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 These unpublished sources were available in the Colombo “old colonial secretariat” files (now the series 65 of the Sri Lanka National Archives) when I consulted them, and will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.

 

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

by Eric Meyer

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

 

Land settlement in time and space

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Land Settlement under John George Fraser (1901-1911)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Formation of the Land Settlement Department: a political decision

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Land settlement, peasant indebtedness and peasant resistance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Appendix : the testimony of Frank Leach[123]

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

[6] Diary  Fraser, 5.09.1901

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

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

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

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

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

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

[13] Administration Report Matara 1898, p. E20

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

[22] CO54/682 n°240 of 17.06.1903

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[34]  Administration report Matale 1905, p. B28

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

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

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

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

[39] SLNA 59/Pending File 2537B

[40] SLNA,65 L754/1929

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

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

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

[44] Diary Fraser, 4.07.1903

[45] SLNA 6 box 15, 0107/1907

[46] Diary Brayne, 28.11.1909

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

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

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

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

[51] Fraser, 9.12.1904, 05.1905

[52] Fox, 8.06.1904

[53] CO54/706, 16.11.1906

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[65] CO54/712, 11.12.1907

[66] Diary Fraser, 27.05.1908

[67] CO54/718, 1.09.1908

[68] SLNA 59/Pending File 2226

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

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

[71] Diary Davies, 11.12.1913, 25.04.1914, 6.07.1914

[72] SLNA 6/ 761, RN 03961/1913 

[73] Diary Hughes, November 1924

[74] Diary Leach, 30.01.1924 and 8.12.1924

[75] Diaries of Wedderburn and Hughes, February 1924

[76] Diary Christoffelz, 8.05.1930

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

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

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

[80] Diaries Cocks, 15.05.1931 and Abhayaratne, 23.11.1933

[81] Diary Archibald, September 1915

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

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

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

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

[86] Diary Hughes, 24.07.1926 (Walgam pattu)

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

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

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

[90] Diary Stace, September – October 1925

[91] Diary Stace, 7.01.1926

[92] SLNA, Land Commission file 907

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

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

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

[96] Diary Sandys, October 1929 and 16.07.1930

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

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

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

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

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

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

[103] Diary Fraser, 12.07.1909

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

[105] Diary Toller, 14.11.1908

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

[107] Diary Hughes, 18/19.11.1924.

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

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

[110] Diary Abhayakoon, December 1935

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

[112] Diary Sandys, October 1929

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

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

[115] Diary Sandys, 18.07.1930

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

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

[118] Diary Luddington, 13.12.1927

[119] Diary Hudson, 12.03.1928

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

[121] Diary Christoffelz, 23.10.1930

[122] Diary Seneviratne, March and December 1933

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

ABORTIVE CHENA SETTLEMENTS IN THE KÄGALLA DISTRICT 

DURING THE LATE 19th AND EARLY 20th CENTURIES

By Eric P. Meyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The case of Dorawaka[52]

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Forest settlement in Pata Bulatgama

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dear Wace,

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

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

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

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

 

The case of Garagoda

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Village versus plantation : colonial & post-colonial ideologies and practices , by Eric Meyer

We publish the revised text of a lecture delivered in November 2017 at the Sri Lanka seminar organized by the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg. The readers will find further information on this seminar in www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/en/

The social history of rural Sri Lanka is no longer popular among social science scholars while it was in the forefront in the first 30 years after independence : the ethnic conflict studies have swamped the academic field for the last three decades. I am pleading for a return to socio-economic research. I am convinced that such a return can help to better understand the long term trends of the island’s history, including the two major crisis manifested in the double JVP insurgencies and the enduring Tamil separatist movement.
The political implications of colonial and post-colonial land policies have been studied by several authors (notably Mick Moore, Vijaya Samaraweera, Asoka Bandarage) in the 1980s, when the take-over of estates by the SLFP government, just after the first JVP insurgency, gave the issue a great visibility. I reviewed the issue a bit later, with publications in the Journal of Peasant Studies and in Modern Asian Studies in 1992, and that same year, Mick Moore and Jonathan Spencer (in Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka edited by James Brow) added to the literature of the subject. Since that period, the subject has lost its appeal; a quarter of a century later, it may be worth revisiting the question in a critical way.
I am not going to analyse the impact of the plantation system on the village sector (which is the subject of various publications of mine), but rather :
– to trace the origins and development of the representations of ‘the plantation’ and ‘the village’ taken as reified opposite entities, personified by the opposite figures of ‘the peasant’ and ‘the cooly’, and to explain the meaning of the dualistic theories and practices in the colonial context ;
– to document the development and the mass appeal of what could be called the ‘peasantist’ ideology and the role played by it in the land policies promoted, first in the economic and political context of the 1920s-1930s by a section of the colonial administration, then by nationalist politicians before and after independence ;
– to assess the consequences of the different options followed by the colonial administration and by governments after independence, to remedy landlessness and rural unemployment : either large scale agrarian colonization in the dry zone (rougly speaking, the UNP policy, from Senanayake to Jayawardene, from Gal Oya to Mahaveli project) ; or to the redemption and redistribution of plantation land in the wet zone (the SLFP policy) ;
– to review the academic literature on the subject in the 1970s and 1980s – what was called at that time ‘peasant studies’ – , and to discuss the thesis developed by authors such as Moore that the ‘repeasantization’ policies checked the development of violent agrarian movements – taking into consideration the subsequent revolutionary and ethnic violence correlated with these policies, and what could be considered as ‘depeasantization’ resulting from 30 years of war.

Constructing the dualistic model and the ‘peasantist’ ideology

During the last quarter of the 19th century, the impact of the plantation system on peasant agriculture and more generally on the ecological systems of the island began to question a section of the colonial administration. But is is only during the late 1920s and 1930s that it became a central political issue coinciding with the setting up of the Donoughmore system of representation, and with the major depression which hit the plantation economy.
The proto-history of the question is connected with the first cyclical crisis of the plantation economy, characterized by the collapse of coffee in the early 1880s. Until then, the land policy of the colonial government, which appropriated and sold for a song to coffee planters large areas of primeval and secondary forests (generally used for chena – slash and burn – cultivation by villagers) in the Kandyan upper and mid-country, had met with little open opposition, except in 1859 (when a combination of Kandyan headmen sellers and prospective intermediaries and buyers, who actually represented planting interests, met in Kandy), and after the property of some Temple lands was rejected by government (but temples themselves started to lease their lands to planters). Actually a large proportion of villagers in combination with intermediaries started themselves to plant coffee in their gardens and came to depend on coffee sales to pay their paddy taxes. But with coffee collapse which hit both the estates and the village gardens in the early 1880s, many villagers lost their holdings – often mortgaged to intermediaries : they became landless and famine conditions developed (especially in Uva, Walapane, Matale). This is well documented in Asoka Bandarage book.
Before that crisis, only a few civil servants, such as the governor Sir Henry Ward (1855-1860), took an interest in what they described as the decline of the village community due to the growth of individualism. The 1880s represent a turning point : the coffee crisis coincided with the growing popularity in intellectual circles in Britain and the East of ideas held by authors such as Henry Maine and John Phear, who drew an ideal picture of ‘traditional’ peasant societies (1). In their conception, these societies were self-regulating and egalitarian, based on customary institutions such as gansabhava (village councils), and it was the duty of the colonial masters to uphold or restore the (imaginary) village in its pristine purity. These views were reinforced by two contemporary developments : 1. the growing awareness among specialists of botany and forestry of the ecological degradation resulting from deforestation and monoculture (the successive directors of the Peradeniya botanic gardens, Trimen and Thwaites, were quite influent). And 2. the archaeological works undertaken in the ancient cities of the dry zone, which revealed the advanced technology (especially hydraulics) attained by paddy cultivators in the past.
A group of young colonial administrators (Le Mesurier, Fisher, Price, Davidson, Burrows) attempted to alert the public opinion in the island and in Britain on the condition of the Ceylonese (and specifically Kandyan) peasantry ; they were discreetly and later openly supported by the governor Arthur Gordon (who gave them as guideline: « Keep the peasant on the land »). They obtained in England the support of the Aborigines Protection Society. This group proposed practical measures to ‘save the peasantry’ : their campaign led to the abolition of the grain taxes in the 1890s, and to various experiments aimed at creating new villages (such as Lamasuriyagama, named after Le Mesurier) or at minimizing the negative impact of plantations on village life. But at the same time, the colonial system remained heavily dependent on the development of the plantation economy, the political strength of the planting interests was dominant in Ceylon, and many colonial administrators were themselves involved in covert land dealings, including Le Mesurier himself.
These ‘pro-peasant’ administrators attempted to reconcile their practice with their ideas by adopting a dualistic theory which presented the village and the plantation as two totally independent economic and social entities, which were to be protected from each other and which were to be kept apart. They themselves had a romantic image of the village : an harmonious, egalitarian, beautiful, ecological and smoothly working village versus a destructive, exploitative and morally perverting plantation. The dualistic theory was compatible with the view of the mainstream colonial authorities and their successors the developmentalists, who considered the village as stagnant, non progressive, feudal, unenlightened and immobile, better left to its stagnation as long as it did not compromise the working of a vibrant entrepreneurial and capitalistic plantation sector. To take an example, the Revenue Officer of the Kägalla district in the early 1890s, Price, left what he called « Friendly notes » (2) to his successor Davidson, in which he instructed him to distinguish two parts in the district, one left to the planters, the other to the villagers : « Restrict further sale of land to Three Korales and keep Four Korales as the Garden of the East – with a prosperous peasantry untainted by the civilization [sic in text] of Scotland and Mincing Lane ». This instruction was an extension at the district level of a principle which was applied at the micro level to village lands in the same district : the Revenue Officers effected during the 1880s a summary division of highlands, setting apart areas of chenas for villagers and appropriating the rest for sale to planters or keeping them as reserved forests. But the experiment ended in failure, for lack of legal and governmental support in the face of a wave of land speculation.
These debates in the narrow milieu of the Ceylon Civil Service were not without impact on the views held by the Kandyans themselves : an example is that of a chief headman of the Matale district, Tikiri Banda Aluvihare Ratemahatmaya (Sir Richard Aluvihare’s father) : in 1896, he wrote a report (titled « the silent revolution in the village ») at the request of the AGA of Matale Burrows (himself in charge in 1884-1886 of what was to become later under H.C.P. Bell the Archaeology Department, and the author of a guide book on the Buried cities of Ceylon published in 1905 : this is not a simple coincidence). This document is as far as I know the first example of the Kandyan discourse which will become a cliché on the ideal village life disturbed by the advent of the British planter ; I have published this document in my paper published in Journal of Peasant Studies (1992).
The dualistic model became popular in other colonies as well, notably in Dutch territories ; it was theorized in the 1930s by the Dutch scholar Julius Boeke (translated in English only in 1953). And that the same model in another colonial context led to the apartheid system.
In the 1890s, the coffee crisis was over and after the successful conversion of large estates (but not smallholdings) from coffee to tea, would-be tea planters rushed to the Kandyan areas to obtain fresh land either from government, or from the villagers themselves, who were often ruined and could not take to tea, using intermediaries and various stratagems for their landgrabbing activities (see my paper in Modern Asian Studies, 1992). Soon followed a huge demand for land for rubber plantations in the mid-country of the wet zone, especially in the Kägalla and Ratnapura districts, and for coconut plantations, especially in the Kurunägala district, in which the Colombo-based emerging Ceylonese middle class played a prominent role. In these circumstances, the colonial government interfered and tried to curb land speculation and assert its control over land by a new waste lands ordinance in 1897, which paved the way for the birth of a Land Settlement Department.

