KAMALIKA PIERIS

Tamils were initially very keen on the Gal Oya Project. They thought it would help   strengthen their position in the Eastern Province. They thought it would strengthen Settler Colonization. Gal Oya scheme was in Ampara and Ampara was part of Batticaloa the time.

G.H. PeIris observed that the records of the State Council proceedings indicate very clearly that Tamil representatives, especially those from Batticaloa District which, at that time covered the present Ampara District as well, were at the forefront of the agitation for implementing the Gal Oya project in the 1940s. [1]

However, when they found that the Gal Oya project was going to bring Sinhala settlers into Gal Oya, their attitude changed. The Tamil Separatist Movement then became openly hostile to the project.  Settler Colonization greatly feared the arrival of the Sinhalese into the Eastern Province.

The Gal Oya Irrigation and Power Project was inaugurated on August 24, 1949. Three months later, on the occasion of the inauguration of ITAK, in December 1949, its leader, Chelvanayagam, said There is evidence that the government intends planting a Sinhalese population in this purely Tamil-speaking area.”  He warned that the government’s colonization policy, starting with Gal Oya was even more dangerous to the Tamil people than Sinhala Only.[2]

Chelvanayagam had also complained to K.Kanagasunderam. Kanagasunderam was the Chairman, Gal Oya Development Board from 1952-1957.  Kanagasunderam’s son recalled, Once, travelling to Batticaloa by train, my father was told by SJV Chelvanayagam   Young man, do you realize that you are driving a dagger into the heart of the Tamil people”.

 Father had explained that, as AGA Kegalle, he had witnessed the dire land hunger of the Kandyan peasantry. The lands to be colonized at Gal Oya were un-inhabited jungle lands. There would be ample village expansion lands for the Tamils and Muslims too. Chelvanayagam had rejected the explanation. [3]

At Gal Oya the first preference for settlement   was given to people from the Eastern Province. But there were no applications from the Eastern Province. No one had applied. Tamil Separatist Movement noted this much later on, with deep regret. [4]    Clearly East coast Tamils had not wanted to leave the coastal areas and go into the hinterland. The Gal Oya Board then turned to applicants outside the Eastern Province. They found plenty. There were eighty eight applicants from HIndagala, (Peradeniya). Only 8 were selected. [5]

It is not well known that there were Sinhala-Tamil clashes in Batticaloa before the Gal Oya riots. There were Sinhalese in Batticaloa at the time,  well entrenched, doing business. Pieter Keuneman, speaking in Parliament in 1956 said the Eastern Province had a history of communal rioting,   S. J. V. Chelvanayakam admitted in    Parliament on 26 July 1956 that there had been clashes in Batticaloa and in the area between Batticaloa and Kalmunai before the Gal Oya riots took place. He admitted that   the offenders were Tamils .  [6]

The  Gal Oya  settlers  did not go straight to Gal Oya from their homes. They hit Batticaloa first. Batticaloa was a Tamil majority district . 1953 Census showed 72% Tamil, 25% Muslim and 1% Sinhalese.[7]  Batticaloa was also the entry point to the Gal Oya scheme. The road to Gal Oya started at Batticaloa and went through Kalmunai, also Tamil into the Gal Oya scheme.  

Gal Oya  settlers  arrived at Batticaloa by train to proceed  by road to Gal Oya.  Tamils  were  not happy to see the Gal Oya project become a reality.  In 1951  Tamils  demonstrated  when  the  first Sinhala settlers arrived at Batticaloa   railway station   . The ‘demonstration’ was   clearly an alarmingly aggressive one, because the army was brought in. Not police, but army. It should be noted therefore that the first Sinhala settlers  arrived at their settlements  in Gal Oya under army protection.

K.S. Podi Menike   who hailed from Kegalle recalled    that  from Polgahawela they took the train to Batticaloa. At Batticaloa  railway station,  they faced violent protests by the Tamils.  They travelled to their new home  in Gal Oya accompanied by an army escort.  Army came in the lorries they travelled in, she recalled,  providing a guard from the Railway Station to their  new home. [8] This means that  even before they   arrived  at Gal Oya, at Batticaloa railway station  itself,  the  Sinhala  settlers  faced aggressive  Tamil opposition.

The Gal Oya authorities would have known  that the East coast Tamils  as well as  ITAK objected to  Sinhala settlements in the east. The settlements  were therefore   planned as segregated settlements, not mixed. Sinhalese settlements were   separate from the Tamil and Muslim settlements.

 Elsewhere in Sri Lanka , Tamils and Sinhalese were living  next to each other. But Gal Oya was different.  The  Gal Oya colonization scheme was   in a highly  sensitive area. It was reaching into   the Eastern Province which Settler Colonization wanted to make fully Tamil. Settlement of large number of Sinhalese  in what Tamil nationalists considered their traditional Tamil homeland, would   create tension, observed   critics.

