeavor to support native claims to chenas, being themselves highly interested, and therefore desirous of an indulgent treatment of the question. There is much injustice in the partial and erratic consideration of the question whereby numbers of unsound claims are left unnoticed while a few cases are severely dealt with (…) Nor it is in instances where large forest is felled that the greatest injury is done: small jungle containing the germ of future valuable timber is constantly and of course with much fewer chances of detection felled and destroyed. It is highly demoralizing that property apparently worthless for the growth of timber or for any other purpose from which government might derive benefit, can be appropriated with so much facility”[75]. “Once when on circuit through the district shortly after assuming charge, I had occasion to go on foot for some considerable distance in company with a subordinate headman. After accomplishing several miles through jungle, chena and paddy fields, my companion came to a sudden stand, and with the air of a man conscious that his intimation must impart sincere gratification: this, said he, is Government land”.

 

He proposed a general and systematic policy: “It is high time that Government should take active measures to lead to a general and systematic protection of its own rights, while affording to the people a uniform method of dealing with their claims”. The question was before treated in a “highly inconsistent and spasmodic manner”.  The report pointed the contradiction between “the popular notion that every land which do not bear high trees is prima facie the property of the people unless the contrary can be proved” and the idea behind the ordinance of 1840 that all highlands are prima facie the property of the Crown unless the contrary can be proved. It added that « the universality of private claims (…) has frequently led to the sale of much doubtful property by the Fiscal (…) the usual means of parting has been the Fiscal’s department, an execution debtor finding that he could satisfy a writ by surrendering his chena, has naturally done so in preference to losing his paddy field”. Other difficulties experienced by the colonial administration laid in the confusion in the names of the chenas which did not correspond with a precise plot of land but rather to a range of lands where chena was practiced. And in the interpretation of the instructions given by the authorities to tax ‘private’ chenas cultivated with älvi at 1/14th and ‘crown’ chenas at 1/10th  (in that case, taxation is in the nature of a light rent) ; and the interpretation of the ‘equivocal’ 6th clause of ordinance 12 of 1840 itself : “Is a sannas in every case absolutely necessary, or is it to meant that a private claim to be admitted must be either supported by a sannas and proof of boundaries, or by a proof that the land has been taxed as a private land for a certain fixed period ?” And which period? Finally there was “much injustice in a partial and erratic consideration of the question, whereby numbers of unsound claims are left unnoticed, while a few cases which come prominently before the notice of the Assistant Agent are severely dealt with (…) and harassing that parties are frequently submitted to by being required over and over again to attend the kacceri to produce what evidence they can afford”.

           

The case of the Matara district offers a different example. Being a section of the Southern province, and not of the former Kandyan kingdom, it was not legally ruled by the same sections of the ordinance of 1840, but the repressive policy was similar. Morris had become the Agent for the Southern Province, and in a situation of failure of paddy crops, his assistants at Hambantota and Matara asked for a relaxation of the rules limiting chena cultivation to enable the cultivators to avoid famine. Morris refused and in a letter to the Colonial Secretary dated 12.11.1867, he argued against chena cultivation in Matara with the interests of planters in view, attributing the climatic changes to the felling of forests “not only for coffee estates, but to an infinitely greater extent for chenas”, and adding: “in the immediate neighbourhood there is ample employment with liberal wages for the very men who are anxious to clear chenas, viz on the coffee estates, which are now worked with foreign labour, because the local residents prefer to work Government lands on their own account”. He complained that “both these gentlemen were undisposed to act in accordance with the strong opinion held by me on this question” and he accused the headmen to be the principal instigators and profiteers of chena cultivation.[76]

Elliott, his subordinate in Matara, who “finding that Mr. Morris was extremely opposed to the measure, was reluctantly obliged to drop the matter” “Very great distress has been the consequence, especially in Kandaboda pattu where the people have not had a moderate harvest since 1862 and where in 1866-67 between 9 and 10 p. c. of the population were carried off by fever and connected ailments, greatly aggravated by the want of proper food… Dr Anthonisz (the Colonial surgeon) has been shocked by the prevailing misery; the fever is intensified and the death rate magnified by all the horrors of semi-famine (…) the supply of food being much reduced by the prohibition of chena cultivation on Crown lands”. According to Elliott suppression of chena  cultivation “is a mistaken policy and calculated to do immense injury, and I submit that the present order for its suppression should be cancelled, the practice acknowledged… Elliott considered that the principle of Crown property of highlands implied that the British should exert this right “as the fathers of the people”, and that under the Dutch rule it was “usual to allow the cultivation of these waste lands on permission being asked, and a nominal portion of the crop reserved for government (…) while under the term kanuis paraveni many families held a limited hereditary interest in large tracts of chena lands; but claims under this tenure have for some years past not been recognized”. He added that large extents were fit only for chena cultivation “providing a supplementary supply of food for the people” through the system of mixed cultivation. Government should authorise it: “the most effective way of securing this would be to choose blocks of chena lands in central positions, conveniently situated for access from different villages and well away from forest and other valuable land ; these should be cut up by the survey department into 5 acres lots and cultivation permitted on payment of survey fees”. He concluded: “chena cultivation is indispensably necessary for the well-being of the people, as is shewn by the undoubted misery caused in the neighbourhood by its indiscriminate suppression”.[77]

In spite of Elliott’s arguments, Morris four years later carried on his policy:  “I am aware that Mr. Elliott entertains a strong opinion of the benefits of chena cultivation…I would encourage the planting of gardens but in the Matara district I consider that fine grain cultivation ought to be put an entire stop to. There are abundant demands on the estates, the roads, the irrigation works and by private individuals for labour which has now to be imported from India, whilst our own available population is engaged in destroying the country.”[78] When Elliott left Matara his successor Fisher fell in line with Morris, recommending a total prohibition: but “so wedded had the people become to the occupation of chena cultivation that I found the sale of 1/2 the crops had no effect on unlicensed clearing and I accordingly ordered the prosecution of all offenders…These harsh measures have had the desired effect and entirely put a stop to the practice”.[79] Later Elliott became Agent of the province and rules were relaxed from 1885 to 1892, since it was impossible to enforce the control owing to the connivance of headmen, and he considered that in the hilly part of the district (Morawak), chena cultivation was necessary to the survival of the population and could not be detrimental to forests[80]. Afterwards another assistant agent, Le Mesurier, adopted a more repressive policy upon the orders of his superior, who wrote in his report for 1897: “Soon after I assumed duties I obtained the sanction of government to interdict chena cultivation in the Morawak korale and if possible in the Hambantota district. There is such demand for labour throughout this district that there is really very little necessity for chena cultivation as a means of food supply” The assistant wrote: “The only division in which this prohibition is really felt is in the Morawak korale, where the extent of paddy land is quite insufficient for the requirements of the population. The people must however learn sooner or later to find a livelihood independently of Crown chena land, and the sooner they begin the better…however it is desirable that all private claims to chenas be enquired into and dealt with in a liberal spirit.”[81]. Le Mesurier had to quit the Civil Service and started perverting the system by collecting deeds of highlands in the very district he administered before, on the pretense of helping the villagers fight the administration: hence a new repressive fit aimed that time at Le Mesurier but falling on the villagers as well. Finally the colonial administration was compelled to tolerate an amount of chena cultivation which it tried to keep in narrow limits[82]: “For many years past, practice to allow chenas for persons who cannot otherwise maintain themselves, on a nominal rent of 2 Rs per acre and on a scale of 1 acre for a man, ½ acre for his wife and every child over 5. My predecessor only allowed chenas on lands where growth was under 10 years”.

