TOWARDS A NEW LAND POLICY IN THE KANDYAN REGIONS: from the Ceylon Land Commission of 1927-1928 to the Kandyan Peasantry Commission of 1949-1950.



By Eric Meyer



During the last two decades of colonial rule, diverse but convergent factors led to a redefinition of the land policy and practice of the British administration: first, during the boom of the mid-1920s, awareness of the contradiction between the huge demand for land for plantations and the limited land available for villagers; second, during the great slump of the 1930s, pressure exerted through an incipient representative system by a landless peasantry on a plantation sector weakened by the crisis; third, during the world war, the relaxation of rules combined with growing Sinhalese nationalist claims leading to Independence.

The decision to review the land policy was taken in 1927-1928 by the colonial Government, motivated by a combination of reasons:

  • Criticism, by a section of the westernized bourgeoisie adopting the nationalist stance and at the same time investing in the plantation economy, of the land policy based on the 1897 ordinance.
  • Desire of the colonial administration to rationalize and unify the management of land matters through an extension of the role of the Settlement department.
  • Atmosphere of political reforms encouraged by the Donoughmore commission
  • Political concern about possible peasant unrest.

Two valuable papers deal with the general issue of the factors behind the positions taken by the Land Commission: Vijaya Samaraweera, “Land as Patrimony”[1], and Mick Moore “The Ideological History of the Sri Lankan Peasantry”[2]. They question the defense of the ‘peasantry’ by a bourgeois-nationalist class of renters whose affluence was based on plantations which impinged on ‘peasant’ interests. What is missing in these papers is the detailed process by which the Land Commission came into being and took these positions. The following development will try to tackle the issue keeping in mind the general theories developed by these authors. Apart from the published reports of the commission, various memoranda, written and oral evidence collected by it, will be quoted extensively. These unpublished sources were available in the Colombo “old colonial secretariat” files (now the series 65 of the Sri Lanka National Archives) when I consulted them, and will be quoted under their original classification. 

The agrarian question seen by governor Clifford and the origins of the Land Commission

The genesis of the Land commission was recounted in 1930 in a dispatch sent to the Colonial office by the acting governor[3] : “There have always been spasmodic agitation in certain quarters against the working of the Waste lands ordinance as applied to chena lands in the Kandyan provinces. This agitation had in of recent years not been directed so much against the practice of the settlement department, whose fairness and equitable treatment of claimants inspired general confidence, as against the principles underlying the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 which were held to be unjust and inequitable, and also to a certain extent against the practice of some of the Revenue officers who were guided by the law and the existing law regulations”. In February 1927, a motion was passed in the Legislative council “ that in the opinion of this council the Land settlement officers should be instructed to give effect to evidence of long possession by periodical cultivation with fine grain of chena lands in the Kandyan districts not subject to taxation which lands are claimed as paraveni chenas”. The idea behind that motion was to ruin the presumption in favour of the Crown established by the ordinance of 1940. On the other hand,  “public attention was at that time becoming more and more focused upon the numbers of villagers who were becoming landless and the importance of taking early measures to secure that the villagers’ interests were not overlooked in the development of the colony’s lands and that everything possible was done to foster and maintain upon the land he class of small peasants”: the experiments tried in Batticaloa under the Peasant proprietary system and in Matara “served to concentrate attention upon this subject”. But the decisive factor was that “Sir Hugh Clifford was in full sympathy with this movement and in a paper read in March 1927 called attention to the urgent need of providing land for small holdings in the wet zone”.

What the official dispatch failed to disclose is a third factor, the intense pressure put on the government to sell Crown land for the extension of the plantations of rubber, coconut and tea, by the mid 1920s. This pressure was exerted more by Ceylonese entrepreneurs investing in rubber and coconut than by European planters who had dominated the land market during the previous decades, but at the same time a section of the Ceylonese nationalist press put the blame on the Government for favouring the big planters. The governor Hugh Clifford was Colonial secretary in 1912 and had been alerted to the land problems by John Fraser, the Settlement officer (see previous chapter on the history of the Settlement department). During his subsequent governorship (1925-1927), he rehearsed and put together his views, prompted by the debates of the time  A series of unpublished documents and discussions regarding applications for Crown lands for rubber in the interior of Kalutara district, and the sale of patanas in Uva, show the process which led him to convene a Land Commission.

The starting point was a memorandum (dated 26.03.1926) addressed to the Governor, after a private meeting with him, by Sir Marcus Fernando (1864-1936), an influential medical doctor turned businessman, closely connected with the powerful Karawa plantation owners of Panadura and Moratuwa, and politically conservative. The author pleaded for a speeding up of land sales by the Crown: “A stage has been reached in which fresh development of the planting industries are overdue and necessary for the healthy advancement of the colony. The spectacle of jungle or waste lands reaching 500 to 1000 Rs per acre is perilous both to the planter and the country (…) it is an unmistakable index of the fact that the demand for land is greatly in excess of the supply”. He added the usual argument of the colonial planters that “land should not lie idle” and he insisted on the necessity to propose allotments of different sizes in order to allow ‘middle class’ investors to coexist with large size entrepreneurs. The demand for tea and rubber mid country, for tea up-country, for coconut in the North Western province would necessitate “that large blocks of land be selected for alienation and cut up in large and small parcels (500, 50, 5 acres)”. The interests at stake were clearly expressed by another conservative politician involved in the plantation industry, F.A. Obeyesekere: “Many professional men in Ceylon have saved money and are anxious to invest it in land, but could not have a look in if blocks were more than 50 acres in extent” [4].

By the same time (April 1926), another influent Karawa plantation owner, C.E.A. Dias, applied to purchase an extensive block of Crown land (4,000 acres) in Pasdun/Hinidum pattu in the interior of the Kalutara and Galle districts (where about 10,000 acres were available), at a cost of not more than 75 Rs an acre, and the Revenue officer Burden approved the project, which was however abandoned after a critical paper titled ‘Rubber Eldorado’ was published in the Daily News (15.07.1926).  The previous year, at Dodampapitiya in the same district, an application by a European company (Lewis Brown) for 1,545 acres had been approved upon the decision of the Controller of Revenue (E.B. Alexander), in spite of  the criticism of the Panadura Mahajana Sabha, a nationalist association represented by C.E.V. Corea: in that area which was for a long time a reserved forest and was unreserved after debate, Alexander ruled that land should be sold in large blocks and the building of roads “and generally the development of the country” should be left to the estates. In another case, the Kalutara Mahajana Sabha, in August 1926, protested against the projected sale of 179 acres of Crown land by the same Burden to extend the Pimbura estate, very close to paddy fields and gardens, and the sale was stopped. [5]

In November 1926, Burden who was promoted Government Agent of the Uva province recommended the sale to the influent British planter S. Bostock of plots of Crown pasture land  (patana) adjoining his Aislaby estate, in spite of protests which, in his words “are always forthcoming in practically every instance of the survey of any considerable block of Crown patana in Udukinda and Yatikinda (…) The reservation of thousands of acres of patana for cattle grazing seems to me uneconomic in the extreme”. E.B. Alexander confirmed the sale, but the Udukinda Mahajana Sabha and the Legislative Council member D.H. Kotelawala protested, and a meeting was held at the Buddhist school of Bandarawela. The Daily News (6.01.1927) attacked the Government: “The government surrenders to the almighty planter (…) For all the high-sounding ideas that Sir H. Clifford absentmindedly proclaimed, there is and there will continue to be only one land policy in Ceylon, and that is to make the land safe for the exploiter (…) The day was not distant when coolie lines will be seen on the ruins of Kandyan village homes” . As a result, the sale was stalled.[6] 

The Governor commented these questions (16.10.1926) and discussed the issue with the acting Controller of Revenue Wait and the Settlement Officer Stace, underlining that “two quite opposite policies are being pressed upon us: a. The necessity for the speeding up of the sales of Crown land; and b. the advisability of restricting all future sales of Crown land to comparatively small blocks, with a view to the multiplication of peasant proprietors”. In congested areas the second option would be preferable, but that for lack of sufficient information a commission of enquiry would be necessary.

In his minute (7.11.1926), E.B. Alexander, Controller of revenue who was acting as Colonial secretary, thoroughly criticized the past land policy, or rather lack of policy. After a rather trite defense of the colonial project (“The development of states should be only regarded as a secondary consideration [but] on the other hand, the indigenous population is very lacking in enterprise, and it is in the interest of that population that facilities should be granted for enterprise to be brought in from outside”), he conceded two points:

“No reader of the report made by Mr. Lushington of the Indian Forest Services can fail to be impressed by the great mistakes made in the past in the disposal of crown land to the coffee and tea planters and to the serious consequences which have ensued in the diminution and contamination of the principal sources of water supply in Ceylon”.

“No student of the conditions which at present prevail in the districts in which the cultivation of the staple products (tea, rubber and coconut) is now being extended, can fail to observe without dismay the rapid exploitation of the villager and his expulsion from his ancestral land. The government has been powerless to check the almost universal demoralization which is resulting in Sabaragamuwa and elsewhere from the success which has attended the defiant and openly shameless practice of land grabbing. The government itself has had to surrender its claims to very large tracts of chena lands. Every boom in the prices of no matter what product is inevitably followed by a certain degree of demoralization [but] the demoralization would not have been so complete if the government had exercised a more energetic land policy. The weakness of Ceylon’s land policy is principally due to the absence of any cadastral survey of the island (…) Since the Waste lands ordinance was passed in 1897 and the Department of Land Settlement was inaugurated by H.E. West Ridgeway, succeeding administrations have given by comparison very little attention to land problems and very little encouragement to land settlement”.

He concluded that the only remedy was the development of the staff of the survey and the settlement department, and that a strong commission of inquiry could persuade the Legislative council to finance it.

The Governor, while admitting that the proposal raised “extremely difficult problems”, agreed with the creation of such a commission, stating that “the primary object of government is the multiplication of small holdings, provided steps can be taken to prevent improvident alienation” (10.12.1926).[7] In a further note on these affairs (12.01.1927), Clifford recognized that the previous policy of alienating large blocks in sparsely populated areas up-country for tea was not adapted to the development of rubber in already congested mid-country areas where it was done “without regard to the ultimate results of that policy (…) We are faced with the fact that the population of Ceylon has increased in a period of 70 years from about 1.7 million to well over 5 million souls, and it is precisely in the healthier part of the moist zone that this expansion has been greatest”. The past policy of speedy development of large estates should be abandoned in view of the enormous population growth in these areas, and a new policy planning should consider “the future expansion of agricultural peasantry” and encourage “its overflow to such areas of fertile Crown land as are still available”. “Our policy should be to encourage taking up of land by small local capitalists in comparatively speaking modest areas rather than dispose of it to big capitalists or to companies in large blocks. Our object should be to multiply the number of landholders among the indigenous population”.

On March 3rd 1927 the Legislative council decided to set up a commission to report on land laws, on the policy followed regarding alienation of Crown lands, and to make recommendations to provide for the protection of villagers and small holders. In the meantime, Clifford, who was to leave his post in June 1927, elaborated his position in three documents, one public, two others of restricted circulation, which he sent to the Colonial office in London, explaining that his intention was to “clear away misunderstanding between publicists and the planting community, European and Ceylonese, in exposing the fallacy of the theory that the latter, which for near a century has built up the prosperity of Ceylon and that of its indigenous inhabitants, are parasites draining the island of its wealth; in making clear the folly and futility of the attempts so frequently made by Ceylonese politicians of recent times to treat purely economic questions from an acute angle of racial prejudice and animosity; in showing that there is ample land of 1st class quality still available in the most fertile areas of the island alike for the development by capitalists and for the occupation of a very large number of self-respecting and self-supporting peasant proprietor”[8].

