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SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Observatoire pluridisciplinaire

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

ABORTIVE CHENA SETTLEMENTS IN THE KÄGALLA DISTRICT 

DURING THE LATE 19th AND EARLY 20th CENTURIES

By Eric P. Meyer

The following paper completes the previous article on Chena cultivation and its repression in Colonial Ceylon

In the colonial Ceylon context, a settlement is theoretically a contractual decision arrived at between a representative of the colonial government (‘the Crown’) and a claimant, peasant or landlord, or a purchaser from them, recognizing private title to the land claimed or deciding the land to be ‘at the disposal of the Crown’. The ‘contract’ is generally unequal, the power of the Crown being stronger than that of the subject, but the judicial system offers opportunities for the latter to defend his rights. Settlement may be analyzed purely in terms of rational administration, a typical 19th century tendency which led European powers to introduce, instead of undefined customary rights, the concept of absolute property in their colonies after imposing it at home. But it can be understood as a tool legitimizing the appropriation of land by right of conquest for colonial purposes. The concept of land as territory with fixed boundaries, and not as a means of production, was implicit in the ‘Roman-Dutch’ law system imposed by the Dutch on the Low country of Ceylon, but was rather new in the former Kandyan kingdom, although in its border areas, such as the Kägalla district, the situation was more complex. Establishing the legal status of a land involved specific operations: surveying the land, naming it, measuring its area (and not estimating as before its ‘sowing extent’), mapping it, before defining its owner. These operations were never completed on a systematic basis for want of method, means and political will, and they resulted in a mess which suited the interests of the planting industry[1].

The starting point of all that is the policy pursued after the annexation of the Kandyan kingdom and the subsequent rebellion of 1819, at the initiative of D’Oyly, the first British resident at Kandy, to let the people (local and low country) fell the ‘forbidden forests’ (tahansi käle) which served as a bulwark for the Kandyan kings to develop guerilla activities against invaders. Hatarakorale (‘the Four counties’) and Tunkorale (‘the Three counties’) were essential in that respect, located as they were along the shortest route from Colombo to Kandy.

In the Kandyan times, the area was disputed between the Western powers (first Portuguese, then Dutch) and Kandy, and was therefore often depopulated and repopulated. A side aspect of the policy of the Kandyan kings was to employ several categories of ‘low caste’ people (collectively known as Duraya – the name given to their headmen and used as a generic) to guard the paths and to act as porters; among these people were Kande minissu (hillmen), local Hakuru, palm sugar tappers with a good knowledge of the jungle, and Panna living in hilly areas, distinct from Batgama, paddy cultivators attached to royal villages. The area was caste-mixed, the Goyigama being in the majority but many of them belonging to a lower stratum of the caste (naides – the term erroneously reserved for artisan castes by most authors was widely employed in Hatarakorale for Goyigama living in free villages – koralegam – but subject to service) ; apart from the various Duraya  and the Goyigama, there were a few Karawa and a few Moor villages, both engaged in trade, a couple of Salagama villages engaged in cinnamon peeling, and a few Berava/Nekati villages usually connected with temple property[2].  

In his diary of October 1916, the Assistant Government Agent H.A. Burden, after reading the diaries of his predecessors, wrote[3]: “During the time of Mr. Price and for about 30 years the chief source of worry to the Assistant Government Agents – as is quite apparent from a perusal of their diaries, was the alienation of their chena lands by the villagers and the creation of a landless and improvident class of people. There was therefore a continuous attempt to hedge round the chena settlements with such conditions as would tend to restrict the alienation of the chena lands. One of such conditions was to allow the right of chena cultivation only (…) These precautions have not prevented the alienation of many thousands of acres of chena lands settled in such a way. The attempt to make the Kandyan villager thrifty in spite of himself (sic) is not an undertaking which is likely to achieve much success”

That these ‘abortive’ settlements left deep traces in the minds of the villagers is shown by the note found in the diary of 1937 of the Settlement Officer Jansz regarding the village of Malwana[4]: “A number of villagers of the Batgama caste refused to sign agreements under the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1931. They profess not to be dissatisfied with the settlements offered but are unwilling to put their signature to any agreement. It is a recollection of the position following certain Forest settlements made by Mr. Ievers which they bring forward as reason for their refusal.” In this case as in others, the settlement (actually by Booth and not Ievers) had never been given official sanction.

Successive and contradictory settlements such are those of Dorawaka, Pallegama, and Edurapota resulted in a mess. In Edurapota, which was initially a feudal (saramaru) village[5] “The village was the subject of an informal settlement by Mr. Wace as Assistant Government Agent in 1884. The overlord and tenants repudiated this settlement which had no legal value and Mr. Price settled the village again in 1888 as Forest Settlement officer, which was slightly different from Mr. Wace’s. This settlement was duly proclaimed but owing to some irregularity was declared ultra vires. Proceedings were to be started again but the papers got lost and the villagers received instructions to cultivate any land to which they had title. After that date I find that several blocks of land declared private by Mr. Wace and Mr. Price have been surveyed and sold by the Crown”

The erratic land policy pursued by the colonial administration in the Kägalla district is a clear example of the contradictions of the system, which was actually driven by the wishes of the planters but candidly considered by some naïve administrators to function for the sole benefit of the peasantry.

In the years following the enactment of the ordinance 12 of 1840, government interference was limited to the rare cases when a coffee planter wished to acquire land in the mid-country, which was then considered a second choice compared with virgin up-country land: a kind of rough and arbitrary block division was made on the spot, with little regard to the claims of the local villagers: a typical case is that of Berawila, detailed in a previous chapter on land-grabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district. But there was no systematic attempt to survey and settle all high lands.

By the end of the 1850, the property of lands belonging to temples (especially to the Kandy Maha devalaya in the Kägalla district) was reviewed by Government and surveyed; the title of many lands given to the temples was rejected by the Commission and these lands were appropriated by the Crown, while large areas recognized private could be leased to planters by temple trustees.   

By the mid-1860s, when highland for coffee became scarce in the upper districts, colonial administrators such as Frederick Saunders envisioned the forcible appropriation of whole areas in the mid-country on the basis of ordinance 12 of 1840, and this policy was put into practice with much difficulty by his successors (Lee, King, Dowson, Pennycuick) between 1871 and 1877, on the basis of systematic surveys, especially in the Kelani Valley, but  it was then found that the ordinance of 1840 was unworkable without the agreement of the villagers.

When Saunders became Government Agent of the Western Province (from 1879 to 1890), an energetic Assistant Agent, Ievers, followed by Murray, Le Mesurier and Wace, backed by the new governor Arthur Gordon (later lord Stanmore) invented a new system of ‘block settlement’ which partitioned highlands on the basis of needs of the villagers and with their agreement (or rather that of their headmen) with little regard to the letter of the ordinance, and in a context of crisis of the plantation industry. The result was to demarcate two blocks of highlands, one which the Crown could sell to planters, the other which was supposed to be reserved for the use of the villagers.

During the next decade, with the growing demand of land for tea, the sale of Crown blocks was soon followed by the sale by villagers of their supposedly inalienable chenas. With the arrival of more ‘pro-peasant’ revenue officers, such as Price, Booth and Davidson, attempts were made to curb the process by applying the Forest Ordinance of 1885 which was not devised for that purpose.

By the end of the century, the southern part of the district (Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama) was practically left to the tea planters, but the administration still attempted to block the development of plantations in the more populous northern part and to enforce the reservations in the upper reaches of the rivers (the Kälerata).

This policy again ended in failure, in the context of a demand for rubber land, and the administration was compelled or chose to legalize the planter’s acquisition of village land by issuing Certificates of Quiet Possession (CQPs) on payment, except in the case of the Kälerata, which was settled with much difficulty under the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 by the Land Settlement Department in the 1930s.

Administratively speaking, the lessons drawn from the failure of the experiments made in the Kägalla district led to the 1897 ordinance and the setting up of the Land Settlement Department. But politically speaking, the whole exercise was doomed from the start by the contradictions of the colonial system, which at the same time arbitrarily vested land rights in ‘the Crown’, encouraged the planter’s enterprise and attempted to protect the local peasantry. In the drama there were three actors with shifting alliances, or rather four because the legal profession acted often independently from the actors it was supposed to support.

 

Chena surveys and settlements upon wattoru: 1873-1878[6]

The ‘chena question’ became in the early 1870 a major issue in the colonial administration of the Kägalla district ; the policy of Saunders in 1863-64 was a forerunner of what was to lead to a general ‘un-settlement’ of high lands in an area where they were integrated into the village ecology more than in the upper districts. This was the result of a convergence of factors : the new demand for land at mid-elevation by the planters, first of coffee, then of tea (rubber impacted the demand only during the second part of the 1890s) ; the inconsistent interpretation of the land ordinance of 1840 and the extension of älvi (hill paddy) cultivation in the district ; and the ‘victorian’ methods of the colonial administration : this is the period when the first population census was undertaken; the idea of ‘settlement’ became a driving force. But all these attempts at control ended in failure and the result opened the way to a large-scale appropriation of land by outsiders, which impeded in many cases the transformation of highlands into gardens and household plots by the local villagers.

The clumsy attempts at repression of chena cultivation between 1870 and 1873 under Lee and King had led to resistance and near-famine conditions especially in the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama areas as explained in the previous chapter. It was then proposed by the Assistant Agent Aelian King and the Government Agent of the Western province to set up a regular mechanism of settlement based on systematic surveys. The Survey department, a colonial institution linked with the planters, was principally used to demarcate the blocks of lands sold by the Crown to planters, and was reluctant to undertake such an unfamiliar task.  The project was started in August 1873 in Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama (the Kelani river basin), beginning with the villages close to the roads accessible from Ruanwella, ‘with a young and inexperienced staff’ made up of private licensed surveyors specially recruited for the task : Kavanagh, Durnford, White, Philip Francis Ondaatje[7], De Silva, Willams under the direction of D.G. Mantell, and later Ondaatje, Ch Patterson, R. Langslow, J.G. Koch, W.H. Mackenzie, under the supervision of W.A.B. Fryers (the son of the Surveyor general…).

In practice, the surveyors were guided by the Ratemahatmaya (chief headman) M.B. Ekneligoda. In a first phase, every plot in cultivation was to be surveyed but this was soon abandoned for a block survey of chenas of different ages without regard to individual claims. The decision was taken “to survey chenas in blocks village by village wherever the chenas of a village are so distributed; to survey chenas of every age recording on the plan the approximate age of each”; and to demarcate rectangular blocks to avoid encroachments, while the real chenas were generally rounded[8]. In addition to the practical difficulties of demarcating the areas, some surveyors were not reliable (Kavanagh was so negligent and troublesome that he was suspended). The Administration reports of the Surveyor General show that while initially the survey was planned lot by lot it was later decided to block survey “for the settlement of such worthless lands”; the ‘rejected temple lands’ were surveyed at the same time with a view to put them up for sale. It became soon evident that survey work was done in the interests of prospective planters, who were connected with the Survey department: in the words of D.G. Mantell “7,000 acres of forest saved from destruction by chena cultivators will be purchased by planters of robusta coffee and of tea and were already visited by several capitalists” [9]. In November 1873, detailed surveys were restarted and Mantell complained of contradictory instructions in a letter to the Surveyor General.

An enquiry by the Assistant Agents followed the survey, but the instructions given were confusing. It was not initially to be a settlement with the claimants, but a decision from above by the administration. In practice, the first chena enquiries of the 1870s made under the Assistant Agents King, Pennycuick and Dawson (actually by the Ratemahatmaya Ekneligoda), and supervised by Saunders, former Assistant at Kägalla and now Government Agent of the Western province, show a strict application of the ordinance of 1840, with the clear intention of reserving as much lands as possible for the Crown with a view to sell them to planters, while recognizing the validity of wattoru (receipts of payment of paddy tax) as proof of ownership. When there were wattoru of less than 20 years (generally dated of the 1860s), the chenas were ‘allowed’. In some cases small chena plots were allowed as appurtenances to paddy fields: Kudagama (Dehigampal) offers an example of a chena enquiry of 1875 by Ekneligoda which appears to take into account the concept of appurtenance[10].

Another procedure was possible “in case of chenas generally possessed simply under claim supposed to be won by repeated occupation: 1. Find the number of families in the village 2. Find the extent of paddy land for each family and taking the admitted proportion of chena to paddy land, apportionate an extent of chena land for the whole village somewhat greater. If the survey be in excess of this, let it be reduced with regard to the adoption of the most well-defined boundaries, or with regard to the reservation of soil best suited for the growth of timber”. But this procedure was rarely followed because it involved an in-depth study which the administration was not prepared to undertake.

Regarding ‘old’ gardens, for which there were no tax receipts because they were not cultivated with älvi, the practice was to give a Certificate of Quiet Possession on compulsory payment of survey fees : see for example in the village of Kahanawita, lot 2237 “Old garden more than 50 years, fully planted. Certificate of no claim will be granted on payment of survey fees. Advertise if not paid” (signed Saunders).  Arbitrary decisions were frequent, under the influence of the chief headman, as in the case of the small village of Degalatiriya, near Undugoda, where claims to chenas were ‘rejected’ in 1873 for want of a sannasa, in spite of the village being registered as a nindagama. The decisions were delivered in an abrupt way, like those of the Temple lands commission, without taking into account the position of the villagers: they were not in the nature of settlements. A question constantly raised in these chena enquiries was that of the ‘new gardens’ which were created as an answer to demographic growth. When there were wattoru for the chena on which the garden was created, the land could be allowed as private but when there was no tax receipt (for example for rejected temple lands), the administration usually demanded the sale at half improved value. The files of the ‘chena cases’ kept in the Kägalla kacceri show a systematic refusal by the authorities to recognize the rights of the villagers in the case of recent transformation of chenas into gardens, and the theoretical assertion of Crown property over most of the chena areas. But the system was soon found to be not only unjust, but also unworkable.

In December 1873, it was also decided to select special headmen to look after chena cultivation, and the Assistant Agent Dawson, successor of Aelian King, published a series of rules relating to their role in distributing licenses and seizing crops “illegally raised on Crown lands” – an unworkable bureaucratic mechanism[11]. These headmen were selected with the idea that they would act in surveyed villages. But further correspondence in 1874 admitted that “the appointment of these headmen has not prevented or checked forest clearings to any extent”, and that their authority ran parallel to that of the regular headmen, which complicated things[12]. The administration reports for 1874 and 1875 are quite clear on the impact of the repressive policy which had become much harsher with the progress of surveys[13]: “The people compelled by a strict enforcement of the orders of government to abandon to a great extent the cultivation of chenas, gave more attention to their fields”. “In Pata Bulatgama, there must have been a scarcity of food, but it was relieved, I hear, by emigration to the neighbouring coffee estates of much of its adult population during the year, and so avoided calamity. The cultivation of high lands in this division should I think be liberally regarded.”

Regarding the settlement work, the same reports noticed that “the people have not responded willingly to the notice of government to attend and prove their claims. Very many absented themselves and their claims were in consequence rejected”. Pennycuick in the report for 1876 noted that the progress of the survey was too slow and that settlement was often difficult owing to confusion in names ; it is only in the report for 1879 that his successor Ievers considered that, with the help of Ekneligoda, the chena enquiries were accepted and even sought for by the villagers. The poor quality of the surveys sometimes gave rise to contestations by the villagers: the case of Kappagoda sales in 1872 is very typical[14]. In this ‘rejected’ temple village inhabited by Duraya and Muslim villagers, some of whom had sold their lands to a certain P.G. Fernando mudaliyar, the surveyor had included as Crown lands for sale paddy fields and gardens “because he could not take the proper bearings”

A regular difficulty was absenteeism of the claimants, especially of Duraya villagers as in the case of Dannorukanda; they were supposedly ‘noticed in advance’, but as the notice was delivered by high caste headmen, one can suspect that it was often not properly done: then the land was declared Crown and these headmen were in a position to point them to planters and pocket benefits for themselves: this is probably how Ekneligoda (and later Mideniya) became affluent. It is quite clear that corruption was the result of colonial interference in land matters, and not the cause of poor performance of the administration in land matters. The case of Narangala, a remote Panna village in Pata Bulatgama, settled by Dawson in 1874, is an example of the repressive policy pursued by the administration and of the resistance of Duraya villagers: Vikrampedige Goma petitioned against the chena headman who failed to notice him : because he was absent for the enquiry, the rocky highland adjoining his paddy field “never sown with paddy but with amu seed which is used by the meanest and poorly class of people every two or three years” was taken to the Crown. This chena had been converted by him into ‘peasant’ coffee: proof of the enterprise of these villagers living in contact with planters of the Dolosbage district; finally the enquiry was reopened and the land was given to the claimant on payment of ¼ share. Another case of resistance in the same area was that of Badahela (potters) and Vahumpura villagers of Pilawela and Rangalla: they opposed the claim of a high caste clan, the Dissanekge, who pretended that the highlands of these villages belonged to them on the basis of a sannasa. The document was found by the Courts to be a forgery, but it is the Crown and not the villagers who appropriated the lands which were subsequently sold to a planter[15]

Many high caste villagers were not better treated,  especially along the road leading up-country along the Kelani river where early purchases by colonial administrators and by low-country traders were frequent:  in Gomanduwa, a small Goyigama village near Yatiyantota (“2 pangu, 5 families, only 6 pelas of mud land”), most of the chenas were declared Crown in the 1877 chena enquiry and many gardens were sold at half improved value: “the land to the south of the road belongs to Mr. Anstruther (…) who is said to have bought it from Mr. Power who bought it in 1841” (Both these gentlemen were government servants). Another village in the same area, Karawudeniya, a rejected nindagama, has been sold by the Goyigama to Moors after a dramatic flooding.