Four years later, in 1956, a few months after the  April 1956  general election,  Gal Oya became the site of the first major  Sinhala-Tamil riot. The riots started on June 11, 1956 and continued over the next five days. Gal Oya Board authorities were unable  to control the riots. They had to bring in the army.The army brought the riots under control.

S.J. Tambiah  , then  a lecturer in University of Ceylon had been in Gal Oya doing field work with his students when the riots broke out there.  On his return to Peradeniya , he was asked by the  Vice Chancellor, Nicholas Attygalle  to provide a  report on the riots, because these riots were a new phenomenon and  people did not know what to make of them.

In his report[9]  Tambiah said the Gal Oya disturbance cannot be treated as an isolated phenomenon. It must be viewed in the general context of communal tensions existing in the country and also as a continuation of disturbances that started in Colombo from June 5^th.[10]Violence on a scale hitherto unknown broke out in Gal Oya some five days after Sinhala-Tamil clashes took place in Colombo, over Sinhala Only, he observed.

 If you wonder what the relationship between the official language controversy and ethnic violence in the Eastern Province might be, why the rioting leapt from urban Colombo on the west coast to Gal Oya, a bustling enclave of hectic development activity and peasant resettlement, the answer is that around this time, the language issue was also becoming interwoven with the government’s policy of peasant resettlement, continued Tambiah. [11]  

The  Sinhala Only” Bill, specifying that Sinhala would henceforth replace English as Sri Lanka’s official language was presented in Parliament on June 5^th 1951. ITAK Leaders had  whipped up feeling against the Bill  for weeks. There was a hartal” in the Tamil-majority areas of Sri Lanka on June 5^th.

 Also on June 5 ITAK staged a satyagraha at Galle Face Green in Colombo. Some 200 Tamil protesters, including leading politicians, took part. They were beaten up by  a crowd of Sinhalese who had  assembled there. Some  had to be taken to hospital.

In Batticaloa, probably at the same time, a mass demonstration by about ten thousand Tamils was fired on by the police, resulting in at least two deaths, reported Tambiah. [12] The main supply route to Gal Oya was the Batticaloa-Ampara road. There were large numbers of Tamils concentrated in Batticaloa and in the colonized areas of the valley, and a large number of Sinhalese in the Gal Oya Valley.  What takes place in Batticaloa and its hinterland would have repercussions in the Valley and vice versa, observed Tambiah.

The  riots  in Gal Oya were Sinhala versus Tamil . Both groups attacked each other .According to  a newspaper account the riots had started by someone setting fire to a Sinhalese shop in Batticaloa.  A Sinhalese inside the shop had shot three Tamil persons in the crowd that had gathered to watch the fire. A false rumor was spread in Gal Oya that a Sinhalese girl had been raped and made to walk naked down a street in Batticaloa town, by a Tamil mob.[13]

In his report to the Vice Chancellor Tambiah said, I was told that the rioting, assaults and looting in the Gal Oya scheme was done mainly by the irrigation and construction workers in Ampara   and those working in other construction sites such as Pallang Oya.  This group was   later joined by truck drivers.

Unlike the colonists who were a permanent population, these irrigation and construction workers and truck drivers, were not permanent residents in Ampara. They might not have been directly concerned with the language issue, but the politics and the wave of emotionalism prevailing in the country at the time, pushed them to exploit the situation, said Tambiah.[14]  This group later went to the Gal Oya   workshop,   took the vehicles in the workshop and went into the colonized areas. On the third day the fighting had spread to the colonized areas which had hitherto been peaceful.

Several incidents took place at Gal Oya on the first day, reported Tambiah. A bus was stopped and asked whether there were Tamils in the bus. On being told there were none, they were allowed to proceed . Miranda’s, a restaurant and store run by Indian Tamils was set on fire.

Gal Oya Board officials were celebrating at a café. a mob collected outside and demanded that the Tamil officials and their wives inside be delivered to them, the Sinhalese officials refused to do so. Instead they were smuggled out the back way. When the Sinhala officials emerged they were assaulted and their cars stoned.

The Sinhala Assistant Commissioner of Local Government told Tambiah that the rioters entered his house, where another official, Rajavarothiam also lived, and assaulted Rajavarothiam. Independent of this, Tambiah saw four Tamils brought to hospital. Two were dangerously clubbed on their skulls.

Thanks to all this, Tamils in Ampara had run to the Circuit Bungalow to seek refuge. By evening of the first day, the Circuit Bungalow was full of Tamils. A large [Sinhala] mob had encircled the Circuit Bungalow. the mob tried to stop a jeep bringing a Bren gun and assaulted the driver. the police opened fire. One man was shot dead through the bowels, another shot through the shoulder (he subsequently died) and the third was shot in the arm. All three were Sinhalese.