When Morris became Government Agent for the North-Western province, at the border between the wet and dry zones, he carried on his repressive policy. In his view, there was “a steady and rapid desertification of the country by the destruction of forest and jungle for chenas, and the consequent diminution of the rainfall”, and food shortage in 1874 was the result of the sequence chena cultivation > disappearance of forest > drought > failure of paddy cultivation. He inferred from this theory that chena cultivation should not be exempted from tax, and be stopped at once – as if it was to restore rainfall at a stroke![83] This officer went so far as to write leaflets printed in Sinhala “to explain the ABC of the question”, and condemned the laxity of his predecessors : “For years this wasteful cultivation has been far too widely permitted until of late almost all attempt at repression seem to have been abandoned”. Famine was according to his view the result of drought, itself the result of chena cultivation, and paddy cultivation was abandoned because chena cultivation was so much easier… In 1877, a witness explained that stoppage of chena cultivation by Morris three years before had resulted in that in the Wanni “many people died from want of food or from disease brought on from the use of unwholesome food, such as jungle leaves, roots, fruits and so on”. Morris then “told the headmen to allow the people to cultivate chenas, saying that he did not meant to prevent the people to cultivate their own chenas, but only meant to prevent their encroaching upon Crown lands (!!!)* and since then the chena cultivation is continued under many restrictions and great fears of prosecutions by the Government Agent”[84].

After years of more relaxed administration, the extension of private land sales for coconut plantations in the North Western province led to a general revision of the policy by F.R. Ellis (Controller of Revenue) and to an alternation of repressive and permissive fits. During Mc Callum’s governorship, in 1911, a fresh Government Agent, Thorpe, decided that “permits for chenas should be insisted upon” and he was going to proclaim by tom-tom beating in the villages “what the government view of the title to land is”. The then Controller of Revenue Fraser, in a private letter, warned the Colonial Secretary: “Unless great care is exercised by government in retraining Thorpe’s well-meant but almost fanatical zeal, you will steadily have a recrudescence of the whole land question in Ceylon. I understand the people of Weudawili are contemplating organized action… I see no object in exasperating the people by fines and prosecutions”.[85]  In other terms, whatever strong the legal position of the Crown, the only sound policy was to maintain the good feelings of the villagers by expediting amicable settlement: as that time, as we shall see later, a new and on the whole more successful highland policy was being set up by the Settlement department.          

The situation was the same in the nearby the Matale district, where after a long period of rather lax enforcement of the law, there were repressive fits in the 1870s: but the permissive pattern was so well established that the Agent lamented that: “it appears to be the firm conviction of every Kandyan that all forest land belongs not to government but to the natives and that the fact that a man has cleared without the knowledge or with the connivance of the headmen a jungle once or twice at intervals of 7 to 10 years and sown kurakkan gives him a right to claim the land as his own.” Similarly in 1912 and 1913, the Agent (Southorn) noted that the sudden repressive policy pursued by his predecessor (Tyrrell) had created a serious tension – after years of laissez-faire. Tyrrell acting on the orders of the governor McCallum, had decided to enforce the 1840 ordinance  and not to follow any more the practice of recognizing village claims to ‘paraveni chenas’ and allowing highland ‘appurtenances’ to paddy fields, in order to check private land sales to outsiders, especially to European rubber big firms.[86]

The colonial policy as described by J.C. Scott in the case of South-East Asia was at work in Ceylon [87]: “The narrowing of subsistence options 1. forced the peasant family further out of production for his own use and further into the market. Bamboo and firewood had to be purchased (…) Buffaloes for whom there was not enough pasture had now to be rented (…) The peasant might not be poorer but he was increasingly vulnerable to price fluctuations outside his control. 2. The loss of these free gifts of nature together with the decline of labour intensive handicrafts eliminated many of the possibilities for village poor to remain independent. A life on the margin was more difficult. The only route to survival within the village led to a permanent dependence on those who hired labour. 3. Rents and taxes that had been tolerable only because this margin of subsidiary options remained open, became more intolerable once they were closed”.

 

Peasant resistance, administrative tolerance and final extinction of chena cultivation in the wet and intermediate zones

 

Chena repression has been analyzed as “the only source of discontent among the Kandyans” (Bailey 1857). Cases of open opposition occurred and these are by definition well documented: sending petitions and memorials, protesting before grain tax commissioners or settlement officers. But resistance generally took passive or covert forms, with the connivance of headmen: non-reporting of chena clearings, pleading destitution, using forged tax receipts, under reporting of extents were common means open to those villagers who had good connections with the headmen and could eventually bribe them[88]. One should be aware that a large part of the official reports on the subject are pieces of wishful thinking, and that colonial administration was largely self-deceptive in the matter: this becomes evident when comparing official reports with local evidence.

In a report dated 5.03.1887[89], Price, the Assistant Agent in Kägalla, explained that the change of the system of tax assessment in 1880 led to a rise in taxation : “Even as regards älvi, the extent indicated in the tax receipt or the wattoruwa is – if of a date previous to 1880 – generally much smaller than the actual extent which was cultivated . The discrepancy is explained by the fact that before 1880 chena crops were taxed by officers appointed for the purpose and known as wibadde lekam. These headmen were paid at a fixed rate of 37c a day, the number of days allowed for the work in each division being subject to supervision in order that a fair amount of work be ensured. As a consequence the wibadde lekam were, it is believed, not too scrupulous on assessing the extent of the crop, depending on the gratitude of a cultivator whose taxation was liberally reduced rather than on the small stipend which they obtained from the kachcheri [now the assessment is done by the korala who] is paid by a commission of 5% on his collection, it is accordingly to his interest to make as high an assessment as is compatible with justice”.

As early as 1840, the leading headmen of the Ratnapura district submitted a petition on the fate of chena cultivation under the new law[90]: “The greater part of the inhabitants of this district being entirely dependent on their chenas for their subsistence, they dread… no less than the actual horrors of famine and the concomitants of people labouring under want and increase of crime”. The governor replied that there would be no interference with regular chena cultivation, even when no payment of tax was proved. But soon afterwards, by 1848, the Ratnapura headmen found it necessary to write down a chena lekammitiya (register of highlands, in sinhala, still extant) which however was never admitted as proof of title by the administration[91]. In 1847, Kandyan chiefs “complained that Government claimed all uncultivated lands, but there were chiefs who had lands in different parts which they cultivated at intervals. Others had reserved the higher lands on purpose for timber, others did not cut down the timber in some parts of their lands for fear the rivulets and water courses should become dried up by exposure. If the government claims these as forest lands, what was to become of them all?” [92]

Peasant resistance combined with the inner contradictions of the repressive policy led some civil servants to question its relevance before the end of the 19th century. D’A Vincent, Forest Commissioner reported in 1882: “For 10 or 15 years it has been held that in compliance with an order from Government, chena cultivation could be stopped, but the impossibility of stopping the cultivation of grain on which the poorer people depend as much or possibly even more than on paddy, and the inability of any administration to carry out order in opposition to the mass of the people and likely to inflict hardship, unless supported by the law, have not been considered. The issue of the order and its occasional repetition appears to have satisfied the conscience, especially when it has met with an occasional assurance that the order was being carried out and that chenas were stopped.(…) It has been frequently pointed out that if the wants of the people are considered and chenas are allowed in moderation, the people are easy to manage; if chenas are forbidden absolutely, they get exasperated and when owing to some excuse of famine, the orders of government are suddenly relaxed, the forests are devastated wholesale”[93].

