KAMALIKA PIERIS

This essay looks at Tamil colonization of Sinhala lands during British rule. (1815-1948).From the time they took control of the Udarata kingdom, the British wanted to bring the Sinhala population to heel, especially after the rebellions of 1818 and 1848.

They decided to replace the Sinhalese with Tamils from South India. This   was a deliberate policy and carried out relentlessly, throughout the period of British rule. It was easy to move Tamils from Tamilnadu to Sri Lanka .Tamilnadu and Sri Lanka were both under the British.

 The British policy of settling Tamils in Sinhala lands was not confined to the coastal north and east. Tamil settlers were brought inland into the ‘tank country’ as well.  In 1857 the GA for   Minneriya suggested colonizing Minneriya with people from south India. In 1867 the GA, Trincomalee said he wanted to start a Tamil colony at Kantale.   

In 1886, it was reported that Tamils from Jaffna were coming into luppaikadavai, in Mannar district to make it a ‘flourishing Jaffnese tobacco growing colony’ (SP 8 of 1886 p 11) it was also hoped, said Denham in 1911, that settlers from Jaffna would come to the Vanni, using the railway and that large extents of paddy land under irrigation would be taken up by colonists from Jaffna. 

Kalawewa colonization scheme was started in 1893. The colonists were exclusively Tamils. The GA was   told to give preference to Tamils from the Jaffna peninsula. 14 families arrived from Jaffna, followed by another set later. They returned home as soon as possible. (SP 4 of 1893)

Government Agent R.W. Ievers complained that these settlers had never seen a forest before and that they wanted everything done for them. GA Ievers had to get the land cleared for them, employing Sinhala villagers. The settlers sowed some short term crops but soon returned to their villages in Jaffna. Ievers lamented   that he had spent much state funds on these short lived settlers.

In 1886 Parker had pointed out that labor for restoring the NorthernProvince tanks would have to be got from South India or Jaffna. (SP 49, 1886) .The GA, Eastern Province   reported in 1900 that ‘on this side of the. Island we can get no responsible Sinhalese worker for the salary we can offer’. (AR, Eastern Province 1900. p F12) This means that Tamils continued to come in as cheap labor as well  

But the earlier settlers were no longer poor. From the 1880s  Jaffna Tamils had gone   in large numbers, to Malaya to work as clerks, supervisors and so on. Malaya was also under British rule and when the British administration there needed middle level workers, they got them from Jaffna.

Tambapillai Adigar in his   report on Jaffna district said in 1911 that Tamils working elsewhere in Ceylon, also in Burma and especially in Malaysia, remitted money to Ceylon. Several lakhs of rupees are annually remitted to Jaffna by them. There is not a village in Jaffna which has not benefited by the employment of its persons abroad.   As a result land has gone up in price in Jaffna too,   he added.

Tamils were therefore able to buy out Sinhala landowners in the north. In 1886, irrigation engineer, Henry Parker, reported that the Sinhala villagers around Pavatkulam tank, Vavuniya were too poor to purchase the irrigable land which will soon become available but the GA had said that he was confident that purchasers will come from Jaffna. (SP 11 of 1886 p 7).

Regarding Mamaduwa tank, Vavuniya, Parker said, I know for a fact that some of the Tamil money lenders of the neighborhood are disposed to buying up much, if not all, of the reclaimed land over the heads of the Sinhalese settlers, if the lands are offered for sale. Parker hoped that that won’t happen.  So did the Sinhalese. They had objected to Tamil settlers being brought in (Sp 8, 1886 p 8 and SP 46 of 1886) p 2)

 In the 20^th century too, the British   rulers continued to colonize the island with Tamils from India .British Governor Henry McCallum informed the Tamil leaders in Jaffna peninsula at a meeting in 1911 that he had reserved the Tank Country and the East for the people of Jaffna. He would bring immigrants from south India, if the Tamils in Jaffna did not comply.

 Ponnambalam Ramanathan had told the Governor at this same meeting in 1911 that Jaffna people had colonized the land up to Anuradhapura and wanted the government to open up the railways so that more Tamils could come south. (

Denham observed in 1911 that Jaffnese do not emigrate as pioneer cultivators and settlers but for jobs as educated persons.  They are not interested in working to open up the country where they have to work for at least two years before they got a return.

Shantha Hennayake, whose doctoral thesis was on Tamil ethnonationalism in Sri Lanka” (1991), noted that in 1920 the Tamil population was at a high level and the Sinhala population was at a low level in the northern part of the island.

In Vavuniya, in 1921 of the four DRO divisions, Vavuniya south had a Sinhala majority but this is the smallest of the four divisions,   said Hennayake.  In Mannar, in 1921, there is not a single Village Headman/Grama sevaka area where the Sinhala were in a majority. Manner was mainly Tamils and Muslims, and in the southern part of the district, the concentration of Muslims was very high. Only three VH areas in Mannar district had a Sinhala population even above 10%. They were Talaimannar, Pesalai and Musali division.  This pattern continued for the next 50 years.  The VH/GS areas of the northern part of Mannar was overwhelmingly Tamil, with some Muslim concentrations, said Hennayake.  