In ‘Some reflections’, a defense pro domo of the British land policy meant for the general public, Clifford first tried to clear the colonial administration of the suspicion that it favoured planters at the cost of villagers in the process of sale of Crown lands, and that its policy to defend Crown rights was too strict. Then he attempted to counter the school of thought which held that tea and rubber plantations “are a parasitic growth” which “owe their existence to a systematic series of acts of expropriation and spoliation”. Such a theory was historically untrue according to Clifford, first because the prosperity of Ceylon was proportional to the prosperity of the plantation sector up-country (timber felling and carpentry, vegetable and poultry, peasant coffee) and also because coffee and later tea was planted in sparsely populated or uninhabited areas, and because the villagers were not compelled by poverty to work on estates; this theory “tends to promote ill-feeling between different sections of the community whose economic interests are inextricably interlocked. With the development of rubber and coconut, ‘in the low country today the prosperity of the villagers is usually in direct ratio to their proximity to large estates”

Land grabbing was according to him a recent phenomenon connected with “the phenomenally rapid growth of the rubber industry” (adding that the same process occurred with the extension of the coconut industry) which created a demand which the principles of preservation of Crown land could not satisfy; hence “delays which men in a frantic hurry to avail themselves ere too late of the opportunities offered to them by successive rubber booms”. He then undertook to explain the mechanism of appropriation of chenas through sales by villagers: “Considerable areas of land, the chena rights over which had been declared to be the communal property of certain villages under the late Lord Stanmore’s Forest Ordinance 10 of 1885, were simply sold to land speculators; and the Government, finding itself confronted by men actually in possession, to whom this transfer of rights had voluntarily been made by villagers, was usually compelled to complete the purchase by accepting for the Crown’s rights to the soil the half improved value” [this is not exactly what the chena settlement and the Certificate of quiet possession system were] “in this way extensive areas, the right of user over which the Government had sought to secure in perpetuity to the permanent rural population, were sold by the latter to persons who were often unconnected with their community”. “The men who made these purchases in some instances retained for themselves and subsequently converted into rubber plantations the land which they had thus secured, while others sold them as speedily as possible at greatly increased prices to the owners of adjoining estates (…) The villagers all too often made with these purchasers of lands bargains of a highly improvident character” but “it has occurred that the astute villager had sold the same piece of land more than once, while the issue of extracts from the wattoru registers had to be discontinued  because copies of the same extracts were constantly being produced as proof of private title to a number of different chenas in different locations in the same wasama (…) In all this however I am unable to find any evidence of the villagers having been ‘expropriated’; and as regards ‘spoliation’, their own improvidence  was mainly to blame.  Though much of the land purchased from them eventually became the property of one or another of the big rubber companies, or of individual European or Ceylonese estate owners, the speculative work of buying up doubtful titles from villagers was for the most part conducted by their own countrymen”.  Clifford conceded that Government failed “to devise effective means of preventing the sale by villagers of chena lands” but that it was a difficult task “for a handful of Revenue officers to stand between a dense rural population and their own improvidence”. He concluded – two years before the depression – that “the real solid base of the economic prosperity and stability of Ceylon is her highly organized agricultural industries (…) broadened by the recent creation of the rubber industry and the expansion of the coconut industry” and that the growth of the indigenous population was proof of the benefits of colonization. He however could not support the view of the planters pressing for “the speeding up of the sale of Crown lands”.

In his ‘Message to the members of the Finance committee’, Clifford was more explicit on his views regarding rural development and the relations between the plantation industry and the peasant society; he pleaded for a system of allocation of land aimed at developing a strong peasant proprietor class: “When I returned to Ceylon at the end of 1925, I was concerned to find that Ceylonese peasants in ever increasing numbers were beginning to find work as wage earners on estates, more especially in the Low country. This I definitely regard as regrettable. In my opinion only economic necessity and sheer inability to obtain land on his own account will compel a Sinhalese villager to seek employment for wage on any estate, and the scheme which I have put forward should gradually have the effect of draining off from the estates of the island all Sinhalese who are not employed upon technical jobs, and the conversion of them into peasant proprietors”. This dualistic conception was popular at that time in reformist colonial circles and was theorized by Julius Boeke in 1930[9].

In his ‘Memorandum for the colonial conference’ Clifford enlarged the scope of his analysis by pointing out the impact of rubber development: “For the first time since the agricultural development of Ceylon had been undertaken by Europeans, lands which could be put to profitable use by the indigenous peasantry of the country came into demand for conversion into properly organized and managed estates (…) It is clear that the further indefinite growth of large tea, rubber and coconut estates cannot continue to be promoted and encouraged unless the Government of Ceylon is prepared to face the prospect, long ere another seventy years have come and gone, of a congested population in a tropical agricultural country, with no suitable land available for its use. Were such a state of things to come about, the vast number of Sinhalese peasants, who would thus be rendered landless in their own native country – while huge areas were owned and cultivated by landowners the bulk of whom are of alien origin – would have against the colonial government (which had taken no measures to guard against this contingency) a legitimate grievance of the first magnitude”. It is to be noted that memorandum was not discussed at the London colonial conference, because its propositions could raise a hornet’s nest: the staff of the Colonial Office objected that “the question bristles with difficulties” and let the matter drop.

The reports of the Land Commission

The commission included elected members of the Legislative council and colonial administrators and sat for more than one year, during which time the Donoughmore commission sent by London enquired on the institutional future of Ceylon : announced in April 1927 by the governor Clifford, nominated in August after he left, sitting in Ceylon from 13 November 1927 to 18 January 1928 during which time the governorship was vacant, the Colonial Secretary Fletcher acting. The reports of the Land commission were printed as sessional papers of the Legislative council, but their information should be supplemented by the unpublished evidence collected by the commission[10], the commentaries on its proposals[11], the memoranda received by it from various individuals or bodies[12], which form a rich uncensored corpus of documents.

Its first report[13] insisted on the urgent necessity “to prevent the improvident alienation by villagers of their land pending settlement of their titles (…) such alienations are proceeding on a large scale usually at an undervalue”, through an ordinance prohibiting the alienation and mortgage of unsettled lands in the Kandyan provinces. It was based on a detailed report by the Government Agent at Kurunegala titled ‘the effect of Land settlement on the alienation of village lands’[14], which quoted numerous cases of settled villages where land sales had ceased.

The third report was much more detailed, and its proposals, reflecting the interests and the patronizing attitude of the emerging national bourgeoisie, led to a number of commentaries and criticisms[15]. Its main findings were:

  • The urgent need to make reserves for the present and future requirements of the indigenous population
  • That special provision should be made to reserve blocks of 10 to 50 acres for “middle and professional class, too wealthy to be classed as villagers, too poor to compete with big capitalists and companies (…) It is in our opinion distinctly for the benefit of the peasants that men of the educated classes should hold and cultivate estates of medium size (…) producing employment for the peasants and securing the residence among the peasants of men of culture and position”
  • That auction sale of Crown land be abandoned, that a Land registry replaced the Deed registry, and that Land Settlement operations be suspended pending the definition of what is a paraveni chena.
  • The complex legal mechanism of Land Settlement had led to various legal decisions which might be contradictory and rendered difficult for a claimant to dispute the Crown title to a chena. (The report included a detailed note on the Land Settlement operations which insisted on the principle that the field work was never left to headmen, and described the process of a model settlement whose effect is “to substitute individual ownership of definite surveyed separate blocks for a vague claim to a probably disputed undivided share in a large tract”. The final decision was always based on the merit of each case, but the settlement officer had no compulsive authority and if the claimant did not sign the agreement the case was referred to the court of law: “it frequently happens that a speculator buys up a small share and then attempts to grab the whole of the chenas and oust the villagers. The Settlement officer can say to him: ‘if you refuse to sign an agreement accepting your actual share, I shall urge the presumption that the land is at disposal of the Crown”)
  • Discontent created by settlement resulted from the difficulty to prove title to chenas by prescription, while in the past cultivation of chenas was a customary right attached to the cultivation of paddy fields, possibly on a communal basis: “For many generations the Kandyan villagers have been allowed to cultivate the village chenas according to their needs without interference”. The creation of individual rights to specific chenas thus affected the relations inside the village community.
  • Increasing the number of Settlement officers would help to “remove the cause which at present tempts the villager to sell his chenas, the uncertainty of title”
  • Acquisition of land sold to non-villagers should be possible for redistribution in case of landlessness

The following reports[16] dealt with the special demands of officers or of planters. The situation in the North Western province was discussed in the 5th report, following the demand of Hodson, the Government Agent, to stop land transactions in Wanni, Devamedi, Hiriyala and Madure, where speculation was maximal; the proposal was made to prevent speculative purchases in advance of settlement at very low prices (as in the case of Kiribamuna in Hiriyala Hatpattu purchased by an outsider at 2.5Rs per acre). The Commission decided to accept the proposal in spite of the opposition of Madawela and Senanayake who objected that the move could prevent the villagers from clearing their ‘paraveni chenas’; but the real reason behind their opposition was that it would freeze the land market in the area in which Madawela was interested.[17]

The final report of the commission[18] proposed the creation of a post of Land Commissioner, the institution of a ‘mapping out’ system instead of the application system in order to plan the alienation of Crown land, and of a system of unalienable tenure to prevent sales to outsiders, and the recognition by the Settlement department of the principle of paraveni chenas at least in the North Western Province.

The ‘Planters Raj’ fighting back during the sittings of the Land Commission

Just before and after the departure of Clifford, using the opportunity of an interregnum, and during the sittings of the Land Commission, attempts were made by planters and their allies to influence the government. The speech made in March 1927 before the Tea traders Association of the European planters by their representative at the Legislative Council, Thomas L. Villiers (1869-1959), is typical[19]: “There is no excuse more irritating than that of land being required for purpose of grazing (…) To let it stand idle when as everyone agrees  it is insufficient to grow and enrich good sized cattle, better could be made of the land”. The private letter sent by A. Wickwar, the Surveyor General, to M. Fletcher, the Colonial secretary acting as Governor, to persuade him to reverse the ban on Crown patana sales in Uva, shows the close connection between the planters and a section of the colonial administration [20]: “In accordance with your request made at Diyatalawa [the British army camp in Uva province] when we were discussing land matters, I now send the details of three separate applications for Crown lands, all of which have been refused. Two of them adjoin Ainslaby Estate, owned by Mr. Bostock, and the third adjoins Malwatte Estate owned by my brother O.S. Wickwar and myself. My reason for submitting Mr. Bostock application is that I was in charge of his estate when the land was definitively refused (…) The chief headman recommended the sale and inquired into the petition which two or three villagers put before him (…) Third case is an application for 12 acres by O.S. Wickwar, the land to the north and south of this lot is already the property of Malwatte”.

Another Villiers, Evelyn Charles (1884-1968), the superintendent of a large group of estates in the Kelani Valley (Hemingford) had applied for lands in the Kägalla (Humpitakanda) and Ratnapura districts (Badahelgoda) and through his relations, he thought he could overcome the restrictions put by the Land Commission to such sales: the lands should not be sold as long as ‘mapping out’ of the localities was not acted. In a private correspondence addressed to the private secretary of the Governor (28.03.1929), he wrote : “I had been told by the Controller of Revenue (E.B. Alexander) I could have the land  for 150 or 100 Rs respectively; after 3 ½ years I get a letter which puts the value of land at double what I had been told (…) I want these lands settled on me at the rate I was promised them by Alexander”. The new Controller of Revenue (Tyrell) reported that such a promise by Alexander or any other was ‘impossible’. Finally the land was put up for lease at 135 Rs an acre in May 1929, and E.C. Villiers was in 1931 appointed by Government to the State Council as representative of the European planters….[21]

A similar case of planter resistance was offered by the actions of L. Archdale, superintendent of a Kägalla estate (Lassehena) and speculator in land in his spare time, who had acquired cheaply from a local aristocrat, T.B. Morahaela, upon a contested sannasa, ninda lands, which he wanted to resell with a profit against the decision of the Land Commission to prevent alienation of unsettled lands. The Revenue officer and the Settlement officer had refused the sale qualified by them of ‘purely speculative claim’ but Archdale had obtained the authorization by the Executive council on the advice of the Controller of Revenue and of Sir Francis Molamure, representative of the Kandyans, closely connected with the influent families (Ellawala, Mideniya), who held that “the word ‘unsettled land’ did not apply to nindagam, viharegam or devalegam which have been recognized as such by Government by entering them in the Service Tenures Register[22]. This was contrary to the constant doctrine of the Settlement department expressed by the Settlement officer Fox in a letter of 12.12.1919 quoted in the report of the officers.