In a critical analysis of these settlements on wattoru[16], the Assistant Agent Ievers posted at Kägalla in 1878 reported that the extent to which title was shown was only a small proportion of the whole chena area, impossible to locate and broken in small patches: the settlement was on paper, and assented to in so far as the villagers knew it was not put into practice. “I believe the existing system to be absolutely useless as a settlement” The report gives an history of the chena surveys, (first chenas were surveyed separately, then range by range), and describes the procedure: “on the day of the enquiry, all the claimants being present, I proceed to decide what chenas are private property and what are Crown (… ) the burden of ownership lies on the claimant, he may show title in four ways : by producing sannas, by producing deed of gift or purchase giving a prescriptive right, by custom which gives an appurtenance of highlands to a paddy field, by proof of payment of tax within 20 years ; practically only this fourth proof is adduced (…) but the full tax is hardly ever paid owing to the venality of the assessors who underassess the extents actually cultivated (…) When the claimant gives notice that he is about to clear a chena, the Ratemahatmaya permits him to clear the extent given in the list, but the claimant then goes and clears as much as he pleases and wherever he pleases, as the village headman is sure not to make any objection, or if he does, his scruples are easily removed (…) Nothing remains but an elaborate settlement on paper (…) If by chance the Crown is sufficiently ill advised to go to law, a recent decision of the Supreme court (…) will send the defendant triumphant to his village” “The present survey is quite unremunerative (…) The land declared Crown cannot be put up for sale, mixed up with private land (…) The present system is fruitful in irritation and an objectionable feeling of insecurity and unsettledness among the people, who finds the chenas which they believe to be theirs partly ‘become Crown’. The Crown decides against their title but cannot enforce its own possession (…) To decide according to the strictest letter of the law has proved useless and has only been acquiesced in by the people because the decision has been a dead letter and allows them to do as they please.”

 

Chena block settlements, or the contradictions of ‘dualism in action’.

Ievers was the first in the district not to restrict himself, like his predecessors, to legal considerations, and to devise a form of planning taking into account socio-economic factors (a process later formalized by the Land Settlement Officers as ‘mapping out’). He was initially supported by Layard, Government Agent of the Western province, and later by Gordon (later Lord Stanmore), Governor of Ceylon from 1883 to 1890, but Saunders, who succeeded Layard, was rather skeptical: “all this money and time are absolutely thrown away unless the agreements are made legally binding”[17]

Ievers experimented his plan in the remote village of Welihelatenne[18]:  “I admit that the claimants can show title to a very small portion of the chenas, that in fairness they must be given sufficient for the support of their families and that consequently, the Crown will allow them more than they can show title to. I proceed to find out how many families there are in the village, the extent of paddy lands and gardens, and the extent of the chenas. From these data I decide what extent of chenas they should be allowed, taking everything into consideration. Where paddy fields are very few and comparatively unfertile, the people must of necessity cultivate chenas, but it should be the object of government to restrict such to the narrowest limits. After the agreement is signed by the headman and the family heads, the Crown block is demarcated”. The settlement of Hatnapitiya (Tunkorale)[19] provides a precise example of calculation of villagers’ needs in a small Goyigama village of the Panawal korale: 7 families have 3 acres 20 perches of irrigated paddy and a chena area of 825 acres; each family needs 2 pelas a year of chenas x 10 years (the interval between two cultivations) x 7 families = 140 pelas = 280 acres, considered as ‘a most liberal allowance’: the balance of 545 acres is taken as Crown land.

The difference between the early ‘settlements’ on wattoru and the new chena block settlements imagined by Ievers are clear from the case of Paradeniya[20], a small village with 14 houses, one Goyigama panguwa of 4 families and one Vahumpura panguwa, near Mattamagoda. Paradeniya was settled three times: under the old chena enquiry system by Pennycuick (7.07.1877); under the block chena settlement system by Ievers (24.04.1884); under the Forest settlement system by Booth (26.05.1893). The detailed settlements lot by lot in the first settlement show the results of a settlement upon wattoru, which decided to be Crown all the highlands even those regularly cultivated such as owiti (wet valleys) because owiti and chenas cultivated with amu and kurakkan did not pay taxes ; even coconut gardens of less than 5 years were declared Crown ; coconut gardens of less than 20 years growth were also settled at half improved value. In the block settlement made by Ievers seven years later, it was decided that “a block of 127 acres in the north will be sufficient as the Crown land in this village”, and the rest was allowed to the villagers; this was confirmed nine years later in the Forest settlement.

The major innovation was to divide village land into two blocks, with the idea to give the Crown the possibility to sell a compact part of the village highlands to planters: the ideology behind the move was that of ‘dualism’[21]. Ievers was still of opinion that the object of government was “to restrict chena to the narrowest limits and prevent the hitherto desultory and nomadic cultivation”. He thus justified his plan: “Land is now in much request and is daily becoming more valuable in the Tunkorale, applications are numerous, as the soil and climate are eminently suitable for tea, liberian coffee and cocoa. Several estates have already been opened and are very promising. But land remains tied up, owing to the present impossibility of settling the native claims, and planters will not purchase small isolated pieces”. That this consideration was always in the background when settlements were made on these lines is clearly shown in the diaries, as in the example the Patberiya settlement[22] : “I took as Crown block a piece of about 200 acres divided off from village on east by Gomala Oya and adjoining the Crown block at Hatnapitiya. The two together make a fine compact block of about 750 acres which will be very valuable some day for tea”. In the margin, the Governor Gordon, who read the diaries before returning them to their authors, wrote: “good”.[23]

But the settlement process imagined by Ievers, which requested the acquiescence of the villagers, soon ran into problems. The vivid details given in his diaries show how difficult it was to explain to the villagers the rationale of a system of settlement imagined from above which was so much at variance with the land practices of the Kandyan peasants: “It takes at least three hours patient talk and reiteration before a village settlement can be made and the same points and explanations gone over and over twenty times before they really understand”[24]. In practice Ievers was assisted by M.B. Ekneligoda, the Ratemahatmaya of the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, whose integrity was soon suspected by the villagers. A major problem arose in villages where the settlement deprived certain pangu[25] of the area in which they used to cultivate: “pangukarayo would disagree between themselves and if they decline to accept a compact block of chenas in place of their small scattered pieces scattered all over the village mixed up with Crown land, the officer making the settlement could not compel them”. There was a basic discrepancy between the actual chena practices (varying according to localities) and the rational system of surveys and establishment of property rights implied by the colonial logic. The Ievers settlement system totally ignored the fact that in many large villages, each panguva used to cultivate chenas in specific ranges, and that no collective decision by a gansabhava (village council) always convened by high caste chiefs often opposed by coterie rivalries could be imposed.

Ievers was replaced momentarily by Baumgartner, who mentioned that chena surveys had been stopped when he took over. He added: “The apportionment of the private block among all the claimants was left to be settled by the Ratemahatmaya and the village council (…) In not a single instance has the Ratemahatmaya of Tunkorale been able to effect a settlement owing to the refusal of those in possession of the block assigned to the villagers to give any share of it to others. In the case of 27 villages referred to him, he had to report in September 1881 that in every instance there were people who objected to a division, the very people who had signed the agreement at the time of the enquiry. There being no legal power to enforce the written agreements, it was useless attempting any further settlements”[26]. Other unresolved issues were the question of mortgages or leases on lands included in the Crown block, of people who had not signed the agreement returning to the village, and more generally of the arbitrary and extra-legal character of the settlement process, which could not be legalized by an ordinance.  The result was again that the authority was jeopardized and that only the hard fact of plantation clearing would enforce these paper settlements.

Returning to the district, Ievers in his report for 1882 defended his plan saying that “the conflicting claims of the villagers and the Crown had been arranged in 71 villages, 15,020 acres recovered as Crown property, and already 1,977 acres sold ; the villagers with a few unavoidable exceptions are satisfied with the settlement (…) capital is attracted into the country and barren wastes of jungle are formed into flourishing tea estates. During the year under review, I have only made settlements where the villagers asked me to do so, or where the planters applied for tracts of chena land partly claimed by the villagers”. In the first settlements effected by Ievers after 1883, he explained his method to the Governor Gordon, as in the case of the village of Pannila: “In making chena settlements one of two courses must be pursued : 1. To treat all claims from the strictly legal point of view and only admit title to such lands as it can be shown that the customary tax has been paid within 20 years or by virtue of a Crown grant or sannasa [It is how Dawson and Pennycuick worked]. 2. To treat the claim upon a communal basis and give a fair share to the pangukarayo, defining accurately the limits of the communal lands. I have made the chena settlement of this district upon the latter basis as I consider the former to be inequitable, and the villagers in fact in almost every case have agreed to my settlement (…) It is to avoid constant disputes between the villagers and the Crown claims, where neither can definitely say “this is Crown” or “this is communal land” that I have made these settlements, and the system has worked very well. If the agreement be cancelled, each man must produce his wattoru before the Ratemahatmaya, after giving notice to the chena headman of the extent he means to clear, and if he clears more than what appears in the wattoru, he is liable to prosecution if he clears any jungle over 20 years old ; and in fact the want of settlement gives rise to constant worry and annoyance both to villagers and headmen and the Assistant Agent”[27].

In his Administration report for 1884 the new Agent Wace made a case for pushing the settlement of the district[28] : “The definite settlement of village claims has too long be deferred already, to the great damage of Crown lands and the demoralization of the villagers (…) Government rights are necessarily in suspension as long as such claims remain undecided and the private capitalist is shut out as he is between two claimants he does not know with which to deal. The wealth of this district is in its gardens and highlands and it is a policy attended with loss both to the Crown and the public to neglect any longer the definite land settlement of their district. I would commence with Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, where villagers are chiefly dependent on älvi for food supply, and where the demand for government land is greatest.”

But when a village was large, multi-caste, divided between rival families, and prospected by would-be planters, such as Pannila, it was difficult to reach a settlement[29]. As early as March 1872, Goyigama villagers had petitioned the Governor against the first wave of chena repression and the answer of the colonial administration was:  “the petitioners be informed that there is no intention to interfere with their property in chena and that they are perfectly at liberty to do as they please with their own. It is necessary however to impose a check on the promiscuous occupation of crown lands and the wanton destruction of timber for worthless purpose, and with this view, chenaing any such land without a license cannot be permitted”. Twelve years later, Ievers  undertook to settle these chena lands and reported: “Pannila is a large village with flourishing fine gardens and people in good sort ; but mud land in this korale is very little (…) Great difficulty in making settlement : 7 pangu, 26 families, 1555 acres : 20 acres of paddy, 69 acres of garden, 1191 acres of chenas,  273 acres of forest ( 3 large pieces in the east), so to preserve them I took a block of about 200 acres (actually 354 acres) surrounding them. Had to talk for about 2 hours before I could get a few recalcitrants to sign agreement. These settlements whenever they are made legal should be sufficient if 4/5 of the pangukarayo agree. I now have to get unanimity and this entails great loss of time in talk before they can be convinced.”   “The 837 acres allowed as private was divided between 3 gamwasam and the Vahumpura panguwa; one of the gamwasam received 500 acres and none of it was taken to the Crown. On the other hand, one of the gamwasam was entirely taken to the Crown. As a compensation, when the 350 acres of the Crown block was settled under the WLO, 37 acres was allowed out of the Crown block to the gamwasama entirely taken”. But the representatives of the Mahagamarallage alias Mahagamwasama panguwa “of the class known as village proctors”, who would lose 8 amunam in the division out of the 11 amunam of chenas they claimed, refused to sign the settlement. In their petition of 27.09.1884, they affirmed that their right to cultivate chenas as members of a high caste family who rendered feudal services was registered in a lekammitiya, that they paid tax at 1/14 for their chenas, that they could not pay survey fees. They recalled that in 1872 being obstructed in the cultivation of their chenas they petitioned the governor and apparently obtained satisfaction. The Governor Gordon commented on this report: “I quite agree with the principle enunciated in this very clear and full report, and am anxious that these communal chenas should be established if consent can be obtained. But a general consent is necessary to the working of the system successfully. I do not agree except in a very restricted sense with the opinion expressed in the minute of 1872 and the villagers should be made to understand that while the chenas may be ‘their own’ to use, they are not their own to alienate”.  The end of the story, according to the Kägalla kacceri file, is characteristic of the failure of the process of settlement in this case. In 1887 the gamwasama panguwa petitioned again and the new Assistant Agent Price reported that “cases of this description have frequently occurred in these unformal settlements which provide for the decision of all disputes by a reference to a gansabhava. If the petitioners are unable to obtain redress in that manner, they must wait till the Forest Settlement Officer deals with Pannila”. In November1889, Price reported on another petition of the Mahagamarallage panguwa which complained that a larger area of chena lands was taken from it than from other pangu; the Agent considered that there was a real grievance but that the expression of their hardships was as usual in a petition largely exaggerated. In 1896, Pannila Mahagame Appuhami re-petitioned and said that in any case the panguwa would cultivate these chenas taken by Crown. This time, the Vahumpura panguwa made a similar request, recalling that they had signed the settlement on the condition that they would be given other lands. In reports of 28.03.1896 and 19.05.96, the new chief headman Mideniya confirmed what they said and “failed to settle the dispute” even by holding a gansabhava. Shortly afterwards (12.06.96), the Assistant Agent Davidson wrote to A.J.R. de Soysa, a well-known land speculator: “I have been informed by certain villagers of Pannila that it is your intention to buy from a dismissed aracci of Pannila, Punchirala, a range of the village chenas. These chenas were especially reserved with villagers for chena cultivation. It is to my personal knowledge that the distribution of chenas based on this settlement has been made impossible in its operation  by the ex-aracci Punchirala, and the deprivation of their shares of this chena is calculated to turn some of the villagers into vagrants and thieves”  But Punchirala meanwhile sold on 25.08.1896, to various intermediaries (KDJ Perera and S Velayden Chetty about 150 or 200 acres, and 280 acres to Thomis Appu, another shopkeeper), and Davidson wrote to them that the sale was invalid; they waited until a change of Assistant agent and in  September 1906, they resold the lands to two British planters, G. Talbot and L. Bayly, who asked the government for a Certificate of Quiet Possession in April 1907.

In the case of Morawatte, a village located close to the town of Ruanwella, the situation was still more complex because influent planters, local land brokers, and a possibly unscrupulous civil servant were involved[30].  The first settlement had been made in 1879 by Ievers, but “in defiance of their agreement and subsequent decisions of the gansabhava, the villagers who were in possession of the village block declined to allow any portion of it to those who gave up their lands to the Crown (…) It seems that some village proctors among them have advised the others to resist”. These Crown lands made up of numerous small lots were sold by auction by the Assistant Agent Le Mesurier in December 1885 and were aggregated to form Ruanwella estate. The purchaser was T.N. Christie, the chairman of the Ceylon Planter’s Association from 1885 to 1888, who had been previously in affairs with Le Mesurier. One of these lots was an old coconut garden erroneously included in the survey, another a new garden which the villagers failed to keep to themselves, trying to bid against Christie. In spite of petitions against the sale, Christie attempted to take possession of the land and tried to obtain from government that the adverse claims be compensated and silenced; the offer was refused by the villagers: they were supported by a contractor formerly employed on the estate, called Baron Perera, who bought their rights and fought in court ; then government asked Christie to desist after being reimbursed, which he refused “because it will impair the value of his estate”. Cases ensued which were won by the villagers. Meanwhile Christie, himself a land speculator, had resold half his estate to one Mrs. Drummond-Deane in 1887. They both brought the affair before the Colonial Office in London and were finally awarded handsome damages. Le Mesurier was later accused of being the real owner and Christie a figurehead.