Building the ‘peasantist’ ideology into the nationalist discourse

By the beginning of the XXth century, the idealized representation of village life became popular among the urban Sinhalese elite, while its lost its appeal to British civil servants. British colonial administrators in the previous years were proclaiming pro-peasant sentiments while practicing pro-planter policies, and the contradiction led some of them to drop out of the civil Service, like Le Mesurier. The views of the colonial administrators with a real knowledge of village life became generally pessimistic. A well known case is that of Leonard Woolf, who came back to England in disgust, to marry Virginia Stephens and write his celebrated novel on Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle, which was certainly not an hymn to the glory of the Sinhala Buddhist village, nor a picture of villagers oppressed by the planters, but on the contrary a representation of village society oppressed by an addition of natural, cultural and colonial forces. Others who remained in the remote areas of the island devoted their time to collect village folk tales (Henry Parker), or to defend the rights of the dry zone villagers (such as H.R. Freeman).
On the contrary, the ‘peasantist’ ideology was adopted as a central argument of the nascent nationalist discourse in its Sinhala-Buddhist version. Apparently this option went against the interests of a large section of the nationalist elite, which was very active in opening rubber and coconut plantations on former village chena lands. In the words of Samaraweera (1981) : « The first generation of national leaders were the most unlikely champions of the cause of the peasants (…) Some among them had actually benefitted from the British Land ordinances (…) It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the land qustion was looked upon by the first generation of nationalists as a convenient issue which would give legitimacy to their claim as representatives of the people of the colony ».
In this « typical urban middle class myth model of the harmonious village » (Spencer 1991), the ‘peasantist’ ideology (restoring the village) was grafted upon the Buddhist revival project (restoring the sasana) :
1. The ‘original’ village society was harmonious, without class conflicts, made up of peasants-aristocrats (in the words of Hocart, archaeologist and ethnologist, using himself the often-quoted Sinhala proverb related by Robert Knox « take a peasant, wash off his dirt, he is fit to be a king »)
2. Its economy was based on paddy cultivation (qualified as an ‘Aryan’ crop) and its inner organization was geared to the proper functioning of the hydraulic systems – revealed by the archaeology of the Rajarata and Ruhuna (the paddy field and the tank, yaya/wäwa) : the publications of Harischandra and his endeavour to make Anuradhapura a sacred city illustrate that view
3. The ‘original’ village society was free from crime, drunkenness, based on Buddhist values, transcending caste differences, and organized around the vihara : this is a central theme in Anagarika Dharmapala’s writings
4. The disintegration of the village was the result of outside malefic forces : the Tamil invasions in the past, the British invasion of the present, with the complicity of the ‘foreign traders and moneylenders’
5. The (British) plantation and its (Tamil) coolies was the negative antithesis of the (Aryan) village and its (Sinhala) peasants
6. Restoring the ‘original’ village was the most urgent national duty, to avoid the degradation of the free peasant into a slave cooly, equated with the degeneration of the Sinhala ‘race’.
These ideas were borrowed from European authors of the late 19th century and early 20th century quoted above. But the myth was promoted among the urban anglicized elite by outstanding writers such as the Anagarika Dharmapala or the young Solomon Bandaranaike (3) ; Indian models such as Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore were popular among the enthusiastic bourgeois youth who ‘discovered’ a romanticized version of the peasant life, while their fathers were at the same time exploiting the peasantry. The success of the myth had a political utility as well, which was to unite Kandyans and Low Country Sinhalese against a common enemy, real or imagined, the outsider (a composite category comprising the British planter, the Tamil cooly, the Chettiar moneylender, the Indian Muslim trader), and to offset the grievances of the Kandyans against the landgrabbing activities of the Low Country Sinhalese.
A committeee on landless and indebted villagers was set up in 1925 by the Legislative Council. Among its members were two outstanding figures, D.S. Senanayake and Madawela. Madawela was the representative of the Kurunegala district, where he had been active since 1906 in organizing the opposition to the activities of the Land Settlement Department in that area, where he was himself active in land dealings, together with various low country speculators from the Negombo-Chilaw area, such as the Corea brothers. Don Stephen Senanayake and his brothers were the sons of a successful landed proprietor who had made a fortune in graphite mining and had extended his coconut and rubber estates in the mid-country, but his reputation was built as fierce opponent to the repressive policy of the British during the First world war. At the beginning D.S. Senanayake’s position was quite close to that of Madawela: « 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 » (Testimony before the committee of the Legislative Council on rubber restriction, CO54/874). They both were in touch with the most influent Ceylonese planters of the time, belonging to the new rich class, who in the 1920s were busy purchasing lands for rubber and coconut cultivation, such C.E.A. Dias and Dr Marcus Fernando, and with the Low Country Products Association which represented their interests. At the same time they were connected with Kandyan family groups who had themselves been involved in large scale land trasactions in the mid-country areas, such as the Meedeniyas, and with the influential press baron D.R. Wijewardene. Cases of villages entirely surrounded by plantations, and of villagers forcibly displaced, were frequent in the Deraniyagala area, and in all these cases Meedeniya, various intermediaries such as Van der Poorten and capitalists such as Wijewardene were implicated.
The Land Settlement Department, established by the Land ordinance of 1897, was very active after 1918 in two districts, Kurunegala and Ratnapura, where Ceylonese elite speculators were most involved, and it was their ‘bête noire’. Its officers were the resolute adversaries of the landgrabbers and saw themselves as the defenders of the peasantry, especially in the Kurunägala district, where small and medium landbuyers, anxious to invest in coconut estates, were purchasing title from villagers cheaply in advance of settlement by borrowing money on mortgage of these dubious titles from Indian moneylenders (Nattukottai Chettiar and ‘Coast Moors’). Before the Committee on landless/indebted villagers, Senanayake and Madawela tried to ruin the image of the Settlement officers as defenders of the peasantry, by insisting on the responsability of the Land Settlement operations in compelling the villagers to part with their lands, and pointed the role of Indians in the indebtedness and subsequent land sales of villagers in the coconut triangle, while in fact the Nattokottai Chettiars were lending money to would-be medium scale investors, most of them non-resident, rather than to small peasants. Madawela insisted that the Department should more liberally recognize private property of highlands, while the Settlement officers attempted to check the alienation of land to non-villagers.