The law firm De Sarams was entrusted by a number of planters to defend them. In Denawaka Udakada (Ratnapura district), 218 acres were purchased by A.M.C. Rajasuriya, resold to Dr S.C. Paul who resold again to the Pelmadulla Rubber Co. led the Settlement Officer to comment: “As regards the preamble of the new land ordinance, its object is in brief to stop the traffic in village lands. One way to achieve this end is the prevention of sales by villagers, but a surer way is to prevent the transfer of village claims by a landbroker to a company. The broker himself has not as a rule the capital to enable him to open the land, and convert vague village claims into for example a valuable rubber estate. I was under the impression that the intention of the land commission was to prevent such sales by this ordinance. If it was not so, the ordinance loses a great deal of its effect.” [23]. In Kattange, a similar operation was done by one Mr. Ingram who purchased village shares for resale to the same rubber company. In Waleboda, a very poor devalegama on the borders of the Ratnapura district the beneficiary was the Anglo-American Direct Trading company who had purchased unsettled lands from S.D. Mahawalatenne who had pressed the nilakarayo to sell to him. His heirs J.C. Ratwatte (Dissave and shroff of a bank) and Barnes Ratwatte (the Ratemahatmaya) had not been able to perfect the title :“a purely speculative sale” according to the Government Agent Millington, but finally authorized as in the case of Archdale.[24] In another case, at Delwala, the firm on behalf of the Grand Central Rubber company put such a pressure on Government to open a land which was not legally settled on it that it had to refer the issue to the staff of the Colonial Office in London, which commented (Cowell): “We do not want the Secretary of State to be drawn into a political controversy as to the propriety of the transfer of lands in violation of recommendations of the Land Commission (…) We are skating on rather thin ice”[25]

The evidence collected from planters and other witnesses by the Land commission, and the questions and interventions of its members, especially D.S. Senanayake, G.E. Madawela and D.B. Jayatilaka, offer a valuable source to understand the conflicting interests at stake[26]. Marcus Fernando reiterated (21.03.1928) his views expressed in his memorandum of 1926, even opposing the idea of 50 acre blocks for middle class Ceylonese defended by D.S. Senanayake and C.V. Brayne: “It is only the rich man who can cultivate tea and rubber with any degree of success”; In the case of coconut, “in the Kurunegala district some years ago land could be bought at 50 Rs an acre, you have to pay 200 or 300 Rs now; you must reduce the cost of land by giving greater opportunities for alienation (…) I think it is objectionable to demarcate village lands, separate them for present and future use and place them in the hands of trustees”. Fernando added that “the trouble is that different government agents have different policies, one will alienate lands which his predecessor had refused”. Finally he accepted the idea that big and small planters could benefit from each other “the peasant holders will plant their holdings while working in the large estates, and these as well as middle class capitalists will participate in the road making and medical aid work, which only the large capitalists can successfully inaugurate and maintain in the pioneer development of a forest area”. Madawela “remarked that almost every clerk who went to the Kurunegala kacceri or courts bought a small piece of land, thus making provision for life”.

The deputation of the Planters Association of Ceylon started with demands concerning local applications for land (notably in Uva) and then strongly opposed the proposals of the 3rd report. Their position was that “there is no real shortage of land nor any likelihood of shortage; the fault really lies in the villager’s lack of energy”. To that D.S. Senanayake and D.B. Jayatilaka objected that there was difficulty to find land for village expansion in the wet zone, which was contested by the planter Coombe who insisted that “planters who have bought land and put it in better use than villagers should not be dispossessed for the benefit of village population”. “I consider it a very serious matter, when the commission begins to talk of taking land away from estates and settling it on villagers”. Another planter, E.C. Villiers, affirmed that “we have never seen cases where villagers have actually been stranded, they still keep their paddy fields and they still have a certain amount of chena land round their villages, but they apparently prefer work in the neighboring estates to the precarious livelihood they make out of their own land”, while Coombe admitted that “there are villages in certain parts of the country where all the surrounding land has been sold” but that it did not justify a general policy of land redemption for villagers. Clarke, another planter, tried to prove that plantations and villages can ‘advance side by side’, taking the case of Uva where villagers worked on estates and increased the productivity of their paddy fields at the same time: “It is not a case of turning the villager into a coolie, he works for a part of his time on the estates and devotes the rest to the development of his own land (…) Are you going to penalize estates for the increase of population in the villages?” The deputation considered that the government should compel the villagers to develop their lands: “If the owner does not care to develop it, he ought to be dispossessed (…) we regard the land as an asset of the colony, and anybody not making proper use of it must be prepared to hand it over to someone who will.” Incidentally, a remark made by D.S. Senanayake during the session showed that the anti-Indian sentiments of the Sinhalese elite so conspicuous during the next decade predated the great depression: he proposed that financial aid from a State bank would be offered to the indigenous population but that Indians (notably enriched head kanganies) should be excluded to avoid attracting more Indians to the island “competing with bona fide villagers (…) There will be competition between Indians and middle-class Ceylonese” Opposing this position, the planters defended the principle that Indians were British citizens as well as Ceylonese.

The legal firm of De Sarams represented by Leslie de Saram gave evidence on 11.05.1928, on the Mahawalatenne affair at Waleboda, mentioning that there was a lot of bickering between the Ratwatte heirs. Jayatilaka then raised the question of litigation between private parties after settlement and De Saram confirmed that “As soon as the Crown is eliminated the field is clear for the speculator”. The question of the bona fide villager transforming the chena into a garden is then raised as opposed to the case of chena cultivation with the intention of asserting title against the Crown with a view to sale to outsider, and Madawela rehearses his theory of paraveni chena lands “there are well defined chena lands which are periodically cultivated as a matter of fact”

Next came the deputation of the Sabaragamuwa planter’s Association (A.W. Ruxton, L.B. de Mel, D.M. Berry, A.E.H. Trimer), who asked for the acceleration of settlement and land sales with a settlement officer under their control. The discussion then opposed the planters who stated (with veiled satisfaction) that the villagers no longer cultivated chenas which did not pay and preferred work on estates and having a small garden, and the Ceylonese members (Wickramanayake and Jayatilaka) who objected to “driving the villagers into estates as coolies only without any land” and insisted that “the villagers must be given chenas”. De Mel insisted on speedy settlement or even no settlement at all: “The man who opens up the land will take the risk (…) What is the objection to a portion of a very large area being alienated to and being planted by anybody who is willing to spend the money?” Jayatilaka and Wikramanayake denounced land speculation at the cost of the villager, “who cannot fight the capitalist when he is backed by the chief headman. That is what we are out to prevent”.

The session of 27.06.1927 heard the deputation of the Low Country Products Association, led by H.L. De Mel and C.E.A. Dias, who pleaded for “a complete alteration of the system of Crown land sales” in order to release more lands for development, in small and large blocks; the idea being that it would provide employment to the neighboring villagers, who would in their turn open small holdings – a trickle-down effect.  The long exchange of arguments during these two sessions revealed the rift between the Goyigama-Buddhist minded Ceylonese such as D.B. Jayatilaka, a staunch defender of paddy cultivation and idealized village life, and the big Karawa capitalist minded Ceylonese planters, such as L.B. De Mel, insisting that “paddy cultivation cannot be carried out on a business basis”. The interests of the big Ceylonese planters were the same as those of the British planters and the section of the colonial administration which backed them, while the position of the nationalist leaders converged with that of the reformist administrators: witness the evolution towards land reformism of D.S. Senanayake, who in the early 1920s was supporting the planters interests and changed his mind as a result of his experience as a member of the Land Commission.[27]  

A more radical position was defended before the commission by Kandyan representatives, who denounced the ‘hemming-in’ of the villages by the big estates up country, and the land grabbing activities of outsiders, specifically Muslim traders and enriched kanganis (estate foremen of Indian origin)[28]. H.W. Mediwaka, the English educated son of a chief headman of Bintenna, member of the staff of Trinity College, socially minded, gave a very long evidence on two sessions. He had made a study of ‘low-caste’ villages near the ancient capital Gampola,  surrounded by estates which came close to the paddy fields: “the estates thus formed a ring round the villages, cutting off the villagers from the unopened lands beyond the estates” “I found that there was practically no room between the paddy fields and the estate, even for the purpose of building houses. Houses were often in a string one by the other, and the coolie lines were often shoved right into the center of village properties”. A tank was included: “every part of its bed was now covered with rubber trees”.  “Under the old system of government, if the property was confiscated from a Kandyan it was given to another Kandyan. Now the position is different when it comes to chena lands; it is granted that the government has a right to sell the land to anybody it likes, the land goes out of the hands of the Kandyans, the Tamil kangani maybe comes in and buys the land”. Mediwaka asked for the possibility in the case of necessity for Government to redeem land sold to outsiders, accusing the settlement system set up by the Ordinance of 1897 to have made the tenure of lands insecure with the result that the Kandyans have sold their lands before settlement instead of risking confiscation: “speculators realizing this position make the most of the situation”

According to a memorandum presented to the Commission by the ‘Kandyan National Assembly’ (“Land policy in the Kandyan kingdom”, by M.B. Galagoda), there was no Crown land at all, since the gabadagam had been sold, the nindagam and koralegam belonging to the people and the Crown had no right to sell the highlands of the people. “The government of H.M. sold most part of the forest and chena lands, which formed part of the purappadu [reserved for the increasing population] and malapalu [devolved on the state as the result of extinction of families] lands to foreigners at nominal prices on the plea of developing the country and used the money realized in opening roads and building bridges for the purpose of enhancing the value of the properties so sold”. The memorandum denounced the arbitrary confiscation of Temple lands and the appropriation of chenas of koralegam, and “suggested that all land alienated to foreigners by Government within village boundaries will be repurchased by government and set apart to the gam to which they originally belonged” and that the laws prohibiting the sale of land to outsiders be enforced. [29]

The critical reactions of the colonial administration[30]

The Revenue officers who were asked to comment on the proposals of the Commission were generally critical. Some of them held views similar to those of the planters: Hobday, Assistant Government Agent at Kägalla, minimized the situation of landlessness: “In the district, the great majority of villagers have land in spite of extensive alienations. In the more remote parts of the district, especially in the Peak Wilderness country the villagers would be greatly benefitted from the opening out of a few large estates. It would in my opinion be improvident and arbitrary to prohibit completely the sale of any more Crown lands to capitalists. After all it is the capitalist who makes good use of the land and the peasant who spoils it. One cannot but suspect that where commissioners speak of ‘peasant proprietors’ they have in mind a type which does not exist in Ceylon and has never existed. The Ceylon villager or at any rate the Kandyan villager will never exert himself to make a prosperous ‘small holding’ out of a chena allotment. He will grow enough to keep himself alive and that is all. It is often the case in this district that the more land a villager has, the more primitive and miserable is his existence. The best off is the man who supplements the small return of his paddy land and chena with good pay from a neighboring estate”. Regarding the proposed sale of land to middle class Ceylonese: “I fail to see why this class should receive preferential treatment. My experience is that they know very well how to look after themselves. They have indeed been concerned in some of the worst cases of land grabbing (…) The benefits derived from contact with ‘men of culture and position’ are apt to be obscured when the middle class proprietor lives in Colombo and his estate is left in charge of a Tamil conductor”. And regarding prescription as regard to chena “there would be great danger of some influential person possessing himself of communal land by this means to the detriment of the very class which the commissioners are most concerned to protect”.

The Assistant Agent at Puttalam, Wadia (of Indian origin), held similar opinions: “Chena land alienation has in my opinion been entirely beneficial to the villager. He has obtained a price albeit small, for something which did not belong to him, and the value of the ancestral land retained by him has increased by leaps. The capitalist has brought the village within the confines of civilization for better or for worse, and has introduced the seed from which all may grow the flower (…) The abolition of the paddy and grain tax constituted in the opinion of many a setback to agriculture in this country. Ceylon is probably the only country in the world which has no land tax and the question of its re-imposition on the basis of the value of the land and not its annual production is worthy of favorable consideration”. The Assistant Agent at Nuwara Eliya, Wooley, while recognizing the situation of landlessness especially in Kotmale, considered that “the only solution is for them to obtain employment on estates where there is ample work and pay is good. Hundreds of them do so and have done so for years. But recently they have got the idea that government is giving land away to all and sundry and I have been inundated with applications. The usual plea is that they are poverty stricken with large families, and have no land to build a house and cultivate. I sympathize with their desire to have a home but I see no reason why they should not work on estates”

The Settlement officers were less critical than their Revenue counterparts, but they had practical objections based on their field experience. Archibald, acting Settlement officer, considered that the recognition of the property of chenas on the basis of prescription did not correspond with the conception of the peasant: “A man does not say: ‘I claim Batahena because I had a chena there five years ago’. What he says is “Batahena lies within the boundaries of my pangu. My father claimed 1/24th share of the pangu. Therefore I claim 1/24th of all the chenas in the pangu”.  He also questioned the legal form suggested for settlement, that of a decision by the settlement officer open to an appeal, instead of a deal between the claimant and the Crown representative. His colleagues Hunter and Hughes objected to the definition of the appurtenances on a 3 to 1 basis: in the view of villagers, only pillewas and owitas were appurtenant to paddy fields, but the chenas  were claimed independently from the paddy fields and often by people who had no paddy fields at all “one might as well say that the chenas are appurtenant to gardens”. “One does find the whole future of a village has been prejudiced in the past by recognizing the rights of individuals to chenas (…) Settlement of a village on a 3 to 1 basis is often a jigsaw puzzle without any further scheme to provide for”.