In 1884, block settlement was undertaken in Beligal, a section of Hatarakorale (Kiraweli and Kandupita pattu)[31]; population was denser, chenas lands were more scattered and the planters were less pressing to obtain fresh land than in Tunkorale. The project soon ran into difficulties. Some land had already been sold or appropriated by the government, as in Pindeniya, (21.04.1884). In Nikapitiya the village obtained all its remaining high lands in view of the fact that most its chenas had been seized and sold by the Crown after the Temple Lands commission. When the paddy land was extensive and chena land was not, all the chenas were recognized private on the principle of appurtenance (Digogedara, 2.04.1884, Bopetta 7.04.1884). When Crown blocks were demarcated they were generally much smaller (Kiridena, Epalotutuwa, Kinigama, Kanatuwawala, Harigala, 22-23.04.1884; Naranwatte 17.05.1884). When fields, gardens and chenas were mixed, settlement was difficult and might be abandoned (Tambadiya, Kanatuwawala, Kinigama: “any block settlement would be very difficult. I think none is necessary and the Crown claim to chenas might be abandoned as the extent of high land in proportion to mud land is not excessive”. “I do not think any block of Crown chenas can be formed in this village. There is no forest in the village nor in adjoining villages. I would recommend that claims be allowed.”  In Lahupone the settlement was abandoned until 1893. All these villages were inhabited by Goyigama and Vahumpura peasants, who cultivated chenas separately: block settlements created problems between the two groups as in Epalatotuwa, where the Vahumpura panguwa felt discriminated against by the decision of the gansabhava, saying that they had lost 17 acres in the process, while the other pangu have benefitted.

The case of the large village of Maha Pallegama (25.04.1884), populated by Goyigama and a few Vahumpura peasants, was singular: on the basis of the former status of the village as royal , “the people desire a settlement to have the chenas alotted to them without Crown claim” ; and indeed on the appurtenance basis all chenas could be recognized private. In this and the neighbouring villages Kuda Pallegama (entirely Vahumpura), Udagama, and Pelpita, Crown blocks of about 50 acres were carved out but the settlement was finally abandoned.  

Disputes between owners and tenants made settlements impossible or difficult in formerly feudal villages such as Malwana (24.09.1884), a large nindagama given by the British to a Kandyan chief who collaborated with them after the 1818 rebellion, and later purchased by another collaborator, Edward Wijesinghe, who had usurped the prestigious name of Molligoda and was not recognized as landlord by the Batgama peasants. A similar situation prevailed in Edurapota (29.10.1884) given by the British in 1821 and resold to a Low-country Christian mudaliyar, C. Perera Samarasinghe: the settlement was constantly contested because the tenants (Goyigama and Vahumpura) and the proprietor were at war: “From time to time the tenants have shown themselves very obstructive and have repeatedly refused to obey the decisions of the gansabhava on the division of the village block (…) The landlord wrote a letter formally repudiating the agreement of 1884. Both tenants and landlords being decided in their determination not to observe the terms of the settlement, the Crown may also disown it”[32]. Even in small high caste ‘simple’ villages with 3 pangu only, such as Basnagoda, settled by Ievers in 1879, the situation could be very tense. One of the three pangu had lost ‘its’ chenas included in the Crown block which was sold and the other pangu refused to let it cultivate chenas in ‘their’ range of highlands. As late as 19.07.1898, the chief headman Mideniya failed to solve the dispute, which lasted since 1884.

Pata Bulatgama differed from Tunkorale. In these narrow valleys going up to the former Dolosbage coffee estates of the Kandy district, the impact of the plantation system was felt before 1870, and the connivance between the colonial administration and the planters had deprived the locals of the control of their highlands. In the upper Ritigaha Oya valley, a declining aristocratic clan (Ranasinghe Mudianselage) still exerted its authority, but highlands had been sold by the Crown to Dolosbage coffee estates (Gangwarily, Glenalla, Dedugala, Kelvin, Doteloya). The whole area (Dedugala, Yatideriya, Tumbage, Kekalapone, Udapota) was claimed by the Mudianselage extended clan, which held the post of Uduwe korala and possessed a sannasa for the whole valley. Dedugala was a remote Goyigama village, possibly originally Vedda; a large part of the land was rocky chena or patina (grass land). There were three pangu, two belonging to the Ranasinghe Mudianselage clan (Ihala walauwa, Pahala walauwa) and one Mullilage. Kekalapone was a large, mainly Vahumpura village situated above Dedugala, which was registered as a nindagama belonging to the Ranasinghe clan, with 8 nila (service) pangu and 12 families. After initial Crown sales in the late 1860s, the Gangwarily planter, Drummond, had attempted to grab Dedugala and Kekalapone village lands to extend and ‘round’ his estate. In January 1876 he wrote a letter to the Assistant Agent Dawson, asking to enter into possession of a land adjoining his estate but claimed by Dedugala Ranasinghe, arguing that “in a governmental point of view, no doubt the land is much more valuable in my possession than in the hands of the natives; for I will cultivate, they will not. In the like manner, the natives put in a claim for a considerable portion of the present estate, but Mr. Worthington did not recognize their title to it some seven years ago”. At the chena enquiry of Dawson in 1876, it appeared that the survey contained errors, that the surveyors had made no enquiry from the headmen, and that the genuine sannasa of the Uduwe family was interpreted as covering only a part of the land: “the korala claimed the greater part of the Gangwarily estate on the same sannasa, but his claim was disallowed”. Again in 1884,  Drummond “applied for 278 acres as a free grant”; the Assistant Agent at the chena settlement recommended that “half the remaining chena (of low growth) be allowed to villagers and the rest (old chenas and forest) be marked off and sold (…) These villagers deserve to be liberally dealt with, as in Gangwarily are included several old gardens and one paddy field, all of which with the surrounding chenas and gardens were sold by the Crown in 1868 or 67. Some small compensation was given for the paddy field but none for the gardens”. The governor Gordon asked in the margin of the diary: “How this came about?” The Agent answered that he was unable to find the papers relative to this sale, and concluded: “I am disposed to allow the villagers a good extent of chena lands to form a good ring fence (so to speak) around the villages to prevent encroachments and raids on their gardens from the Tamil coolies – even at the sacrifice of a little more land than usual in these cases. At Dedugala and Kekalapone their need is so considerable as so much was sold to Gangwarily estate in 68 or 69”. In 1885, when the settlement enquiry was held, Kekalapone had 11 acres of paddy, 37 acres of gardens and 128 acres of chena “the remaining lands in this village have been sold to Gangwarily”. The Assistant Agent Wace concluded : “I do not think it advisable to take any portion in this village for Crown, lots 388 and 389 are the only large lots left between the village and the estate” [33].

In 1884 the planters’ demand was in full sway and Wace was constantly pressed for land[34] : “It will be observed that these settlements have reserved for the Crown a very considerable extent of so-called forest and chena lands (…) The question now is how much of this land may be offered for sale? That it will sell well to tea planters is certain. I have received several applications for land for tea estates and am continually being pressed for information (…) It should be remembered that the village chenas (and many tea estates already opened) adjoin these portions reserved for the Crown, and that consequently it is difficult to protect them as in spite of the settlement they will assert a claim by wattoru or even cultivate without claim (…) So much land has already been sold in these villages that together with the private lands of the villagers it is impossible to secure any considerable unbroken extent of Crown forest, and I therefore submit that it is desirable to offer the remainder for sale. The question is one of pressing importance to this district which already enjoys the reputation of being the best suited for tea cultivation in the island.”

Chena block settlements made under the Ievers system in Atulugam and Panawal korales allowed the Government to sell large blocks of chenas and forests to planters in the 1880s, resulting in the creation of a large planting district generally known under the name ‘Kelani Valley’. In the process, the solidity of the Crown block was rarely questioned, while that of the villager block was constantly jeopardized by the problems of redistribution between the pangu. This situation contributed to the sale by villagers of their chenas to neighbouring estates, generally through middlemen such as contactors, bazaar traders and tavern keepers.

A typical case was that of Hinguralakanda, a bi-caste locality located close to the pioneer tea estates of the Kelani Valley at the limit between Panawal and Atulugam. Wace was unable to effect a settlement, because part of the chena area “adjoins the estate opened up by Mr. Forsythe and the villagers want it so as to be able to sell to him: they will then be without chenas and be continually in need and complaining. It is not I think advisable to encourage the sale of villagers chena to planters for tea estates. This village is also divided into two castes, Vellala [Goyigama] and Jaggery [Vahumpura], and this makes any joint possession difficult”. This complex Hinguralakanda settlement made Wace to suggest the legalization of the chena settlements under the new Forest ordinance: “it would further prevent the alienation of village chenas. It often happens now that after settlement the villagers decide to whom a land shall belong and they sell it off to outsiders. The title is weak, but the Crown having withdrawn its claim the purchasers are willing to risk a claim by anyone else, whereas in a settlement under the new ordinance the village portion would be reserved for village chenas and its alienation effectively prevented. Nor would the reservation affect the right of the Crown to sell any of the portion reserved to it, for the government can always withdraw the reservation either wholly or in part”[35].

The judicial system of Ceylon appeared as obstructive to the colonial administrators. In their Administration Reports[36], Wace and Price had insisted on the necessity to legalize settlements and render impossible the sale of shares in the chena block without sanction by other community members and the administration: “Under present circumstances it is impossible to entirely prevent the sale of such lands to those who are interested in the cultivation of tea. It is equally difficult to obviate the hardships which the poorer class of shareholders in such lands frequently suffer in consequence of sales which may have been effected without their knowledge or against their will”. As long as a villager can sell his share “the chief object and benefit of the chena settlement policy will be lost. It has been due to the settlement work pursued so steadily in the Kägalla kacceri during the last ten years that the district has advanced so rapidly and that the villagers themselves have so largely benefitted by the introduction of European capital and the opportunities afforded them of estate labour. But the conditions under which such settlements were made must be observed if the same advance and prosperity is to be continued. If the result of the settlements is to enable the villagers to deprive themselves and the village of their highlands allotted to them for one purpose for the immediate attraction of a few rupees, their agricultural condition will hardly be ultimately improved. All that is necessary is to pass an enactment that land so settled shall not be alienated except with the consent of the whole village and the Crown”. Chena settlements were perhaps adapted to the period before the tea boom but “will not stand the scrutiny of the law courts”.

Davidson, a new Assistant Agent, took a slightly different position in 1892[37]: “My predecessor strongly held that the remedy lay in legislation to prevent the alienation of holdings intended to be communal. Although I sympathize with the spirit which led him to advocate this course, and although I apprehend the difficulties which may arise with the landless and indolent peasantry [sic], I cannot see my way to recommend legislation to restore the character of village holdings after the practice of alienation had been countenanced for so many years in the Supreme Court of Ceylon. No legislation can at this stage arrest the progress of the decay of the communal village system, where that system runs counter to the temporary interest of the villagers and to the interest of the European element (…) When the process of transition be past, with its misery and attendant crime, the Kandyan villagers will develop into an honest and industrial race as are the Sinhalese of the Europeanized portions of the South or the Tamils of the Jaffna peninsula. Meanwhile I advocate that Government should not countenance the alienation of the village lands and should refuse to make surveys and grant Certificates of Quiet Possession to purchasers, and thus devise the means to make the transitional stage between the old time Kandyan usage and the Europeanization of the hill country as slow and as gradual as possible”. The alienation of lands from the village block will become the main preoccupation of the administration and eventually lead to the Waste lands ordinance of 1897, which will be the subject of another study.

The aim of the settlement was to obtain land for planters without ‘legal uncertainties’ and in this it succeeded, but it failed to preserve village interests. It is when planters who had acquired Crown blocks started to extend their lands by purchasing in the village block that the settlement was contested. These purchases were later legalized by the Government conferring Certificates of Quiet Possession under the pressure of the planters and of their legal advisers, actually nullifying the work done by his own agents. Another weakness was that these settlements were conducted with meagre means, very quickly: the British agent visited the village with the headmen and decided in an abrupt way to cut into pieces the village land. As soon as these intelligent peasants or some of them, the so-called village proctors, began to understand the game, they started to contest the colonial authorities with its own arms – the legal apparatus.

 

A new system of chena settlement under the Forest Ordinance[38]

 

A Forest ordinance had been enacted in 1885 following the report on forests of Ceylon made by a member of the Indian forest service, D’A Vincent, who had pointed the difficulties of working the ‘chena survey’ whose object was “reclaiming large areas of Crown land which have been cleared for chena and in which individual proprietary rights have grown up under ord. 12 of 1840. The land originally either communal or Crown, is now cut up by plots claimed in individual right, and although the joint area of these claims may not be 1/10th of the whole, in the interest of the Crown and to permit of the land being sold, it is desirable to come to an equitable settlement with individual proprietors” but it requires the unanimous assent of the villagers and “has only the sale of land as an object” and not forest conservation.[39]

To overcome the shortcomings of the Ievers system, a new Assistant Agent, Price, proposed in 1886 to undertake the chena settlements on a new legal basis, using the Forest Ordinance of 1885 instead of the Ordinance of 1840, following a suggestion made by his predecessors Le Mesurier and Wace[40]. It could prevent the alienation of village chenas: “under the present system it often happens that directly Crown has withdrawn its claim, the villagers decide to whom a land shall belong and they sell it off to strangers. This was of course not the intention of these settlements. The lands should be, as laid down in a minute of H.E., ‘the villagers to use but not to alienate’. The title is weak but the Crown having practically given a Certificate of Quiet Possession, the purchasers are willing to risk the very remote chance of any other villagers ousting them by due course of law”. In June 1887, Price wrote to Saunders, his superior in Colombo, to expedite legalization of the chena settlements on the basis of the Forest Ordinance, but Saunders was not prepared to press the matter, probably because it would freeze the land market, contrary to the wishes of the planters with whom he was closely connected. The first attempts at applying the Forest Ordinance to the old chena settlements were made by Price in Edurapota in November 1887, and his diary was annotated by the governor: “I think this is a most excellent suggestion if there is no legal impediment”. Price was nominated as Forest Settlement Officer (26.10.1888) but nothing official was done because the Forest department opposed it, considering that it was a misuse of the ordinance to allow chena cultivation instead of protecting the forests[41].

The Forest Ordinance of 1885 had been enacted to constitute Forest Reserves in the still uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited parts of the island. In the Kägalla district, the only area which could be considered to correspond to that definition was the eastern part of the Atulugam Korale, commonly called Kälerata (Forest country). The initial plan was to give villagers the right to cultivate chenas in certain areas under the control of the forest administration, but not the right to alienate these areas: “The demand among Europeans for land in the Kelani Valley has caused much interference with village interests and the sale by villagers of chenas which should be theirs only to use and not to alienate is open to grave objection  (…) Indiscriminate sale of Crown land is open to grave objection but a judicious sale of the chenas which are the property of government is to be desired (…) Investors are determined  to have land in the Kelani valley and if they cannot buy it from the government they purchase it in fragments from the Sinhalese. The result of such transactions is disastrous. Native brokers make it their business to acquire the chenas of the Kandyan villagers who rapidly dissipate the purchase money and eventually become vagrants”. The same message was repeated in 1887, with the precision that the main victims were the shareholders who had not sold their shares, and Price began to put his idea into practice, and extend its application to other districts as well: “The people of Digala asked for a chena settlement. But I pointed them that in view of the obstructive action of the people of Morawatta, Garagoda, and other settled villages, I was not prepared to make any more informal settlements which could not be legally enforced”. The announcement of a new settlement must have raised an alarm among the population, once again. In his diary the Agent mentioned that he had to tour his district to allay the fears of the villagers : “All that the government wants is settlement (…) They must not conclude that because they may not be able to prove title they will therefore be mercilessly deprived of all means of cultivation and subsistence (…) I think that the distrust which the enquiries of the Forest Settlement Officer have, I am told, created in the past, will now disappear”[42].