‘Repeasantization’ : proactive land policies in the age of economic depression

In 1927, the then governor Hugh Clifford decided to appoint a Land Commission to review the entire land policy of Ceylon (4). This was a time when the great depression had not yet affected the plantation economy, which was booming. The starting points were the motion moved by Madawela and passed by the Legislative Council that the Settlement Officers should be instructed to recognize the private property of chenas, and the pressing request by a group of Ceylonese planters allied with British planters, and especially of Marcus Fernando, to speed up land sales in the wet zone for rubber, especially in Ratnapura and Kalutara, and in the Uva patanas for tea. The argument of Fernando (himself a former medical doctor, connected with the De Soysa big business family) was that many professional men had saved money and were anxious to invest in land, that owing to the slowness of the Land settlement proceedings, money was lying idle, that « the villagers have advanced side by side with the planters », and that the prosperity of the villages was proportionate with their proximity to a plantation.
These projects were opposed by popular meetings organized by local popular assiciations (Mahajana Sabhas) and became a public issue, and the colonial administration, startled by the risk of popular agitation, felt compelled to arbitrate between opposite demands. In a minute dated november 1926, the Acting Colonial Secretary wrote that there were two forces trying to influence the government policy : « the commercial establishment pressing it to expedite land sales to take advantage of the present boom ; the other may be described as the Ceylon nationalist party ; its extremists object to any Crown sale policy for estates and demand that land be reserved for the indigenous population »
Clifford’s own position was expressed in a text dated 11.02.1927 : « A school of thought has developed since 1910 [when Clifford was Colonial Secretary] until 1925-7 [Clifford being Governor] which maintains that tea and rubber estates are a parasitic growth which is battening upon the colony’s lifeblood, that they have worked no appreciable benefit to the indigenous inhabitants of the country and that they owe their existence to a systematic series of acts of expripriation and spoliation » ; Clifford considered it as « an historical and economic error » which « helps to fan the fires of class and racial prejudices, the blazing up of which can work nothing but misery and confusion ». But on the other side his position was that « the primary object of government is the multiplication of smallholdings, provided steps can be taken to prevent improvident alienation. The rapid development by means of estates of land which has not yet been exploited is by comparison a secondary consideration (…) I consider that early steps should be taken to encourage the overflow of (landless) people to such areas of fertile crown lands as are still available (in the wet zone), I should greatly prefer to see suitable crown lands utilized for this purpose than sold for conversion to still more estates. »
The Commission, which comprised officials of the colonial administration and elected members of the Legislative Concil, received a mass of memoranda and sat for one full year ; a part of its records were published in several reports in 1928 and 1929 but most remain in manuscript form. Its findings were informed by the ‘peasantist’ ideology : to quote the reports : « There is a very strong feeling among the unofficial members of the commission that villagers should not become coolies on estates ». « The rapid exploitation of the villager and his expulsion from his ancestral lands, the government being powerless to check the almost universal demoralization resulting from the success of the shameless practice of landgrabbing ». Many colonial administrators pleaded for greater powers to reserve lands in favour of the peasantry, and check landgrabbing, but they were sceptical about the possibility to operate a complete revolution : « I am not aware that anyone seriously contemplates the gigantic task of setting right the mistakes of the past by the only possible method, viz acquisition of lands from estates and their free sale to villagers » (Hodson, Government Agent North Western Province).
Unofficial members of the Commission, notably Madawela and Senanayake (in the 5th and 6th interim reports) while claiming to speak on behalf of the ‘poor peasant’, opposed any measures which would restrict the rights of the villagers to dispose of their lands. Besides these claims in favour of the peasantry, what is significant is that the Commission insisted that ‘middle class Ceylonese’ (as opposed in its phraseology to ‘outside capitalists’) should also get reserved lands, with the idea that their presence in the midst of the peasantry could introduce an element of authority and moral order. Senanayake suggested that blocks of 50 acres of highland suitable for coconut should be sold to these ‘middle class Ceylonese’, excluding outsiders, that is Tamil kanganies and Muslim traders : « the middle and professional classes (…) too wealthy to be classed as villagers (…) too poor to compete with big capitalists and companies (…) for the benefit of peasants men of educated classes should hold and cultivate estates of medium size (…) not only by providing employment for the peasants but also by securing the residence among peasants of men of culture and position ». C.L.Wickremesinghe, a friend of Senanayake and future Land Commissionner, who married his son Esmond to the daughter of D.R. Wijewardene, the press magnate, declared before the Commission : « Many of the middle class eke out a hand to mouth existence [sic]. I agree that Crown Land should be alienated to them… ».
The mechanisms set up to put into practice a new land policy were inspired by an influent but controversial colonial administrator, Charles Valentine Brayne. His elder brother Frank Lugard Brayne, a member of the Indian Civil Service, was one of the promoters of the Punjab colonies (5) ; Charles Valentine as government agent in Batticaloa had experimented a system of restricted tenure and planned alienation of land which he called ‘mapping out’, and obtained the green light of the government for that ; together with some of his colleagues he proposed to extend the system to the planting districts, and applied for the post of Land Commissionner when its creation was decided. His views were developed in an interesting unpublished text titled The protection of the village (6) « 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 villagers 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 a 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 ».
Brayne was criticized, violently opposed and even ridiculed by some of his colleagues who called him « Brainless Brayne », but his proposals were eventually adopted by the Land Commission and he was put in charge as Land Commissionner. D.S. Senanayake himself sided with him when he became the first Minister of Agriculture in the new State Council established in 1931. The Land Development ordinance of 1935 gave a legal basis to the system : but in the meantime, the great slump had intervened, which ruined land investors, threw out of employment hundreds of thousand coolies, and deeply affected the villagers who depended on estates : the dramatic malarial epidemic in Kurunägala and Kägalla in 1934-35 was partly the result of unemployment leading to undernutrition.
The great depression proved the falseness of the dualistic theories, the vulnerability of the peasant economy linked with the vulnerability of the plantation economy, especially owing to the overproduction of rubber which was the result of extensive planting. Its major political result was to give an impetus to the radical leftist movement, and to make it adopt the ‘peasantist’ approach. Young intellectuals underlined the contrast between abandoned estates and overcrowded villages. Following marxist orthodoxy, some of them undertook to organize (Tamil) coolies, considering them as an industrial proletariat ; but others began to demand the repurchase of estate lands for redistribution to (Sinhalese) villagers. One of the first promoters of the leftist movements, Wilmot Perera, defended a project of ‘Village reconstruction’ in his book Problems of Rural Ceylon (1932). He was the son of a ‘rubber king’ of Panadura, and convened an All Ceylon Rural Reconstruction Conference at his Horana estate in May 1932, where S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike spoke ; shortly afterwards, he founded the Suriya Mal Society in 1933, the precursor of the Lanka Samasamaja Party of which he was a member. He initiated a series of socio-economic studies of villages in 1934. He later became parlementarian and ended his career as Bandaranaike’s ambassador to Mao’s China in 1957.
Meanwhile, the landed middle class demanded the annulation of its debts, the expulsion of Indian moneylenders, and of all immigrants, with racist arguments reminiscent of antisemitism in Europe. Bandaranaike wrote in 1933 : « Rich and poor are being sold up by their creditors and driven in the streets, homeless beggars ». The memoranda and evidence of the Ceylon Banking Commission of 1934 are filled with these claims and complaints. Xenophobic – Indophobic sentiments were fuelled by the policy of the Indian authorities who appeared to interfere in Ceylon affairs, and eventually led to the disenfranchisement of Indian workers and merchants established in the island. The emerging Ceylonese elite (actually Low country Sinhalese) was careful to preserve its interests, through the creation of a Mortgage Bank (headed by Marcus Fernando) and later of a Central Bank. At the same time, the Land Commissionner services (controlled by Senanayake as Minister of Agriculture), undertook the distribution of available Crown land in populous areas of the wet zone, by mapping out and distribution of allotments, but resources were limited as long as the estates were left untouched. In the dry zone land was available, but malaria was still endemic and most attempts at restoration of the ideal hydraulic villages ended in failure.
The second world war, where Ceylon held a strategic position, created a new state of affairs : the rubber economy bounced back, food drive led the authorities to be very liberal in recognizing land rights, the government started to repurchase plantation land alienated to outsiders for distribution to villagers, especially in Kägalla district, where difficulties arose in 1946 in Knavesmire Estate, between expelled coolies and village allottees. Henceforth, the lax policy of succesive governments allowed quiet but uninterrupted encroachments by villagers on lands proclaimed as Crown by the Land Settlement Department. Finally, the extensive use of DDT against malarial mosquitoes made it possible to start land colonization in the dry zone, especially in the Eastern province, under the leadership of Senanayake, who became the First Prime Minister of independent Ceylon, in 1948. His policy of organized peasant colonization was again based on the ‘peasantist’ approach. It had a double objective : developping the country’s self sufficiency in paddy ; and deflecting rural discontent, land distribution to Kandyans in the new settlements acting as a sort of safety valve, without encroaching upon the planting interests. This policy allowed Low Country Sinhalese politicians to get the support of the Kandyans. But it alienated the Tamils because it encroached on the areas they considered as their homeland.

‘Peasantism’ in post-colonial political and academic controversies

At independence, the problem of landlessness was by no means new, but it had acquired such a visibility that it remained in the forefront, and became the major topic of research for social scientists and specialists of economic development, and a central political issue. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed a flurry of field researches on Ceylon villages, including very valuable ethnographical and sociological studies. After the Report of the Kandyan Peasantry Commission (1951), appeared a Report of Peradeniya University social scientists Sarkar and Tambiah (1957) under the title The Disintegrating Village, of the book of B.H. Farmer on Peasant colonization (1957), of Pul Eliya of Edmund Leach (1961) ; in the field of art and literature, the publication in Sinhala in 1944 of Gamperaliya (‘Village Upheaval’) by Martin Wickremasinghe was a landmark. These works exerted an influence on and were themselves influenced by the political controversies of the time.
The Kandyan Peasantry Commission analysed the adverse impact of the plantation system in a systematic way. Pre-colonial peasant economy was presented as an ecological system in equilibrium, achieving self sufficiency in food and employment, through the paddy system of production. Village society was depicted as knit together by common language, religion, and cultural traditions, « a great majority of the peasant population professing the Buddhist religion ». The advent of the plantation economy resulted in dualism, non-integration of the two sectors, and loss ; the villages became hemmed-in by estates : this obsessive image is constantly repeated. The major themes were the theft by the estate sector of useful peasant land and subsequent landlessness ; ecological impact of deforestation on paddy cultivation ; preferential treatment of Tamil coolies by authorities ; moral disintegration of peasant society : « New land was unavailable for village expansion, village councils gansabhava fell into disuse, prospect of crown claiming land prompted numerous sales to speculators, the old unity of village life began to disappear, moral and social standards were adversely affected, child marriage and giving out children for domestic service became common »
There was nothing new in these arguments, and many scholars consider the Report of the Kandyan Peasantry Commission as a rehearsal of commonplaces – what could be expected from a commission made up of a Colombo lawyer, two upper caste Kandyan MPs (Attygalle and Panabokke), and a representative of the Kandyan low castes, all of them close to Senanayake. In my opinion however, the Report is highly significant : its findings were based on a great number of memoranda (about 650), many of them in Sinhala, by various individuals and local associations, and by enquiries on the spot in different parts of the Kandyan regions in March and April 1949, one year after Independence, during which about 150 individuals were heard during public sittings. Most of these papers remained unprinted but are still available in the Archives : for example, the sittings of the commission in Badulla are vividly reported in a sort of diary. These documents reveal a high degree of public awareness of land problems in the Kandyan regions. A detailed examination of the lists of participants shows that the sociology of the memorialists closely corresponds with that of the people who will ensure seven years later the electoral success of the SLFP : schoolteachers, monks, high caste Bandaras and Appuhamys, a few low caste leaders, Village Committees, Cooperative Credit Societies and about 200 Rural Development Societies (the sittings were organized by Ellepola, in charge of these societies in the Ministry) ; besides these Kandyans, a fair number of Low Country Sinhalese established up-country as traders or small scale planters and writing in English ; and very few Muslims and Tamils. The result is that although the Commission was made up of UNP supporters, their report offers a sort of blueprint of what was to become the SLFP master narrative. These arguments are found after 1956 in the speeches of Bandaranaike and his Agriculture Minister (for a short time) the Marxist leader Philip Gunawardena, which are directly derived from the ‘peasantist’ theory, in which the Sinhala people is defined as a people of peasants.
Sarkar and Tambiah’s published six years after the Report of the Kandyan Peasantry Commission, just after the victory of Bandaranaike at the 1956 elections, an academic work, based on a detailed socio-economic quantitative study of a group of villages in the lower Dumbara valley (7). It was introduced by a sort of abstract of the Report, which gave it a scientific legitimacy. The very title of the book was derived from it. But it was however less prone to draw an idealistic picture of village life. Among the similarities, the insistence on history (« the basis of rural economy in ancient Ceylon was paddy cultivation »), the emphasis put on the « well integrated and self-sufficient social and economic system, well adapted to certain ecological factors », the affirmation that « the invasion of this system by the plantations struck a damaging blow to its stability, destroyed the balance between paddy, chena and forest », the use of the term « degeneration of the community »; the emphasis on ecological impact of the destruction of forests ; an analysis of the vicious circle of modernisation, better health services, population increase, landlessness, exploitation by the bourgeoisie of the less fortunate, and impact of the new law system. The study differed from the Report in that it used a statistical and scientific approach, and in that economic exploitation inside the Kandyan society was put on the same footing as « victimization and exploitation by the middle classes, merchants and estate owners » ; although not informed by the marxist theory, the book, because of its scientific approach, was to exert a decisive influence on the leftist Ceylonese intellectuals.
That same year 1957, B.H. Farmer published a detailed study of the dry zone colonies (8), which can be considered as a semi-critical assessment of the first results of the Senanayake policy started with the Land Commission of 1928 and the Land Development Ordinance of 1935, but really applied to the dry zone only after the war and the use of DDT. He pointed out the romanticism which led to exaggerate the wealth and population of ancient Rajarata and Ruhuna based on irrigation works : « it is important to give the lie to estimates which are grossly exaggerated ; if such receive credence as they unfortunately do they engender false optimism about the carrying capacity of the dry zone… ». He therefore doubted the capacity of the colonies to solve Kandyan landlessness problems, which he recognized as serious, while suggesting a balanced analysis of its causes : « The author is convinced by field evidence that the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance and the estates which grew because of it, have borne hard on many Kandyan villages and in doing so have accentuated an agrarian problem which would have been serious in any case ». Farmer became the first director of the Center of South Asian Studies at Cambridge, established in 1964, and his book sowed the seeds of a critique of the nationalist discourse on the question of the responsibility of the British pro-planter policy in the Kandyan agrarian problems.
This ‘revisionist’/developmentalist approach was initially defended by Lal Jayawardena : in his Cambridge thesis (1963) he raised the question as to why the Kandyan peasants, if evicted on a mass scale, did not become wage workers on the plantations ; he therefore minimized the impact, maintained that the colonial administration undertook to efficiently protect the peasantry, and at the same time exposed the responsibility of landgrabbers, especially members of the rising nationalist elite (his wife Kumari who wrote at the same time her thesis on the nationalist/working class movements in the interwar period once said to me : « my heroes are his bad guys ») ; but Lal Jayawardena left his work unpublished (he became a career economist and diplomat) and therefore had no influence, except on the group of historians at the Peradeniya University who from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s undertook to deconstruct the Kandyan discourse, at a time when the campus was the scene of a growing agitation led by marxist students, especially during the year 1971. The Ceylon Studies Seminar met in the late 1960s under the aegis of Kingsley De Silva, with Michael Roberts, Vijaya Samaraweera, and L.A. Wickremaratne : they elaborated the ‘revisionist’ thesis in various papers which found their way in the Peradeniya History of Ceylon volume III. After the JVP insurgency and university reforms, some left Sri Lanka like so many British-educated intellectuals, while others regrouped outside the universities in NGOs and various foreign funded research institutes. But at the same time, western economists such as Snodgrass could still defend the dualistic theory : in 1966, Snodgrass spoke of « the classic purity of the Ceylonese case », of a « dualism nearly perfect » and maintaned that « smallholder production of export crops had only a marginal impact upon the giant mass [sic] of the traditional economy »