It is likely that chena repression led the villagers to lay claims which would not have occurred to them, by a process of reification: such was the case in the Matara district[94]: “Formerly the villagers used to cultivate large extents on permits from the Crown, paying share to the Crown. During that period the title of the Crown was never questioned. Then the policy was adopted of restricting chena cultivation in the hope that the people would devote themselves to permanent products, especially paddy; this may be good policy where paddy land is available in a village, and the people have the means to acquire it. But if the people have no money, they cannot buy it and can only work as coolies or go to a big irrigation work. This chena question has greatly strained the relations between the Revenue officers and the villagers.” The Revenue Officer fined the villagers who disregarded his orders and when he found that they continued, he forbade cultivation and sequestered the crops: “This, the villagers say, drove them to desperation for they must live, and they began to clear, claiming the land on any frivolous title. It is in this way that a great many claims have originated. Now the villagers refuse to acknowledge Crown title. The villagers spoke quite sensibly and said they did not want the land but only their immemorial right to chena” [95]

By the end of the 19th century, peasant resistance began to be assisted by local lawyers, scornfully dubbed by the Bristish ‘jungle proctors’: the method was to play the game by laying claim to huge areas. Hiring lawyers, generally with the help of interested parties such as low-country speculators, and refusing to obey orders, became a general practice, especially in the Kurunegala and Matara districts. As late as 1928, H.R. Freeman, an ex-Revenue Officer with a long experience in the intermediate zone, could question the colonial policy in his testimony before the Land Commission: “How is it that these law-abiding villagers become law breakers in the matter of their food supply ?”[96]

Peasant resistance combined with Le Mesurier’s provocative attitude in Matara contributed to the enactment of a new ordinance on waste lands in 1897 and compelled the administration to set up a mechanism of systematic land survey and settlement. starting work in the Morawak area. Three successive prominent officers, J.P. Lewis, W.E. Davidson and J.G. Fraser were entrusted to the task, and being on the spot they soon realized that chena repression was counterproductive. Lewis described thus the result of the repressive policy : “At Alapaladeniya, chena cultivation was allowed from 1885 to 1892 and in 1892 it was fully put a stop to; the people were then much better off than they are now, as there is not enough paddy land for them to cultivate. Men now go to Panagoda in Hinidum pattu to work in the plumbago pits…but all the people cannot get work at the pits. Nearly everywhere in the district I am told by the headmen that the people owing to the stopping of chena cultivation and the want of paddy lands do not get enough to eat. Yet the Administration report usually says that “food was plentiful”[97]. Davidson, who remained in duty a few months only, had to face the Government agent who criticized his proposals[98]: he wanted to declare Crown all the highlands but to allow chena cultivation to a limited extent and on payment of a 1/10th share to the Crown. His analysis is worth quoting: “The more I see of the condition of the people of Morawak korale, the more I realize that chena cultivation is a necessity for their existence. I did not wish for motives of policy to allow claims which were not really sound. My compromise of allowing the villagers to practice chena cultivation over a defined area of chena while paying 1/10th as rent to the Crown was a solution which pleased the people. Fraser again was struck by the miserable appearance of Morawak villagers, and “after considering the question without bias” he found that “chena cultivation must be allowed. What the people want is chena. They do not want the land”

The situation in the nearby Hambantota district, which lies in the dry zone, was different, but the result of chena restriction was similar[99]: “the land is useless in its present state, no better than when under chena. Why then not allow chenas under certain conditions of re-afforestation (…) Claims are largely put forward because chenaing is forbidden (…) Chena is bad, but no worse than allowing land to remain under scrub”. The situation was described by Leonard Woolf who was posted there in 1908 and by the settlement officer Wait, who criticized the refusal to give chena permits in settled villages of East Giruwa pattu[100]: “the enforcement of such an order must mean either the migration or the starvation of the inhabitants. These people are absolutely dependent on chena cultivation for their supply of grain. Formerly they have chenaed at their own sweet will, tempered with the fear of a fine if they did not obtain permits (… Judging from the number of young gardens and encroachments in nearly all these villages between Talawa and Kirana, the population is increasing and the increase is largely due to people drifting inland from the more crowded population near the coast. Gradually more land will come under permanent cultivation and the spread of coconut plantations will no doubt in time diminish the amount of chenas required. But this gradual growth will be at once checked if a reasonable amount of chena cultivation is not allowed, at all events for some years to come”

The natural process of conversion to permanent cultivation is well documented in the diaries of the settlement officers of the early 20th century, in spite of their colonial prejudice[101]: in the southern province where population pressure was maximal, “the villagers have helped themselves to what they wanted (…) The usual modus operandi of the villager appears as follows. In the 1st year he clears a chena, perhaps on permit, perhaps oftener without one. Along with his chena crop he plants a few fruit trees in the corner. Next year he plants sweet potatoes, sugar cane and plantains and builds a hut. 2 or 3 years after he puts in more fruit trees and some coconut seedlings, and claims his encroachment as a paraveni garden. Where he has a bona fide garden he generally puts his fence out a few yards every now and then till he has taken in a considerable amount of Crown chena” (…) “A villager squats on an acre of land, clears it, puts up a hut, sows fine grain and puts in 6 to 12 coconuts. At the end of 2 years he abandons this portion and opens up another acre or two not adjoining it but in the vicinity. This goes on perhaps for 8 to 10 years and by this time a number of isolated parcels of land containing each one or two coconut plants, the survivors of successive plantations, have been created. Some of the coconut trees in the 1st clearing then come into bearing and became of value in the eyes of the cultivator.  He then clears round them and erects a house of a more permanent nature and then proceeds to carry a fence round all the patches of cultivation so as to enclose them as also the intervening waste land. A coco tree, jak and so on grows up and the waste land is cultivated at times with fine grain”.

But subdivision among shareholders tended to slow down individual peasant enterprise in the view of colonial administrators[102]: “One man starts a new garden and gradually extends it little by little till when he dies there is a thriving plantation of perhaps several acres. By the time the trees are decaying there are it may be 10 or 1é descendants who in the midst of their family squabbles all hold fast to their shares of the fruits of the garden. Ergo when anyone wishes to start with a new garden, he is generally careful to choose a piece of what even the villagers acknowledge to be Crown land. At all events he is free from the claims of importunate relatives or connections by marriage, and if it is an out of the way place and the headmen are complaisant, the tiresome formality and expense of obtaining a Crown title are dispensed with.”

Modernist administrators such as Davidson considered chena doomed by progress but were prepared to encourage the process of conversion to permanent cultivation: “The fixed policy of government is in favour of the extension of permanent garden cultivation. With this end in view, endeavours are being made to limit the area held under the panguwa system of land tenure and now wholly devoted to the destructive methods of chena cultivation. The government hopes thereby to be able to sell small allotments of land to villagers under Crown grants, thus facilitating the transfer of land from the family to the individual”[103]. “Chena cultivation is the result of the communal system of holding highlands in vogue in the Kandyan provinces, and as a method of agriculture it decreases and disappears before the growth of wealth and the security of a personal title in land. I can illustrate this by means of a table in which are placed the korales of this district in order of wealth and population, showing how in the more favoured places the population has grown up to the capacity of the paddy fields to feed it, and the leisure to turn the highlands into gardens instead of being compelled to cultivate them with grain (…) As soon as the peasantry has a margin between it and hunger, it will improve its lands permanently, and chena cultivation will tend to decrease.” [104].       In view of the very general obsession of a release of a vagrant population, everything had to be done to avoid the prospect of an uprooted rural proletariat: the object of most planters was therefore antagonistic with the views of government, which tried to avoid what they called a silent revolution. The best – actually the only means to prevent it, was to keep the peasant on the land, admit any form of cultivation including chena, and then encourage conversion to garden (or small-scale plantation). The alternative was not between chena and paddy, but between chena and garden. Chena cultivation was indispensable for a successful transition to permanent garden cultivation, especially in the intermediate zone as it offered resources until the trees bore fruit[105]: “Gradually the population is increasing, gradually more land will come under permanent cultivation and the spread of coconut plantations will no doubt in time diminish the amount of chenas required in the less arid parts of the district. But this gradual growth will be at once checked if a reasonable amount of chena cultivation is not allowed, at all events for some years to come (…) A liberal chena policy is necessary for the preservation of health and even existence. The undue restriction of chena cultivation, until the villager has learnt to go in for garden cultivation, can only result in the impoverishment and gradual extinction of villages”.