Regarding the possibility to distribute inalienable land in new colonies, their colleague Bassett was skeptical, fearing that “the great majority of Kandyan peasants will not consistently work their lands (…) After an enthusiastic start, the villager gets tired of keeping his cultivation in order” “It has been my experience that after settlement quite 50% of the villagers immediately make every effort to sell the land to which they have got good title to capitalists, usually rich men from Panadure or Kalutara”. “In settled villages, villagers unable to sell their new settlements are going to live in their new lands and selling their old gardens to capitalists. In unsettled villages, now that speculative sale of chena land is prohibited, villagers are selling old gardens and even fields to capitalists. In villages under settlement, villagers sometimes cannot pay for their settlements, however low the rate is charged. They therefore as they are not allowed to sell the land settled upon them, either allow the settlement to lapse, or sell an old garden to pay for it”.

The testimony of Mideniya Adigar (1867-1931), the chief headman who had closely collaborated with the British administration in the Kägalla district, and was himself involved in land speculation, is of special interest; he was backed by his son in law Francis Molamure, the elected representative of the district at the Legislative council[31]. In a letter and in his further evidence before the Land Commission, he described the colonial land policy in the Kägalla district as particularly permissive and developed arguments similar to those of P.F. Ondaatje, the lawyer of the land speculators, who fought in the 1920s against the presumption in favour of the Crown in the matter of highland property, adopting the notion of paraveni chenas developed by Madawela. According to him, in the past there had never been government interference in former gabadagam (royal villages) and koralegam (freehold villages “entirely owned by private persons”) with chena cultivation in all cases where lands were under cultivation within 20 years; only chenas cultivated with hill paddy were taxed,  and ordinance of 1840 required the production of wattoru (tax receipts) before the Crown could admit claims of private ownership, except for registered temple lands and nindagam (feudal villages) whose lords could prove their right to the soil by sannas or other grants by the authorities. The other highland grains were not taxed and it was customary to consider they covered an area two or three time that of hill paddy. On this basis the administration liberally distributed Certificates of quiet possession: as the paddy tax had been abolished no wattoru were being issued after 1892 and the ordinance of 1840 could no longer be enforced. But with the implementation of the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 by the Land settlement department “the Crown now claims those chenas which absolutely belong to villagers (…) There is no Crown chena, if you read all those things you will see that there is no Crown land, no villager would go and take any land of over 20 years growth, because they were presumed to be the property of the Crown (…) How can Government now claim chena lands which are of about 10 or 12 years growth? (…) Even after the Waste Lands Ordinance was brought into operation, Mr. Hill never took a chena land of under 20 years growth, they are all village lands (…) All chena lands are private property”.  Mideniya added: “The villagers in the wet zone do not now cultivate chena lands for chena produce as before. They are as a matter of fact cultivating permanent produce (…) The villagers may be allowed to open up the paraveni chenas on unsettled lands as heretofore. The policy of government is to go back to the land”.

A minority of members or former members of the colonial administration took the side of the peasantry. In the previous decade, the Settlement officer Fraser had opened the way to a reconsideration of the peasant use of the land and the practice of chena cultivation, and some of his successors, such as Stace and Sandys, had followed.  Two influent and controversial individuals  played a role at the time of the Land commission: a former Revenue officer, Freeman, and a visionary administrator, Brayne, who was to become the first Land commissioner in the next decade.

In defense of the peasantry: Freeman and Brayne.

Herbert Rayner Freeman (1864-1945) joined the Ceylon Civil Service in 1885 and retired in 1919, deciding to remain in the island instead of going back ‘home’; his last post was at Anuradhapura and he chose to run for the seat of representative of the North Central province in the Legislative council in 1924 and was continuously reelected until his death; he was very popular in his constituency and assertive as parliamentarian. He developed before the Commission a view of the history of land policy in the North western province, showing its lack of continuity[32]: “I have been connected with land matters in this country since 1885. Between 1886 and 1889 in the Kurunegala district. There chena lands were going into coconuts on a large scale and settlement was very much in advance of surveys – by settlements I mean encroachments. A feature in those days was the considerable number of lands regarded under the 1840 ordinance as encroachment because they were just going out of jungle and being planted up with coconuts (…) In those days the ‘appurtenance’ claims were well known and recognized (…) The difficulty was to make surveys, the department always said that it had too much work to make speculative surveys.  The upset price was 10 Rs an acre, later it went up to 15 Rs and lands were sold readily, numbers of best lands in the Kurunegala district were sold at this price (…) In circulars of April and August 1886 by Sir Arthur Gordon, there was an extension in the favour of the subject of the 8th section of ordinance 12 of 1840, the circulars made clear the intention of Government to settle with encroachers and not to eject them (…) Between 1889 and 1906 there was a period when a considerable number of Certificates of quiet possession for large areas of land were granted (…) on the payment of 2 Rs 5 an acre as survey fees (…) When I returned in 1906 to Kurunegala, I found that all land matters were being dealt with on a notice, the author of which was believed to be Mr. Ellis; the Government agent was directed to call on chief headmen to supply lists of lands planted with any permanent cultivation since 1890 (…) Well, the notice was unfortunately unsigned and it was undated and was stuck up in gansabhava and other buildings, on trees and various places, and difficulties of working it arose (…) There was a very great confusion about the matter, both in 1886 and 1906. Nobody knew which were actually Crown land, or which were private or appurtenances, or what are called paraveni chenas”. Freeman gave  an example of the confusion: if a villager had instead of fine grain planted coconuts (even which did not grow) on his land he was ordered to pay 20 Rs an acre, and was prosecuted and acquitted; Ellis then said he should have been dealt with under the Ordinance of 1897 and not of 1840: “Owing to the form of the notice of Ellis, it caused great confusion and ill feeling, and finally led to the public meeting of 1906 or 1907”.

In the dry areas of the North Western and in the North Central province, the restrictive land policy had catastrophic results: “Government Agent after Government Agent has given the people of the North Central province the character of the most law-abiding people in the island. How is it that they have become law breakers in the matter of their food supply? There is a very tragic misunderstanding of villages of the dry zone, because hardly anyone goes to the villages in these days of railways and motorcars (…) if you penetrate into jungles and hamlets and see the physical state of people you are very much struck by this assertion that these people are habitual law breakers in respect of chenas”.

Charles Valentine Brayne[33] (1877-1964) was the elder brother of Frank Lugard Brayne (1882-1952), member of the Indian Civil Service, author of ‘The remaking of village India” (1929), who came under criticism by his pairs and became the anti-hero of a study by Clive Dewey of the flaws of the Indian Civil Service, who painted him as a perfect Utopian led by a sort of missionary zeal. Charles Valentine was also considered by some as a visionary, by others as a lunatic, and was despised by his conservative colleagues who nicknamed him ‘Brainless Brayne’. He had entered the Ceylon civil service in 1901 and had been for some time Government Agent at Batticaloa, on the east coast, where he made an experiment at land planning. He apparently had the support of Clifford, who nominated him to the Legislative Council, but was strongly opposed by a majority of his colleagues. He was however able to extend his experiments to other districts as additional Controller of Revenue in 1927, supported by some of the Ceylonese members of the Legislative Council, and finally obtained for himself the creation of the post of Land Commissioner.  

C.V. Brayne had developed his ideas in a number of reports and memoranda, which have been bequeathed to the Cambridge South Asian archive. The most exhaustive document is an undated memorandum, ‘The protection of the village’, which is worth quoting:[34]

“Everyone will admit that in parts of the country under rapid development in rubber and other economic products, there is a danger of the village disappearing and the villager becoming landless. This has been put down by some to the Government selling land to capitalists without sufficient forethought for village requirements. This may have occurred in certain cases. There is however another far more potent factor at work, and one which presents a more complicated problem: Government has now ceased to alienate land to capitalists, except after the most careful precautions to safeguard the future needs of the villagers; the problem of the landgrabber has not however been solved.

Let us endeavor to analyze the trouble a little further. In most Kandyan districts, the villagers claim certain chenas in the village. These claims may in certain localities be communal, but in others become with time individual. Certain individuals claim certain areas. Definition of boundaries may be little vague, but the claims are individual. Under the strict letter of the law, ordinance 12 of 1840, the majority of these claims cannot be sustained. In actual practice the policy of Government has been as an act of grace to admit such claims as at least giving a right to purchase the land preferentially at a figure much below its actual market value.

Now, what has been the practical result of the Government’s policy and who has in the main profited? In many places, the land grabber has forestalled the settlement officer, bought up the villager’s right for a song, and in many cases planted the land. He is already there when the settlement officer arrives, and claims that the land be admitted as his private property or sold to him, at a low preferential rate. Now what the land grabber has actually done, I would submit, what were really rights to chena, that is the right to take a chena crop off the land at certain intervals which we may take at an average of ten years – he has translated these rights into rights to the permanent exclusive ownership of the soil, and pocketed the difference in value, we will say in good many times 9/10th. Naturally, land grabbing is an extremely lucrative operation, and there are many in the field.

The problem is: how can this sort of things be prevented and the villager’s interests be protected? It is obvious he cannot protect himself. In fact he is often for motives of a little temporary gain the chief agent in the ultimate destruction of his village. The present development is widespread and in the destruction of the village most mischievous. The remedy to be effective must be drastic.

Survey and settlement must necessarily be a slow process, they cannot, as at present carried out, be greatly expedited. However much they are quickened up, the land grabber will always be there first. Some quicker process is necessary to forestall him.

If ordinance 12 of 1840 could have been enforced for all it was worth, and the last pound of flesh exacted in the interest of the Crown, the present land-grabbing could never had gone on. The kernel of my suggestion therefore is that the presumptions of this ordinance should be tightened up, strengthened and further defined and exacted to the full, not in the interest of the Crown, but in the interest of the village. Let us consider how this could be done.

My proposals with regards to presumption would include:

– the differentiation by law of chena rights and absolute rights of ownership of the soil, the former should not by any number of years of exercise be capable ever of being transmuted into the latter; although there might be difficulty in introducing this principle in the low country where prescription against the Crown is permitted, yet there seems to be no difficulty with regard to Kandyan provinces where prescription against the Crown is not permissible;

– no right to the ownership of the soil should be admitted except on proof a/ that the land is covered by a sannasa b/ that it has been permanently occupied by plantation for a 1/3rd of a century or c/ that it has explicitly been admitted by the Crown to be private property;

– that chena rights to any area can be commuted either by the village or the claimant for rights of absolute ownership to 1/10th of the area, or an equivalent payment in money, that is the village will be able to commute the rights of or buy out land grabbers on this basis;

– some provision would have to be made permitting more lenient treatment of persons who had bona fide acquired and improved land before the introduction of the ordinance.

My second proposal is that in unsettled villages, mapping-out should be carried as quickly as possible. The best method for doing his will to a certain extent have to be determined by actual experiment. The object aimed at would be to determine what land is reasonably required for village purposes, expansion in dwelling compounds and for permanent cultivation in small holdings, chena cultivation, pasturage, timber and so on. This area whether actually claimed by villagers or not, and considering the question of needs rather than the question of rights, would be definitely determined; in certain cases more than one village might conveniently be included in the area, area roughly defined by natural boundaries. It would not be necessary to wait for a survey if one had not yet been made. The area then be proclaimed as a protected village area under the ordinance. As soon as this had been done, the presumption would automatically come into effect, and all forest, chena, waste and unoccupied or uncultivated land would be presumed to be village land. I might suggest that Mr. Dawson, Mr. Archibald and myself should provisionally map out a few villages for the consideration of the commission.

The Government agent would be given power to protect village land as he has now to protect Crown land. Encroachment on village land would be punishable as a criminal offence. The Government agent as trustee of village rights should be given power to notice any person clearing or planting to stop further operation and produce evidence of his title. If not satisfied with the title he might make an order forbidding further operation or occupation of the land. Disobedience would be punishable by a Police court which would make final order for the ejection of the person pending proof of his title in a civil court.