‘Peasant Studies’ ‘Repeasantization’, ‘Depeasantization’ : 1971 and after.

The shock of the unexpected 1971 insurgency left indelebile traces in the realm of politics and economy. Its immediate results were the new republican constitution of 1972, and the take-over of the large plantations between 1972 and 75. The event had also a far reaching impact in the research field with the creation of the Agrarian Research and Training Institute established in Colombo in 1972. The insurgency was immediately interpreted (by the ruling classes and by their foreign advisers who began to swamp Sri Lanka with their foundations, NGO’s and the like) as the result of unemployment and subsequent demoralization among the educated rural youth, and also, (I insist on this point which is often overlooked because the JVP itself adopted elements of the nationalist discourse), to the influence of outside, non-national forces. These interpretations reinforced the political attempts to ‘repeasantize’ (term used by Moore) society, to reinject moral values, to promote ‘national thinking’ – Jathika Chintanaya.
It is often assumed – for example by Moore (9) – that the JVP had no agrarian programme, and therefore no real appeal among the rural masses. This is also the impression left by the books of Alles and of Gunaratna, who are up to prove that the only aim of the JVP was the seizure of power by a leninist-guevarist strategy : both books are written in a judiciary and political science perspective, and insist that JVP « was essentially a cadre party which had a limited public support » (10). It is true that the JVP was not an agrarian mass organization as such ; but its appeal for a great number of rural youth was based on what we have called ‘peasantism’. JVPers shared the ‘peasantist’ views of the SLFPers and integrated them in their revolutionary agenda. The ‘Five Lectures’ conceived by Rohan Wijeweera by the end of 1967 and diffused through classes of endoctrination in the high schools and universities give the rough elements of the JVP. ideology. They have not been published as far as I know, but their substance can be found in the statement of Wijeweera to the police (C.I.D.) dated 1971 and in the JVP press in Sinhala (11).
The first lesson dealt with ‘The economic crisis’ (the following were: 2 ‘Independence’ 3. ‘Indian expansionism’ 4 ‘Leftist movement’ 5 ‘The path to revolution’). The lectures were designed to fit with the aspirations of the educated unemployed rural youth. According to a classical marxist-leninist approach, the economic crisis faced by Sri Lanka was attributed to the impact of colonialism and post-colonial capitalism, in the form of the impact of the plantation economy on the peasant sector : « the primary root of the problem is the collapse of a self-sufficient economy ; the birth of the tea plant at the expense of kurakkan is the main cause of the crisis ». Then follows the usual analysis of rural decline found in the nationalist discourse, which is integrated into the revolutionary logic :
1. That the nationalist-bourgeois (and the walauwa people) were actually lying when they pretended to take the side of the peasantry. It was only by armed struggle that a real independence could be obtained, the maoist way; the old left similarly failed because it was prisoner of the democratic game, western ideas and modes, and led a bourgeois corrupt life, cut from the authentic masses. 2. That the real revolutionary class was made up of landless peasants, and swabhasha-educated unemployed youth (including young monks)(12) 3. That Indian plantation workers, contrary to the classical leftist view, were not a proletariat but the agents of imperialism, part and parcel of the plantation system
What was to be done ? According to Wijeweera in his submissions to the CID : « We should change the entire economy. The basic aim is to do away with the plantation industry, the hill slopes should be reafforested, reservoirs built, rivers diverted to the dry zone ». It was commonly said by JVPers in the villages in 1971 that they would uproot rubber and tea and plant yams instead – this is what had been done since 1935 in the Village Expansion Schemes that became the hotbed of JVP activities notably in the Kägalla district. Finally, the JVP strategy was to be guevarist rather than maoist : the conquest of towns from countryside being difficult in Sri Lanka, the leadership envisioned an instant revolution rather than a long walk ; as we know, this strategy ended in failure.
A parallel, or possibly a connection between JVP and Khmer Rouge ideologies may be explored. In a paper read at an international workshop on cultural heritages held at Heidelberg in 2011 (« The myth of Angkor as an essential component of the Khmer Rouge utopia »), Locard shows that there was an ‘repeasantization’ component in the economic policy of the Khmer Rouge. Their utopia – back to the countryside and to self-sufficient food producing peasantry- was grounded on the myth of Angkor ‘the hydraulic city’, just as the JVP utopia was grounded on the image of Anuradhapura. Both kingdoms had grown rich and powerful because they controlled extensive irrigation systems that produced surpluses of rice. By building a nationwide system of irrigation canals, dams, and reservoirs, the Khmer Rouge leadership believed it would be possible to produce rice on a year-round basis (13).
Successive attempts by SLFP and UNP to solve the problem of Kandyan landlessness and unemployment within the framework of the peasantist/nationalist ideology constitute in my opinion a decisive factor contibuting to the violence of the ethnic crisis, and finally fuelling the war itself. The SLFP in 1972 made the choice of the land reforms which were supposed to radically transform the system from above. It entailed a real dispossession for the class of the low country political leaders (coconut estates) but not for the upper caste Kandyans (paddy and temple lands which they controlled were excluded). In part, it was an extension of the principle of Village Expansion Schemes, but only 10% of the land was actually redistributed ; for the rest, it was an attempt at collectivization, creating cooperative production, which resulted in poor management, actual expulsion or even killing of Tamil coolies or supervisors, and the final restitution of plantation management by the state to private firms. The multiplication of violent clashes between Sinhalese (generally people from bazaars rather than villagers) and Tamils on estates, starting in 1977 and renewed in 1983, signalled the failure of the take-over project.
Back into power in 1977 with J.R. Jayawardene, (from a Low Country wealthy planting family connected with the Senanayakes), Gamini Dissanayake (from a Kandyan wealthy Goyigama family of Kotmale) and the low caste rival leaders Cyril Matthew and Ranasinghe Premadasa, the UNP immediately undertook to expedite the ‘repeasantization’ of the country with the Accelerated Mahaveli Development Project, which was meant to relocate impovershed Kandyans (especially from Uva and Matale) close to their native land and in continuity with the Gal Oya project. Jayawadene himself found it necessary to reinvent agrarian rituals in the very district where his class had grabbed land. Even Premadasa, who as a typical working class urbanite could have despised the peasantist ideology, felt it necessary to launch the Gam Udawa project (specifically for low caste villages). But the ‘repeasantization’ project was slowed down by the war, and aggravated interethnic relations, especially in the Eastern province. At the same time, the successive governments, either SLFP or UNP, were very lax in checking encroachment by villagers on public land for the purpose of putting up houses and gardens, either in the wet or in the dry zone. Local civil servants were easily corrupted, and local strong men, with the right political connections, were always ready to help. It was estimated in the 1980s that one sixth of the house cum garden plots in the whole country were thus acquired.
While these developments were taking place in the countryside in the 1970s and 1980s, ‘peasant studies’ became extremely popular in academic circles, but these critical researches had little bearing on actual policies. In the 1960s appeared the great stream of peasant studies – linked with the maoist experience in China. Eric Wolf published Peasants in 1966, Peasant Wars some time later, the Journal of Peasant Studies was started in 1973 by Terence Byres of London University, Eric Stokes published ‘The return of the peasant to South Asian history’ in South Asia, 1976. In France, the publications of the agronomist globe-trotter René Dumont (who was later a founding member of the Green party) were best sellers, and he was invited to visit Sri Lanka by Chandrika Bandaranaike : his book Paysanneries aux abois (Peasantries at bay) published in 1972 devotes 100 pages to Sri Lanka.
Agrarian Research and Training Institute’s field studies were published in a series of monographs in the late 1970s, and some of these studies were collected in Morrison (1979) published under the same title as Sarkar and Tambiah. Shortly afterwards, four theses of political economy using a more or less marxist approach were defended and later published : Tilak Hettiarachchy (The Sinhala Peasant MA 1978), Asoka Bandarage (Colonialism in Sri Lanka Ph D Yale 1980) and Mick Moore (The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka Ph D Sussex 1981). Several papers by the marxist political scientist Newton Gunasinghe (Ph D Sussex 1979, who died prematurately in 1988) were later published by the Social Scientists Association. Further additions to this body of literature were the contributions to a conference held in Anuradhapura in July 1984 published in 1992 by Brow and Weeramunda, Agrarian change in Sri Lanka. Other important publications included Charles Abeysekera, Capital and peasant production, Social Scientists Association, 1985 (especially the introduction by Newton Gunasinghe) ; and the report of the Third Land Commission headed by Prof. Madduma Bandara, in 1987.
Tilak Hettiarachchi’s historical booklet published in 1982 reproduced the nationalist discourse (as suggested by its title, The Sinhala peasant) with a marxist packaging, making a mechanical use of Dobb, Polanyi and Eric Wolf. The cover of the book showed the trinity ‘Wäwa, Caitya, Yaya’ with a crack. The author maintained that the pre-plantation peasant system based on paddy cultivation was balanced, self supporting, sustainable, socially indifferentiated and economically homogeneous and free from any clash of interests. He ignored the debates raised by the revisionist school. The facts were taken mainly from published writings on the coffee era.
Asoka Bandarage’s book on colonialism published in 1983 was more sophisticated. Colonialism in Sri Lanka, the Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands adopted the general thesis of the disintegrating impact but took into account the revisionist theories ; Asoka Bandarage attempted to deconstruct peasant myths and to analyse class conflicts inside the village society (« the overdrawn image of the Sinhalese as a nation of rice cultivators and rice eaters, constituted an important element in the ideological control exercised by the overlords in keeping peasants tied to the paddy fields »). But at the same time she agreed with the idea that peasantry was homogeneous in Kandyan times, economically speaking, and that « caste differences within an otherwise homogeneous peasantry inhibited the emergence of a class consciousness and collective action among the cultivator class ».
Newton Gunasinghe’s papers and other publications by the group of social anthropologists and political scientists known as Social Scientists Association were much more critical, written in a neo-marxist perspective. Newton Gunasinghe attributed to the repeasantization strategy the technological stagnation, and considered that Village Expansion schemes were more housing projects than agricultural projects.
The theoretical question raised by Mick Moore (who was attached to the Agrarian Research and Training Institute and the Sussex School of Development Studies) was the absence of a peasant (smallholder) political interest group and of peasant movements in Sri Lanka, in which he saw the result of the ‘repeasantization’ strategy of the ruling classes. He considered that this strategy was a success : « Unlike almost all other developing countries Sri Lanka has experienced no major flight of people from the rural areas to the cities » He explained that the major reason for that was « the relative excellence of public provision for most of the population » : a cheap transport network, free education, free health, subsidized prices of foodstuff, land given out to the poor, extension of small scale family farming, social laws, low incidence of taxation. As a result, « the total number of agricultural holdings has increased faster than the rural population ; the center of gravity of the smallholder economy has shifted substantially to the dry zone ; rice production through this process has expanded faster than plantation production ». Even in the plantation sector, the development occurred in Sinhalese-owned smallholdings, especially in the South, and employment on estates was increasingly occupied by non-resident Sinhalese villagers. If we follow Mick Moore, the Senanayake and Bandaranaike policies have succeeded. Then 1971 appears as a minor revolt and not as a peasant class revolt in any case, and the ethnic crisis is something unconnected with general socio-economic problems. On the contrary, C.M. Madduma Bandara (President of Third Land Commission) in a report of 1987 maintained that Village expansion schemes had not ‘created’ a prosperous peasantry as anticipated by the planners of the 1930s : « On the contrary the majority of these settlements have become pockets of poverty and areas of social deprivation. Many of them have become centres of turmoil in the present crisis (JVP) ».