The dramatic increase in garden cultivation and concomitant development of rural markets in the whole of the island during the first decade of the 20th century was noticed by every observer. It started even before in some areas such as the north of the Kägalla district, where 1500 acres were planted in one year[106]. The process of conversion from chena or even patana (grass land) to permanent cultivation is conspicuous in Uva and Sabaragamuwa, where the administration gave up its control over regularly cultivated highlands, and the settlement officers were at a loss ‘to deal with such encroachments’. In 1935 “large number of plots used exclusively for vegetable plantations, lands planted in rotation, hence also they presented to the eye the appearance of chenas recently cleared; they were in reality old vegetable gardens with periods of cultivation extending to over 30 years”[107]. Some areas eventually specialized in market products for urban consumption, as plantains in Kägalla, and vegetables in Rakwana and Uva. In the north of the Kägalla district, garden development was the result of the development of a banana market created by the Rambukkana railway station, of the un-reservation of Crown land previously reserved for fuel supply, and of the enterprise of Batgam and Vahumpura cultivators combined with Moor and Karawa traders.

But of course the larger part of chena land in the wet and intermediate zones had been alienated for estate plantation development, and the reports for Kägalla in the 1920s all notice that “most of the lands traditionally labelled chenas are chenas only by name, growing for the most part rubber, plantain, papaw, arecanut palms”; “chena cultivation seems to be dying out, the villagers preferring to work for wages on the estates and buy imported rice in the bazaars.”  However the transformation of shifting to permanent cultivation was not an easy task and the return to chena was attempted during food crises : “No form of cultivation is so dear to the villager as the chenaing of high forest and when the crisis opened up such vast possibilities he was not slow to take advantage of them”[108]. At the local level, conversion was either through the sale to outside planters, or through the formation of small-scale plantations by the villagers themselves. The question is whether the large-scale sale of chenas to outsiders prevented the development of village gardens and/or of village plantations.  

Conversion of wet zone chenas to rubber and intermediate zone to coconut plantations accelerated during the first two decades of the 20th century. At the island-wide level, it is documented by census statistics collected by Patrick Peebles[109]: between 1921-24 and 1946, areas cultivated under the chena  system in the whole of the island were reduced by 42%; in the dry zone, the reduction was only 32% in the North Central province; in provinces including dry and intermediate/wet areas it reached 37% (Central Province), 40% (North Western Province), 42% (Uva); in the wettest areas it was as high as 75% in Sabaragamuwa, where the rubber boom practically wiped out chena cultivation in the 1920s. But in the dry and intermediate zones, chena cultivation was still practiced besides coconut cultivation, and there were fits of repression, which however were pointed out as abnormal in the context of politicization of the 1920-1930s[110]

                       

Rehabilitating chena cultivation

In colonial circles, there were timid attempts to defend slash and burn cultivation, and critiques of the colonial policy, such as Ludovici, recognized that chena cultivation was complementary and not contradictory with paddy cultivation: “Enthusiastic Government Agents with visions of imaginary forests sprung from the chena looming in the future, have prohibited chena cultivation as to this they attribute the decline of paddy cultivation. We fail to see in this connection the cause and the effect… If ever a paddy field is abandoned it is from causes other than choice… Wet and dry cultivation are not carried on simultaneously…Chena cultivation far from interfering with paddy cultivation, is only intended to supplement the produce of the former.” [111] According to another author, the chief headman Mahawalatenne, the choice was not between locally produced rice and chena products: if chena was forbidden, the people would subsist on imported rice.

Others questioned the reality of its ecological nuisance and noticed that chena cultivators were careful to protect water supply: “The chena system is undoubtedly responsible for a large amount of preventable erosion, but it is possible that the damage is not so great as is often thought. The chena cultivator does not introduce drainage systems into his land, but on the other hand he does not keep the surface of the soil so scrupulously clean as the estate owner, and the very presence of weeds assists in preventing soil wash”[112].       Others defended the cultivation on the ground of its profitability and adaptation to a traditional society: kurakkan cultivated on new clearings yielded much more than paddy; and the nutritional value of älvi was superior to that of wet paddy.

Several observers were conscious that chena products were the poor man’s, and not the lazy man’s crops: chena made the difference between destitution and survival and was the most reliable source of food.[113] The condition of ‘feudal village’ cultivators was considered by some as much better than that of others because they had unlimited access to chena[114]: “If a comparison be made between service villages and any adjoining village held by peasant proprietors and not liable to service, the results will be in favour of the former (…) This is attributable in a great measure to the greater security the service tenants possess from the settlement of village boundaries in reference to the chena  which, though cultivated in the most rude and primitive way, are of the utmost value to the poorer classes(…) To refuse to allow the cultivation of chena  altogether is often to condemn a whole village or district to starvation. And yet this has been attempted at times, in complete ignorance of the real state of the case. On one occasion, the temporary administrator of government publicly told a deputation that the government was determined to put down chena cultivation, as the chena plant was a most obnoxious weed which exhausted the soil and so on. Fortunately the deputation did not understand English, and the interpreter failed to explain the reasons of the temporary head of the government.” However there are numerous examples of feudal villages, especially devalegam, where chena cultivation was controlled or forbidden by their proprietors or trustees who wanted to sell them to prospective planters[115].

These early attempts at defending chena cultivation on the basis of a rational understanding have never been analyzed nor systematized in the literature on Sri Lanka. But I want to direct your attention in this respect to the brilliant defense of ‘swidden’ cultivation in Indonesia by Clifford Geertz in the second chapter of his classical Agricultural Involution[116]. According to Geertz, ‘swidden’ farming is integrated into and maintains the general structure of the preexisting natural ecosystem; contrary to the man-made and highly artificial wet paddy cultivation, its rationale is to reproduce the multiplicity of plants and resources found in the original tropical forest (which is itself the ecosystem with the highest diversity), eliminating the useless plants and adapting itself to a shallow soil which can only be regenerated with ashes and subsequent growth of trees; but intensification is impossible in such a system, and this is precisely why it has been condemned from the start by outside observers and revenue collectors.

Finally, the lucid analysis by the Settlement Officer Fraser underlined the contradictions of the government’s position. In a report to the Colonial Secretary in Colombo on ‘the chaotic state of land matters’ which was later censored on the order of government from his annual Administration Report, he put it bluntly[117] : “The English government having upset or allowed to fall into disuse the land policies existing in his eastern possessions at the time of annexation, cannot escape the responsibility of substituting for these the most perfect form of land policy which our western civilization can devise.”