The Forest Department considered that it was not his job to make chena settlements. Initially the aim was to form a forest reserve in the upper reaches of the Kelani Valley basin – the east of Atulugam korale, above Deraniyagala, unsurveyed and unsettled. It is only in early 1887 that after a lot of evasiveness a captain Walker had been posted as Forest Settlement Officer in Three Korales.  He was tasked to report on which chena rights could be admitted in the reserve: he proposed to base them on wattoru, but the Agent considered it should be extended, as amu and kurakkan were not taxed, on the basis of population. He raised a series of questions regarding the use of wattoru which underassessed the extents actually cultivated, the existence of joint ownership (which was denied by the Assistant Agent who wrote: “Chenas are never held in common amongst different pangu; the tenure which the Forest Settlement Officer calls as communal I should define rather as tattumaru – rotating”), using the example of Ballahela village, and the position to take in the case of sales to outsiders : “The people seem to have sold their property or any title or claim they may have had to it for a mere trifle and then left the village for good. In many instances the vendors are dead.”[43]. Price suggested that the ‘Forest settlement’ should be done by the Agent himself and not by a Forest officer, and that the chenas of the village block should be declared by him ‘village forests’ at the disposal of the village community, and those of the Crown block ‘lands at the disposal of the Crown’; he added that people could object that “the intention of the chena settlement was to hand over to the villagers an absolute and unconditional right to the village block” but that in his opinion the holdings were considered as “communal and beneficial only”. At that point, the Government Agent of the Western Province disagreed and considered that it was not proper to deny full rights of highland property to individuals : “there can be no doubt that for years in the Kandyan districts persons have been allowed to hold them absolutely and they have feely exercised a right to dispose of them by sale”.

But in 1889, the Governor decided to de-link the Kägalla and Ratnapura districts from the Western province and create a new province, Sabaragamuwa, with Wace as Agent: the explicit intent was to reduce the distance between the administration and the people, and the implicit object was to remove these districts from the influence of Saunders[44]. At that juncture, the repressive policy was found to be unrealistic and practically abandoned. In the words of Wace: “Since 1815, the private title of villagers in highlands has been enjoyed without interruption and in every part of the Kandyan provinces chena lands have changed hands repeatedly on notarial deeds; it has been held by the Supreme court that the payment of tax constitutes a good title against the Crown, and wattorus establishing proof of such payment could be produced for the greater part of the chena lands in these settlements. I believe myself that this individual right among members of each pangu existed in village life even under the Kandyan dynasty, and that it was recognized even in gabadagam”. Communal lands should be settled on villagers “strictly prohibiting the alienation of such lands to other classes or for other purposes. I have repeatedly pointed out how greatly Kandyans have suffered from the failure of their coffee gardens; if in addition they lose their chenas they will certainly have no visible means of subsistence left and will become vagrants, and a serious burden on the general community, as soon as the small sums acquired by the sale of their chena lands have been consumed.”[45]

In 1892, it was decided to assign to a member of the Civil service (and not of the Forest department) the task of expediting the Forest settlement of the Beligal korale. L.W. Booth was appointed in June 1892, and his instructions were to abandon the block principle and settle according to the ordinance of 1840.  18 villages in Kiraweli east (a section of Beligal) were selected; 16 were already block settled and there was in this district a tendency to repudiate these settlements (for example in Elamaldeniya and Narangoda). All these villages had a population belonging in majority to the Vahumpura caste and formed a compact block, on the western side of the Gurugoda Oya, north of Salgala monastery, 5×2 miles, 4,800 acres of forest and chenas. Another group of villages was added later on the eastern side of the Oya, in Kandupita south, around Pindeniya, a multicaste area (Goyigama, Vahumpura, Batgama) with several plumbago pits. Most of these villages had been block-settled on the basis of surveys made north of Ruanwella and they were already eyed by land speculators, although they were not considered fit for tea cultivation, and the Crown blocks had not been alienated; in almost all these villages the Crown block was less than 100 acres. In the first series of villages (Kiraweli east), the aggregate area was 5,161 acres, with 175 acres of gardens, 201 acres of fields, 3,297 acres of village chenas, 1,259 acres of Crown chenas and 229 acres of Crown forest.

The systematic work of L.W. Booth was first hailed by the colonial administration as a great success but eventually ended as a major failure. The Assistant Agent commented favourably on the advance of the surveys in his diary[46]: “The decisions are fair: there would be no appeals; they follow very closely the chena settlements (identical in 13 cases, very different in 4 cases where the chena settlement was flatly rejected). About 2,800 acres are the absolute property of the Crown, the Assistant conservator of Forests must have his say; I suggest 1/10th as village forest, 2/10th sold for village gardens, 3/10th sold in large blocks for estates, 4/10th reserved for timber supply”. But the Conservator of forests in a letter of 22.06.1894 wrote that it was not the job of a Forest Settlement Officer to advise concessions to villagers but the job of the Revenue Officer. The Administration Report of the Kägalla Assistant Agent for 1896 still described it in optimistic terms: “During the years 1893-1897, Mr. L. W. Booth settled in this district an extent of 70,644 acres, settling finally I hope the long continued disputes between the Crown and villagers over an area equal to 1/6th of the whole extent of the district. A permanent settlement of this nature followed by a block survey is one of the greatest benefits to all parties which the government has ever carried through. One appeal only was taken from Mr. Booth decision, and his decision was upheld in the Supreme Court. The universal acceptance of his settlements is the highest testimony to the fair and liberal spirit which characterizes his work.” The following year the picture was less optimistic: “It is most important that the work of the settlement officer in Beligal korale and the Kelani valley should be completed. The boundaries between the Crown and private chenas still remain to be demarcated before the necessary proclamations can be published. Beligal was settled in 1895 but only 22 out of the 46 villages have been proclaimed under the Forest Ordinance”[47]

The Forest settlement soon ran into difficulties in Beligal korale[48]. Between December 1894 and March 1895, the settlement was contested by petitioners who after accepting the chena and forest settlements: “allege that they have not enough to live upon”. Upon enquiry, the Government agent found that “it is not the limited extent they demur to as much as the arbitrary location of the highlands at points which do not suit their convenience or are not in keeping with their tradition”. Contrary to the situation which prevailed in Atulugam, in the densely populated area of Beligal, each panguwa cultivated chenas in specific areas and the settlements failed to recognize that practice. The high proportion of Vahumpura caste villagers, who had a tradition of fighters and were more than others dependent on chena cultivation, may have contributed to their resistance. Their discontent was increased by the high-handed attitude of the surveyors, who misunderstood the tracings made by Booth and cut into chenas in cultivation, as in Hinwella (petition of 29.05.1895), while the villagers themselves might have ignored the delimitation of the Booth settlement in opening their chenas. The Agent eventually decided that they could cultivate their chenas “irrespective of the lines now being cut by the chena surveyors”. “To my thinking the method pursued in giving effect to Mr. Booth forest settlement in this district has been injudicious (…) The fundamental error has been in construing Mr. Booth tracing as absolutely accurate (…) The villagers throughout the settled area have upon legal advice from Colombo deliberately proceeded to clear all land on which the growth was less than 20 years, whether decreed to them or not, in order to have possession on their side”. Booth recognized that “the villagers will not consent to take their lands in solid blocks and I must admit on consideration that the Government Agent is right in saying that I probably exceeded my powers in so arranging them thought it did not occur to me at the time”.

According to the Assistant Agent Davidson, these villagers were manipulated by “mischievious advisers”  and undertook willfully to cut chenas in the Crown sector in Narangoda, Kurunegoda, Welhella, Kiwuldeniya and Elamaldeniya: “The villagers throughout the area have upon legal advice from Colombo deliberately proceeded to clear all lands upon which the growth is less than 20 years, whether decreed to them by the Forest Settlement Officer or not” “The stupid [sic] villagers instigated by designing persons and encouraged by the consistency with which the Supreme Court sets aside all convictions under the Forest Ordinance have cleared these lands to see whether the Crown can maintain its own rights. If the Crown fails, the villagers will fell every stick of forest which has been reclaimed from chena clearing for the last 30 years and under the good of a consistent policy which has curbed promiscuous clearing”[49]. Davidson sought the assistance of the renowned advocate Bawa to defend the Crown: “the issues are very serious ; there is a risk of an organized attack on the settlements not only in the Beligal korale, but also in the Three Korales ; the benefit of the policy of the last 18 years, which has led to a marked afforestation of the hills bordering the western province, will be swept away if we fail to secure a conviction. The villagers have organized a fund and will be represented by the leading lawyers of Colombo”. Among the lawyers involved was the young advocate Aelian Ondaatje, who was to become a staunch adversary of the colonial administration in land cases: he argued that a land having been cultivated three times during the last 30 years gave the cultivator a presumption against the Crown.

The hostility of the villagers focused on the surveyors as had been the case in the first decades of estate development up-country. The Surveyor General received petitions and the district surveyor of Sabaragamuwa, Snowden, wrote in a report to his superior who annexed it to his letter to the Government Agent of  Sabaragamuwa (23.11.1895): “the surveyors cut trenches through standing hill paddy and this occasioned a great outcry ; so to pacify the natives I gave it up with the understanding that they cut the trenches themselves where indicated when the paddy is harvested. The natives had no objection to my surveying the boundaries but they said after I had finished that they would clear where they liked. They would not touch the forest but the chenas belonged to them and nothing will induce them to give them up to government. They have employed counsel in Colombo who advises them to say that when signing the agreements on 18.11.1880 they were under the impression the land was being consigned to them”. At the beginning of 1896, tension increased and the administration forced chena cultivators to pay the ‘ground share’ (1/5th) to the Crown, in Welhella, or prosecuted and forcibly removed the crops (in Kiwuldeniya).

By the end of 1896, it appeared that the survey plans were no longer valid for a legal proclamation, that the lack of cooperation between the settlement officer and the surveyors was fatal to the exercise, and that the cost of detailed surveys could not be recouped by the sale of small lots to enterprising villagers, as Wace was contemplating in 1895. Finally, most of the Beligal settlements were never proclaimed. The Surveyor General proposed in October 1902 the abandonment of these ‘useless surveys’: his department was obviously unwilling to do any other survey than block surveys of forests, and in January 1903, the Agent answered to the Surveyor General: “It appears to me unnecessary to survey and define on the grounds the limits of each separate chena”.[50]

After these successive, often contradictory, and never legalized settlements, the situation was in an incredible mess in many villages of the Kägalla district: “A certain block of chena was declared Crown, another private; the pangu whose lands were declared Crown were compensated by lands of other pangus out of the private block. When the people who had thus received lands had planted them, the original owners took a case against them and ejected them. The original owners of the Crown block then began to clear the Crown block”. In other cases, two or even three successive settlements did not fit with each other: the villagers followed neither and no further settlement was possible, as in the case of Amitirigala (a Vahumpura village) where the original owners of the village chena block ejected the people who had been settled in ‘their’ lands and the latter then fell back on their original chenas.  In 1905, dealing with what remained of the ‘old settlements’ and connected intractable land cases in the village of Paradeniya above mentioned, the Assistant Agent Vaughan concluded: “The sooner the land is sold the better”[51] .

The final failure of these various settlements was due to the fact that they contradicted the legal system, that they depended on the honesty and diligence of headmen, and that they could not resist the pressure of the land demand of the planters coinciding with the sudden shift from coffee to tea, and later to rubber. One may even consider that they were self-defeating, in that they attracted planters close to the village. It resulted in a pressure exerted by the planter’s interests in favouring, first block settlements to obtain continuous blocs of lands sold at cheap prices by the Crown, in the line of what was done up-country during the coffee days ; and secondly in purchasing through intermediaries lands in the village block by asserting the rights of alienation by the villagers. As soon as the Crown had sold its block to the planters, the villagers saw no reason why they should not sell their block as well.

 

The case of Dorawaka[52]

Colonial land management in Dorawaka village offers a typical example of what Swettenham, a member of the governor’s staff, called ‘chena un-settlement’. Dorawaka was a very large and prosperous ancient gabadagama (royal village) in Kiraweli section of Beligal, disputed for centuries between the hill country kingdoms and the low country kingdoms and subsequent colonial powers. It is said to have been depopulated in time of war and repopulated by Duraya (Batgama) people after having been degraded and deprived of its original name of Mawatagama (‘Village of the road’). These people were settled by the kings on the land to cultivate paddy, carry burdens and act as foot soldiers and the village was organized to furnish rice, coconuts and arecanuts, under the control of high caste officers. It was especially prosperous, well-watered, with excellent coconuts and extensive chenas. According to the thombo (land roll) of 1614, there were then 100 amunam of paddy (26 for the muttettuwa (royal domain cultivated by the Duraya) 1 for the vidane (high caste overseer), 31 for 15 Duraya families, 18 ½ for 30 service coolies, 6 ½  for 4 dancers, 3 for 4 lascarins (soldiers), 10 ½ for 11 natives (i.e. Goyigama, living in the separate hamlet of Ganegama), and each of these categories had coconut and arecanut gardens. The leading Duraya family (Meragal) had a sittuwa (written act) from the time of the last Kandyan king. After the British accession, the muttettuwa was sold to locals, and paddy cultivation was still controlled by the high castes in 1861. During the chena enquiries of 1871 and 1874, “people represented that they considered the chenas theirs and paid tax for älvi at 1/14th rate” and highlands were therefore “allowed on long possession”, without being demarcated. But these enquiries began to unsettle the ancient order, and in 1876 the Goyigama accused a Duraya family of “possessing Crown land called Bulatwatte – formerly the property of the Kandyan kings – without paying tythe to government, by planting coffee, coconut and plantain”.

In 1880 the village was surveyed, and in July 1885 it was settled for the first time by the Assistant Agent Le Mesurier who found that it contained 190 acres of paddy, 137 acres of gardens, 1,000 acres of private chenas and 964 acres of Crown highlands: “After a long and troublesome debate, the villagers at last agreed : I gave them 1000 acres for their chenas and confined them to the western side of the village”. This settlement did not meet with universal approval, the representatives of some of the pangu refusing to sign the agreement because these chena tracts were too far from their houses. According to a report written 20 years later, “the greater majority however of the pangukarayo accepted the arrangement and chenaed or converted into gardens the lands allowed as private; on the whole however the settlement was unsatisfactory as some pangu had not been fairly treated”.

In March 1890, a second settlement, orthogonal to the first, was effected by Price, giving the villagers the northern lands, closer to the houses of the Durayas, about ½ of the village to the south being taken as Crown property; but it was immediately contested in a lengthy petition by a few Goyigama cultivators of chenas living and chenaing in the southern part ; Price commented : “It is impossible to find boundaries to suit everybody, the very small minority must give way for the general good”. According to the report above quoted, “this was a good settlement, and met with approval among nearly all the villagers, only 2 pangu out of 36 refusing to sign the agreement. There is little doubt that matters would have been satisfactorily arranged on the basis of Mr. Price settlement, but unfortunately another settlement was undertaken under the Forest ordinance. By this settlement, about 1,600 acres were allowed to the villagers to practice chena cultivation, and the balance 500 acres made up of isolated strips throughout the village was set apart for the Crown. The portions taken by the Crown under this last settlement were never demarcated, and at present hopeless confusion reigns”

This third settlement made by L.W. Booth as Forest settlement officer at the end of 1893 and detailed in a report of January 1894 was based on the proved claims to chena and actual practice of the 83 different family groups. And what emerged was that the villagers had from time immemorial “chenaed in all directions of the village” [53], over an extent calculated as 1,358 acres : “This it is submitted is by no means an excessive quantity of chena for the [increasing] population, 785 in the last census, while the settlement of 1890 was on the basis of the census of 1881, only 674 persons. The village being a gabadagama, I have held that only well-established gardens of long possession and regularly cultivated fields are the absolute property of the people, and that their interest in the highlands is limited to a right to practice chena cultivation upon them, the soil of such lands belonging to the Crown. The effect of this is : 1. That the people cannot sell such lands belonging to the Crown or in any way dispose of their rights to do so ; 2. That several pieces of chena which have been planted as gardens [26 acres] are the property of the Crown subject to the planter’s interest on them”. Booth clearly stated that point 1 preserved the communal character of the village chenas, and that point 2 could evolve in full property of the newly planted gardens “on payment of survey fees or other easy terms ; this liberality will lend to secure cheerful acquiescence in the settlement, a very desirable object, and to encourage industry in bringing waste land under regular cultivation.” Booth recognized that “the settlement had not done much to secure valuable property for the Crown but [it is hoped that] it will put an end once for all to the frictions between the authorities and the people which have existed for such a long time past”.