After 30 years of civil war, of militarization or massive outmigration of the youth, and of growing ‘rurbanization’, are the questions raised in the 1970s and 1980s still relevant ? I would suggest that the war signalled the failure of the ‘repeasantization’ projects : a large proportion of the unemployed rural young men found employment as soldiers in the war, while a large proportion of rural women went out as factory workers or as maids in the Middle East.
What happened was ‘de-peasantization’ rather than ‘re-peasantization’ : what remains are nostalgic symbols such as Rajapaksa’s kurakkan-colour shawl… Power in the countryside has been seized not by agrarian leaders, but by successful mudalalis (petty businessmen) and armed gangs. Village Buddhist values have been superseded by the discourse of urban activist monks. It looks as if what a century or more of colonization had spared has been disintegrated by three decades of turmoil.

Bibliography :
ABEYSEKERA Charles ed., Capital and Peasant Production. Studies in the continuity and discontinuity of Agrarian Structures in Sri Lanka. Colombo : Social Scientists Association, 1985
BANDARAGE Asoka, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, the Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands. Berlin/New York : Mouton, 1983
BROW James & WEERAMUNDA Joe, eds., Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka. New Delhi : Sage, 1992
The Disintegrating Village. Report of a Socio-economic Survey conducted by the University of Ceylon [Sarkar & Tambiah]. Colombo : Ceylon University Press, 1957
DUMONT René, Paysanneries aux abois : Ceylan, Tunisie, Sénégal. Paris : Le Seuil, 1972
FARMER B.H., Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon. London : Oxford University Press, 1957
GUNASINGHE Newton, Changing Socio-Economic Relations in the Kandyan Countryside. Colombo : Social Scientists Association, 1990.
HETTIARACHCHY Tilak, The Sinhala Peasant in a Changing Society. Colombo : Lake House, 1982
LOCARD Henri, « The myth of Angkor as an essential component of the Khmer Rouge utopia » in Falzer Michael ed., Cultural Heritage and Civilizing Mission, Heidelberg, Springer, 2015, p. 201-222
MEYER Eric « ‘Enclave’ Plantations, ‘Hemmed-in’ Villages and Dualistic Representations in Colonial Ceylon » in Val. Daniel et al. Plantations, Peasants and Proletarians in Colonial Asia, London : Cass 1992 ; also published in Journal of Peasant Studies 19 (3/4)
MEYER Eric « « From Landgrabbing to Landhunger: High Land Appropriation in the Plantation Areas of Sri Lanka during the British Period. » Modern Asian Studies 26, 2, (1992) pp. 321-361.
MOORE Mick, The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka. Cambridge, U.P., 1985
MOORE Mick, « The Ideological History of the Sri Lankan ‘Peasantry’ » in Brow & Weeramunda p. 325-356
MORRISON Barry et al . eds., The Disintegrating Village. Social Change in Rural Sri Lanka. Colombo : Lake House, 1979.
SAMARANAYAKE Gamini, Political Violence in Sri Lanka, 1971-1987. New Delhi : Gyan, 2008
SAMARAWEERA Vijaya, « Land, Labour, Capital and Sectional Interests in the National Politics of Sri Lanka » Modern Asian Studies 15 (1), 1981, 127 – 162
SNODGRASS Donald, Ceylon, an Export Economy in Transition. Homewood : Irwin, 1966.
SPENCER Jonathan « Representations of the rural, a view from Sabaragamuwa » in Brow & Weeramunda 1992, p. 357-387

Sources :
Report of the Kandyan Peasantry Commission, Ceylon Sessional Paper 18/1951
Land Commission Reports, Ceylon Sessional Papers, 1927-1929
Cambridge South Asian Archive : C.V. Brayne Papers
Sri Lanka National Archives (Colombo and Kandy), Record Groups 30 (Kägalla district), 69 (Land Commissionner), 108.28 (Kandyan Peasantry Commission), 220 (Land Settlement)
Colonial Office Archives (Public Record Office, Kew), series CO54.

Notes
(1) Henry Maine, Village Communities in east and west, 1871 ; John Budd Phear (former Chief Justice of Ceylon 1877-79), The Aryan village, 1880.
(2) Sri Lanka National Archives 30/2246
(3) S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, The spinning wheel and the paddy field, 1933.
(4) Sri Lanka National Archives : Commentaries, Memoranda, and Evidence before the Land Commission, 1927-1928 ; Confidential files 1926 ; Hugh Clifford, Some Reflections on the Ceylon Land Question, Colombo, 1927.
(5) His books published during those years : Village uplift in India (1927) and The remaking of village India (1929) made him famous in India
(6) C.V. Brayne papers, South Asia Archive, Cambridge (undated, probably 1928)
(7) The Disintegrating Village. Report of a Socio-economic Survey conducted by the University of Ceylon [Sarkar & Tambiah]. Colombo : Ceylon University Press, 1957
(8) B.H. Farmer, Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon. London : Oxford University Press, 1957
(9) Mick Moore, The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka. Cambridge, U.P., 1985, p. 220
(10) Rohan Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution. Kandy, 1990, p. 93
(11) Gamini Samaranayake, Political Violence in Sri Lanka, 1971-1987. New Delhi, 2008 p. 254-267
(12) « The so-called left-wing leaders of our country have said that the peasantry is not revolutionary. These leaders will never understand the problems of Ceylon. Due to a failure to analyse the problems of the peasantry scientifically and accurately, there has been no attempt to establish a worker-peasant alliance nor any move to unit the entire oppressed class and to work towards a socialist revolution…It is only socialism that could permanently liberate the up-country landless peasant, the peasant in the wet zone whose crops are being constantly destroyed by the floods, the dry-zone peasant who is the victim of droughts, the agricultural labourers, chena (slash – and – burn) cultivators and sharecroppers. » (« The Peasantry is the Main force of the Ceylonese Revolution », Vimukthi, 4, September 1970.)
(13) The Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan obtained a doctorate in Economy in Paris in 1959 for a dissertation on Cambodia’s economy, which was later eagerly read by the group of Cambodian students (the text is available in English translation at Cornell U.P., 1979) ; he belonged to a proto-maoist group in which the French-reunionnais Jacques Vergès played a prominent role ; the Maison du Cambodge where they all stayed became for a few years the scene of constant incidents between warring factions, especially after 1968 and was eventually closed for 30 years in 1973 ; I met there a few Sri Lankan JVPers in the early 1970s.