“The policy of government has of late been to restrict chena cultivation; with this every right-minded person will agree. But have we substituted anything for it? Have we made it easy for the villager to take up permanent cultivation in place of chena cultivation? I think not. To ask the average villager leading a hand to mouth existence, to purchase land at 10 Rs an acre and fees is to demand of him an impossibility. Even if it were possible for him to raise this amount, it would mean that he would have to borrow it or that in paying it he would exhaust his capital…The result in one case will be that the moneylender will reap the benefit of the villager’s labours by selling him up, and in the other case he will have no capital to enable him to develop his purchase.” [118]

“The ethical objection to chena cultivation is that it is detrimental to character in making the people lazy and improvident. But for my part, I cannot see how enterprise and exertion upon chenaing can be half as demoralizing as periods of enforced idleness. For it is not as if gardens and fields were being neglected for chenas. No, they are cultivated, in many cases over cultivated, planted with trees until production is impeded by overcrowding. Even if given new areas to convert into gardens, the people, destitute of money, must have a means of livelihood until the new gardens come into bearing. And this means can only be found in chena cultivation.”    “There is no doubt that these lands formerly produced an immense quantity of Indian corn and fine grain, whereas they now produce next to nothing. The ‘waste’ all seems to be on the side of the present system if the question is regarded from the economic point of view (…) Asking villagers to desist from chena cultivation is much the same as asking them to starve to please government.” [119]

 

Annex:

Analysis by Assistant Settlement Officer L. L. Hunter of land use in the Kandyan villages (1928)[120]

“I do not agree with the proposition that in Kandyan villages the ownership of paddy land carried with it the right to cultivate chena in the village (…) The only land linked with the ownership of fields are what are known even to the present day as pillewa and owita. When a peasant is asked what lands are appurtenant to his fields, the invariable answer is the pillewa – a narrow strip of highland, chena or waste land, adjacent to the paddy field (…) With the exception of the pillewa, the remaining chena in the village was called paraveni chena. In a large number of cases, these paraveni chenas are claimed by claimants who are not paddy field owners. To call all these chenas ‘appurtenances to paddy fields’ is to deny the claims of persons who are not field owners. One might as well say that chenas are appurtenant to gardens.

The extent of the chena does not depend of the size of the family. Where a large extent of chena was cultivated by a village, the inhabitants of which decreased in numbers, the extent of the chena remained the same, the only effect being that the chena was cultivated at longer intervals.

I agree that all the chenas were originally held and cultivated on a communal basis. All the chenas of a village were cultivated by the inhabitants of the village, and individual families cultivated yearly an extent of chena as was sufficient to provide them with dry grains and vegetables for the year. Where the chena land was insufficient or worked too frequently, inroads were made in the adjacent forest which consequently became chena in the course of time. These chena lands were considered suitable only to the production of chena crops in due rotation; they were not considered the property of any particular villager; no claim by any particular villager was admitted, and no villager prescribed against any co-villager by the mere fact of his chenaing a particular area of chena.

When, as a result of the expansion of the gangoda, or the zeal of a particular villager, a portion of this chena was converted into a garden, the village as a whole rose up in arms against the encroacher, though, if he was able to resist his opponents and continue to possess his garden, the communal claim disappeared with the passing of time. The best example of the communal system of chena is to be found in the North Central Province and in the province of Sabaragamuwa, with this difference between the two that while in the North Central Province no claim to chena is made against the Crown, and the entire extent of chena is worked communally by the whole village, in the Sabaragamuwa district, portions of the chena are worked communally by a panguwa of the village, and the chena is claimed against the Crown. In the North Central Province, no claim has been put forward, to the best of my knowledge, by a villager to any particular portion of a chena, based on the fact that a particular chena was worked by him. The chenas in the North Central Province are and have been admitted the property of the Crown, subject to the right of the villager to ask for permission to clear and plant yearly such an extent of chena that will satisfy the needs of the village. This, I take it, is the origin of all chena cultivation in the Kandyan districts. That this practice has changed in parts of the Kandyan districts, due to a demand for land, or the failure on the part of the Crown to exercise its paramount title to chena, does not alter the fundamental principle on which chenas were cultivated by villagers, namely that the land was Crown with the limitation that villagers were allowed to eke out their requirements by cultivation of the soil at regular intervals.

[Hunter misses the point that it is the taxation system together with the nature of the grain which made the difference: where älvi was cultivated, that is in the wet zone, the paddy tax and its written apparatus led the cultivator to claim an individual right to a particular portion of chena; while in the dry zone, where kurakkan or amu only were cultivated, there was no tax on chena, but only the issue of a verbal permit by the headmen. It is essential to study the process by which chenas were appropriated to find out when and where taxation applied to hill paddy: it is likely that Three korale and Sabaragamuwa stand out and that the ordinance of 1840 did not contemplate the use of wattoru to prove title]

 

[1] E.R. Leach, Pul Eliya, Cambridge 1961, esp. p. 289-291; N. Yalman, Under the bo tree, Berkeley 1967; J. Brow, Vedda Villages of Anuradhapura, Seattle, 1978, esp. 100-104; P. Kloos, ‘Agricultural policy in Sri Lanka; the views of a 19th century colonial elite’, Focaal, zomer 1988, p. 56-79; J. Spencer, A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble , Delhi, O.U.P., 1990. Strictly speaking, a chena is a temporary field, which is again cultivated after years of fallow during which natural vegetation is allowed to grow; when uncultivated, the area is generally called landu (see Diary Settlement Officer, 7.02.1928).

[2] Robert Knox, A Historical Relation of Island Ceylon, London 1681, p. 43. Reprint with additions, Dehiwala, Tisara Prakasakayo, 1989.  Knox lived in wet zone villages for two decades by the end of the 17th century

[3] J.C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, New Haven 1976, p. 15; in the description of swidden cultivation in Indonesia by Conklin , a similar distinction is made between “supplementary swidden farming” and “established swidden farming”

[4] M. Roberts, ‘The Impact of the waste lands legislation and the growth of plantations on the techniques of paddy cultivation in British Ceylon: a critique’, Modern Ceylon Studies 1970 p. 160; Lal Jayawardena, “The supply of Sinhalese labour to Ceylon plantations 1830-1930” PhD Cambridge 1963.

[5] Spencer 1990, p.105-106

[6] On owita, Colonial Office Records, Kew (hereafter CO) 461/2 Replies from the Agent at Ruanwella, and U.A. Gunasekara, ‘Land Tenure in the Kandyan Provinces’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1959, p. 28; also Sri Lanka National Archives (hereafter SLNA): Diary of the Assistant Settlement Officer (hereafter ASO) Hughes, September 1924: ovita is considered either as paddy or as highland “They may be regarded in an old village as paddy land on the margin of cultivation” (Godamuke village)

[7] R.E. Lewis, ‘The rural economy of the Sinhalese, more particularly with reference to the district of Sabaragamuwa, with some account of their superstitions’ Journal of the the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch  II, 4 (1848), p. 41-42

[8] F. Lewis, Sixty four years in Ceylon , Colombo 1926, esp. p. 198 sq (village of Bambarabotuwa); SLNA 30 and 45: Diaries of the Agents of Kägalla and Ratnapura Districts ; diaries of the Settlement Officers (hereafter SO); also ‘Ievers on hen cultivation’, quoted in R. Pieris, Sinhalese social organization , Colombo 1956 p. 86.