Hennayake said that in 1921, Anuradhapura district was largely Sinhala.  All the AGA divisions of Anuradhapura have reported a Sinhala majority since the census started in 1871.    Tamils were concentrated in Anuradhapura, Kekirawa and a few rural areas. Anuradhapura town has always had a relatively large Tamil population, they were largely engaged in business and related activities,   said Hennayake.   (Shantha Hennayake. Island 4.5.2009 p 10 )

There was some limited resistance from the Sinhala villagers. GA, Northern Province reported in 1873 that some of the Vanni pattus had several villages occupied by the Sinhalese who  had  migrated from Anuradhapura. When requested, Sinhalese headmen were appointed. ( AR 1873)

In 1886 Parker says that around 1876, some enterprising Sinhalese villagers settled at Chemamadu,   but abandoned the settlement after four years.

Trincomalee and Batticaloa Districts  of the Eastern Province, were  a part of the Udarata kingdom during Dutch rule. Dutch governor Ryckloff van Goens  stated in his Memoir of  26^th December 1663 that ” The country between the river Waluwe and Trinquenemale  is entirely inhabited by the [Udarata King’s ] people and therefore  I have never been able to visit this district”.

The Eastern province came under British rule in 1815. The British   colonized the districts of Trincomalee and Batticaloa  with immigrants from Jaffna and south India. Roads were developed             up and down the coast, linking Jaffna, Trincomalee and Batticaloa. In  1901 cultivators were brought into the Trincomalee district from  Jaffna  for tobacco cultivation. ( AR, Trincomalee 1901 p F17)

The British rulers blocked out land in the Eastern province and sold them. The main buyers of these lands were the  Tamils. .(Administration Reports. 1868) . Tamil settlers  also bought up the holdings of the Sinhala villagers.  The Sinhala villages have been bought out by Tamils who now own all the paddy lands of some villages, said GA Trincomalee in 1898.  ( GA, Trincomalee  AR 1898 p F 16-17.)  

The British    restored irrigation works in the Eastern Province   and gave the land that would be irrigated to Tamil colonists. The administration Report for 1867 of the AGA Trincomalee District states that ” I should like to form a large Jaffna colony and if liberal terms are offered, might succeed in the Kantalai tank  area. ( AR 1867 P 106)

The Government Agent Jaffna was not successful in his attempt to send people to Gantalawa tank to colonize it,  But AGA Trincomalee  said in 1868  I have every reason to believe that we may set up a  Tamil  settlement there, with settlers from Tamilnadu, to cultivate the lands fed by this splendid tank .( Report of AGA Trincomalee 1868)

In Batticaloa the colonial British government spent 76,000 pounds on repairs to the ancient wewas and rendered 23,000 acres of forest land irrigable for rice cultivation. 500 acres were leased to a newly formed Tamil enterprise called the Jaffna – Batticaloa Agricultural Company. The plan to lease the entire 23,000 acres to this enterprise was frustrated when the company failed,  said Gamini Iriyagolle.

 Tamils therefore have acquired land in the east by  the straightforward purchase of land allotments from the British rulers and also by buying out the Sinhala settlers who were  there.  By 1933  the Sinhalese villagers and their tanks in the Eastern Province  had died out. ( AGA Diary for Trincomalee for 18.3.1933)

The diary of the AGA, Trincomalee, for July-August  1933 recorded that the  migrant Sinhala fishermen, who came. Into Trincomalee, had had a conflict with the Tamil fisherman re use of the beach. The British  GA had given the decision against the Sinhala fishermen.  The Sinhala fishermen had appealed to the Fisheries department in Colombo. AGA refers to the continuous succession of interviews, the longest was  with a Mr. Subramaniam ‘who is still advocating the cause of Tamil fishermen’ as he was writing  in his diary.

A reader  wrote to the “Island’ newspaper, saying that he can find Tamils and Muslims who can  trace their ancestry to the North and  Eastern province, but that  he  cannot find any Sinhalese who can do so.

Emil Van der Poorten (b.1939) said I have spent all my holidays since I was a child in Kuchchaveli area, where a maternal uncle was living. His Sinhala wife was to my recollection the only Sinhala speaker for miles around. Even the fishermen who came from Negombo spoke a mixture of Sinhala and Tamil. As an adult I was familiar with the east coast between Verugal and Batticaloa, Panchchankerni area in particular. There   were very few Sinhalese there either.

Emil Van der Poorten says ‘there was never a significant concentration of Sinhala speakers in this part of the country.’ It is a gross misrepresentation of fact to rewrite history and settle Sinhalese in what was originally Tamil and Muslim country. (Sunday Leader.1.3.2009 p 15)   continued)