Landgrabbing by coffee estates in the Kägalla district, by Eric Meyer

After « The 1934-1935 Malaria Epidemic in Sri Lanka » (http://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/1251) and « Gamperaliya in the Kägalla district » (http://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/1354), we publish here the third paper in a series on the socio-economic history of the Kägalla district.
Download the paper here:
Coffee estates Kegalle

‘Gamperaliya’ (village upheaval) in the Kägalla district, by Eric Meyer, Inalco, Paris

Nous publions ci-dessous le second article inédit d’Eric Meyer sur l’histoire de Sri Lanka à la période coloniale. Il s’agit de matériaux pour l’étude micro-historique des bouleversements survenus dans la société villageoise (c’est le sens du mot singhalais ‘gamperaliya’) d’une localité du district de Kägalla, sous l’impact du développement d’une plantation de thé et d’hévéas.
This is the second in a series of unpublished papers by Eric Meyer on the social history of Sri Lanka during the colonial period. It provides material for the micro-level study of village social upheaval (it is the meaning of the word ‘gamperaliya’ in sinhala) in a Kägalla district locality under the impact of the development of a tea and rubber estate.

Gamperaliya in the Kägalla district
Material for the historical study of a Kandyan village in its relations with a plantation

The selection of the H*** village and G*** estate was the result of my previous research (1975 to 1978) into the archives of the Kägalla district, which showed the special interest of three localities in which plantations had developed inside a village area and for which detailed information pertaining to the British and even the Kandyan period was forthcoming: the Rangalla village / Yatideriya estate, near Bulatkohupitiya ; the Dorawaka village / Madeniya estate near Warakapola ; and the H*** village / G*** estate near Kägalla. It appeared that the first two areas were too large and too populated to be studied in depth, and that no estate documents were available. H*** had only 49 houses, and I had access to G*** estate (state-owned since 1975) and its records.
After a careful study of the written documents of the British colonial administration in the Sri Lanka National Archives in Colombo and the kacceri record room in Kägalla, a house to house survey was made, in August 1979, with short interviews, which helped to draw genealogical charts and a village plan (together with documents of the Survey Department including an aerial photograph), to figure out the secular trends of the high and low land market in the village by comparing paddy tax registers (especially 1881) with the cultivation officer’s data (1979), and to check written information regarding land sales by villagers to the estate. Further data was collected in the estate records including an old plan. Interviews with members of two influent families, and in the nearby villages of A*** and T*** with elders, a monk and a head teacher, elicited the local view of the history of the area. Much later, additional precise information was found in a sinhala ola leaf manuscript of the Dissawe Lekammitiya of Hatarakorale kept in the Peradeniya University Library.
The enquiry revealed a case of social revolution in a Kandyan village very similar to what the well known Sri Lankan writer Martin Wickramasinghe had depicted for a southern low-country village in his novel Gamperaliya (Village upheaval). Among the few village monographs on Kägalla district, Tamara Gunasekara’s Hierarchy and Egalitarianism located further east near Aranayake provides a wealth of fascinating material often similar to that of H*** ; some comparison can also be made with Jayantha Perera’s Nuwaragama in the same area, and in the Central Province with monographs by Newton Gunasinghe and Kalinga Tudor Silva. The present paper made up of half-worked material, is provisional and focusses only on social history ; it does not pretend to be a piece of scientifically founded ethno-history. Only the initials of names of localities and village families are given, while those of public officers and professionnals are mentioned in full.

Overview of the village history before 1900:
By the mid-18th century, Mawata pattuwa, where H*** village is located, was crossed by the main path (still locally known as the king’s road, Raja mawata) connecting the Dutch-occupied low-country with the Kandyan kingdom, which ran distinctly south of the present Kandy road built under the British in the 1820s. Between the line of forts at Ruanwella, Menikkadawara, Arandara, and the Leuke – Attapitiya area under the Balane pass leading to Kandy (and the minor Balatgomuwa pass leading to Gampola), it was a rugged and circuitous route crossing rivers on creeper footbridges (edanda), with ascents and descents, blocked with thorny checkpoints (kadawat) – the ideal place for guerilla warfare, which enabled the kingdom to resist the attacks of the successive European powers until 1815. Owing to its strategic importance, many villagers along the path were enlisted as warriors, scouts and spies in time of war by the governor (Dissawe) of Hatarakorale, in the so-called nanayakkara and atapattu services. Such was the case in H*** village, whose Radala caste lord, bearing the honorific Tänannähe, was in 1747 the mohottala, secretary to the Dissawe (the powerful military chief Leuke Dissawe the elder), in charge of the organization of the military service. The Dissawe Maha Lekammitiya, rewritten under the orders of Leuke at the beginning of the reign of Kirti Sri (december 1747), bears testimony to his political will of reinforcing the atapattu organisation of Hatarakorale, the bulwark of the kingdom facing the Dutch territories : it provides an updated list of the families attached to the military service in the different villages of Hatarakorale. Following the usage of the Lekammitiya, we shall apply in this study the term Radala to the families listed as such in 1747, which were clearly distinguished from the families of soldiers of a lower grade, styled Hewayo.
In the same H*** village there were three families of Hewayo, two of Naide or Rate caste (now Goyigama), the K*A* naide and the W*A* naide and one of Padu (now Batgama) caste, N*P* aya. Ralph Pieris (1956 : 302) wrongly states that the title -nayide is reserved to respectable persons of artisan castes : according to the 18th century onomastic the suffix was generally applied to hewayo of ‘good’ caste, while the suffix -pediya or -aya was frequently but not always applied to hewayo of Padu caste, and -dewaya to hewayo of Vahumpura caste. Whatever their caste, surnames of the hevayo generally alluded to their military prowess or duties (in this case : Victorious Chief ; Defender of the City). Three families from the neighbouring village of A*** were also involved in the military service : a Radala nanayakkara, R*, and two hewayo, R*A* naide and W* pediya, while a W* family hailing from a third village, D***, was serving in a special unit of lancers.
After the British accession, the Radala family members (who then sported the full patabändi name of S* M* M* instead of Tännanähe) were spared together with the other Hatarakorale chiefs who followed Molligoda Adigar in his support for the British during the 1817-1818 rebellion. But they lost most of their power with the abolition of the rajakariya system after 1833, the banishment of Molligoda, and the abandonment of the old Raja mawata when the British opened a cart road to Kandy about 5 miles to the north and established their administration in the new town of Kägalla. They however retained substantial headmanships in the 1850s (division officers and paddy tax assessment officers in Mawata pattuwa). They continued to reside in their small manorial house (walauwa), enjoy the product of their paddy fields and chena lands, and exert an authority over some families of the village through the control of land. The paddy tax receipts (wattoru) of the 1860s show that in addition to their paddy fields they possessed rights over chenas cultivated with hill paddy by the N*P* family, but that the former soldier families K*A* and W*A* had their independent properties (paraveni pangu). Other families that do not appear in the 18th century lists are mentioned in 1882 : one (H*R*) was that of a long established high caste Vedarala (medical practicionner) who possessed substantial fields and gardens : his traditional occupation made him independent from the service system and the Radala lord ; another (H*K*) was that of a group of poor oboe players, Berava by caste, from a neighbouring village.
In addition, the S*M*M* retained a measure of control over the neighbouring village of D*** which had been given them as nindagama by the Kandyan kings, and they enjoyed the services of its (mainly Padu) families (18 pangu + 1 high caste paraveni panguwa), which consisted in cultivating the fields of the reserve (muttettuwa) and delivering its produce, but also included personal service such as carrying the baggage of the proprietor on journeys. In the late 1860s ans early 1870s, the colonial policy makers, following the Indian example, decided to foster the interests of the hereditary aristocracy : the administration undertook to register the services due by tenants of so-called feudal villages to their lords. At the enquiry, the S*M*M* could not establish their rights to services in H*** village (the enquiry mentions : « nindagama, sannasa lost, services prescribed ») but they succeeded in having the entirety of the large village of D*** recognized as their nindagama, in spite of the absence of sannas (written grant). The fate of some their caste fellows in the neighbourhood was worse : in the village of A***, the nindagama claim of the survivor of the local R* family was « rejected by reason of long desuetude ». On the contrary, some families belonging to the ordinary soldier class during the 18th century were on the rise : the R*A* who hailed from the same village of A***, had obtained from the colonial administration posts of headmen and paddy tax evaluators (wibadde lekam) in the 1860s, and they were able to register a small nindagama under their name at the Service Tax enquiry early in the 1870s.
However the fortunes of the S*M*M* family were already declining : in February 1873, the head of the family, Kiri Banda, was heavily indebted to a Chettiyar moneylender of Kägalla, Kaliappa Chetty, who obtained the judicial sale of all the family property, advertised in detail in the Ceylon Government Gazette : 11 paddy fields and 3 gardens in H*** , 7 paddy fields in D***, together with « the services or rajakariya due from the tenants of the ninda village D*** as noted in the Service Tenures Commissionner Registry ». It is likely that a part of the land was purchased by a member of the R*A* family, Appuhami, who appears in the Grain tax commutation register of 1882 as proprietor of one of these paddy fields ; but the rest of the lands were still registered under the name of S*M*M* Kiri Banda and his brothers Ukku Banda and Punchi Banda, who together owned a considerable extent of 5 amunam 4 kuruni of paddy fields in H*** . However this property must have been mortgaged to outsiders, and R*A* Punchi Appuhami appears in 1898 as the proprietor of another of these paddy fields purchased at a fiscal sale. As regards the family property in the village of D***, they were acquired by a member of another Radala family of the area, B* Banda, who attempted to have these lands surveyed in 1888.
The reasons for this state of things are not given but allusions in the colonial diaries of the time, and in today’s village talk, regulary mention alcoholism : Kägalla town, the new district capital, was easily accessible from the H*** area. The new Kandy road opened by the British was lined with licensed taverns which sold local arrack and imported whiskies, to the great benefit of low-country renters and the colonial budget. There were also unlicensed gambling dens, which became famous in the early 1860s when a low-country adventurer, Sardiel, known as the Robin Hood of Ceylon, scoured rich travellers and squandered his plunder in these places. Another new activity in the town was linked with the establishment of local courts : proctors, surveyors, notaries, most of them outsiders, swarmed around them, and the Kandyan villagers became an easy prey to their speculative activities. It is likely that the S*M*M* brothers became embroiled in this environment.
The 1880s mark a turning point in the agrarian history of the district. The coffee crisis led the British planters to turn to new products, first tea, and later rubber, which could be planted on former chena lands at mid-elevation. The Assistant Government Agents were instructed to survey highlands and effect ‘chena settlements’ and later ‘forest settlements’, reserving an area for the villagers and declaring the rest Crown eventually for sale to planters (Meyer 1996 : 197 sqq and further publication on chena settlements and forest settlements in Kägalla, on this site). The highlands of the Mawata and Kandupita pattu, south of Kägalla, were never settled, but some of them were surveyed in 1880 and after, under the orders of Government, by private surveyors styled ‘chena surveyors’, as in the case of M*** (the chena plan 300 carefully drawn in December 1880 by young Philip Francis Ondaatje – the grandfather of Michael Ondaatje, shows the detailed location of fields, gardens and chenas). It is likely that the survey attracted the attention of the Kägalla landed interests. But the sale of land to planters started only some 20 years later, when a new local administrator, Bertram Hill, lifted the restrictions put by two successive Assistant Government Agents, F.H. Price and Walter Davidson, who wanted to keep Hatarakorale for Kandyan villagers as « the garden of the East » and to direct the planting interests towards the Kelani Valley in the south of the district. The first isolated sales occurred in 1894, and the movement accelerated in 1898 to pre-empt an attempt at enforcing the new waste lands ordinance promulgated in 1897 to stenghten the hands of the administration against land speculation.