[9] Diary of SO J.P.Lewis 18.12.1897: in the village of Narawelpita (Morawak) “chena is the only means of subsistence for depressed Vahumpura villagers”; this pattern was also common on the borders between Kurunegala and Matale districts, for example in the village of Moratihe Gabadagama (Diary ASO Abhayaratne, November 1933)

[10] Eric 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, pp. 21-54

[11] examples: Polatagama defined as a ‘rice village’(batgama) vs Denawakawatta defined as a chena village’(henagama), SLNA 30, Diaries of Assistant Government Agent (hereafter AGA) Kägalla, 12.8.1872; ASO Abhayaratne nov 1933 on Moratihe Gabadagama as compared with Moratihe Viharegama.

[12] F. Lewis, Sixty… p. 198

[13] Diary of the Settlement Officer, January and February 1931

[14] SLNA, Comments by ASO Hunter on the 3rd interim report of the Land commission (1928), p. 10; (quoted in annex to this chapter); Sessional Paper (hereafter SP) 22 of 1880 (Dry Grain Commission Report). In a document of the 1830s (CO 416/2 Replies of the agent at Fort King to the questions of the Colebrooke-Cameron commission) the term appurtenance to paddy fields is restricted to permanently cultivated fruit and vegetable gardens with houses

[15] Sessional paper 22 of 1880; from a revenue point of view, the most tax producing districts were Kägalla for älvi, Hambantota and Matara for other dry grains

[16] as suggested by Joke Schrijvers in Mothers for Life: Motherhood and Marginalization in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka, Delft, Eburon, 1986 and personal communication. Freeman, as Government Agent of the Eastern province in 1908, made the same remark in his Administration report (hereafter AR) for 1908, p. E3: widows with children depended on chenas in his district

[17] P. Peebles, Sri Lanka: a Handbook of Historical Statistics, Boston, Hall 1982 p.  111 & 118-119. (see next section)

[18] On tax evasion see Burden report 1916 in SLNA 30/868

[19]  See annex to chapter on Chena unsettlement in the Kägalla district; AR Kägalla 1878 p. 72

[20] AR Kägalla 1886 p. 146A; also CO 416/2 Colebrooke Cameron commission, replies from Ruanwella         

[21] R.E. Lewis 1848, p. 41-43

[22] The Administration Report of the Service Tenures Commission for 1871 gives a vivid description of how the headmanship system developed in Wellassa. It negates the idea current at the time of an original village community “No trace appears to exist of the management of a village community by a council of elders, as in a Jat village community” “all traces of a joint possession is lost” “but the possession of hen [chena] land in common still remains (…) in many villages especially in Matale north the whole of the hen land is held in common and there is a strong ground to believe that prior to the acquisition of the Kandyan territories individual possession of hen land was unknown. So clearly was this recognized that in some of the early records of this government the word hen was ordinarily rendered as ‘commons’. See also R.E. Lewis 1848 p. 40-41; H.W.Codrington, Ancient Land Tenure and Revenue in Ceylon , Colombo, Government Press, 1938, p. 4-5. For modern ethnographers, see especially J. Brow, Vedda villages… p. 100-104: “In summary, chena cultivation is egalitarian it is undertaken by the household on land which is not individually owned and is equally accessible to all”, N. Yalman,  Under… p. 100-101; on the other hand, Codrington, Ancient…, and Leach, Pul Eliya,… when describing “wheel chenas” in the dry zone, insists on the communal organization of the cultivation; Before the Committee on landless villagers, Madahapola, the chief headman of Hiriyala Hatpattu, in the dry zone, says that “chenas are not appropriated to each man, but by pangu” (SLNA, Land Commission records 907). Codrington considers that “the growth of claims on the part of pangukarayo [co-parceners] of a is comparatively recent”

[23] AR Nuwarakalaviya, 1871 (Rhys Davids)

[24] Miyanowita Forest Settlement, SLNA, Land settlement department records.réf?; Diary of ASO Ingledow, October-Novembe1936 (villages of Helarambe and Koskandehena: “I find that chenas are still as a rule worked on a communal basis”)

[25] SLNA, SO Archibald comments on the 3rd interim report of the Land Commission 1928; also diaries of ASO Ingledow, February 1936, for the villages of Gilimale, Helarambe, Koskandehena, and the general definition given by Abeyakoon, the Settlemen officer, before the Land commission of 1956 of the paraveni chenas of each panguwa “well known to the inhabitants and only the rightful owners may cultivate them”

[26] SLNA 65/958, letter 5.03.1887 AGA Kägalla to GA WP.

[27] see the case of Wattegedara: in this small Kelerata locality, the only family employed outsiders called pelkarayo, leading a wandering life, to cultivate its highlands in the 1870s: SLNA 65/1352, Harries claims. In remote dry zone villages such as Kahambane (diary of ASO Wijekoon, August 1938), the evolution from that initial system may be observed:  in the 1930s, the gamarala was still considered as the master of highlands: “Villagers obtained his permission to cultivate any chena in his jurisdiction and gave him a share of the produce of that chena or in lieu of this helped to cultivate a chena for him.”

[28]Land Settlement Records, Dorawaka file. Kägalla kacceri records, Old chena plan 269, Chena settlement file 1880 and Forest settlement file 1894.

[29] CO 416/2 Replies from Badulla :”The chenas on high grounds for the cultivation of dry grains are all fenced”; Diary ASO Seneviratne, September 1933 and August 1935.; diary ASO L.J. de S. Seneviratne, 10.06.1935

[30] J. Brow , Vedda…p. 103-104

[31] SLNA 45/1726: Kelani Valley Forest Register, Anhettigama,. Nur Yalman, Under the Bo Tree, p. 82 shows that people belonging to different castes do not cultivate chenas together. 

[32] R.E. Lewis, The rural p. 41-42; Ch. Malamoud, Cuire le monde: rite et pensée dans l’Inde ancienne . Paris, La Découverte, 1989, p. 93-114: ‘Village et forêt dans l’Inde brahmanique’

[33] Nur Yalman, op. cit.

[34] CO 416/20, G11 Evidence of George Turnour before the Colebrooke-Cameron commission; see also CO 416/2, questions 40 and 69: in the reply from the agent at Fort King “the uncultivated land is used for pasturage and is private property (…) government do not possess lands in the district, to give grants to natives or others”; but on the contrary the agent at Kurunegala says that “all land are supposed to be the property of government, rented to the present occupier on condition of paying a certain annual tythe and performing services  (Turner comments that this is quite wrong); and the agent for Ratnapura “would consider the government as proprietor of all unclaimed waste lands (…) and the proprietors very frequently set up false titles to chenas or highlands which have perhaps become the property of government by the extinction of the family of the original proprietor”, while the chief headman of the dry portion of the same district, Mahawalatenne, , “does not consider the uncultivated land to be at the disposal of government, it is used in pasturing cattle”

[35] AR Southern province 1872

[36]  AR Puttalam 1884 p. 100A

[37] S.H. Alatas, The myth of the Lazy Native. London, frank Cass, 1977

[38]  L.Ludovici , Rice cultivation, its past history and present condition,  Colombo nd (1867) (opening address to the Legislative  Council 3.10.1866) In a letter of Colonial Secretary to Government Agent Colombo of 21.1.73, Ludovici is mentioned as a private surveyor of great experience who could be entrusted with the task of effecting the chena  survey.

[39] SLNA, MP 04261/1910, minute of Governor Mc Callum, 29.05.1911. quoted by L. Jayawardena.