This Booth settlement was severely criticized by the Controller of Forests in a letter to the Government Agent of Sabaragamuwa (21.06.1894), in which he pointed out that its result was to reserve an infinitesimal area as Forest reserve : “This settlement cannot honestly be called a Forest settlement (…) and I would again suggest that the Forest Ordinance be used only for bona fide forest purposes. In 1885, half of the land was given over to the villagers to destroy, and in 1890, half of the remaining half was likewise conceded to them, and now the depredation over ¾ of the area not having proved to be sufficient, some fresh areas out of the remaining quarter have been opened out to them. Speaking generally, Mr. Booth settlement report appears to be more the proposal made by an advocate on behalf of his clients – the villagers – than those of an impartial judge, dealing with the claims of both sides. He also makes proposals which are not part of his business regarding the sale of certain lots of land to people who have lately started illicit cultivation (…) and states that there can be no objection to the villagers helping themselves to fence sticks etc.”. The Assistant Agent Price recommended “that no proclamation be issued at all; let the required demarcations be effected at once, let the large blocks be subdivided into small lots each ranging from 5 to 10 acres roughly, let the assistant conservator of forests cut out all the available fuel. And I will then offer for sale the whole Crown land in the village with the exception of lot 6674 ½”.

The Booth settlement affirmed the principle of Crown property of the chena lands in gabadagam[54]. It recalled that in the early days of British rule, “nilakarayo had no paraveni right in their pangu but were maruveni tenants removable at pleasure (…) The nilakarayo were from time to time chiefly between 1819 and 1826 relieved of the duty of cultivating the crown muttettu fields which were either farmed out or sold by the crown, and their fields were subjected to tax in lieu of such services. By the present time, hereditary rights have come to be practically conceded in the case of regularly cultivated fields and well-established gardens, but not in the case of waste and highland chenas which have not been under continuous cultivation. The Crown has never abandoned its claims to such lands (…) and has often asserted it (…) For the above reasons I find that all highland chenas in gabadagam are lands at the disposal of the Crown”. But the slack attitude of the colonial authorities who failed to demarcate the Crown lots, and to proclaim the settlement, nullified its intentions. We shall study in a further chapter how this state of things attracted a land speculator, Albert A.Wickramasinghe, who purchased the village chenas to form Madeniya estate around 1906, how this estate became the subject of constant recriminations by the villagers, how violence often erupted between villagers and estate workers, and how the factory, especially during the insurgency of 1989.

 

Forest settlement in Pata Bulatgama

The area, especially its Uduwe division, had attracted the attention of the colonial authorities at the time of Saunders and had been the theater of the first movement of discontent in the 1870s when the administration attempted to repress chena cultivation, with severe food shortage as a result. Twenty years later, another attempt was made, this time under the Forest ordinance, and under the pressure of the planter’s demand of land. In the diary for November 1871, the area between Bulatkopitiya and Welihelatenne was described as “almost continuous chena with here and there a forest or an occasional arecanut grove”. Already in 1874, a series of chena cases were instituted in Wegalla and Welatuduwa and on enquiry by the Assistant Agent Dawson it appeared that many chenas had been transformed into gardens five to seven years before; the chenas were allowed by Dawson ‘on account of long possession’; a few areas had been purchased by Muslims but their presence remained marginal. Wegalla, Welatuduwa and Lewala were three localities on the southern bank of the Ritigaha Oya: here subsistence depended on the cultivation a few paddy fields and of extensive chenas and gardens producing arecanuts and betel leaves (hence the name of bulat gam – betel villages) by peasants belonging to the Panna Duraya caste.

The Forest Settlement file of Lewala (including the other two villages), dated 8.08.1892, offers a detailed analysis of the history of these bulat gam and of chena cultivation practices in that area[55]. Detailed information is given in the statements of the Ratemahatmaya Ekneligoda (5.04.1892), confirmed by Uduwe korala Punahela Mudianse and in individual cases, for example that of Mutugalpedige Unga Duraya (n° 49). The first characteristic is that “the Crown does not claim any of the chenas in those villages, the growth on which is less than 20 years. The chenas belong to the villagers and have been cultivated by them and their ancestors for generations”. Chena cultivation until 1873 was totally free without having to ask permission, and since that date, älvi was taxed at 1/14th when permission was asked, and at 1/10th  when it was not “as a punishment but not because the Crown claimed the chenas”.  “In the time of the Kandyan kings the occupants of lands in these villages were liable to be called upon to supply adukku (provisions) to the higher chiefs when travelling, to carry messages and render other services; they had also to attend when called upon to work in Kandy to collect timber, to supply guards etc. Since the British accession, such services have been abolished and the people in such villages have possessed their lands absolutely as their own without any condition”. “In the time of the Kandyan kings, some of the lands in the koralegam were paraveni (hereditary), and others were held on the condition of performing services but since the accession, no distinction has been made in koralegam between paraveni and service lands, all the lands possessed by the villagers are now paraveni”. The peasants had therefore acquired full land rights and their personal status was the same as that of high caste villagers. Gardens, owita, and pillewa regularly cultivated were never taxed, chenas when cultivated with älvi at long intervals were taxed; untaxed “amu and kurakkan chenas belonged to the villagers”. Owiti were often transformed into gardens.

In the final settlement of the three villages by L.W. Booth in 1892, out of a total of 2,362 acres (302 lots claimed by 113 persons), 95 acres of gardens, 53 acres of paddy fields, 1,305 acres of owiti and chenas were recognized as private; 908 acres were “at the disposal of the Crown, out of which provision will have to be made for village forest, supply of timber and other forest produce”, but this Crown land was scattered in small parcels and impossible to make into one block and therefore difficult to sell for estate development.

In these villages, chenas were individually cultivated and possessed. The case of the Mutugalpedige panguwa in Lewala shows the structure of an extended family farm: out of a total extent allowed after settlement of 66 acres, the panguwa possessed three permanent irrigated paddy fields (kamburu) totaling  2 acres 1 rood 9 perches, three recently irrigated paddy fields (asweddum) totaling 4 acres 1r 8p, one threshing floor (kanatiya) of 2r. 19 p.; two gardens with houses totaling 5 acres 2 p.; three fields cultivated at short intervals (2 to 4 years) with amu and kurakkan (owiti) totaling 4r. 29 p; and seven chenas totaling 40 acres, cultivated with älvi every 12 or 13 years, or with other grain at shorter intervals like the owiti, including 5 acres left fallow for more than 20 years.

In the same area, the villages of Tunbage and Urumiwala had similar features, while Panawitiya had a Goyigama population. The extensive chenas of all these villages were coveted by planters established further south. The private correspondence between Wace, the Government agent of Sabaragamuwa, and Forsythe, one of the pioneer planters of the Kelani valley, bears testimony to the influence exerted by the planters on the colonial government[56]:

W. Forsythe to H. Wace, 27.10.1889. Nahalma Estate

My dear Wace,

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

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

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

In the decade following the Forest settlement, the planters laid their hands on the area. Intermediaries were already at work in 1892: Moor traders (Lebbe Marikar) who had purchased land from villagers and planted extensive gardens (coconuts, arecanuts, banana) ; village headmen and the chief headman Ekneligoda himself who had purchased land from the Durayas ; even the Vidane duraya Devatapedige Pina (village headman of the Duraya caste) was busy “getting people to sell him their shares including the other shareholders shares”. The Lewala estate was created on 200 acres of village land and 40 acres of Crown land by the notorious land speculator J.P. Anderson (of Glassel estate) with Marshall of Avissawella  as notary and Saibu Lebbe of Mattamagoda as middleman, for the Grand Central Rubber Company, in very dubious conditions[57] : the Forest settlement had not been respected, the survey was made after the settlement. In 1899 there was already an encroachment of 99 acres on reserved forest which had not been clearly demarcated by the survey department; actually it was found that that area included old chenas covered by wattoru and that there were only 16 acres of forest. There was a further extension of area clearings of about 150 acres. The company asked for a Certificate of Quiet Possession through the advocate Aelian Ondaatje and the legal Colombo firm of De Sarams in February 1907: “the estate has encroached upon a considerable portion of Crown land; some of the lands encroached upon have been unreserved and sold by Crown. There is nothing for it but to unreserve the rest and sell them to the estate at a high figure” concluded the Assistant Agent of Kägalla (11.02.1907) who advised to sell the forest land not covered by wattoru (37 acres) at 200 Rs per acre, which was raised by the Colonial Secretary to 400 Rs an acre, that is half improved value (15.04.1910).

 

The case of Garagoda

The Forest settlements were unable, for want of legal strength, to solve the problems raised by previous settlement, especially the sale of chenas from the village block to planters. An early and typical case is that of Garagoda village, a Tunkorale locality very close to Yatiyantota, with a mixed Muslim and Goyigama population, which had been settled for the first time by Ievers in 1879: out of 1,046 acres, 800 acres had been taken and sold by the Crown to establish Degalessa estate and the remaining 246 acres left to the villagers were composed of fields, owitas, gardens and chenas.

After enquiry held in May 1892, the Forest settlement officer Booth reported on the intractable situation created by the block settlement and subsequent sale to the planters[58]: “The villagers successfully established their title to their chenas (by wattoru at private rate of 1/14th) and the records of the chena settlement effected from 1879 to 1886 show that these areas were admitted as private by settlement”. But the villagers as elsewhere in the area undertook to sell lands from their village block to the nearby plantation : “The idea of those who initiated the Forest settlement was not to obtain a reserved forest proper, so much as to procure the apportionment of the chenas among the villagers for communal purposes and so prevent their alienation to the proprietors of the adjoining tea estate. This object was no more attainable than was a reserved forest. The Forest Settlement Officer has no power to take away any private land from their owners and redistribute them (…) This is not the first attempt that has been made to arrange the possession of the land in Garagoda according to a preconceived ideal. There was first the chena settlement of 1879 which considerably curtailed the extent of chenas previously possessed by the villagers. By it several lands which had formerly been enjoyed by a portion of them were declared Crown property and afterwards sold as such, other lands possessed and claimed by other villagers being assigned to them in lieu of those taken away. The original possessors of the lands so assigned in many cases refused to make room for the incomers, and this gave rise to a good deal of discontent which is still simmering and to many disputes among the villagers themselves (…) Next, and probably due to the unsatisfactory state of matters subsequent to the chena settlement, came in 1888 the Forest settlement of Mr. Price who attempted to arrange the possession on a satisfactory basis on the lines of the chena settlement ; his efforts however proved abortive, and the settlement effected by him was cancelled. (…) The present settlement had done nothing to effect what are the legitimate objects of all such undertakings (…) It has tended to revive the old discontent which followed the chena settlement of 1879 and has raised vague hopes that in some way or other the lands then taken away were about to be restored or compensated for (…) The settlement will perhaps also tend to hasten the process of alienation by the villagers of their lands to the proprietors of the adjoining Degalessa tea estate, which it was wished to prevent. The latter will certainly be now more ready to purchase village lands than they would have been if the villagers had not been publicly put to the proof of their title and had not successfully established it”.

The subsequent history of the lands is given in the diary of the Assistant government agent Price under the caption ‘Nabboth Vineyard’[59]: “Mr. Wilkins of Degalessa Estate has written to ask for ‘a little information with regard to a small block of land adjoining his property which was settled some years ago upon a native, who is now willing to lease it to Mr. Wilkin’s company ; the company is helpless in the matter without a plan or tracing of some kind’ so Mr. Wilkins says ‘help us in the matter by letting me have a tracing of your office plan or even the number of the lot’. Not so. I reply to the effect that the usufruct of the land to which Mr. Wilkins refers was conferred on the Gallatgamage pangu of the village of Garagoda, that no right of alienation was implied in the grant, which was made for the purpose of chena cultivation ; that a revision of the entire settlement is required ; that blocks of chena land are not given to the villagers with the view of their being alienated for purposes of tea cultivation.” The estate however continued to press the administration as is very clearly shown in the following entry of the diary for 5.09.1892: “Had interview with Mr. Mitchell, manager of the Degalessa estate, relating to his application to purchase lands from the Crown and from his neighbours. Also his information that the villagers had chenaed Crown land near him: on enquiry it proved to be private land. Had also various complaints against him by villagers for encroachments on their lands. He admits an encroachment of 8 ½ acres for which he says he has settled to pay 50Rs per acre. His experience for very many years in the Matara district has taught him to handle his neighbours making them his friends, he says. Most managers merely accentuate by their manners the prejudice with which the village views the strangers invading his hillsides. I told Mr. Mitchell that I exceedingly objected to his proposal to buy from a Moorman 120 acres bordering his estate for 33 Rs an acre. I pointed out to him that the Moor broker was rendering the villagers landless, and when the money has gone, they would be vagrants, and some of them criminals.”

Several other cases of forest settlement resulted in the rapid alienation of village chenas in spite of the restrictive condition allowing villagers to cultivate but not to alienate. A later example is that of the Mahabage Forest Settlement (1896)[60], a Goyigama village located to the north of Kitulgala, close to the abandoned coffee estates of Yakdessa. In February 1897, three months after the settlement, three middlemen acting for the aracci of the nearby town of Kitulgala, Juan Pulle (a Chetty land speculator who tried to pass as a Kandyan under the name of Mudianselage) started to offer village lands to a planter (Protheroe, superintendent of Ingoya). In 1904, the Ceylon Tea Plantation Company acquired the land, which had been allowed for chena cultivation: according to the report of Mideniya, the chief headman “this was communal land, and the original owners thereof, possessing some more communal lands, have set apart for each some definite land out of the communal property” and his subordinate the korala had signed an attestation to the effect that “there was no dispute to the land, either from Crown, or from his villagers to his best belief and knowledge”. A few years later, Mideniya, who had assisted Booth in the Forest settlements as Ratemahatmaya of Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama and was therefore well informed of the situation in these villages, became himself a land speculator specializing in the sale to planters of these chenas allowed for cultivation by a Forest settlement which had not been given legal authority.

 

The ambiguities of forest settlement in the ‘Kelani Valley Reserve’[61]

In remote areas with extensive forests and limited land speculation, such as the west and south of Adam’s Peak (called Kälerata), the Forest settlement could have succeeded in reserving forest areas while allowing villagers to carry on subsistence cultivation on highlands, realizing the wishes of the governors Gordon and Havelock. But the ambiguities of the colonial policy which at the same time wanted to protect the peasant society and ecology, and to promote modernity and planting interests, and the dependence on headmen for settlement enquiries, resulted in a failure to fulfill the initial project.

After the short-lived attempt of settlement in Atulugam by Captain Walker in 1887, another forester, W.H. Clarkson was posted, this time to settle the large hilly villages Bambarabotuwa Gilimale, Eratne, Morahela and Madampe in the Ratnapura district, with the project of protecting the Kaluganga valley. He wrote in his memo dated 26.08.1889 “the general maxim is that there can be no such thing as a right to a wasteful and destructive user of another’s property”. His successor Frederick Lewis, in his memoirs[62], recalled the unpopularity of the Forest officers: “The nature of my work was of a character that was intensely displeasing to many classes of people : to the natives I was a constant source of irritation as I hindered him greatly with his chena cultivation when I found the forest destroyed; to the land speculator I was an unmitigated nuisance because I thwarted his designs as I knew too much to suit his particular book; to the illicit plumbago miner I was to be more hated than the plague; to the timber trader particularly disliked the way I insisted on his having a permit to remove timber; to the planter I was obnoxious because I did not agree with him that it was right to cut down forest that did not belong to him about which he thought ought to”. The findings of the Forest Settlement Officer were generally disregarded, and these areas of the Ratnapura district were engulfed by rubber estates during the first decades of the 20th century.

The forest settlement of the upper Kelani valley could not be started before 1896, as Booth was busy with the Beligal korale villages. Meanwhile the governor Havelock, in answer to a deputation demanding the extension of the Kelani railway, had declared in 1894 that there was no Crown land to sell in that area and that regarding the reserve “it became the fixed policy of my predecessor, and I think it was very wise policy – that these reserves should be kept inviolate and that the Crown should not sell a single acre of it. Of course I cannot answer for what my successor may do”. Two years later, the planters launched a fresh offensive and the Government Agent of the Sabaragamuwa province explained to the new governor Ridgeway that Havelock was under the pressure of up-country planters who feared that the extension of low country producers would overstock the market, adding that “the result which these gentlemen feared has not been prevented for the attraction of large profits has merely caused investors to buy land from the native owners instead of from the Crown”; a change of policy was possible if the Forest settlement was sped up.