Land sales and estate formation.
By 1900, land speculation was in full swing in Hatarakorale (Meyer 1992, and detailed study fortcoming on this blog). The careful but useless survey and settlement enquiries of the 1880 and early 1890 were a thing of the past, branded by civil servants in Colombo as « chena unsettlement », and successfully challenged in the Courts of law. Chena land was being sold cheaply by villagers, who had no written title against the Crown, to planters, through intermediaries, who pocketed substantial speculative profits, and the planters began to open the land and force the hands of the administration. A new ordinance passed in 1897 to clear the mess and strenghten the rights of the Crown led to the progressive establishment of a Land Settlement administration : but it remained understaffed, was busy in other parts of the country (Matara, Kurunegala), and considered it was too late to intervene in Kägalla. The formula adopted in that district was to issue ‘Certificates of Quiet Possession’ (CQPs) delivered by the Assistant Government Agent after enquiry with the local headman: the Crown withdrew its claim to the land (usually upon payment of a paltry sum by the planter) and left the planter to settle with the villagers and the intermediaries without guaranteeing title against them. Of course deals of that kind entailed a lot of underhand pressure and corruption, a certain amount of uncertainty too, and big firms of Colombo lawyers became experts in the game, which could be very profitable or prove ruinously expensive. When the Government Agents were cooperative, it was all the better for planters : it was the case with successive Agents for Sabaragamuwa, the superiors of the Assistants at Kägalla, especially E.B. Alexander and Thaine.
In the H*** area, two would-be planters, Fellowes and Harper, started to buy village land and build up bit by bit what was later called G*** tea and rubber estate. But it was a long drawn out affair, and in March 1912 when the plantation was opened nothing was settled. By that time, the planters had hired the services of the former surveyor P.F. Ondaatje, now a lawyer, to apply for a CQP. In the words of the Colonial Secretary writing to the Government Agent of the province of Sabaragamuwa, « G** estate is entirely made up of lands purchased from natives. To effect the formation into a Company, a clear title is required (…) As the Surveyor General cannot undertake a survey of the area without very serious detriment to his other work, and as it is not desirable that an application of this nature should be met by Government with a mere expression of its inability to give the required information, the Controller of Revenue suggests that the Assistant Government Agent should make as careful and minute an enquiry as possible without a survey into the respective rights of the Crown and the villagers with a view to arrive at an approximate valuation of the claims of the Crown. When this had been done, it may be possible to arrange with the promoters of the Company for its purchase by them of the Crown rights and thereafter to issue to them a CQP.» The Agent instructed his assistant at Kägalla in February 1913 : « I gather that the Company are anxious to get a Crown title quickly. I should not waste much time over tax receipts »
It was an uphill task described two years later in the diary of the Assistant Government Agent (27-28 October 1914) : « The estates were in a frantic to get a CQP, as a company was in process of formation, and through their representations, my predecessor had to cover the whole ground and make a report as to the probable settlement, in the absence of the Surveyor General’s plan. This he did relying on the estate plan. I have now to go over the whole ground again with a plan issued by the Surveyor General. All this land is now planted up with rubber, and there is nothing to distinguish the land purchased from villagers from the land purchased from the Crown. However with the assistance of the individual who acted as intermediary between the estate and the villagers when the lands were purchased, considerable progress was made. »
During the war years the file was shelved, and then retrieved in 1922. In a letter sent to the Assistant Government Agent, P.F. Ondaatje, who has become a sort of specialist in these muddled land issues, explained that « it is not possible to reconcile or identify the names and extents of the lands appearing on the CQP plan with the names and extents of the chenas purchased by the estate on their several title deeds ». Finally a list of 50 lands were advertised in the Ceylon Government Gazette (20.10.1922), and in March 1923, the CQP was issued, at 20 Rs an acre for the 270 acres for which the purchasers could not prove private title, and free for the 68 acres coverered by tax receipts. E.B. Alexander and his colleagues in Colombo minuted : « this is a piecemeal settlement but better than none at all (…) ; in view of the long possession by the claimants, I consider the price per acre fair ». But this settlement covered only a small part of the estate, which according to the Ferguson planting directory of 1939 finally consisted of 689 acres in tea and 484 acres in rubber, and distributed handsome dividends in the 1920s (10% to 40% yearly)
The various enquiries revealed that S*M*M* Ukkubanda attempted to uphold his feudal rights in D***, while the villagers wanted to sell direct to the estate. A petition received from D*** villagers complained that he « uses to come forward and claim as proprietor or landlord a share of the petitioners’ and other lands. Some months ago, one of the petitioners, R. Setuwa, sold some of his lands : at this instance the said Banda came and took a share of the proceeds of the sale at 10 Rs an acre… ». But Ukkubanda’s business was of a wider magnitude. He was actually employed as a broker by the planters (together with another middleman, a Muslim trader). The collection of G*** estate deeds still kept in the estate office in 1979 show that Ukkubanda was paid a commission on most sales, plus batta (a sort of fixed salary) of 1 to 1.50 Rs a day, or sometimes a measure of rice. The same collection of 37 deeds shows that P.F. Ondaatje supervised all the sales, which span a long period, from 18.09.1894 to 8.10.1919 for the main portion of the estate, but extend until the end of the 1920s for A*** village. The amount paid to villagers was 10 Rs an acre in the beginning but rose to 45 Rs for the last sales. According to the testimony given me in 1979 by Kiri Ukkuwa, an old villager of A*** born around 1900, the first A*** villager to sell was Kattandiye Bandiya in 1915, he himself sold in 1928, Ondaatje acting as legal adviser and one ‘Wanumara Nilame’ (perhaps a nickname for Ukkubanda, meaning something like the forest destroying squire) as middleman, getting 12 Rs and a bushel of rice per month.
But all the villagers did not sell all their lands. In his testimony, the rich son of a Batgama villager from A***, H.S. Jotipala, said that only the poorer and more submissive villagers sold all their highlands : a few families on the contrary resisted the temptation of easy money, transformed their chenas into vegetable and fruit gardens and invested in the purchase of new lands the profits obtained from the sale of these products on the Kägalla market. As a result, the village was not enclaved by the estate. In H*** the situation was quite different : all the chenas of the S*M*M* family were sold, together with those of their dependents, the N*P* family, of another family of low status, the H*K*, and of one of the Goigama families, the K*A*. Two other high caste families, the W*A* and the H*R*, do not seem to have sold their chena lands (maybe they had none), but on the whole the village was practically restricted to its paddy fields and resident gardens, surrounded by tea and rubber lands of the estate, like so many villages in the area (see the annexed map).
For the S*M*M* it was the end of the road. The descendants left the decrepit walauwa and obtained as landless paupers an allotment of land in a dry zone colony in the 1950s. A son, S*M*M* Sadi Banda came back with his sisters two decades later and attempted with little success to revive the family’s pride and to revamp the walauwa. Some of their remaining paddy fields had been acquired by the R*A*, now the biggest landowners in the area, who built a modern house on the outskirts of the village, puchased lands to plant coconut and rubber, started a manufacture to smoke rubber sheets, and opened a boutique cum bakery in the village. But a large part was purchased by the H*S*, a Batgama family from A*** village, who settled in H*** and built for themselves the second largest house in the village. The other families in the village either carried on paddy and garden cultivation on a small scale and attempted to supplement the poor income they had by seeking casual employment outside the village (for example in Kägalla town, or in seasonal employment in the dry zone colonies) ; or they obtained regular employment in government service after independence ; or they took contract work on the estate, and by the mid 20th century many were employed as rubber tappers and timber sawers.
This case may be compared with that described by Tamara Gunasekara of the decline of D* Nilame, who was also the scion of a military Radala family in the nanayakkara service (according to the Lekammitiya) controlling the access to Dolosbage above Aranayake. But there are differences between S*M*M* and D* Nilame which can be inferred from reference to mid-19th century Kägalla diaries unknown to Tamara Gunasekara : D* Nilame’s father was suspected to have harboured Keppitipola, the head of the rebels, in 1818 ; after his release he lost all his authority, was never given a headmanship, nor recognized as ninda lord; with the early opening of coffee plantations in Dolosbage, his chena lands on the top of the hills were engulfed in the estates with the connivence of the local chief headman, a pseudo-Kandyan of low-country origin who had usurpated the name of Molligoda ; at that time (the mid 1850s) the Nilame was described as an upright old gentleman, who attempted to resist the encroachment by the estate on his lands but was helpless for want of support from the colonial authorities. When in the 1870s the British undertook to uphold the rights of the Kandyan aristocrats, it was too late, the ninda status of the Nilame lands were not recognized, and his son had become an alcoholic. The end of the story as told by to Tamara Gunasekara by local villagers is that the ruined walauwa was acquired by a former Batgama servant of the lord, who had obtained employment as an overseer (kangani) in the coffee estates, and that the whole village had become by the mid 20th century controlled by members of that formerly ‘low’ caste.
In the H*** area, the large tea and rubber plantations were opened half a century later than the up-country coffee plantations. But the enterprise of the Batgama villagers was similar to that of their Aranayake brethren : by the end of 1861, S*P* Tikkira of D*** repeatedly petitioned the British administration (he went to Colombo for that), to have his newly asweddumized paddy lands and newly planted coconut and arecanut gardens in A*** recognized as private. The rise of the Batgama entrepreneurs (Gunasinghe 1990 : 63), which is often connected with business opportunities during the Second world war period, has at least in the Kägalla district much older roots, especially among the hewayo families. These local cases confirm the better known example of the family of Nuwarapassa Hewayalage Keerthiratne in the Rambukkana – Kadugannawa area, where they became affluent by developing their own plantations at the beginning of the 20th century. In the words of N.H. Keerthiratne who gave me an interview in March 1978 : « These people were not given any responsible position in the country. Their job was planting. For that there is no objection. So we started planting, coconuts, any other things, vegetables, we began planting and making money (…) Even those caste minded people wanted money, so they had to come to these people who were making money ».