[40]  Administration report of the Agent at Ratnapura, Birch, for 1864 (in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers p. 139); however other administrators were skeptical: see note by Fowler dated 8.09.1906 in SLNA 65/2226: “The contention that chena cultivators if deprived of chenas will become vagrants carries no conviction to my mind when I see the results of the process of conversion; the people who become vagrants for want of chenas are of the class already worthless”. The same representation was found in Europe where the settled peasant population was distinguished from the numerous unsettled mobile occasional workers living in woods and waste lands: Andrée Corvol, L’Homme aux bois, Paris, 1987, pp. 116 to 130

[41] Diary ASO Davies, 9.03.1907

[42]  Andrée Corvol, L’Homme aux bois , Paris, 1987, p. 280.

[43] The only (early) document defending it was a memorial on the Kurunegala land question dated 29.10.1907 in which influent members of the Kandyan aristocracy and low country new rich asserted the necessity of chena in the dry zone and for some groups such as Kande minissu.

[44]  Diary of ASO Hunter, January 1928

[45] Administration Report of the Service Tenures Commission 1870

[46]  K.M. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, , London-Berkeley, 1981, p. 173 and 163-165.

  1. Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant: Agrarian Society in Western Sri Lanka under Dutch Rule, 1740-1800. Leiden, Brill, 2008, p. 65-67; Davidson and Fraser, as settlement officers, held a slightly different view, insisting on the encouragement of garden cultivation by the Dutch (see my chapter on Land settlement)

[47] David Ratemahatmaya in a letter dated 24.12.1860 included in the diary of the Agent for Kägalla for that year (SLNA 30/1); see also report of the Government Agent for Kandy Braybrooke in CO54/345/D

[48] R. Herring, ‘Redistributive agrarian policy: land and credit in South Asia’, Ph. D. Wisconsin, Madison, 1974, p. 404

[49] RE Lewis 1848 p. 43 ; Great Britain, Eastern pamphlets 52, p. 34-35

[50] SLNA 10/177a: AR Matara 1853

[51] letter AGA Matale to GA Central Province 18.04.1859 reproduced in CO54/345

[52] Included in Kägalla diary for October 1863 (SLNA 30/1) ; the full story of these Dompelgoda lands is found in the diary for June 1871 and in the manuscript ‘Reminiscences’ of the agent, later Reverend, H. Mooyart (available at the Library of the University of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya). Had the village been high caste, there would have been such deeds and the position of headmen might have been more permissive

[53] Templar (Report on the Central Province for 1864, in House of Commons Papers for that year)

[54] CO 54/345, annexures: Memos on the Chena question by Bailey, 1857 and 1859

[55] AR DJ Kurunegala 1867 p;.182

[56] AR Kägalla 1868, p. 32-33

[57]  See CO 57, Executive Council of Ceylon minutes, 4.09.1855 

[58] F. Lewis, Sixty Four Years in Ceylon, Colombo 1926, p. 219

[59] CO 54/393, dispatch of 7.10.1864

[60] SLNA 30/3, diary of the AGA Kägalla, 1-5.10.1864 and 15.12.1864. Frederick R. Saunders was the son of a Controller of Customs, who joined the Survey Department after his return from India; his younger brother, Henry S. Saunders (1841-1919), was the Chairman of the Ceylon Planters Association in 1876-1878; he was associated with Ratwatte Basnaike Nilame regarding the lease of temple lands in Talduwa, and he had as manager of Yellangowry estate been involved in dubious dealings in Dampelgoda with the then Assistant Agent Mooyaart: in all these cases, low caste villagers deprived of land rights were victims of landgrabbing. The Saunders brothers offer a glaring case of close connections between civil servants and planters. In a private letter the former governor Arthur Gordon (then Lord Stanmore) wrote 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.”

 

[61] Administration Report Ratnapura 1864 (in House of Commons Parliamentary papers 1864, p. 139),

[62] AR Ratnapura 1868 p. 18 and 22 (reproduced in Papers on Service Tenures, SP 18 of 1869)

[63] Diary AGA Kägalla, December 1869 (Magala village)

[64] EKNELIGODA Ratemahatmaya was in charge from 1864 to 1892: compare with the succession of Assistant Agents: Frederick SAUNDERS (02/1864-11/1865), George WORTHINGTON (11/1865-01/1867), George DE SARAM (01/1867-03/1869), George PATERSON (03/1869-09/1869), Lionel LEE (09/1869-09/1872), Aelian KING (09/1872-10/1873), Augustine DAWSON (10/1873-06/1875), Frederick Robert BILLS (09/1875-11/1876), Charles Edward PENNYCUICK (11/1876- 12/1877), Robert IEVERS (12/1877-08/1880), Collin MURRAY (09/1880-04/1881), George BAUMGARTNER (04/1881- 05/1883) Robert IEVERS (02/1884-12/1885) with WACE interim in 1884; Cecil John Reginald LE MESURIER (06/1885- 03/1886) ; Fernando Hamlyn PRICE (01/1886-11/1888 ; 01/1890-03/1892 ; 03/1894-02/1895) and Walter Edward DAVIDSON (03/1892 – 12/1893 ; 02/1895 – 12/1896)

 

[65] AR Kägalla 1871 p. 29-30; in the diary of 1870, several petitions against -the new chena policy are mentioned

[66] In the Kägalla kacceri, the file of the Pannila village in Panawal includes this petition of Pannila Goyigama villagers, (2.03.1872)

[67]  AR Ratnapura 1872 p. 27-28 (E.N. Atherton)

[68] AR Kä 1873, p. 117; Sessional paper 15 of 1873, letter n° 443 GA WP to AGA Kä

[69] AR Kägalla 1875 p. 65-66: “It appears that there must have been a scarcity of food, but it was relieved I hear by emigration to the neighbouring coffee estates of much of the adult population during the year, and so avoided calamity. The cultivation of high lands in this division should I think be liberally regarded”.

[70] Diary AGA Kä, October 1872

[71] Quoted in Sessional paper 15 of 1873

[72] Diary AGA Kä, May 1873

[73]  AR Ratnapura 1873 p. 111-112, 1874 p. 18-19

[74] AR Kä 1872 p. 32-35, 1873 p. 117; Sessional paper 15 of 1873 (Cultivation and Survey of Chena Lands)

[75] AR Kägalla 1872 p. 32-35. It seems that Saunders, who became Government agent of the Western province, impressed upon his subordinates at Kägalla and Kalutara to follow a most repressive policy

[76]  AR Matara, 1867  SLNA 11/471 

[77]  AR Matara, 1868, p. 232-33 (Elliott)

[78] AR Southern Province 1872 p. 149 sq.

[79]  AR Matara 1875 p. 19

[80] AR Matara 1886 p. 91A, 1896 p. E17; AR Southern Province 1888 p. 155A

[81] AR Southern Province 1897 p. E8, Matara p. E20.

[82] AR Matara 1904 p. D45

[83] AR NWP 1874, p. 125-127: he based his theory on the work of Col. Corbett from India

* in text

[84]  SP 16 of 1877, Grain Tax Commission report, appendix, answers to questions, J.G. Jayatileke, Kurunegala. This official report is one of the rare sources linking famine conditions in Ceylon in the early 1870s with the anti-chena policy

[85]  SLNA, 65/2059; Fraser to Bowes, 31.07.1911 and 22.08.1911.

[86] AR Matale 1872 p. 61, SLNA 65/1954A, and AR Matale 1911-12 p. B18-19 and 1912-13 p. B22.

[87]  J.C. Scott, The moral …, p. 64

[88] Peasant strategies were those analyzed by J.C. Scott in Weapons of the weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Newhaven, Yale University Press, 1985.