 [Among practical measures] provision be made that land allotted to villagers or purchased by them from the village for individual permanent occupation might be given on a restricted tenure and registered to prevent alienation to outsiders” (…)

Towards a new land policy

A new policy was the outcome of the suggestions of the Land Commission, in a political and economic context transformed by the simultaneous advent of limited self-government based on universal suffrage, and of the economic depression affecting the planting industry. This new context accelerated a complex process which was outlined before the crisis: it combined a new conception of the role of the State in land matters – dispenser and planner, and a nationalist ideology aimed at village reconstruction and restoration of a self-supporting peasantry.

The first stage was to create a new administrative mechanism to supervise or eventually replace the existing practice of the Revenue officers. On 6.10.1927, the Land Commission addressed to the Colonial Secretariat a request to create a Land department, separate from the Revenue administration, headed by a Commissioner with a rank equal to that of the Controller of Revenue, arguing that it could undertake the collection of information to prepare an experiment at ‘mapping out’ selected villages in order to protect them from speculation and the inroads of outsiders[35]. The legal and theoretical basis of such a program was “the presumption to forest, waste chenas, etc., which now operates in favor of the Crown, should operate in favor of the village community, that is the settlement would proceed not on the basis of the Crown versus individual claimants. Within such areas it might be necessary to buy out the claims of outside purchasers to undeveloped land necessary to the well-being of the village. Land would be settled on village claimants on the new peasant tenure already provisionally approved by the Commission (…) What the Commission has chiefly in mind is the mapping out of unsettled villages, particularly in the Kandyan districts”. In a confidential minute of 13.02.1928, the acting governor (Fletcher) approved the creation of a Land commissioner but he was opposed at the Executive Council by senior Government Agents, especially Thaine (Western province) who argued that they had a superior knowledge of land matters – the same argument which was used against the Land settlement department two decades earlier.

On 11.05.1928, C.V. Brayne produced a confidential memorandum to explain what he had in mind; he began with a radical critique of “the old policy of application survey and sale or lease by public auction (…) The interests of the villager has in many cases been overlooked. The person desirous of developing land has naturally chosen the best land for himself and this was in a majority of instances the land immediately joining the village. The land was eventually alienated to him. The proximity of an estate stimulated in the villager too the desire to improve land in economic products and also put the necessary money into his pocket to enable him to do so. There was however by this time no land available as it had all been taken by the bigger man. The village was in fact hemmed-in, with no room to expand (…) In the alienation of land for economic products, the policy of government has been practically one of hand to mouth. The consideration whether land  could or could not in the interest of the villagers be alienated had to be considered by the Revenue officer under the pressure of urgent demand for land (…) In many cases he was compelled to depend upon the report of a chief headman  which may have been sound but in many cases was not” Then he explains his ‘alternative policy’ in anticipation of demand for land and preliminary to development and insists that “it is beneficial both to the villager and the capitalist”.

The comments on Brayne’s memorandum were very critical, even if some Revenue Officers recognized the problem, for example Walters in Uva: “Applications from outsiders to open land near villages are in many cases strongly opposed by villagers (…) Mapping out is wanted (but) the Government Agent is unable to find time for such a work (…) it should be done by the Settlement department”. Hodson (North Western province) was highly skeptical: “I am not aware that anyone seriously contemplate the gigantic task of setting right the mistakes of the past by the only possible method, viz: acquisition of land from estates and their re-sale to villagers. Mapping out before survey is putting the cart before the horse” “I do not consider the appointment of Mr. Brayne would be in the best interests of the colony (…) His policy tends too much to extremism, I think, faddism, for it to be safe to entrust to him the land policy of the island”. Hobday (Kägalla) considered that “to anyone familiar with local conditions, the outstanding fact is the great prosperity of the country rendered possible only by the land alienation of the last 50 years”. For Archibald, the Settlement officer, “these projects appear to be in the region of experiment”. The only enthusiastic supporter was Sandys, a former assistant settlement officer, now posted as Revenue officer at Matara: the project would remedy “the evils of the old system of laissez-faire in land matters”. The experience of mapping out started by his predecessor A.N. Strong in the Matara district, with a system of preferential leases, was positive and “intensely popular”. “As a rule, the villager is perfectly content to work on the tea or rubber land of others so long as he has his own small patch of native garden to build a house and settle on. It is clear however that progress will be slow and difficult without the assistance of large estates. I find that where these are in existence, the population has increased by leaps and bounds, while where they are absent, the increase is very slight. Apart from the employment they create, they alone have the capital to build metaled roads and drive back the jungle with its swarms of wild elephants and leeches that makes colonization so difficult”

To answer these remarks, Brayne produced another confidential memorandum (‘Note for the use of the Parliamentary undersecretary of State for the colonies’, 22.06.1928)[36] in which he recalled that the grief of the Kandyans re. the working of the Waste Lands Ordinance expressed in Council was at the origin of the Land Commission. He criticized the “haphazard and spasmodic development” resulting from private initiative: “the survey maps show the total lack of method in the survey of alienated Crown land during the last 80 years”. Admitting the temporary and tentative nature of his project, he insisted on the importance to start a mapping out experiment in Uva, and alluded to “certain obvious handicaps” he was encountering. On 19.10.1928, the Executive council, presided by the new Governor, Stanley, finally approved the proposed experiment, “work to be done by the Revenue officer under supervision of Brayne”, and two special Assistant Government Agents (Tennyson and D.B. Seneviratne) were entrusted to undertake mapping out in Uva.  

‘Mapping out’ and ‘village reconstruction’: the first experiments.

The idea of village development planning became popular in the 1930s but its origins can be traced to the first Settlement officers. In 1901 Fraser wrote: “In the rear of the Settlement officer should certainly come an officer to decide what land is to be sold, and what made into reserved and village forest. It is practically useless to declare land the property of the Crown, unless some use is to be made of them (…) If this is not done, the villagers will say: formerly we were allowed to chena these lands, but now government although it makes no use of them, refuses to allow us to cultivate them”. The concept of land development was already present in the reflections of Fraser in 1907: “The people were a miserable lot, spoilt by unlimited opportunities of chena. In several cases, I found coconut gardens allowed to go to ruin (…) It is rather too 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 rupees with the prospect of having the lot put up for sale in 2 or 3 years, when he may get it ; or if as is probable any other bidders are about he may not, if he still wants land he can get his fees back and repeat the performance with another piece of land (…) It is no wonder he prefers to take what he wants and pay when he is found out. The remedy is for Government to every four or five years cut up a piece of land declared Crown into garden lots and to regularly advertise them once a year as near as possible to the village”[37].

The man who formalized the principle of ‘mapping-out’ was C.V. Brayne. After the settlement of individual claims, its principle was to reserve the remaining Crown lands to specific needs of the village community. The 3 to 1 system which recognized common property of paraveni chenas was in contradiction with the mapping out principle because it left practically no Crown land available for planning. The Settlement department as such was not in charge of the program but its knowledge of the village needs was a great asset to guide the work of the village planners. The Land Commission entrusted Brayne in September 1927 with the task to experiment the system he had proposed, against the will of the Colonial secretary who considered that the ordinary Revenue administration could do the job[38]. His mission evolved into the creation of a new authority, the Land Commissioner, who supervised these activities (1931) and eventually became empowered to effect mapping out (1934) by the Land Development Ordinance[39].

The first official experiment of ‘mapping out’ in the plantation areas was done by A.N. Strong in the Matara district[40]: “In the report of 1925, attention was drawn to the need for so restricting the alienation of Crown lands, where these were still available, as to provide for the future expansion of the village population and the needs of the middle class people who, under the existing scheme of public auction, are financially unable to make any pretense of bidding against a class of professional land grabbers. As a partial remedy, a scheme has been elaborated with a view to the settlement on preferential terms of landless residents (…) The scheme is very popular. At first numbers of applicants came forward, with some landowner behind them, obviously with a view to subsequent re-sale at a profit, but withdrew on learning that personal residence on the land was an indispensable condition and that neither alienation nor even sub-lease would be permitted (…) Each village is being taken up as fast as time permits and certain extents earmarked for various purposes, first for village expansion and the preferential leases above described, then for village forest reserves for fuel and building, then if land is available, for middle class leases, and finally in the less populated areas, for development on a larger scale by estates or other capitalist concerns (…) There is very little land left (…) and the question arises whether the effects of unrestrained and uneconomic alienation in past years can be remedied by anything but outright expropriation”

Another experiment was made by the Land Settlement Officer Bassett in Epitawala, a village of the Sabaragamuwa district[41]. There was a keen demand for land (66 applications) and in 1926 it was decided to issue leases of ½ acre lots for 99 years with a clause prohibiting sublease, donation, mortgage or sale. In 1928 the colony scheme was effective with lessees building houses and planting rubber, but in the meantime it had been decided to demand a contribution: “From experience gained starting a small colony of Vahumpura people at Epitawala, it appears that in that district at least, it is fatal to the success of a scheme to give the land free under any conditions (…) The colonists do not value land for which they have not paid and consequently make even less effort to cultivate it well. The colonists are regarded and openly laughed at by other villagers as ‘charity people’ unless they have bought their lands. This hits their susceptibility to ridicule very hard and they lose all heart in their work. The price charge may be very small, but any sum protects them from the two foregoing disabilities”.  

Quick enquiries associating Brayne with local Revenue officers were undertaken in December 1927 in the north of the Kägalla district[42], in two groups of villages (Paspolakanda, south of Alawwa and Dambullakanda, north of Rambukkana) whose forested lands had been preserved as fuel reserves for the railway;  in the Nawadun korale of the Ratnapura district where extensive sales of Crown land had taken place; in Magul Otota korale of the North western province; in Hapitigam korale of the Western province; and in Pasdun korale of the Kalutara district, where “among the Goyigama population of these villages, there is a desire to own land, even the smallest share, and be classed as cultivators and not as coolies. Enquiries however elicited that it was very difficult for villagers to buy land at all from the Crown as they were generally outbid by richer people; when they did succeed, the price was very high, running to as much as 600 Rs an acre; under these conditions, villagers were discouraged from applying for land”. But these enquiries led to nothing, for want of official support.

More extensive experiments were started in 1929 in the province of Uva, by a special officer  entrusted with the task, E. Tennison, working under the direction of the Government agent.  They  selected the area between Bandarawela – Haliela – Welimada, which was most congested due to the extension of tea estates and vegetable production. Mapping out the Crown lands was based on statistics of population increase, on the village needs expressed by the villagers assembled and written down, and the characteristics of lands available. The proposals for each village were made public and sketched. Once approval was given by the Controller of Revenue, land was allotted by the administration under the Peasant proprietor system[43].

At the same time, the condition of the peasantry attracted the attention of the young generation of the Ceylonese nationalist elite, like in India, and various unofficial projects and experiments of ‘village reconstruction’ were framed. The career of Wilmot Perera (1905-1973) is exemplary in that respect. Wilmot Perera belonged to an enterprising Karawa family allied with the Dias (A.V. Dias was his uncle) and de De Soysas, who were among the richest Ceylonese plantation owners. He was the son of Mahawaduge Abraham Perera, ‘rubber king’ of Panadura, who made a fortune by contracts with the colonial government and invested in rubber lands, and the grandson of Mathes Perera, an arrack renter. He inherited large estates around Horana when his father died. He first managed them as the other plantation owners, and was involved in the acquisition of chena land from villagers as an intermediary for a local British planter of Horana, Healey (Perth Estate). He confronted the Assistant Settlement Officer Bassett, first refused and but finally accepted his offer of settlement in the village of Paragahamaditta in the Ratnapura district: it seems that he was already conscious of the injury caused to the villagers by the land grabbing activities which were the source of wealth of his class[44].  Then instead of going to England which was the usual cursus in these new rich families, he chose to join Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal at Santiniketan and on his return initiated a replica of Santiniketan on his Horana estate. This led him to ‘discover’ the poverty of rural Ceylon and progressively turned him into a leftist. In 1932 he was still an admirer of D.S. Senanayake to whom he dedicated his book Problems of Rural Ceylon (Colombo, 1932) which gathered papers published in the Daily News, the organ of the anglicized bourgeoisie. He criticized the peasant colonization schemes started by the government in Rayigam korale, near Horana, and   attributed the failures of these experiments and more generally the poor productivity of peasant agriculture to social environment rather than to the supposed laziness of the peasantry ; he blamed the headman system as “the principal limiting factor in the betterment of the peasant” and pleaded for “village reconstruction” through the return to the supposed self-administration of the past and the development of practical education. He convened an All Ceylon Rural Reconstruction Conference at his Horana estate in May 1932, where S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike spoke, and initiated the first socio-economic studies of villages in 1934[45]. The Suriya Mal movement was launched at his residence in Horana in 1933, and this movement evolved into the socialist-trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaja Party, of which Wilmot was a member, He later became parliamentarian and ended his career as Bandaranaike’s ambassador to Mao’s China in 1957.