A series of 34 villages was taken up for settlement by LW. Booth assisted by Mideniya Ratemahatmaya in August 1896, and completed in February 1897. The forest settlements distinguished private lands, crown lands subject to the right to practice chena cultivation, crown lands on which this right was strictly limited, crown lands on which this right was disallowed but on which villagers had the use of water and right of way, and forbidden crown lands.

Contrary to Ievers, Booth followed ordinance 12 of 1840; even when there were wattorus paid at ‘private’ rate, when the extent could not be ascertained, he rejected property rights and allowed the right of cultivation only, as in the case of Nakkawita, a small Goyigama village on the Maliboda path on the Magal Ganga : regarding the chenas, “the claim to the soil has not been established (…) but the claimants have established their right to practice chena cultivation [which] has been permitted from time immemorial and must be allowed to continue (…) The right above admitted is common to all the claimants, their heirs and successors, and may be exercised by them individually” [63].

In March 1897, the Assistant Agent Davidson after the completion of the Booth settlement raised the question of the 26,743 acres now at the disposal of the Crown[64]: “the announcement of the intention of Government to sell Crown land (…) will tend to check the large purchases of private land, and may lead to a suspension of any further alienation of land now by Kandyan villagers”; in his opinion forest must be reserved above 3500ft (1066 m.) for ecological reasons, but can be felled at lower elevations: the Kelani and the Ritigaha are already silted and unnavigable, the We Oya will soon be bordered by estates, only the Sitawaka and Gurugoda are yet unexploited; in any case, a railway will replace the water way “and the vested interests in the boat trade are trifling”; and the possibly of floods inundating the lower Kelani basin is possible but not likely to occur.  In other terms, Davidson was ready to sacrifice Gordon’s project of Kelani reserve in order to ‘develop a backward area’. His arguments were based on a dualistic view: in order to save the colonial capitalist enterprise it must be limited and concentrated in specific zones; in his view, the Hatarakorale had a balanced and self-sufficient peasant economy which might be preserved, and the only means to do it in the colonial system as it was, was to channel the capital towards the Tunkorale: “this district has 165,000 persons on 420,000 acres; of this total 115,000 live in one half, the Hatarakorale, and 50,000 in the other half (the Tunkorale). It is manifest that in an agricultural country with no townships of any size a population of 350 to a square mile is as much as agricultural land can bear, it being remembered that there are no industries and no pauperism and that the soil produces all that the peasantry depends upon. It is manifest that if that peasantry alienated much of its holdings, it will be left untrained to support itself by the fruits of its labour for others. If an outlet is not given to capital elsewhere, this peasantry will yield to inducements to sell its holdings, and such is the lies of the country of the Hatarakorale that the clearing and draining of the high lands will lead to the destruction of the low-lying lands which are now paddy fields. I hold it to be a very strong administrative argument that capital should be led elsewhere, and whither it could be better led than into that poor country where excluding the 28,000 imported Tamil coolies the indigenous population is still so meagre as to represent only 64 persons per square mile. And more so in the Kelani valley with 4,481 persons, 50,000 acres and 26,743 acres for the Crown”. He therefore proposed to sell 6,379 acres (4,000 acres immediately) from the reserve or nearby, all in the vicinity of Deraniyagala, and detailed the lands village by village, giving time to the investors in London to prepare for the acquisition. As regards the sale of the lands allowed to villagers, the policy of Davidson was also dictated by the same dualistic approach[65]: “In the Hatarakorale where the population is numerous, long settled and well to do, I have used my personal influence and checked almost altogether the alienation of village chenas. In the Tunkorale and Pata Bulatgama, i.e. the Kelani Valley where the population was sparse and underfed, I contented myself with vigilantly guarding the Crown interests and impeaching on all occasions the folly of selling for less than the ultimate purchaser was willing to pay, i.e. something between Rs 25 and 50 per acre. Furthermore, I stopped persons of family and consequence from alienating their family holdings without special sanction from me”

On 16.03.97, at a discussion on the subject held at the Executive council, the Colonial secretary wryly remarked that “the custodians of Kägalla used not so much to favor the introduction of the European influence in this markedly native district (…) The absorption of villager’s lands will still go on by those desirous of extending existing estates”. But the governor Ridgeway declared: “I am altogether opposed to any grandmotherly policy as regards tea in the shape of restrictions in order to protect existing forests. The Treasurer, Lee, who knew Kägalla in the 1870s, commented that  “It is only since the prohibition of chena cultivation that the trees were grown up upon these lands and they are now, I understand, covered with heavy jungle, but when I knew the country 25 years ago, there was little or no forest on it. It was all chena”. It was decided by the Executive council in June 1897 to wait until the railway was decided upon. In June 1898, the project was abandoned: “in view of the depressed state of the tea industry at present, it would be well to indefinitely postpone the sale”. But in June 1899, Booth, then in charge of Sabaragamuwa, considered that in view of the rise in tea prices it might be time to resume the project, but that if the land was not demarcated no sale could take place.

The Forest settlements were never legalized, for want of political will, and because the judiciary system opposed it: “The findings of the Forest Settlement Officer are too vague for any definite action to be taken (…) I am in worse position than if no settlement had been made at all”, wrote Bertram Hill, the successor of Davidson[66] The only possible solution would have been another resettlement under the Waste Lands Ordinance  (WLO) which had been enacted in 1897: “What I want to do is to be able to proclaim in one notice all the chena land and forest and waste land in one village. There would then be absolutely no difficulty in making a settlement and there would be some hope of getting the whole district settled”. “I shall now proceed to settle the district village by village working from north to south”. Five years later, nothing had be done: “It would be advisable to have many of the former settlements in this district resettled under the Waste lands ordinance. The proclamations under the Forest Settlement Ordinance are so imperfect that no court would uphold them, and besides the Supreme court has held that the decision of a Forest Settlement Officer under the Forest Ordinance is not binding as to title”.

The failure of the Kägalla successive settlements is one of the origins of the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1897, and the lessons of the experience framed the future land policy of the island. At the level of policy making, while initially the ordinance was presented by Governor Ridgeway as a means to give the Crown more land to sell, the Colonial office requested him to rectify the position and present it as a tool to prevent “the growing practice of villagers unable to resist the temptation of a little ready money, to sell chena land, and even gardens and homestead, for some trifling sum to middlemen, who now roam the country with purses in their hands tempting the people to sell their inheritance, and thus veritably transform a population of landowners into a proletariat of wage earners”.[67]

Meanwhile, as the settlements were not given legal strength, the lands allowed to chena cultivation but not alienable began to be treated as villager’s properties and eventually offered for sale to planters by various intermediaries, including Mideniya. A typical example is that of Malalpola, close to Halgolla Estate[68]: “The villagers have sold all their land to Halgolla estate and now have the impudence (sic) to claim the Crown lot. They will not withdraw their claim and must be referred to court”. In 1924, the Agent at Kägalla concluded[69]: “Most of the lands in this district allowed for chena cultivation in the 1890s have now been planted up and are the subject of partition cases, fiscal’s sales, testamentary actions, etc.” The situation was discussed by the end of 1903.  The outcome was the publication of a circular which opened the way to what could be called the system of settlement by Certificate of Quiet Possession in the case of former settlements. One should note that it was not proposed to use the ordinance of 1897. A few ‘WLO enquiries’ were held in specific localities of the south of the district such as Welangalla and Udapota, but these localities which had been settled under the old chena settlements were already encroached by planters. In Welangalla, a multi-caste village, the ‘village block’ of Ievers settlement had been partially sold through the usual speculators (Kader Thambi, Velaiathan Chetty, K.D.J. Perera) to Fern Lands Tea Company, represented by proctor Marshall of Avissawella. Marshall attempted to effect an unofficial settlement of private lands of the village parallel to the official settlement by the Revenue Officer and with the consent of him. But they met with the opposition of an old woman who refused to sign an agreement “in spite of the objurgation of proctor Marshall” – a late case of peasant resistance.[70]

To understand the failure of the Booth settlement, one must take into account a series of factors: the imperfection of the surveys and their discrepancies with the findings of the Forest settlement officer; headmen interested or corrupt who pointed the boundaries; the usual lack of professionalism of the surveyors, their frequent hostility towards the villagers and partiality in favour of the planters; the Forest and the Survey departments the last to be relied upon for a pro-villager policy as they were the most repressive in the matter of villagers rights; the skeptical,  hostile, or lackadaisical  position of the administrators who were posted after Booth.; and the rubber boom of the early 1900s which led to a new burst of land hunting.

Settlements in the Kägalla district had been undertaken with the Ievers project of establishing a dual economy at the village level, protecting the traditional village sector by admitting chena cultivation and fostering the development of plantation economy. They concluded with the Davidson project of establishing a dual economy at the district level, protecting Hatarakorale, the “garden of the East”, and leaving Tunkorale to the European tea planter’s rule. Both projects failed because in the colonial context the power and attraction of the plantocracy surpassed the authority of the Raj. We shall study in the next chapters how the local administration attempted to clean up the mess in the Kägalla district by distributing Certificates of Quiet Possession and how the new Settlement department attempted to curb the speculative activities of rubber and coconut planters, most of whom were members of the rising Ceylonese national bourgeoisie, who were not as powerful as the European planters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 



[1] See Ian Barrow, Surveying and Mapping in colonial Sri Lanka, 1800-1900. New Delhi, O.U.P., 2008

 
[2] E. Meyer “Historical Aspects of Caste in the Kandyan Regions, with particular reference to the non-Goyigama castes of the Kägalla District” Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 40, (2015) pp. 21-54
[3] Sri Lanka National Archives (hereafter SLNA) /30/37, diary of the Assistant Government Agent at Kägalla (hereafter Diary Kä) 3.10.1916
[4] SLNA, diary of the Settlement Officer (hereafter Diary SO) 28.06.1937
[5] SLNA/30/37 Diary Kä 29.08.1916
[6] The question has been briefly treated by Michael Roberts in History of Ceylon volume III p. 129-130, who describes the chena survey of the 1870s, without giving any information on the further settlements which were attempted for about 30 years
[7] The fact that Philip Francis Ondaatje (1860-1938), elder brother of Aelian Ondaatje (1874-1942) was chena surveyor for a long time strongly suggests that the work of the survey department contributed to start the whole land grabbing business in Kägalla. Philip Francis was the father of Philip Mervyn, an alcoholic planter, and the grandfather of Philip Christoph the Canadian billionaire and of Michael the novelist, who recalled his childhood in Kägalla in his novel Running in the Family. Lawyer specializing in land cases, Aelian Ondaatje (whose Christian name was that of the Kägalla Agent at his birth), married an English woman who had inherited a share in an old British grant in Nuwara Eliya, and he pursued the claim against the government. He was behind most of the land litigation in Kägalla after 1900 and opposed the government policy of restricting plantation development in Hatarakorale.
[8] Administration Report (hereafter AR) of the Surveyor general 1873 II p. 14; Diary Kä, 7.09.1873
[9] AR Surveyor general 1875, app. L, p. 11; 1876 II p. 10A-11A.
[10] These ‘chena cases’ are available in the ‘village files’ kept in the Kägalla kacceri records, series Y and Z (consulted in August 1979). The cases quoted in the next pages are all taken from these records
[11] SLNA 30/612, 8.12.1873.
[12] These headmen were still in existence in 1886, when Price wrote to Saunders that the system “only added to the difficulty of the question” because the village headmen rejected on them their responsibility and vice versa.(Diary Kä 28.10.1886) ; but Saunders answered that they should be retained « and absorbed into the ranks of forest rangers » ; as soon as the Sabaragamuwa province was created, Price reiterated his demand, which was accepted by the GA Wace in 1889.
[13] AR Kä 1874 p. 23-24 and 1875 p. 65-66:
[14] Diary Kä, October 1872
[15] Kägalla kacceri records, chena case Narangala, and Diary Kä, 12.11.1872 and 31.01.1887.
[16] AGA(Assistant Government Agent) Kägalla to GA (Government Agent) WP (Western Province) n° 916, 12.12.1878 as annexure to Burden report, SLNA 30/868; same report a draft in the Kägalla Kacceri records together with the chena settlement files.
[17] AR WP 1879 p. 21; letter GA WP to the Colonial Secretariat, 15.02.79.
[18] Settled on 29.08.1878 “without special enquiry into the claims to chenas and gardens” ; resettled under Forest settlement but a lot of land had been sold to Lavant estate and according to the diary (8.01.1893)  “this village has been a good deal cramped by the sale of the large Crown block in this village and around it”
[19] Diary Kä, 1.04.1884, Chena file Hatnapitiya at the Kägalla kacceri (see also copy annexed to Burden report 1916)
[20] Kägalla kacceri records, Paradeniya file, PP 91
[21] Later theorized by Julius Hermann Boeke (1884-1956) in Dualistische economie. Leiden 1930

 
[22] Diary Kä, 3.04.1884
[23] When Gordon became Governor in December 1883, he compelled his provincial and district agents to keep a diary which was to be sent to him and which he read and annotated personally. These diaries are therefore much better kept than the previous diaries, and provide a fascinating source to observe the day to day administration of the district; note that Ievers could speak fluent Sinhala and was interested in the sociology of Ceylon (he later authored a Manual of the North Central Province) 
[24] Diary Kä, 1.4.1884. (village of Uda Yogama)

 
[25] A panguwa (plural pangu) is a share of the village territory belonging to a group of families having a common ancestor or common caste affiliation and common economic interests or/and service obligations; its members are called pangukarayo. The term gamwasama (plural gamwasam) is employed for a high caste panguwa and may cover the whole of a village if it belongs to the upper Goyigama caste.
[26] AR Kä 1881 p. 25A-26A
[27] Kägalla kacceri records, Pannila village file, and Diary Kä, 3.04.1884
[28] AR Kä 1884, p. 22A-23A
[29] Kägalla kacceri records, village file Pannila ; Diary Kä 1884 ; SLNA 33/2497 (‘Forest settlement in the Kägalla district’)

.
[30] SLNA, Diary Kä (Le Mesurier), 15.01.1886; CO54/610 Governor to Colonial Office, 5.11.1893
[31] Diary Kä for April – May1884
[32] Diary Kä, 23.06.1887
[33] Diary Kä, 18-19.03.1885
[34]  SLNA 65/ 958, letter 829, 30.12.1884 Wace to GA WP
[35] Diary Kä 26.03 and 13.08.1885
[36] AR Kä 1888, p. 43A, 1889 p. J28, Sabaragamuwa 1890 p. J2, 1892 p.J4
[37] AR Kägalla 1892 p. J6
[38] SLNA 65/ 173 ’Forest Settlement in the Kägalla district’ ;  SLNA 65/ 958 : Kelani Valley Forest Reserve ; SLNA 45/1866,67,68,69,70. (for Beligal settlements) ; SLNA 65/1187 (on the failure of the Forest settlements) ; Land settlement work of F.R. Ellis (Land Settlement Department Records). SLNA L205/1926 : Forest settlements
[39] Sessional paper 43 of 1882, § 65
[40] Letter AGA Kä to GAWP, 13.08.1885; Administration Report Kägalla 1886 p.147A-149A
[41] Diary Kä, 12.12.1887 and Administration reports Kägalla, 1889 and 1890
[42] Diary Kä, 19-21.02.1887
[43] SLNA 65/ 958 ‘Kelani Valley Forest Reserve’: letter of Walker to Colonial Secretary, 31.01.1887, and letter of Price, AGA Kä.to GA WP, 5.03.1887
[44] Saunders was distrusted by Gordon, who wrote in a private letter to the Colonial Office (CO54/653, Stanmore to Lucas, 9.03.1898): “My reasons for distrusting Sir Frederick Saunders’ judgement it is unnecessary to state. It may suffice in this connection to say that as Government Agent of the Western Province, when that province included Sabaragamuwa, he was always in favour of placing the harshest and strictest interpretation of native land claims, except indeed in a few cases where he showed singular indulgence.”
[45] SLNA, 65/173, Forest Settlement in the Kägalla district, report by Government Agent Wace, 30.01.1889