[89] SLNA, 65/ 958 (Kelani Valley Forest Reserve)

[90]  CO 54/345, Memorial of the inhabitants of Saffragam, 3.11.1840

[91]  SLNA, 65/2219, letter GA Sabaragamuwa to Col. Secr., 6.07.1908

[92]  CO 54 /238 Torrington to Secretary of State for the Colonies 12.08.1847 encl 2, Notes of the 1st conference held at Kandy 29.07.47 with a deputation of chiefs and priests of the Kandyan Provinces.

[93] Report on the conservation and administration of Crown Forest in Ceylon, Sessional Paper 43 of 1882, chap. 6

[94]  Le Mesurier, Memorial to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 12 June 1896, in SLNA, 65/570

[95]  Diary SO Fraser, 14.06.1902

[96] Freeman, elected representative of the dry zone peasants, raised the issue before the Legislative council (SLNA L563/27, 26.06.1927, and in his evidence before the Land Commission in 1928. 

[97]  Diary of SO J.P. Lewis, 21 November 1900.

[98] Diaries of SO Davidson, 18-21.06.1901 and Fraser, 30.11.1901

[99] Diary of SO Fraser, 10.11.1901

[100] AR Hambantota 1908 p. D19; Diary ASO Wait, 14.03.1909

[101] Diaries of ASO Wait, July 1906 (Murungasyaya), and SO Fraser July 1904 (Walgammulla)

[102] Diary ASO Wait 24.11.1906 (Katuwana area)

[103]  Kelani Valley Railway Commission Report, Sessional paper 22 of 1895 p. 46

[104] AR Kägalla 1896 p. J 17: see also report of 15.5.95 in SLNA 45/1868=65/1187, Kandupita Forest Settlement

[105] Diary of SO Wait, 14.03.1909., and Tyrrell, GA NWP, in his AR for 1924 p. F2, who had changed his mind when compared with his policy in Matale

[106] AR Kägalla 1891, p. J26

[107] E.B. Denham, Ceylon at the Census of 1911,p 467; Diary SO Fraser, July 1904, and ASO Wait, October 1905; AR Uva 1928 p. H9, Ratnapura 1928 p. I4; diary ASO L.J. de S. Seneviratne, 6.06.1935 (Kumarapattiya village, Uva)

[108]  E.B. Denham, Ceylon at the Census of 1911, Colombo, 1912 p. 467 (summarizing district reports). A.R Kägalla 1920 p. I15 and 1927 p. I 21; AR Sabaragamuwa 1914 p. I4

[109] calculated from P. Peebles, Sri Lanka… table VII p. 118-119

[110] For example, according to the diary of ASO Rasaretnam of October 1932, chena cultivation was not allowed in 1931 [in Ihala Otota country] but “the present ordinance does not prevent the villager from cultivating his paraveni chena, and where they requested permission they were told that as far as Crown was concerned they had no objection. It may be more than one year before the villager will know that he can cultivate his paraveni chena”

[111]  Ludovici, Rice cultivation… chap 1. Mahawalatenne report in Census of Ceylon 1901, vol 1, appendix F: “This much abused but little understood cultivation is in reality not so bad or so unremunerative as it is represented to be”

[112] In SP 3 of 1931, chap 3;  also Ellis (SLNA, 65/1075, Land settlement work in the NWP, memorandum dated 10.02.1904): “The representations made by scientists and others as to the injury done to the soil by this species of cultivation must be considerably exaggerated” . See contra: evidence of planters before the Commission on Soil denudation in the Kelani Valley (SP 42 of 1905), which blames ‘the wasteful and pernicious system” and pretends that “in mountain regions the rivers have a tendency to become naturally silted” !!!

[113] also 65/1187, GA CP to CS 20.01.1904: “the poorer villager who could hitherto get a permit for chena cultivation will be left to the tender mercies of his more powerful neighbour”

[114]  Report on service tenures AR 1870 p. 286 (by Dickson, who is however biased in his defense of the feudal system)

[115] In Kägalla, villages of the Kandy Maha devale; in Matale, case of Ambokka quoted by Lawrie, vol I, p. 42-43.

[116] C. Geertz, Agricultural Involution: the Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia.  Berkeley, 1963.

[117] SLNA, 65/1684A ‘Formation of a Land Settlement Department’, SO to Col. Secr. 9.01.1907

[118] Diary SO Fraser 31.10.1903

[119] Diary SO Fraser, November 1901 and June 1902.

[120] SLNA L/62/1928 Reports of the Revenue and Settlement Officers concerning their comments on the 3rd interim report of the Land Commission. Louis Lucien Hunter (1889-1959) was a first-class but modest Ceylonese Burgher colonial administrator with a grass root knowledge of the country who became a nominated member of the Senate after Independence. Educated at Royal College Colombo, he was initially trained as a teacher. He was free from any prejudices and theories, being neither linked with the colonial business plantocracy, nor with the self-proclaimed national bourgeoisie, nor with the Cambridge-educated progressives.

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 The Routledge Companion to Sinhala Fiction From Post-War SriLanka

Edited By Madhubhashini Disanayaka Ratnayake

2024, Routledge India This companion presents a critical collection of Sinhala resistance literature from Sri Lanka. It includes translated short stories and excerpts from Sinhala novels, written after the civil war in the country. Featuring national award-winning writers, the selected texts share a common theme of resistance as the writers write against an exclusivist nationalism that was propagated through mass media and platforms of party politics in Sri Lanka during the war.

The volume addresses crucial issues such as the fate of civilians in war, the role of religion in Sri Lankan polity, media censorship, the experience of women in war, as well as the current education system and youth problems in present day Sri Lanka. It highlights an alternate discourse that runs among the ethnic Sinhala group and contributes to the overall movement towards peace and reconciliation among the different ethnic communities in Sri Lanka.

A unique addition to the growing oeuvre of translated Sinhala literature, the companion will be indispensable to students, scholars, and researchers of ethnic studies, war and peace studies, peace and conflict studies, literature, cultural studies, political sociology, and South Asian studies, particularly those interested in Sri Lankan literature.

Uprooting the Pumpkin

Selections from Sri Lankan Tamil Literature, 1950-2012

Edited by Chelva Kanaganayakam

2016, Oxford University Press

 

The socio-political transformation of Sri Lanka that began in the 1970s, and continued for several decades thereafter, has been a major factor in shaping a literature that brought new and innovative forms of expression. This anthology brings together around forty poems, fifteen short stories, and one play in translation by eminent Sri Lankan literateurs, scholars, and translators dealing with Sri Lankan life at home and abroad spanning a period of sixty years. Voicing the agony, anxiety, and hardship of migration from different perspectives, this broadly representative collection is an important contribution to the study of exile literature.

 

Many Roads Through Paradise: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Literature

Edited by Shyam Selvadurai

2014, Penguin India

Shyam Selvadurai pieces together the best of Sri Lankan poetry and fiction in this anthology. From the Sinhala and Tamil writers of the 1950s to diasporic writers of today, from stories of love and longing to those of brutality and death, this masterfully constructed anthology will give you a rich sense Sri Lanka’s history, its people and the stories they have to tell.

From Martin Wickramasinghe’s Gamperaliya (1944), the first modern Sinhala novel, to the poetry of Puthuvai Ratnathurai, the official bard of the LTTE, who was among the thousands who disappeared after the end of the civil war in 2009, this anthology on Sri Lankan literature draws a long arc.

 

NR

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