A new land legislation

In July 1930, the Governor had forwarded to the Colonial office in London a series of four ordinances to replace the existing land legislation (Ordinances of 1830 and 1897) after the Land commission recommendations[46]. A new legislation appeared necessary because the presumption of Crown property of waste lands was challenged and at the same time landlessness was increasing. But the question of chenas was “one of extreme delicacy and admitting only of a solution by compromise” and some of the proposals of the 3rd interim report “especially those dealing with the Kandyan chena problem, were not such as could have been accepted by Government. They were not repeated in the final report which entirely superseded the 3rd interim report (…) A compromise was reached consisting in the maintenance of the law practically unchanged while in the definite instructions of Government the fullest concessions are granted by the Settlement and Revenue officers to all reasonable equitable claims in the Kandyan provinces”. This included “the cases in which the claimants would have been equitably entitled to such settlement had the lands remained chena”. Practically this compromise could allow the settlement on outsiders in terms similar to those offered to villager, contrary to the regular practice of the department. Finally there was an urgent need to validate these measures because “there is no guarantee that the new State Council with perhaps a considerably changed personnel will understand these complicated measures or appreciate the labour and patience on both sides which has resulted in the present compromise. Should the controversy be opened on the old lines and an attack pressed against the existing law in the new council, the result may well have disastrous effects”.

The new State Council set up by the Donoughmore Constitution respected the compromise, but decided to reform the administrative system on the lines suggested by Brayne, who had gained the support of D.S. Senanayake: a Land Commissioner (Brayne) replaced the Controller of Revenue for land matters, communicated directly with the Settlement Officer and with the Government Agents, and served as counsellor for the Ministry of Agriculture, which was attributed to Senanayake. But the new policy was impeded by the economic depression which rendered the plantations unproductive and dried up the demand for land, and by disagreements regarding the forms of tenure and the categories of beneficiaries of allotments.  

It was found in 1934, during the malaria epidemic, that the legal basis for the new land policy was not systematic enough and a new bill was passed by the State Council and reserved for approval by London[47]. Its aim was to protect the villager against the outsider, the local against the general interests; to protect the natural environment; to plan the alienation of Crown land for specific purposes to specific categories of the population; to restrict the alienability of land by a system “which approximates to the tenure which existed in ancient Sinhalese times”; to make it impossible the minute subdivision of shares. Since the passing of the ordinance allowing the preferential alienation of Crown land to middle class Ceylonese [defined as residing permanently in Ceylon and drawing an income of less than 6,000 Rs a year], “considerable extents have been alienated to this class by lease or permit in anticipation of the bill. During the last five or six years large numbers of peasants and small holders have been put upon the land on permits which anticipate the passing of the bill. The extent of land involved is something between 60,000 and 70,000 acres and the number of persons waiting for the grants under the bill runs into many thousands”. The new regulations were opposed by representatives of Indian interests because they proposed a restrictive definition of ‘middle class Ceylonese’ which excluded enriched kanganis who were not considered to be ‘members of the permanent population of Ceylon’. The attitude of the Ceylonese representatives was “stiffened by the fact that the indebtedness of Ceylonese proprietors has during the recent period of economic depression resulted in not a few properties passing into the hands of their Indian creditors.  It may also be noted that the present epidemic of malaria has fallen principally upon the wet zone. It is recognized that the malnutrition of the village population has greatly aggravated the severity of this epidemic and delayed its reversal. This malnutrition cannot but be attributed in some measure to the poverty caused by the scarcity of land in numbers of villages. In these circumstances the attitude of the State Council in the face of possible Indian competition for land can very readily be understood and commands every sympathy”. The minutes of the staff of the Colonial Office on this dispatch show that they are prepared to resist the pressures of India and confront the Indian Office on this issue, which was to become hotly debated during the next five years.

Land policy at the ground level: the case of the Kägalla district (1931-1948)

In the early 1930s, unemployment resulting from the closing down of rubber and coconut plantations, and the pronouncements of political leaders, popularized by the vernacular press, on the reversal of the colonial land policy, led to an explosion of demands for land, especially in the Kägalla district. Landlessness was most acute in that district or at least the consciousness of it was most developed there, if one estimates it by the agitation which spread like a wildfire as soon as the opportunity to obtain land was known in the villages, and continued unabated. Villagers began to help themselves and occupy waste land for chenaing or gardening. The administration was compelled to expedite land redistribution schemes (what was called in the administrative lingo ‘land kacceri’) or simply recognize the fait accompli.

The movement started in Yatiyantota in August 1931 with a petition “to obtain land for chenaing in view of the depression; (…) several wanted lands on terms similar to the terms on which land is given to villagers in the Kalutara district. They had read of it in the Sinhalese newspapers; (…) some of the signatories did not want land for permanent cultivation but asked for leases of small extents of forest for chenaing”. It continued in the Bulatkopitiya area, where the demand for land was most pressing, especially in Welatuduwa and Wegolla, two Duraya villages, where after a limited distribution the beneficiaries cultivated more than they had received. In Uduwe palata, “a large number of villagers turned up and asked for land”. In all these localities, land sales by the Crown and by villagers had been heavy during the previous fifty years, there was very little cultivable land left, work was dependent on rubber tapping and processing, and the possibility of having recourse to chena cultivation in case of need had vanished, but the idea was still there. Near Kitulgala, the villagers helped themselves to 40 acres declared Crown “because there was a proposal to give out part of it under the Peasant proprietor scheme (…) the offenders were called upon to pay compensation and all pleaded poverty. True they are poor people, I [the Assistant Agent] gave them the opportunity of paying a fine of 5 Rs an acre and all agreed to do so”.  In Panawal korale east, there was a pressing demand of land for chenaing “so as to relieve immediate distress (…) the demand for land is so great that it is essential that the Crown should know what land is available for village and other purposes” . With the increasing poverty due to the depression, and administrative slackness, in the Kitulgala area “the villagers were most reluctant to abandon what they had cleared and pleaded they had nowhere else to go. I found some land had been mapped out for village expansion but the proposals to allocate it had fallen through”. The situation was especially severe in Mapitigama in 1934, where “the villagers are hard hit by the low prices of coconuts and rubber, and get very low pay for picking nuts, and there is no work for them on the rubber estates. They are living on one meal a day and appear in need of assistance”; and not surprisingly, this village would be one of the worst hit by the malaria epidemic a few months later.[48]

In Four-korales (the northern part of the district), where the experiments of Paspolakanda and Dambullakanda had taken place in 1928, the rural economy was less dependent on rubber, but the pressure was also very strong. The elected representative, E.A.P. Wijeratne, was open to people’s demands. He proposed a scheme for 600 acres available in Walgam pattuwa: land kacceries were held at Deliwala Walpola and Hewadiwela between October and December 1931: “there were so many deserving cases that it was very difficult to make selection (…) In Dombemada, most of the applicants were burdened with families of six or seven persons, but no land was available to satisfy their needs” In Walgama, “a large number of villagers appeared and stated that they were starving and had no lands; the headman recommended that they be given lands in Dumbarakanda where land had been previously allotted for food production”. In Tismalpola the village forest had to be used as a village expansion area”. But there were complaints by people of other villages who felt discriminated, and in 1933 a campaign of petitions was started: “A very unpleasant spirit in this area (…) poisoned by a virulent mixture of caste and anti-headman feeling”. Another hurdle was indebtedness: “most of the settlers in Walgam pattuwa have mortgaged (informally of course) their crop for year ahead to a local capitalist” The demand for land and the tendency for the more enterprising villagers to help themselves were also apparent in the Aranayake area, where land kacceries had not been organized: “these encroachments are continually taking place as few if any outright sales are allowed”.[49]

The lack of available Crown land, the persisting crisis of the plantation sector, and the growing political awareness of the peasant condition eventually led the authorities to consider acquiring abandoned or poorly managed estates for distribution to the villagers. The first operations were held in the Bulatkopitiya and Aranayake areas, where a population belonging in majority to Duraya castes – Panna, Batgama and Vahumpura, had been specially impacted by land grabbing by estates since the mid 19th century[50]. The first series of acquisitions were contemplated in 1938; they were located in Urumiwela and Tunbage (7.12.1940), 473 acres, where 200 families were given lands; then in Aranayake (17.12.1940, 492 acres, 250 families, then Seaforth estate (3.3.1941), 447 acres, 60 families; and Debatgama (28.9.1943), 144 acres, 152 families. The second series, after the war, comprised Knavesmire (4.12.1945), 777 acres, 326 families; Udagoda (5.12.1945), 496 acres, 49 families; Dickella (17.10.1946), 592 acres, 100 families; and Danagama (7.1.1947), 259 acres, 45 families: the colonists were recruited in specific villages around each colony, which are listed in the document.[51]

The acquisition of Knavesmire estate for village expansion in December 1945 gave birth to a political affair, in a context of tension between Indian and Ceylonese authorities about the status of Tamil migrant workers. The rubber and tea estate had been purchased from the European company by a Kalutara Muslim, Ibrahim Lebbe Marikar Hadjiar, in the early 1940s. The decision by Government to acquire it was taken in January 1944, the purchase was finalized in December 1945. But the Tamil resident workers refused to quit, although they were offered employment in neighbouring estates. They had the support of S. Thondaman, young defensor of the Tamil Indian workers, who was to become their representative in independent Ceylon, when the authorities prosecuted them in the Courts for squatting considering that when the acquisition was decided upon no opposition arose from any quarter, and that residence in an estate was not equivalent to residence in an ancestral village. In a lengthy report, D.S. Senanayake tried to the take-over of the estate and listed the villages which should benefit from the scheme (those which were affected by the land sales at the creation of the estate) : “The Kegalle district is one in which the sale of Crown land to estates and of private land by villagers also to estates has rendered the district particularly short of land for the genuine needs of the villagers (…) The claims of the villagers – genuine villagers – whether they are of the agricultural class or workers in other trades must receive prior consideration. Reference is also invited to the definition of the Ceylonese as a person possessing a Ceylon domicile of origin”. Thondaman contested “that villagers and estate labourers were distinct entities and only villagers were eligible to participate in the scheme” and predicted that “Knavesmire episode is an indication of things to come. The complete amity and good fellowship that exists between the Indian labourers of Knavesmire and the Sinhalese of the neighbourhood should be an object lesson to the protagonists of communalism who are in power today. It is a crying shame that such an amity on which a united nation can be easily built up is being destroyed. Mr. Senanayake would treat estate labourers and villagers living in mutual friendship as two different entities. His officers evidently under his directions are in search of domicile of origin to create division. Their object is that Indian labourers who have for generations contributed to the development of the country should be kept secluded as estate labourers and transferred as such from estate to estate if work is available, or repatriated across or into the sea”.  The controversy dragged on with an attempt to organize a hartal, until Nehru in the name of the Indian National Congress advised Thondaman to drop the matter, and the take-over was completed in 1950. [52]

Politicization of land distribution and poor management of acquired estates became a serious issue in the 1950s. In the words of the Land Commissioner Rajendra testifying before the Land Commission of 1956, land was distributed to all and sundry without method[53]: “the situation is today back it was before the enactment of the ordinance: planned alienation has been abandoned and the land is advertised according to demand”. The encroachments were no longer prevented by headmen who had lost their power and were afraid of the politicians. In 1954, the situation of acquired estates was reviewed in a report by the Assistant Government agent to the Land commissioner, defending the principle but recognizing the shortcomings of the project[54]: “Here in Kägalla, where every village is hemmed in by major estates, some of them 1000 acres in extent, the problem is an extremely difficult one. Every acquisition or proposal carries in its train objections, not only from the owners of estates, but also from certain other interests who review the question of land merely from loss or gain of income and not also from considerations of humanity. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that at least 50% of land in Kägalla belongs to uninterested outsiders, the majority of whom are foreigners. Lands which were normally chenas and available for the people have in the last 75 years disappeared and we have the strange situation of people whose traditions are rooted in the soil of Kägalla for hundreds of years, either having to starve, or having to be pulled out of Kägalla. This therefore is the strongest case for the acquisition of estates for village expansion purposes. (…) One might quite fairly point out that while Government sees with great caution and fear the dangers of the devastation of natural assets by alienation to villagers, it apparently viewed with equanimity till very recently a similar situation, where moneyed people, educated and not in want, do exactly the same thing in respect of estates they purchased under the normal system. I make bold to say that in this country there has been a greater loss of original assets on account of such people than were one to total up all the land that has been acquired and divided up among the villagers”.