Villagers and the estate:
The relations of the villagers with estate superintendents and workers were definitely bad from the beginnings : in his diaries the Assistant Government Agent wrote that « here also the villagers complained about the shooting of their cattle. It seems that the cattle do not always stray on the estate. They are sometimes driven onto the estates and then they are shot by the watchers and consumed by the Tamil coolies. In connection with this particular estate some time ago there was a suspicion that all the stray cattle of the neighbourhood gravitated there. » (28 october 1914). Ten years later, reporting on a complaint of the G*** superintendent against the T*** village headman, he commented « This superintendent owing to his keeping a fierce and quarrelsome dog and for other reasons appear to have made himself unpopular with the villagers » (8 june 1925). Then a villager complained that the superintendent had put barbed wire on the way of his house and the planter complained « that the villager corrupted his coolies by illicit sale of toddy, gambling dens, receipt of stolen estate produce, and admitted having put up the fence by way of retaliation » (20 june 1929). During these first two decades, very few villagers worked on the estate, many who had sold large extents, according to R*A* testimony, lived on the product of their sales. The feeling of being surrounded by hostile people was as common among planters surrounded by villages as among villagers surrounded by estates ; but actually estate workers became regular customers of villagers who sold them fruits, vegetables, drinks, and sometimes employed them on Sundays ; the relations between them were not so bad, and it is precisely the connexion that made the planters nervous (Meyer 1992b)

The rubber slump of the 1930s and the malaria epidemic of 1934-1935 changed the situation. Many Tamil coolies were dismissed, and the area was badly hit by malaria. A new superintendent (Harvey) opened his dispensary for village patients (while the local headmen had done nothing to relieve them), and employed villagers for relief work to build roads across his estate. But still the relations were tense between villagers and estate, especially regarding cattle trespass and the use of paths across the rubber sections replanted with young trees (Kägalla diary 27 october 1936). With the stoppage of Tamil cooly immigration after 1939, casual employment of villagers for rubber tapping expanded and became regular during and after the war. Together with connected activities, such as timber sawing, the manufacture and smoking of rubber sheets, estate employment was after independence a major resource for them, and the relations with Tamil labourers reduced in numbers but long established were improved, some of them working in the village.

But G*** estate and its Tamil labourers came under threat after 1970. During the April 1971 insurgency, the area was controlled by young revolutionaries who regrouped there before attempting to launch a Long March to the north of the island; in 1977 rowdies from the Kegalla town came down to attack the Tamil workers and murders were reported ; again in 1983 and 1989 violence erupted and led to cases of arson. The estate was taken over by government in 1975, and employment reserved for villagers selected on the basis of recommendations by the local member of Parliament, and after the violence of the 1980s its activity was much reduced. Finally its management was given on lease to an Indian Goverment-controlled investment company.

Unpublished sources :

Satara Korale Lekam Pota, Maha Lekam Mitiya, sk 1669 [= 1747 C.E.].
copies : Colombo Museum Library (ms. J13, 76 folios and AN5, 34 folios) ; Peradeniya, University Library, (ms. 277674 and 277649 [Satara Korale Lekam Mitiya donated by L.B. Kobbäkaduwa Ratemahatmaya to F.H. Price, Assistant Government Agent Kägalla, 18 August 1887]) ; London, Royal Asiatic Society Library. On the lekammiti, see H.A.P. Abhayawardene’s Lekammiti Vimarshanaya, especially chapter 7.
[According to the colophon of ms 277674, the Disawe maha lekam mitiya was written on Unduvap saka 1669 (i.e. at the very beginning of king Kirti Sri’s reign), at the request of Leuke Dissave, upon enquiry by Haloluwe Mohottala (his secretary in charge of military services), to replace a damaged manuscript. It listed the military services rendered to the king’s governor, the Dissawe of Hatara Korale, by the military families of Hatara korale, according to their localities of residence (korale/pattu). I suppose that the document has been kept by Molligoda Adigar, successor to Levuke, after the Bristish take over of the kingdom, and has been perused by John D’Oyly to write his Sketch of the Constitution of the Kandyan Kingdom ; it was later handed over to Loku Banda Kobbekaduwa, chief headman of Galboda/Kinigoda where the manorial houses of Leuke and Molligoda were located. L.B. Kobbekaduwa made copies for the then Assistant Government Agent Price, well known in his time for his close connection with Kandyan aristocrats (he built for himself a walauwa in the town of Kägalla…), and Bell’s report mentions it without giving any details. Olas 11, 26, 27, 29 and 31 cover the area. We acknowledge the help of Ven. H. Dheerananda (presently professor of history, Peradeniya University) for decipherment of the manuscript.]

Service Tenures Register, Kegalle district
Kägalla kacceri record room.

Grain Tax Commutation Registers, Paranakuru Korale, 1881-1892
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo (33/7291)

Wattoru [hill paddy tax receipts] (1860 to 1886)
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo (30/ 540)

Ceylon Government Gazette 1.02.1873, p. 147 and 20.10.1922 (7291), p. 1366
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo

Chena plan N° 300 (1880)
Kägalla kacceri record room

Chena Cases (1898)
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo (30/615)

G*** Estate Settlement (1912-1923)
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo (30/540)

Preliminary Plan n° 727
Sri Lanka Survey Department, Colombo

Diaries of the Assistant Government Agent Kägalla (1854 to 1939), especially :
1854-1864 : lists of wibadde lekam candidates
1863 : reports on the election of vel-vidanes
22.10.1861 / 4.10.1862 : petitions of D*** villagers
19.11.1888 : project of a survey of D*** village
27/29.10.1914 : inspection for the G***’s Certificate of Quiet Possession
20.06.1929 : enclosure by G*** estate of village lands
27.10.1936 : estate roads
Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo (30/2 sqq)

Private records of the G*** Estate (1903-1930)
– estate plan showing extension by purchase of minute lots (circa 1915) [reproduced here]
– accounts showing sums paid to intermediaries for land purchase
– check rolls showing employment of villagers

List of H*** village lands kept by the Cultivation Officer of T*** (1979)

Fieldwork from 4 July to 10 September 1979 in the villages of H***, T*** and A***, with the assistance of Mr. Mallawa ; the late Travis Siriwardena (Malpendeniya) generously extended his help during that period. House to house survey of H*** families with short interviews and drawing of genealogical charts and village plan (paddy fields, houses and gardens), detailed interviews of village elders, of the chief monk of T***, of the headmaster of the school of A***, of senior members of the R*A* and H*S* families, and of the superintendent of G*** estate.
Interview of N.H. Keerthiratne (march 1978, Rambukkana). Excerpts from this document will be quoted in further papers on entrepreneurship and caste; it may be published in full if permission is obtained from the family.

Published studies

Abhayawardhena (H.A.P.), Lekammiti Vimarshanaya. Colombo, Department of National Archives, 2009 [sinhala]
Bell (H.C.P.), Report on the Kegalle district of the Province of Sabaragamuwa. Colombo, Government Printer, 1892.
D’Oyly (Sir John), A Sketch of the Constitution of the Kandyan Kingdom. Colombo, 1929 ; reprint Tisara press, 1975.
Gunasekara (Tamara), Hierarchy and Egalitarianism. Caste, Class and Power in Sinhalese Peasant Society. London, Athlone Press, 1994.
Gunasinghe (Newton), Changing Socio-economic Relations in the Kandyan Countryside. Colombo, Social Scientists Association, 1990
Meyer (Eric), (1990),« Aspects of the Sinhalese-Tamil Relations in the plantation areas of Sri Lanka under the British Raj ». Indian Economic and Social History Review , 27, 2, p. 165-188. Meyer (Eric) 1992a, « From Landgrabbing to Landhunger : Highland Appropriation in the Plantation Areas of Sri Lanka during the British Period », Modern Asian Studies 26 (2), 1992, p. 321-361. Meyer (Eric) 1992b, « ‘Enclave’ plantations, ‘hemmed-in’ villages and dualistic representations in colonial Ceylon”. Journal of Peasant Studies 19 (3 & 4), pp. 199-228. Meyer (Eric) 1996, « Paddy, garden, chena, plantation. Was there a peasant strategy in the Kandyan Regions of Sri Lanka before 1940 ? » in Robb (Peter) Meanings of Agriculture. Essays in South Asian History and Economics. Delhi, O.U.P.,p. 182-227. Pieris (Ralph), Sinhalese Social Organization, the Kandyan Period. Colombo, Ceylon University Press Board, 1956.

Two remarkable literary works:

Martin Wickramasinghe, Gamperaliya (1944) is a fascinating novel in Sinhala (recently translated in English under the misleading title Uprooted, Colombo, Sarasa, 2009) which depicts the decline of a walauwa family in the South, whose fate is very similar to that of the S*M*M family.
(see also the excellent filmic adaptation of the novel by Lester James Pieris 1964)
Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family (1982) is a fictionalized novel in English drawing from the memories of a family of surveyors and lawyers active in Kägalla at the time of the opening of G*** estate.

We reproduce in the uploadable document the northern half of the G*** estate plan, drawn about 1915, when the estate was already open but still in the process of absorbing additional village land. Estate tea is shown in yellow and estate rubber in light brown.
We have added (for the H*** village only, on the basis of their present situation) the paddy lands in blue, the village gardens with houses in dotted brown. H*** is in the centre of the plan with its walauwa, the houses of the other villagers are scattered in the gardens, to the north for the W*A* family, to the west for the K*A* and H*S* families, to the south-west for the H*R*and N*P* families, to the south-east for the R*A* and H*K* families.
A*** and T*** villages are on each side, M*** and D*** villages further south, themselves surrounding or surrounded by the southern half of the estate.
Notice the extremely irregular and discontinuous limits of the estate made up of small bits of chena lands, the village paths that intersect the estate blocks, the rubber and tea very close to paddy and gardens. 20 years later, the estate had extended and straightened its limits on the east, but the A*** village continued to resist its extension on the west.

Pour télécharger le document / to upload the document :

Gamperaliya in the Kägalla district 3