 
[46] Diary Kä, 19.05.1892, 28.07.1893
[47] Administration reports Kägalla 1896 p. J9, 1897 p. J11
[48] It was the subject of a quantity of reports and correspondence collected by the administration: SLNA, 65/ 1167, see also SLNA 45/1867, 45/1868 and 45/1869 (Davidson report, 8.10.1895)
[49] Diary Kä, 4.04.1895, 9.04.1895, 31.08.1895, 12.09.1895, 10.04.1896, 5.06.1896
[50] Diary Kä 5.06.1902, SLNA 45/1870, correspondence between the Government Agent Sabaragamuwa and the Surveyor General, October 1902 to January 1903
[51]  Diary Kä 3.01.1905, 18.01.1905, 15.05.1905  
[52] Diary Kä, 10.05.1871, 27.07.1885,20.03.1890, 3.03.1906, 4.03.1907; SLNA 45/1866; Land settlement department records, Dorawaka file, Booth report (annexure to letter of GA Sabaragamuwa to Controller of forests, 22.01.1894); Kägalla kacceri records files Y2/46 and Y99, Old chena plan PP269 (1880); “Kiraveli Pattuwa 1614”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Ceylon Branch 36:4, 1947

 
[53] Five Duraya pangu in the North West corner, three Duraya pangu in a small tract in the East, the majority of the Duraya pangu cultivating a very large undivided area in the East, the rest of the Duraya pangu cultivating a large tract in the South West, and the Goyigama cultivating a smaller tract in the West.
[54]  ‘Findings on the question of title to highland chenas in gabadagam’, Land Settlement Department Records; another copy as annex to Burden report in SLNA 30/868.
[55] Lewala Forest Settlement, Kägalla kacceri record room, series Y

 
[56] Loose documents included in the unnumbered Panawitiya village file, Kägalla kacceri record room.
[57] SLNA 30/510 (CQP series)
[58] Kägalla kacceri record room, Forest settlement report by L.W. Booth, 19.05.1892
[59] Diary Kä, 2.05.1891 and 5.09.1892  
[60]Mahabage Forest settlement (1896), Kägalla kacceri record room; SLNA 30/434; SLNA 30/480 (Certificates of quiet possession, Mideniya report, 22.05.1905)
[61] SLNA Colonial Secretariat 65/ 958 brings together the correspondence relating to the proposed Kelani forest reserve from 1884 to 1898; Report on the Forest settlement of the Kelani valley reserve, original signed by L.W. Booth, Kotagala, 9 April 1897, kept in the Kägalla kacceri record room in the series called ‘Booth Settlement’ together with the different case studies of each village; Kelani valley Forest settlement Register, SLNA 45/1726; for the Kaluganga project, Administration Report Sabaragamuwa 1889 p.J4.
[62] F. Lewis, Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon, p. 224-225
[63] SLNA 30/868, Burden report, 15.08.1916; the chenas of this village were eventually sold to a land speculator, Van der Poorten, with the help of Mideniya.
[64] SLNA 65/958, report 04251, 12-13.03.97; see also Executive council paper 680/97 
[65] SLNA 65/178, RN 012857, Govt Agent Sabaragamuwa (acting) to Colonial Secretary, 3.10.1896 
[66] Bertram Hill, Davidson’s successor, in Diary Kä 15.06.1898, 14.10.1898, 13.03.1899; 21.04.1903
[67] SLNA, 65/1187 (GA to CS, 26.11.1903, circular n° 4 (12.01.1904); CO54/639, Ridgeway to Chamberlain 349, 15.10.1897
[68] Diary Kä 24.09.1900  
[69] Diary Kä, 22.08.1924
[70] Village file Kägalla kacceri, 30.11.1878 (Ievers settlement); Diary Kä 10.10.1905, SLNA 30/509 (6.02.1907).

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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Publication récente sur Sri Lanka et les diasporas

Les minorités tamoules à Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour

Identités, intégrations socio-spatiales et transnationalités

janvier 2024

Delon Madavan

et ouvrage propose, à travers une analyse tant spatiale que politique et culturelle, dans une perspective comparative à l’aide de trois terrains asiatiques (Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour), d’étudier les différents modes et degrés d’intégration des minorités tamoules, tant localement (évaluer leur citadinité), nationalement (évaluer leur citoyenneté) que mondialement (situer leurs transnationalités diasporiques).
L’analyse des politiques menées par la puissance coloniale, puis par les trois États indépendants à l’égard des minorités, permet de mieux comprendre leurs impacts sur le sentiment d’identification et d’intégration des Tamouls à la nation, ainsi que sur leur répartition dans ces villes. À l’échelle locale, les politiques urbaines développées par les États, qui selon les cas préservent ou détruisent les
ethnoterritoires, transforment l’empreinte urbaine et la pratique de la ville des Tamouls et influent sur la façon dont ils perçoivent leur appartenance à la nation.
Enfin, les liens transnationaux et les dynamiques migratoires internationales contemporaines des Tamouls dans ces trois pays ont aussi des conséquences sur leur identification et leur intégration

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Interviews – spécialistes de Sri Lanka novembre 2024

 

 

https://www.rfi.fr/fr/asie-pacifique/20241125-sri-lanka-je-ne-pense-pas-que-la-population-srilankaise-attend-des-miracles

Entretien RFI

Sri Lanka: «Je ne pense pas que la population srilankaise attend des miracles»

Leçons d’une alternance avec Éric-Paul Meyer, spécialiste du Sri Lanka. Conversations sur l’alternance historique à Colombo, les priorités et les défis du nouveau gouvernement srilankais, les espoirs et les inquiétudes d’une population acquise à l’idéal démocratique.

Le nouveau président du Sri Lanka, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka,  à Colombo lors de son intronisation, le 23 novembre dernier.
Le nouveau président du Sri Lanka, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, à Colombo lors de son intronisation, le 23 novembre dernier. © AFP
 
 

RFI : Le Parlement srilankais s’est réuni le 21 novembre, une semaine après les récentes législatives qui ont profondément renouvelé la représentation nationale. Comment s’explique le véritable raz de marée dont a bénéficié la coalition gouvernementale, le National People’s Power (NPP), dans ces élections ? 

Eric-Paul Meyer (*) : Le NPP ne détenait que trois sièges dans la précédente chambre. Elle a aujourd’hui 177 députés, 177 sur un total de 225, soit une majorité de plus de deux tiers. Les analystes avaient prédit une large victoire, mais personne n’avait imaginé une victoire de cette ampleur. On peut effectivement parler de raz de marée. Ce raz de marée traduit le rejet complet de la classe politique aux commandes à Colombo depuis quarante ans. Cela va au-delà du clan Rajapaksa qui a gouverné le pays depuis 2005, avant d’être chassé hors du pays par le peuple qui les accusait d’avoir mal géré le pays, d’être corrompus. La victoire de la gauche aujourd’hui est le contrecoup de l’exaspération qui s’est manifestée dans la rue pendant la crise économique et sociale que le pays a traversée en 2022 et qui s’est exprimée cette fois dans les urnes.

Le rejet de l’ancienne classe politique s’explique par l’attachement des Sri Lankais à la démocratie, qui est un phénomène ancien. Rappelons que le Sri Lanka a été le premier pays de la région à expérimenter, dès 1931, un système électoral fondé sur le suffrage universel des deux sexes. C’était avant même l’indépendance de l’île, qui date de 1948. Le peuple srilankais est passionné de politique. Il n’est pas rare, même dans le milieu populaire, d’entendre des gens discuter de la vie politique, de telle ou telle décision prise par les autorités. Tout cela n’est peut-être pas étranger au raz de marée électoral en faveur d’un président et d’un parti qui se sont faits les champions de la lutte contre la corruption qui mine le pays depuis des décennies.

Depuis les législatives, les médias srilankais évoquent régulièrement la nouvelle configuration de ce Parlement, qui affiche beaucoup de nouveaux visages.

En effet, deux tiers des députés sortants de l’opposition ne se sont pas présentés ou ont perdu leur élection. Ils ont été remplacés par des nouveaux venus. Le NPP, qui soutient le président, avait fait le pari du renouveau en présentant de nouveaux visages. Beaucoup se sont fait élire. Nombre de ces nouveaux parlementaires sont issus des milieux ruraux, qui des plantations, qui de la communauté des pêcheurs tamouls du Nord. Cela donne une chambre beaucoup plus représentative de la société srilankaise, alors qu’aux précédentes législatures le Parlement comptait plus de politiciens de carrière, dont certains étaient en place depuis une dizaine d’années.

Citons l’exemple d’Ambika Samuel, qui a travaillé dans les plantations. Pour la première fois dans l’histoire du Sri Lanka, une jeune femme tamoule issue de la classe ouvrière des plantations siège parmi les augustes parlementaires. Cette femme est sans doute une des personnalités les plus surprenantes de la nouvelle chambre. Une autre personnalité marquante de cette dixième législature est le docteur Rizvie Salih, élu vice-président (« deputy speaker ») du Parlement. Médecin d’origine musulmane, il a joué un très grand rôle dans la mobilisation de la communauté médicale pour une réforme en profondeur du système hospitalier srilankais. Certes, issus de la société civile, tous ces nouveaux parlementaires n’ont aucune expérience de la pratique politique. On les a vus à la télé le jour de l’inauguration de la session parlementaire, soucieux d’apprendre leur métier, et très impressionnés par le décorum et les formalités.  

Le siège du Parlement srilankais à Colombo.
Le siège du Parlement srilankais à Colombo. © Denis Sylvester Hurd in Wikipédia

Cette première séance du nouveau Parlement était particulièrement attendue…

Oui, les gens voulaient écouter le nouveau chef de l’État qui, comme le veut la tradition héritée du parlementarisme britannique, ouvre la session parlementaire. À cette occasion, il prononce un discours annonçant le programme et les priorités du gouvernement. Je rappelle que, contrairement à son homologue français, le président srilankais peut être présent au Parlement quand il le souhaite et prendre part au débat. On s’attend à ce que le président Dissanayake qui détient dans le nouveau gouvernement les portefeuilles clés de la Défense et des Finances, participe aux débats notamment sur le budget ou sur les questions de la défense.

Le discours du président était le clou de cette journée inaugurale du Parlement.

Ce discours qui a été transmis en direct à la télévision nationale a occupé l’essentiel de la séance inaugurale du Parlement. Le président Dissanayake a rappelé les principales priorités de son gouvernement qui vont de la remise sur pied de l’économie à la lutte contre la discrimination visant les minorités ethniques, en passant par le rétablissement d’un service public efficace, la généralisation d’aides pour améliorer le sort des pauvres, la relance des activités de la pêche dans le Nord qui touche directement la minorité tamoule et l’aide aux petites et moyennes entreprises. En revanche, le président n’a évoqué ni la question de la réforme constitutionnelle qui figurait pourtant tout en haut de la propagande de sa campagne électorale ni la mise en œuvre de ce fameux 13e amendement consistant à décentraliser les pouvoirs du gouvernement central. Cette façon très précautionneuse d’aborder ces questions laisse penser qu’il veut laisser du temps au temps pour ces sujets épineux, d’autant que c’est  typiquement le genre de questions qui risque de soulever des tensions, y compris à l’intérieur du propre camp du président. Pour le chef de l’État, l’urgence est visiblement ailleurs.

Ailleurs, où ?

L’urgence aujourd’hui consiste à vraiment sortir le pays de la crise économique, à améliorer la condition des populations les plus pauvres et à rendre à l’administration son efficacité. D’ailleurs le début de la session parlementaire a coïncidé avec la visite de la délégation du Fonds monétaire international (FMI) à Colombo. Il s’agit de la troisième revue du programme de prêts sur quatre ans, consentis par le FMI pour le sauvetage de l’économie srilankaise fragilisée par la crise du défaut sur sa dette publique. Pendant la campagne électorale, le candidat Dissanayake avait vivement critiqué le pacte passé avec l’organisation internationale et avait promis de renégocier certaines clauses sociales de l’accord. Élu président depuis, il a fait marche arrière au nom du réalisme économique, déclarant qu’il se ralliait à l’accord avec le FMI. C’est un recul, mais c’était sans doute le prix à payer pour obtenir le déblocage de la nouvelle tranche de prêts dont le pays a besoin pour la poursuite du rétablissement de son économie.

D’ailleurs dans sa déclaration, l’équipe du FMI a pointé du doigt les efforts consentis par le gouvernement pour ralentir l’inflation et améliorer la situation de la balance des paiements. Ces considérations prioritaires pour stabiliser les finances limitent bien évidemment la possibilité pour le gouvernement de mettre en œuvre une politique économique radicalement différente. Mais, en contrepartie, le gouvernement a obtenu le soutien des milieux économiques du pays qui ont été rassurés par la décision du président d’entériner le pacte avec le FMI. Comme l’a affirmé, Duminda Hulangamuwa, qui préside la Chambre de Commerce de Colombo, s’entendre avec le FMI est le seul moyen de remettre l’économie sur les rails.

Eric-Paul Meyer est historien et spécialiste du Sri Lanka.
Eric-Paul Meyer est historien et spécialiste du Sri Lanka. © Eric Meyer

Une autre grande priorité est sans doute la réconciliation avec les minorités, notamment avec les Tamouls dans le Nord ultramilitarisé où trente ans de guerre civile ont dévasté des vies, détruit le tissu social et politique. Rassurés par les promesses de campagne, les Tamouls ont voté massivement pour la gauche aujourd’hui au pouvoir. C’est historique, car jamais un parti cinghalais n’avait emporté les élections dans le Nord. Est-ce que les promesses pourront être tenues, cette fois ?

La réconciliation avec la population tamoule passe en partie par le redémarrage de l’économie dans le Nord, dans les régions tamoules qui, avant le conflit militaire, étaient très dynamiques sur le plan agricole et de la pêche maritime. Il n’est sans doute pas anodin qu’une personnalité tamoule ait été nommée à la tête du ministère des Pêches. Cela montre l’importance que le gouvernement attache à la réhabilitation économique de la région. Les Tamouls peuvent se targuer par ailleurs de compter deux ministres importants dans le gouvernement, la deuxième étant une femme ministre en charge de la condition féminine et de l’enfance. Celle-ci est connue dans le milieu des ONG où elle s’est fait un nom en tant que spécialiste de la santé féminine. Pendant la campagne électorale, le futur président a aussi promis de rendre les terres occupées dans le Nord par les forces armées depuis l’époque de la guerre civile.

Cette promesse a une valeur symbolique pour les anciens et c’est probablement ce qui a réellement poussé la communauté tamoule à voter pour la coalition présidentielle. Or, si dans certaines régions la concrétisation de cette promesse de restitution des terres se fait rapidement, comme dans la région de Jaffna, grande ville tamoule, où les camps militaires sont en cours d’évacuation, l’entreprise se révèle plus délicate ailleurs où le gouvernement se heurte aux réticences des militaires. Au Sri Lanka, comme ailleurs en Asie, l’armée est devenue une puissance économique, partie prenante dans des activités fortement enracinées dans l’économie locale. Il va être extrêmement compliqué de démanteler tout cela. Mais la volonté politique est bel et bien là.

Nous disions en commençant cet entretien que l’arrivée au pouvoir du président Dissanayake a suscité un extraordinaire enthousiasme dans ce pays insulaire qui s’est traduit par le raz de marée aux législatives en faveur de la coalition que le président a su bâtir autour de lui. Or les réticences, les contraintes, le pragmatisme précautionneux des gouvernants, malgré leur empathie sans doute réelle pour la population, ne risquent-ils pas d’émousser l’enthousiasme, détachant les Sri Lankais de la chose politique à terme ?

Je ne pense pas que la population srilankaise attend des miracles. Elle attend que des personnes, qui lui semblent honnêtes et efficaces, sortent enfin le pays du bourbier dans lequel son élite corrompue l’a plongée. En signant des accords avec le FMI, le prédécesseur de l’actuel président, Ranil Wickremesinghe avait commencé à tirer l’économie de la situation impossible dans laquelle elle se trouvait, mais il était issu du sérail. Trop marqué par sa collusion passée avec le clan Rajapaksa, il n’a pas pu inspirer suffisamment de confiance.

Quant à l’actuel chef de l’État, le président Dissanayake, fils de paysan, jouit d’une formidable aura grâce à son histoire, grâce à ses qualités oratoires, voire pédagogiques, mais il a très peu d’expérience de pouvoir. Avec sa Première ministre Harini Amarasuriya, ancienne universitaire, issue elle de la bourgeoisie, le duo constitue un centre de pouvoir inédit, mélangeant l’autorité et le populisme dans le bon sens du terme. Ils suscitent l’enthousiasme, mais une fois que l’enthousiasme sera retombé parce qu’il va forcément retomber, on verra qu’il y a effectivement des contraintes, des limites qui ne permettent pas de faire revenir la prospérité d’un coup de baguette magique.