According to the report of 1954, the results of the project varied according to the method of distribution and management of the lands. A category included estates acquired for alienation in small blocks, under village expansion schemes according to the Land development ordinance, with an allowance paid for house building: “the people were left to fend for themselves either to maintain their cultivation or to ruin it (…) for a short spell, the allotees enjoyed prosperity by eating into the capital of the land, and thereafter they reached a stage of poverty similar to that in which they were previously”. This group comprised Aranayake-Welhella-Rahala; Urumiwela-Tunbage; Seaforth; Malmaduwa; the program failed to do any progress in Debatgama (“utter unsuitability of this land for cultivation”).  The second group of acquired estates was to be run collectively: Kurundewatte/Fairfield, Digana/St Peters, Udagoda, Danagama, Dickella Colony, Mahakanda, and the rubber section of Knavesmire: there was no loss of capital nor income in that case, and the author pleaded for that solution against the criticism of those who considered that only company management could run efficiently a modern plantation. 

The detailed files on proposals of acquisition and on actually acquired estates are available in the Kägalla kacceri and show the extent of political patronage involved[55]. Some acquisitions were proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture or the Prime minister (D.S. Senanayake himself at Hunugala) or by parliamentarians (N.H. Keerthiratne in the area of Rambukkana); some by their proprietors (Mount Prospect); in many cases, petitions originated from enterprising villagers (such as N.W. Gunasekara of Pondape) or from rural development societies (as in Uduwe). Some estates were the property of big firms such the Grand Central Rubber Co., a few belonged to temples; but most medium size estates were more or less abandoned by non-residing owners who had purchased them from Chettiar creditors during the depression, often Moors or Karava businessmen of Colombo, or Burghers lawyers (Ondaatje in Godapola). The case of Berawila, one of the oldest estates above Aranayake, 360 acres, the opening of which we have recounted in a previous study[56], is worth quoting. In a petition dated 16 July 1949, residents of Aranayake, Pondape, Arama and Deiyanwela, wrote: “We are exceedingly poverty-stricken people, who have no land of our own even for cultivation and earn our living by working as laborers and cultivators. In these days of high cost of living we are unable to maintain with a poor coolie pay. Our children are underfed and subjected to suffering of illness”. The proprietors were O.L.M. Ahamed Abdullah and other of Norris road, Colombo, who wrote: “this land was purchased by us from a member of the Chetty community in the year 1946 for the sum of Rs 140000”: they were ready to sell it to Government because it was not remunerative.

The Kandyan peasantry commission of 1949-1950

Immediately after Independence, the government headed by D.S. Senanayake decided to set up a new commission to enquire into the condition of the Kandyan peasantry. It is quite significant that this commission focused on the Central and Uva provinces, excluding the North Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces: its underlying aim was to blame the British land policy in the tea districts for the decline of the Kandyan peasantry, while ignoring the impact of rubber and coconut plantations on the no less Kandyan peasantry of the mid-country[57]. The general tone of the report (dated 28.02.1951) blames the colonial system in general, the foreign plantation development and the two land ordinances of 1840 and 1897 in particular, for the situation of the Kandyan peasantry: “Apart from the direct appropriation of village land under these two ordinances, these laws were also indirectly responsible for much of the village lands being alienated by the villagers themselves. The presumption in favor of the Crown created by these ordinances led to a great degree of uncertainty among the peasantry as to their titles to their chena lands. As a result the peasantry sold what they regarded as doubtful title to speculators from other areas” (p. 73). Alienation of Crown land was systematically done in favour of planters, European and Low Country, and when the Settlement department was set up, its working was too slow, even after 1931when it was reinforced. The general feeling of the Kandyan witnesses (most of them belonging to the Goyigama-Radala class) was that of loss of land[58]. The registration of Temple lands led to temple domains being leased out to plantations and plantations or traders as successors of tenants paying a paltry sum in lieu of services. The danger of a loss of identity was specially feared by them: “these once proud and independent people were driven to a life on estates to be herded like cattle and to be made to work under a kangani from the coast”[59]. The theme of the ‘hemmed-in’ village was omnipresent: “a century of British administration had left behind hundreds of plantation-locked villages rigorously restricted to their paddy lands (…) the peasants were imprisoned in their villages” (pp. 71, 73). Landlessness was general and the solutions are difficult to find: “It is necessary to steer a middle course between national economic chaos that would result from a general break-up of the estates on one hand, and the perpetuation of a landless peasantry on the other” (p. 337). The report denounced discrimination in favour of the plantations in the matter of health, education and other public investments; destruction of village society under the impact of capitalism and land speculation; ecological impact, especially the drying of sources, silting of paddy fields from drains, and earth slips especially in Kotmale; and finally caste as a factor of backwardness. But among the memoranda sent by English speaking individuals such as one E. Navaratnam of Atabage one finds the reverse theory of the benefits derived from the estates by the Kandyan villagers (including women) in terms of employment as non-resident or even resident workers.

Uva, and in particular Udukinda, was the object of special attention, as the most depressed area, and the sessions held at Badulla, Bandarawela and Welimada, which were restituted in the form of a diary, are full of useful information at the grass root level.[60] A typical exposition of the hemmed-in representation was given by an upasaka (Buddhist lay devotee): “The Kandyan peasantry in the village are crushed on all sides by forces arrayed against them, Government on one side, estates on the other, and Tamils on top of them (…) Both within village areas and even in Badulla, all government employment is in the hands of outsiders – Tamils, all contracts go to non-Kandyans, the teachers are all outsiders”. The enquiry disclosed the lack of protection, rehabilitation and colonization schemes by the State (as compared for example with Kägalla); the influence exerted by non-Kandyans, especially Moors and Tamil kanganis; the situation of villagers settled on estates or going out to work in the risk of losing their Sinhalese identity, and the general lethargy prevalent in the villages. The abolition of rajakariya had deprived the villagers of the numerous temple village of their access to chena and pasture lands, which had been leased out to plantations, notably in the case of Raja Maha Vihare lands of Ketakele (near Welimada), which had been ‘acquired’ by Luckyland and Albion estates. This general picture of decline and abandonment is linked by the educated witnesses (typically Buddhist-nationalists) with the repression of the insurgencies of 1818 and 1848, and with the impact of the harsh extorsion of the grain taxes in the 1880s: “the village of Ketakele was specially neglected by the British as a punishment for their intense loyalty to the Kandyan kings”.  Several rural development societies of Udukinda gave testimonies which insisted on the lack of space for village expansion due to the proximity of estates, the drying up of streams diverted by estates, the power exerted by outsiders, especially Tamils who obtained Crown lands to develop vegetable cultivation. They reported the situation in the neighborhood of Diyatalawa army camp dominated by Sinhalese mudalalis (Abraham Saibo and A.M. Fernando). The case of Gorandiyakumbura, a low caste village partly absorbed by Aislaby estate, was mentioned as typical of the area: “D.K. Kiripuncha represents that the really landless and needy have great difficulty in obtaining allotments under the Land Development Ordinance. In almost fear and trembling, he suggests that this is due to the village headman being influenced by the well-to-do and upper classes (…) 90 acres of lands reserved for pasture are being almost fully appropriated by Aislaby estate”

*

The land reform laws of the 1970s resulted in the appropriation by the State of around one million acres of both productive and unproductive plantations; out of these lands only about 10 per cent was redistributed to landless villagers. The Land Commission of 1987 estimated that the situation after the reforms was as follows: the State owned in theory 13,347,630 acres (approx. 5,3 millions hectares), that is 82,3% of the total area of the island. The State had alienated between 1935 and 1985 2,052, 987 acres: 20% in the major colonization schemes, 43% for village expansion, 25% for regularization of encroachments (508,000 acres), 6,7% for middle class allotments. Despite the alienation programs, it was estimated that possibly 6% of the total land area had been encroached by about half a million settlers, notably in the Kandyan regions where the Land kacceries had been stopped in the 1970s and the land policy had become much relaxed. Political patronage had become the norm in land allocation. Alienation programs to landless villagers have not created a prosperous peasantry as expected by the first Land commission: “on the contrary the majority of these settlements had become pockets of poverty and areas of social deprivation. Many of them have become centers of turmoil in the current [JVP] crisis”[61].


[1] In Indian Economic and Social History Review XIV (3) July-September 1977, p. 341-362

[2] In Modern Asian Studies 23 (1), 1989, p. 179-207

[3] CO54/903/3 desp. 571, 16.07.1930

[4] ‘Speeding up sales of Crown lands’, SLNA 65 Colonial Secretariat file L362/1926

[5] ‘Alienation of a block of land in Pasdun east and Hinidum pattu’ SLNA 65 Colonial Secretariat files CF77/1926, and CF86/1926; on Dodampitiya, see also SLNA 65 L258/1927

[6] ‘Alienation of pastures in Uva’, SLNA 65 Colonial Secretariat file L2/1927

[7] SLNA 65, Colonial secretariat confidential file CF120/1926 

[8] CO54/886/11. The three annexed documents are ‘Some reflections on the Ceylon land question’ – papers presented to the Second Agricultural Conference (11.03.1927), printed by Cottle, Colombo, 1927; ‘Message by the Governor to the members of the Finance committee’; and ‘Memorandum on Government land Policy submitted for discussion at the Colonial Conference 31.03.1927’, printed as Colonial Office confidential print 386.

[9] Julius Hermann Boeke, Dualistische economie, Leiden 1930

[10] ‘Evidence given before the Land commission in response to the invitation in § 4 of the Third interim report’, Land commissioner department records, file 51 (C/R 1291); also in Land settlement department records, file 216, 2 volumes, including memoranda.

[11] SLNA 65 L62/1928 ‘Reports of the Revenue and Settlement officers containing their comments on the Third interim report of the Land Commission’: these reports were printed in a censored form but never published, for political reasons. See also SLNA LC784/1929 ‘synopsis of criticisms in the Third interim report’

[12] For example: SLNA 65 L309/1928 ‘Memorandum of the Kandyan National Assembly on the Land Commission proposals’; Land Settlement Department Records file 216: Mideniya Adigar to Land Commission, 17.04.1928

[13] Ceylon Sessional Paper 18/1927

[14] SLNA 65 L295/1927; 7.01.1926

[15] Ceylon Sessional Paper 2/1928

[16] 4th report, Sessional paper 5/1928; 5th report SP16/1928; 6th report SP 35/1928, 7th report SP 45/1928, 8th report 1/1929; 9th report SP17/1929

[17] Land settlement department records, file 216 and Sessional paper 16/1928

[18] Sessional paper 18/1928

[19] Times of Ceylon, 15.03.1927, in SLNA 65 L2/1927

[20] In SLNA 65 L2/1927, private letter of A. Wickwar to M. Fletcher, 8.10.1928

[21] SLNA 65 L288/1927 and Land Settlement Department file 216.

[22] SLNA 65 L1198/1927 incl. Executive council minutes of 5.03.1928. Archdale when the department took up the settlement of Nakkavita where he had purchased lands “through an enterprising deed broker, an ex-aracci” retained his arrogant position, saying to the settlement assistant officer (Diary Ingledow, 8.10.1937) “that his knowledge of land laws, thanks to a number of settlements made on him by Certificates of Quiet Possession, was considerably greater than my own”

[23] SLNA, 65 L650/28 minute of the Settlement Officer, 24.10.1928

[24] SLNA 65 L15/29, L780/28, L688/29; On Waleboda, see village file in Temple and ninda lands chapter. The affair dragged on in 1937 (Diary Navaretnam)

[25] SLNA 65 L395/29, CO54/899/13 ‘Sale of land to Grand Central Rubber Estates’

[26] “Evidence given before the Land commission in response to the invitation in § 4 of the Third interim report”, Land commissioner department records, file 51 (C/R 1291); also in Land settlement department records, file 216, 2 volumes, including memoranda.