 Then the mob cut off the electricity and water supply to the bungalow, and a group broke into a dynamite dump at Inginiyagala and stole dynamite with the intention of blowing up the bungalow. Fortunately they could not lay hands on the detonators. The military arrived about 11 P.M. and with their arrival the mob dispersed. [15] Tamil refugees in Ampara were sent under escort to Batticaloa.

Tamil colonists retreating to their parent villages returned in large numbers armed with guns. Pitched battles began to take place in Bakiella, Vellai Valli, and the village units 11, 16, 14.  A lorry arrived in Ampara with Sinhalese refugees from Bakiella, who said that they had been attacked by Tamil Colonists, reported Tambiah.

It was rumored that an army of 6,000 Tamils armed with guns were in the process of approaching the Sinhalese settlements in the Gal Oya valley. This caused pandemonium. Some Sinhala colonists ran to the Circuit bungalow seeking refuge there.

On the fourth morning the bungalow grounds were swarming with Sinhalese refugees from the colonized areas, recalled Tambiah. Other Colonists started to flee in the direction of Ampara.  Vehicles packed with men, women and children evacuated the valley through the Inginiyagala-Moneragala road.

The rioters however, unlike the colonists, did not run away. Vehicles filled with armed men and carrying dynamite went to meet the mythical Tamil army which was supposed to be advancing. Batticaloa then became the scene of a reverse scare and rumor, continued Tambiah.

 The G.A.’s bungalow was mobbed by residents of Batticaloa who said that a Sinhalese army from Ampara, armed and in possession of dynamite and travelling in Gal Oya Board vehicles was going to attack the town. They requested the G.A. to issue them with rifles and to give them permission to blow up the bridges. No such attack took place, however.

The riots were discussed in Parliament. Pieter Keuneman said that while the Eastern Province had a history of communal rioting,  the events of June 1956 dwarfed them. The government should be more careful when forming mixed colonies

the explanations offered for the  Gal Oya riots, that it was due to food shortage, administration matters or labor problems was  incorrect, he said. The riots took place in the context of earlier incidents against Sinhalese in the Batticaloa-Kalmunai area. He called for a Commission of inquiry.

On 26 July 1956, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, said in Parliament The Hon. Prime Minister announced that he was going to appoint a commission of inquiry into the riots at Gal Oya and elsewhere in the Batticaloa District. There were clashes before, but the scale of such attacks never rose to the level of riots.  Rioting took place on the 5th and 6th in Colombo and on the 11th and 12th at Gal Oya. (edited)^[[16]

There was no Commission of Inquiry on the Gal Oya riots. There was an inquiry conducted by the Inspector General of Police, in collaboration with the Gal Oya Development Board, but in the huge turbulences of 1958 and the chaos that followed the SWRD assassination, the Gal-Oya riots faded into oblivion, said G.H .Peries. [17] The Sinhala Only” Bill, specifying that Sinhala would henceforth replace English as Sri Lanka’s official language was passed on June 14, 1956, by a vote of 56 to 29.  ( continued)

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[1] https://thuppahis.com/2017/01/14/gal-oya-addressing-errors-in-ajit-kanagasundrams-recollections/ GH Peiris

[2] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/the-anti-tamil-gal-oya-riots-of-1956/ SJ Tambiah

[3] https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/10/10/the-gal-oya-project-60-years-on/

[4] Neville ladduwahetty cites Hoole etc. island  continautin of the 20.5.16 essay p … Modern used file 13

[5] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/180204/plus/an-ocean-of-gratefulness-still-flows-279447.html

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_anti-Tamil_pogrom

[7] 1951 Census was postponed to 1953.

[8] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/180204/plus/an-ocean-of-gratefulness-still-flows-279447.html

[9] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/the-anti-tamil-gal-oya-riots-of-1956/ SJ Tambiah

[10] Stanley J. Tambiah, Leveling Crowds. Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, pp. 87-94 https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/tambiahs-contemporary-account-of-the-gal-oya-riots-of-1956-to-vice-chancellor-attygalle/

 

[11] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/the-anti-tamil-gal-oya-riots-of-1956/ SJ Tambiah

[12] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/the-anti-tamil-gal-oya-riots-of-1956/ SJ Tambiah

[13] https://ellalanpadai.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/ceylon-anti-tamil-riots-part-1-gal-oya-riots/

[14] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/tambiahs-contemporary-account-of-the-gal-oya-riots-of-1956-to-vice-chancellor-attygalle/

[15] https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/02/tambiahs-contemporary-account-of-the-gal-oya-riots-of-1956-to-vice-chancellor-attygalle/

[16]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_anti-Tamil_pogrom

[17] https://thuppahis.com/2017/01/14/gal-oya-addressing-errors-in-ajit-kanagasundrams-recollections/ GH Peiris