* Eric-Paul Meyer est historien, professeur émérite à l’Institut des langues orientales de Paris. Il est spécialiste du sous-continent indien.Il est l’auteur de : Une histoire de l’Inde : les Indiens face à leur passé (Albin Michel).

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https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2024/audio/revolution-politique-au-sri-lanka-28703059.html

Révolution politique au Sri Lanka

Radio Télévision Suisse – RTS

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Sri Lanka post-election discussions 2024

Interview

18 Nov 2024

Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake is a powerful, popular president but a pragmatist not a marxist: Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, to Karan Thapar for The Wire.

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15 Nov 2024

Rising above ethnic, language and religious differences, Sri Lankan voters swept the National People’s Power alliance to a landslide victory, giving the NPP of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake a total of 141 seats out of a possible 225 on Friday (November 15), the country’s Election Commission said. The NPP expected to obtain a two-third majority. A total of 196 seats were decided by direct election in the country’s proportional representation system with the remaining 26 members to Parliament being selected by eligible parties through a national list. With the NPP expected to gain 18 out of the 26 national list seats, their tally is expected to go upto 159 seats. To discuss what the Sri Lankan Election results means Amit Baruah, an Independent Journalist is in conversation with Ahilan Kadirgamar, Senior Lecturer, Jaffna University and B.Skanthakumar, co-editor Polity Magazine.

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Transforming Sri Lanka’s economy: a post-elections roadmap

Description

Join us for a timely seminar that will unpack post-election developments and chart a way forward for Sri Lanka’s economic future.

Sri Lanka stands at a critical juncture. Following the recent Presidential elections and with Parliamentary elections set for 14th November 2024, the nation is poised to embark on a new economic chapter. The newly elected government, led by President Dissanayake’s National Peoples Power (NPP) party, is seeking a parliamentary majority to drive an agenda of inclusive growth and economic recovery in the wake of the debt crisis that has gripped the nation since 2022.

While signs of economic stabilisation in 2024 offer a glimmer of hope, crucial questions remain: What policy direction will the new government take? How can Sri Lanka transition from crisis management to sustainable, transformative growth?

To contribute to this important discussion, this event will also coincide with the London launch of our timely and vital essay series, Sri Lanka: from debt default to transformative growth. This publication features insights from leading Sri Lankan and international experts, offering 27 proposals on how to steer the country towards sustainable, equitable growth.

This hybrid event will provide expert analysis of the post-election landscape, exploring key policy debates surrounding the role of the state and market in driving Sri Lanka’s economic transformation.

Speakers

  • Dirk Willem te Velde.jpg

    Dirk Willem te Velde

    Principal Research Fellow and Director of the International Economic Development Group, ODI Global (Moderator)

  • Indrajit Coomaraswamy Former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

    Indrajit Coomaraswamy

    Former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka

  • Ganeshan Wignaraja.png

    Ganeshan Wignaraja

    Visiting Senior Fellow, ODI Global

  • Sujeetha-Jegajeevan

    Sujeetha Jegajeevan

    Director of Research, Central Bank of Sri Lanka

  • Shea Wickramasingha

    Shea Wickramasingha

    Group Managing Director, CBL Group, Sri Lanka

  • Kunal Sen

    Kunal Sen

    Director, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

  • PhyllisPapadavid-feature

    Phyllis Papadavid

    Senior Research Fellow, ODI Global

  • Ravinatha-P

    Ravinatha Ariyasingha

    Executive Director, Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies and Former Foreign Secretary of Sri Lanka

  • Gregory Smith

    Gregory Smith

    Lead Economist, World Bank Sri Lanka

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Article Sri Lanka – post-elections 2024

Power To The People

Reflecting on the recent elections in both Sri Lanka and the US is an interesting exercise particularly because, as the two countries now have synchronized election cycles, comparisons and contrasts are readily evident.

The US has presented itself for decades as a beacon of democracy: progressive and inclusive and an upholder of human rights within its borders. However, the prospective 47th president of the US and the team he is appointing seem to be getting ready to preside over the demolition of democracy and the erosion of many rights and freedoms, particularly for the most vulnerable groups in the country.

By endorsing the rights of billionaires, tech bros and capitalists; asserting the rights of those who have committed multiple atrocities against women and girls; and prioritizing the territorial and occupancy rights of proud white Anglo European Americans over the multi-hued peoples who have until now dreamed the American dream, the new administration is going to complete what the thugs who assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2021 began. They play exclusionary politics inciting human fear, focusing on a message of survivalism and thriving on adversarial combat, heedless of the destruction that ensues and even glorying in that destruction, describing any challenge to their bullish, self-serving narrative as “whining” and “fake news”.

This hostile takeover siege of the US mindscape has destroyed what the country has taken centuries to build, in just a few desperate years.

Qualified representatives 

In contrast, Sri Lanka is emerging from a haphazard 75 years since independence with a record number of female politicians in the new government including for the first time several ministers representing the minority Tamil community. These are educated, professional people, ready to lead and mindful of their responsibilities to the people who have elected them. Few of them come from elite or privileged backgrounds and the nepotism and cronyism that characterized the previous administrations are not likely to take hold in what is clearly a meritocracy.

Their first act, now that the results of voting are being finalized, is to request that all incoming MPs undergo training and familiarization with legal and political protocols and procedures during a three day period of briefings and training.

A second positive step is that no MPs will be permitted to hire spouses, children or family members as part of their personal team of advisors or ministerial staff.

The instant recall of politically appointed diplomats and government representatives after the presidential election a few weeks ago was also a clear sign of the consistency with which new policies are being enacted.

Politicians and those claiming to be dedicated to enacting the will of the people are now being held accountable. Performance reviews are clearly being undertaken. Those who demonstrably do not add any value to the political process or the country’s reputation are being disqualified. The swamp, to use a recent American metaphor, is being effectively drained.

There is a lot at stake for both countries. The societal outrage that built up in Sri Lanka in 2022, erupting in the aragalaya, has been effectively channelled in a positive way in the formal election of this new government. The election has completed the dissolution of corrupt and outdated governance that the aragalaya began.

A new accountability 

However, the people have suffered a great deal over the past several years and will be expecting very high standards of performance from the new administration. The abolition of the executive presidency will be a crucial first step and a test of political integrity.

The united scorn of the voters against the previous incumbents was shown not only by the noticeably low number of votes that previous MPs, particularly the loudest and most notable, received at these polls. It was an extraordinary sight to see, posted by every major print newspaper’s social media page, pictures of the unsuccessful candidates with the words Out!, Lost!, Gone! and Failed! stamped over the pictures of their faces. Only the most brazen of these people have sought to get a seat in parliament via the national lists, having not secured enough personal votes at the election.

Authoritarianism is expressed most openly when any individual wields absolute executive power and this has been demonstrated multiple times in many countries. If a leader has the support of a majority, they often believe they can dismiss or ignore the voices of the minority who did not support them. The people as a whole are given lip service and are only listened to once every few years as election dates approach and ignored wholesale for all the years between. If voters are uneducated regarding their rights and responsibilities, the true power of democracy is white-anted until only a facade remains providing no shelter in any storm.

The US is chaotically lurching towards authoritarianism and the cowboys and cowgirls at the helm seem to be glorying in the thrills involved in the public demise of the values of the founding fathers. In the name of patriotism, a return to colonialist settler values is being imposed: Christian prayers are to be said in all schools; the erasure of difference or divergence – whether related to sexual preference or neurological status – which is called dangerous or abnormal or deviant, enforced; and the forcible annihilation of pronouns and gender identity and reproductive choices that challenge the idea of anyone not wanting to populate the country in a binary way undertaken resulting in a retrofitted society with trad wives subservient to masculinist husbands – A Handmaid’s Tale territory. And fueling this retrograde is the backlash against feminism, the rise of incels and the normalization of “high value” and “high worth” standards used to describe men and women but being sourced only in terms of the income a person earns rather than their character and their conduct.

Reprehensible conduct 

The discourse adopted by the incoming team of robo bros is indicative of the way they intend to dominate the Disunited States. Mockery by stereotypes: Childless cat ladies. Disabled people whose vulnerabilities are seen as offensive by those who are not disabled. Darkies. Savages. Trash people. Garbage people. Losers. Failures. All these phrases are fascist projections of disturbed and contemptuous mindsets that identify physical perfection as being exclusively embodied by seven foot tall, super rich, blue eyed blondes.

North America, unbelievably to the people proud to be American in the past, may become part of a protectionist Aryan hegemony like something out of space fiction. Narrowing its citizens’ minds, suppressing books that threaten its sense of historical evangelical destiny, tarnishing its legacy as an upholder of human dignity while shining up the dollar signs and appointing sex offenders as national role models. Calling itself a “First World Country” with an International Dial Code of #1 while its leaders intimidate their own voting citizens and encourage abuse and violence towards those who fall outside the criteria now being imposed on them. It starts with illegal and undocumented immigrants and mass deportations. But as anyone who has ever deep cleaned their own house will testify, cleaning and clearing and de-cluttering can become addictive after awhile. Where does it stop?

In contrast, Sri Lanka appears at last to be positively embracing diversity and opening itself to the reality that people of varied experiences and capacities can grow in leadership. The active and dynamic citizens’ justice movements that have emerged in adverse circumstances have created an ecosystem which has determinedly brought increased awareness of human dignity and the rights of the vulnerable into the social and cultural landscape, questioning the traditional patriarchal values and the feudal class systems which have suppressed the contributions of many talented individuals. The economic hardships suffered by the citizens over the past years have tested their resilience and they take nothing for granted. Social division and the politics of contempt and derision is something that no one wants, having been collectively jerked around like puppets by racist ideologues for decades.

Unlike the citizens of the US, most Sri Lankans do not feel entitled to anything they have not earned including international recognition and respect. On a personal note, US citizens engaged in international discussions on social media seem to automatically assume that every post on FB is referring to them and that they and their concerns are the center of every thought and conversation. It is over-reach. The whole world is not a backdrop for their narcissistic motion picture. Any nation which ceases to look beyond its borders will stagnate.

I predict that, if Sri Lanka’s financial and economic situation continues to improve, through collective focused effort a far greater autonomy can be achieved by this small island nation, which consistently punches above its weight in the talent, creativity and capability of its people. It will be possible for a better awareness of human rights and the dignity of citizens to grow in a more stable country where corruption in all its brazen and insidious forms is stymied.

Once the swamp is cleared and the sovereign soil reclaimed, we could find that very soil, steeped in decades of mud and mire, offering fertile possibilities. The national flower, the lotus, which famously emerges and flourishes in the most dire conditions, will then become an even more meaningful symbol for us all. Then people seeking better prospects need not look overseas for them.

What could we see happening, if the brakes and limitations that have operated on this country are summarily dissolved and removed?

What will we see when people frustrated by corruption, cronyism and normalized low standards of conduct, are incentivized and supported to become their best selves? This will be the self governance that a former colony has always wanted. In shining contrast to nations who have built their wealth on colonial exploitation and forceful slave labor and laid the foundations of their societies on the oppression of others.

Examples of what to be, what not to b

Sri Lankan people today are going in a sociopolitical direction that will place them in a better position than bigger and wealthier nations in the years to come. 22.4 million people are far easier to manage, educate and effectively resource than 334.9 million. And after everything we have collectively experienced, we will hopefully start to unshackle ourselves from the horrors in our own history, both imposed and self-created.

Lessons have been learned by Sri Lanka, which we hope will not be forgotten in the years to come. However, the US is likely to be an example to the world, over the next few years, of the dangers of indulging in the compulsions of our baser selves. We can watch it all on television as an example of what not to be. When Elon Musk boastfully tweeted “Game. Set. And match” in the immediate aftermath of the US election, it was the crowing of a death watch not only over the Democratic Party but the heralding of a new dark ages. America the self-styled beacon of democracy will see many of its cherished values wither in that darkness. Its much vaunted wealth and economic force are now being marshalled by grabbing individuals to whom a sense of inclusive community is anathema.

The country that gave us 150 years of great literature, cinema, art and culture, which housed and supported some of the greatest expressions of human talent and artistry the world has ever seen, which embraced people from all cultures and races in the 20th century and provided a place in which they could reach their fulfillment, is now shutting its borders and dumbing itself down, preparing to be presided over by a bunch of stormtroopers who learned their moral values from computer games and pornography.

It’s not entertainment. It’s a tragic display. We in South Asia have endured this kind of abusive politics for decades. We would not wish it on anyone.

In Sri Lanka, we used to call ourselves a resplendent land. In the years to come, we are set to shine again. We will be over here, being our best selves, raising the value of our passports. And questioning anyone who tries to come here illegally. After 500 plus years of colonisation, we know what bullying looks like. We have a right to defend ourselves and a right to prosper. The true enemy of the people until recently has been our own misplaced aspirations, learned helplessness and the ease with which we have been manipulated.

Recent events have shown us the capacity of people power to change the trajectory of a country’s future. Vistas of splendor and prosperity proved to be mirages and evaporated in Sri Lanka in the heat of 2022. A sense of awareness of the bitter suffering and frustration of the collective was felt throughout the country and is now being acted on in a unifying way which recognises and respects individual difference and diverse experience.

In contrast, in the US and in contradiction of every principle of democracy, hierarchy and social division are evident: public discourse is increasingly acrimonious and incendiary and people are being labelled as “The 1%” and “The Rest”, as winners and losers. The sneering and contempt which have become normalized in the past decade between adherents of the two major political parties are being modelled by its leaders.

The next few years will see one country course correcting, engaged in self monitoring and conscious reform and the other violently sweeping away many advancements in the name of “strength” and “national pride”. Actions will speak loudly and it is the actions of both sets of leaders that will impact the citizens of both countries.

The people who have tried to game the system will lose. Politics is not a game played for entertainment. It is people’s lives and hopes that are at stake. The winners in this new era are those who will care for something more than themselves and their own fame and aggrandizement. Any leader who does not embody and enact the best values of the whole populace is a loser before his own inauguration, no matter what demands and delusions are bellowed through megaphones and magaphones.

NR

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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.

New publication on Sri Lanka

Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka

Edited By Kanchana N. RuwanpuraAmjad Mohamed Saleem

2024, Routledge

ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka offers a comprehensive survey of issues facing the island country and an overview delineating some key moments in the country’s contemporary polity, economy, and sociality.

This book outlines aspects and influences foundational to understanding a country defined by its economic and political turmoil, and rift with public distrust in today’s shifting geopolitics. Chapters by various established scholars highlight this book’s pivotal contribution in situating Sri Lanka’s turmoil and deprivation in this current conjuncture.

The handbook is structured in seven parts:

  • Nations and Nationalism
  • Politics, State and Institutions
  • Economy and Political Economy
  • Work and Life
  • Environment and Environmental Politics
  • Society, Social Systems, and Culture
  • Moment of Flux, Looking Ahead

Each part includes on average six chapters covering the social sciences and humanities to survey emerging and cutting-edge areas of the study of Sri Lanka. Multi-disciplinary in focus, the book also includes an introductory section and concluding section, which creates the space and platform for senior, mid-ranking, and junior academics to engage in dynamic conversation with each other about contemporary Sri Lanka. Including scholarship from Sri Lankan experts, the handbook creates academic output, which chimes with broader calls in academia on decolonising the academic landscape.

An important reference work, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students from wideranging academic disciplines and a focus on Sri Lanka, Asian and South Asian studies, sociology, environmental politics, development, labour, management, political economy and anthropology.

Open access version available at: Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka | Kanchana N. Ruwanpura,

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Literature from Sri Lanka – biography

Thanuja

A Memoir of Migration and Transition

Thanuja Singam

Bloomsbury, India

Description

A Tamil refugee escaping the civil war in Sri Lanka, through India to Europe, Thanuja’s life is complicated by migration and gender transition. Confusion, pleasure and betrayal characterise the circuitous path to recognising herself as a woman. Gender reassignment surgery is a milestone, but there are difficulties ahead. In Thanuja’s words, ‘No one can even imagine what happens in a transwoman’s life. You cannot understand us with mainstream norms, laws, culture, literature and principles. We have been betrayed by history.’

This powerful memoir weaves family life, sexual awakening, work life, globe-spanning journeys and the navigation of state laws and regulations to present a fully human portrait of ambiguity and joyful contradiction, of a refugee claiming citizenship and of a transwoman claiming her body and dignity.

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