[27] In the evidence of the Select committee of the Legislative Council on rubber restriction (1925) available in CO54/874, Senanayake criticized the land policy (as implemented by the Land settlement department) which restricted land sales: “I must say that in Ceylon there is no land at present suitable for the further cultivation of rubber, as the government is adopting the dog-in-the-manger policy. Ceylon would be far more prosperous if the government opens its eyes to the fact and releases land as much as possible. Ceylon can always compete with the rest of the world. In Ceylon labour is cheap, conditions are better, and I should say the yield is better”

[28] On this point, see Eric Meyer, “’Enclave’ plantations, ‘hemmed-in’ villages and dualistic representations in colonial Ceylon”. in E.V. Daniel, H. Bernstein and T. Brass eds, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, London, Cass, 1992 pp. 199-228.

[29] SLNA 65 L309/1928. On the opposite side, see the testimony of Hyadari, the Agent of the Government of India in Ceylon, and I.X. Pereira, representative of the Indian businessmen: “Indians came to help you (…) now we form a very large section of your middle class, we have lived here for a long time, we have traded with you, yet you have not been crowded by us”

[30] “Reports of the revenue and settlement officers containing their comments on the 3rd Interim Report of the Land Commission” SLNA 65 L62/1928: the original uncensored reports are found here; these reports have been printed in an edited form but have never been published as sessional papers because (as said in the minutes of the colonial staff) such a procedure could have adverse political implications.

[31] Two documents : ‘Letter of Mideniya Adigar to the Land commission on the question of chenas’, 17.04.1928 in Land settlement department records file 216, and ‘Evidence of J.H. Meedeniya on the subject of land settlements in the Kägalla district,’ 11.07.1928 in Evidence given before the Land commission in response to the invitation in § 4 of the Third interim report”, Land commissioner department records, file 51 (C/R 1291). Maduwanwela, Mideniya, Molamure, Ellawala were the main ‘new-radala’ families of the province of Sabaragamuwa who had been given land and titles by the British after the rebellions of 1818 and 1848.

[32] Testimony of H.R. Freeman, 27.06.1928, in “Evidence given before the Land commission in response to the invitation in § 4 of the Third interim report”, Land commissioner department records, file 51 (C/R 1291)

[33] The file SLNA 65 L1054/1928 is entirely devoted to Brayne’s projects ; private copies including his reports on Batticaloa (1925) are also available in Cambridge South Asian Archive, ‘Papers of C.V. Brayne.’ On his brother F.L. Brayne, see Clive Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes, London, 1993

[34] Undated memorandum (1927) in Cambridge South Asian Archive, ‘Papers of C.V. Brayne.’.

[35] SLNA 65 L.1054/28: Letter of 6.10.1927

[36] in Cambridge South Asian Archive, ‘Papers of C.V. Brayne.’

[37] Diary Fraser, 23.11.1901 and 3.03.1907.

[38] See Brayne’s memorandum, SLNA 65 L1054/28, and Administration Report of the Land Settlement Department 1929, p. K4

[39] Administration reports of the Land Commissioner, 1931-1934. In a report sent to London, (CO54/926) mapping out was thus defined : “the systematic allotment of the available Crown land in a given area for various purposes according to the nature of the land and the needs of the community”

[40] Administration report Matara 1926 p. C27

[41] Diary Bassett, 13.10.1926, 2.03.1928, and Report on the 3rd interim report of the Land Commission

[42] Land Settlement Department file 268/2A(216) and Brayne Papers Cambridge South Asian Archive: ‘Notes on mapping out, studies on the Kägalla district, 1.02.1928; SLNA 30, Diary Kägalla December 1927.

[43] In Administration Report of Uva province 1929 p. H9-10

[44] Diary ASO Bassett, 13.09.1927 to 27.10.1927 “His age is 23 and his lawyer looks considerably younger” Wilmot made him understand that ‘If it had been his own business he would have signed [but] Mr J.A. Perera who came with him recited a short resumé of his arguments in the present Neluwana case and to assure me afresh that there was no such thing as Crown chena”.

[45] Wilmot A. Perera, A socioeconomic survey of the Raigam korale, study 1, Colombo, 1934

[46] CO54/903/3, desp. 571, 16.07.1930

[47] CO54/926 Governor to Secretary of State, 31.01.1935 n° 50 (23 pages)

[48] SLNA 30 Diary Kägalla 18.08.31, 18.09.1931, 10.02.1932, 5.02.1932, 15.03.1932, 18.03.1932,17.04.1932, 26.07.1932, 29.01.1934, 20.03.1935.

[49] SLNA 30 Diary Kägalla 5.09.1931, 27.06.1932, 12.09.1932, 21.03.1933, 22.11.1933, 22.10.1934.

[50] On this point, see Eric Meyer, “Landgrabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district : mid-19th century case studies” [https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/5090];“Highland Appropriation by the Plantation Sector in the Kägalla District (1870-1930)” [https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6273] ;“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

[51] In 1948, a first assessment of estate acquisitions was done: Kägalla kacceri record room, File LD 180 Schedule of lands already acquired, 3.02.1948; see the entry in the Kägalla diary: 4.05.1938.

[52] On the Knavesmire affair, see the official correspondence with the Colonial Office: CO54/988/4, file 55569/14 and Kägalla Kacceri Land file LK 154 ; the version given by Thondaman (S. Thondaman, Tea and Politics, an Autobiography, vol 2, New Delhi-Colombo, 1994, pp. 26-30) and the article of  V. Samaraweera “Land, Labor, Capital and Sectional Interests in the National Politics of Sri Lanka” in Modern Asian Studies , Volume 15 (1) 1981 p.156-57. History of Knavesmire estate formation is given in my “Highland appropriation…” quoted above. In an interview I had in 1978 with Dr. N.M. Perera, the LSSP leader, he told me: “Knavesmire was not a serious attempt at village resettlement and was engineered by Senanayake to embarrass the LSSP thinking we will take the side of the Tamils”

[53] Development of land alienated from the inception of the Land development ordinance to the end of 1954 in B.H. Farmer papers, Cambridge South Asian Archive

[54] Report by the Assistant Agent Kägalla to the Land commissioner on acquired estates, 13.09.1954 in B.H. Farmer papers, Cambridge South Asian Archive.

[55] Kägalla kacceri record room, Files LD 180 (2 volumes) and 127, especially Udagoda and Dickella

[56] “Landgrabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district : mid-19th century case studies” [https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/5090]; see also on this area the monograph of Tamara Gunasekara, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism, Caste, Class and Power in Sinhalese Peasant Society. London, the Athlone Press, 1994.

[57] Report of the Kandyan Peasantry Commission, Ceylon Sessional Paper, Colombo, 1951, XIII- 520 p. The theories developed in the report have been criticized in the 1960s and 70s by historians of the Peradeniya University, notably Michael Roberts, who exposed their nationalist bias. The memoranda sent by various individuals and local societies, often written by teachers on notebooks, most of them in Sinhala, some in the form of village monographs, are kept in the Kandy repository of the National Archives (108/28). They provide a wealth of local information and offer a testimony of the state of mind of the swabasha-educated members of rural society who are going to come into prominence with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party electoral success a few years later in 1956

[58] See for example the memoranda and evidence of E.W.J. Rambukwelle, inspector of schools in SLNA 108/28/1

[59] Memorandum and evidence of M.B. Panabokke in SLNA 108/28/2

[60] SLNA 108/28/4, Records of the proceedings at the public sittings of the Commission in the Yatikinda and Udukinda divisions of the Uva province, 5 to 13 January 1950, 148 typed pages. See especially the evidence of Suddhamapala S.B. Ratnayaka of Kitulwatte, Bogoda korale.

[61] Report of the Land Commission of 1987, Sessional Paper 3 of 1990.

 

“Comeback Hopes Dim for Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s Ex-President” by David Barstow

“It is very difficult to keep Rajapaksa out, I would think,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who runs an election monitoring group and a policy research organization in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, he noted, every recent poll shows Mr. Rajapaksa trailing, and there is “no demonstrable evidence of any kind of swing or shift to him.”

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/world/asia/comeback-hopes-dim-for-mahinda-rajapaksa-sri-lankas-ex-president.html

“In Peaceful Sri Lanka, Army Holds Thousands Of Acres Seized In Civil War” by Julie McCarthy

“Anthony Quinn lost his home to the Sri Lankan army at age 17. He’s now 45. He badly limps in injury from shelling during the long war that ended with the government forces crushing the separatist Tamil Tigers. Ever since the military seized his family’s house near the airport of Jaffna, the provincial capital of the north where the fighting raged, Quinn has lived in assorted crude encampments – no privacy, no sanitation. In this one with its barking dogs and corrugated tin walls, he raised four children.”

see: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/05/429597201/in-peaceful-sri-lanka-army-holds-thousands-of-acres-seized-in-civil-war

“Sri Lanka says it will return private land in civil war area” by Radio Vatican

Sri Lanka’s new government plans to return private land seized by the military in the civil war-ravaged north and release several hundred detainees, a minister said, in an apparent move toward reconciliation with ethnic minority Tamils. Cabinet Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne told reporters late Wednesday that the government of new President Maithripala Sirisena will ease its military presence, and that unlike the previous administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that was defeated in the Jan. 8 election, does not believe military action alone can prevent a resurgence of the rebels. “Especially for the north, we don’t think we need all that security. Our entire concept will be different,” he said. “About the lands in the north … we have already decided whatever acquired for business purposes, other than the security purposes, to give back to the owners.” He said the administration of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the civil war, was always concerned about a resurgence of the group. “We don’t think you can stop an LTTE resurrection (just) with an army,” he said. “So spending on security will be very moderate.”

via:http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/01/30/sri_lanka_says_it_will_return_private_land_in_civil_war_area/1120770

“Sri Lanka to Free Tamils and Return Their Land” by Dharisha Bastians and Gardiner Harris

The Sri Lankan government pledged Thursday to free hundreds of minority Tamil detainees and return much of the Tamil land in the north and east that the military seized and continues to hold years after the end of the country’s bitter civil war.

via: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/world/asia/sri-lanka-vows-to-free-tamil-detainees-and-return-land.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150129&nlid=68542801&tntemail0=y&_r=2

“Legal and Policy Implications of Recent Land Acquisitions, Evictions and Related Issues in Sri Lanka” by Bhavani Fonseka (CPA)

Land has a central place in the post war debates involving resettlement, reconstruction, development and the search for a political solution. With the ten year anniversary of the tsunami nearing and more than five years after the end of the war, many questions regarding land issues persist including continuing challenges to individuals being able to fully enjoy, access and use their lands and reside in their homes, due to restrictions placed in the name of security and development. Furthermore, Sri Lanka has a complex framework for legal and possessory rights, covering both State and private land. This framework is meant to provide tenure security for individuals residing and using the land and safeguards to prevent arbitrary displacement and eviction. The legal and policy framework, despite its shortcomings and the need for reform in specific areas, is a basic starting point of a governance system as well as constituting recognition of the rights of those owning and in possession of land. Unfortunately, present practices and recent policy decisions undermine the framework in place and demonstrate a deliberate disregard and/or ignorance of what is in the books. These challenges are highlighted in the present brief with recommendations provided for immediate reform.

“Govt. stops military takeover of lands in north” by The Sunday Times

The Government has suspended plans by the military to acquire 25 different plots of land in the Northern Province.The Land Commissioner General’s Department has issued a directive to the Northern Provincial Land Commissioner not to go ahead with the proposed acquisition of lands in the Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullativu districts.

via: http://www.sundaytimes.lk/140615/news/govt-stops-military-takeover-of-lands-in-north-103742.html

““We don’t want aid, just give us back our land” – The displaced at Mallakam Konappulam Camp” by Thiagarajah Nirosh

“One of the larger areas of focus in the Report of the “Lesson’s Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC) and the subsequent National Plan of Action of the LLRC is land. Though recommendations have been made with regard to land ownership and the “extents of private land” that is being “utilized for security purposes”, there are several civilians who are yet to have access to their land.

The former residents of the villages of Mayilitty, Kangesanthurai and Palali who have been living in temporary shelters since the year 1990 are among the many who await the day their land will be released to them. Mallakam Konappulam camp in Valikaamam North, Jaffna for the displaced is one such camp in which these former residents are residing. Facilities in this particular camp that holds approximately 424 individuals belonging to 127 families are poor, making the people’s demand to go back to their homes even greater. Watch the video for their story.”

To watch the vidéo: http://vimarsanam-vimansa.org/report/we-dont-want-aid-just-give-us-back-our-land-the-displaced-at-mallakam-konappulam-camp/

Source: Vimarsanam-vimansa.org