‘East is also ready for Malabar settlements as was done in Jaffna’ – British Viscount Torrington writes in 1848 (Ceylon/Sri Lanka)
By Shenali D Waduge
This quote is taken from a letter to the Colonial Office in the UK. The lines are important for several reasons. Firstly, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the British were bringing in Malabars (Tamils) from the Indian coastal areas to Sri Lanka and settling these Malabars with the explicit intent to change the demography of Sri Lanka. This constitutes the Malabar colonization of Sri Lanka. Secondly, it also showcases that Indians were initially imported from India to Jaffna and having succeeded with the plan the colonial’s next move was to colonize the East. “Settlement’s” indicate not just one or two Indians but virtually entire villages were created artificially by importing Indians to Sri Lanka. Thus the colonials colonized the North, the East and Sri Lanka’s Central Province with Malabar Indians. It is the descendants of these Malabars that are now demanding homelands in Sri Lanka. By virtue of the colonial record itself the claim for self-determination should be nullified and the bogus claims need to immediately stop while the International Community in particular Britain should own up to its crimes without helping to fan further chaos. British leader David Cameron & Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn please take note.
Exactly which period is the TNA using to claim ‘Tamil homeland’ /self-determination/self-rule/autonomy etc if Sinhalese were living in the North before them?
Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam (Tamil) in his book Ancient Jaffna in 1926 says ” Jaffna was occupied by the Sinhalese earlier than by the Tamils is seen not only in the place names of Jaffna but also in some habits and customs of the people” (p.384). A few pages earlier he admits that the population of Jaffna from the earliest times was one of Sinhala speaking people. It became a Tamil one only after the Sinhala people living there had been wiped out in the middle of the 16th century.
This tallies with Dr. Karthiegesu Indrapala in his doctoral thesis who writes that Tamil settlements existed only after the 13th century. While Prof. K.M. de Silva in his book “Myth of the Tamil Homelands” writes that even between 10-15th century AD Sinhalese settlements were strong in the North “In the early days when Buddhism flourished in North Ceylon, the outlying islands off the coast of Jaffna contained important monasteries and viharas”.
The Portuguese arrived in 1505 and Portuguese historian Fr. F. Queyroz writes “On the arrival of’ the Portuguese that Jaffna was one of the fifteen sub-kingdoms under the King of Kotte who was therefore, known as the Emperor of Ceylon” (Queyroz: The Conquest of Ceylon, p.32).
Let us not forget that Mudaliyar Atapattu was sent to Jaffna to quell the Portuguese attack by the Sinhala King because Jaffna was part of his empire. Queyroz states about the Jaffnapatana “It remained under the Portugezen sway for upwards of 40 years, wrested from the Emperor by Philippo d’Olivero when he defeated the Cingalezen forces near Achiavelli (Achuvely) by the great pagoda”. This clearly dispels the notion of a separate independent Tamil kingdom existing.
The report to UNESCO in July 1983 by UNP MP Cyril Mathew giving a list of Buddhist temples, monasteries and other ancient remains that date to 2nd century BC.
It was only following the Chola invasions from India after 13th century to lead to Aryacakravartis rule that the Sinhalese were forced to move southwards for safety and this is a key reason to oppose the Indian push for a rail/road and ETCA agreement for it would lead to the full Indian colonization of Sri Lanka where currently a Malabar colonization is taking place.
The works of many other foreign and local historians suffice to nullify homeland claims when it is very clear that the Sinhalese were living in the North and remnants of Sinhalese Buddhist existence prevail whereas there is nothing to showcase in terms of architecture of indigenous Tamil sites apart from the Malabars that were brought in or migrated from India over periods of time. We can see the man-made reservoirs, the structural sites, artefacts of Sinhala rule throughout Sri Lanka, if such Tamil civilization existed there should be remains at least. Even after Indian, colonial invasions and the manner these invaders destroyed Buddhist sites a significant number of Sinhala Buddhist artefacts and statues still remain from which we can deduce the colossal number that would have existed before invaders landed.
Malabar Colonization of Sri Lanka:
Viscount Torrington arrived in Colombo in May 1847 and immediately increased taxes that resulted in mass protests. To quell this he brought in Malabar troops from Madras and martial law was introduced for 6 weeks. His tyranny was such that he was known as the British hyena which subjected him to an ignominious recall from Ceylon which almost led to the Whigs losing office in 1850. Did these Malabars’s return to India? Maybe not!
Let us also not forget the Butcher of Uva-Wellassa – Robert Brownrigg. The British are fine gentlemen they say but Brownrigg was to declare to Maj. Gen. Hay MacDowell in 1818 “ Slaughter every man, woman, and child (including babes suckling at the breast)”. This led to Uva-Wellassa the granary of the Kingdom of Kandy in a state of famine and starvation. Herbert White, a British Government Agent in the (Compendium of Uva) Journal reads as follows “there is no record of the population of Uva after the rebellion. No record is left about Uva before the rebellion. If thousands died in the battle field they were all brave fighters. If 4/5 of the remaining population after the rebellion is considered as children and the old, the damage done is unlimited’. Just 3 years after the signing of the Kandyan Convention the British went on a murderous rampage using Malabar Tamils brought in from India – did these Malabars return. Maybe not!.
How did the colonials settle the Malabars that they brought?
They did so by the enactment of waste land laws making Kandyan peasants landless so that colonials could grow coffee and tea.
In 1840 the Crown Lands Ordinance Act (Waste Lands Ordinance) was passed taking all forest, waste, unoccupied or uncultivated land under the Crown. Kandyan resistances was crushed using methods that would constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. Road & rail facilities were created not to benefit the locals but for easy transport for the British. Land grants were given only to loyal native chiefs (in other words anyone who would betray their own people). Indian Tamil Malabars were brought in from India because they afforded cheap labor. ECTA is aspiring to do the same.
In 1856 the Temple Lands Ordinance Act was brought surveying Temple lands. Temples had to omit claims to land tracts to avoid paying heavy survey charges. These unclaimed Temple lands were taken to the Crown. In 1897 Waste Lands Ordinance again declared vast tracts of land to the Crown. Grain Tax Ordinance was introduced in 1878 imposing tax on paddy land owners. The British have done much to destroy the flora and fauna of Sri Lanka. Between 1829 and 1855 alone, more than 6,000 elephants were captured and shot for sport! http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/04/18/british-crimes-in-the-enactment-and-implementation-of-waste-lands-laws-during-colonial-rule-in-sri-lanka-1796-1948/comment-page-1/
The presently existing Thesavalamai law was one that was applicable to Malabar. The preamble of the Thesawalamai law says it is applicable to “Malabar inhabitants of Jaffna.” The Dutch codified the law to benefit the agricultural community (vellalas). Thesavalamai law is not applicable to Tamils in Trinco, Batticoloa or Estate Tamils or all Jaffna Tamils. This law is foreign and should be scrappe completely. http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2012/01/01/scrap-the-thesawalamei-law-that-is-discriminative-racist-and-outdated/
http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/04/20/tamils-in-sri-lanka-are-recent-arrivals-from-malabar-coast-and-coromandel-coast-of-south-india-thesawalamai-law/ (Dilrook Kannangara)
By 1948 at the time of Sri Lanka’s independence thanks to British Malabar colonization there were close to 1million Indian non-citizens in Sri Lanka. These were not Ceylon Tamils after the term was coined in 1911. These were Indians who were residing in Ceylon on Temporary Resident Permits (TRPs). When some Tamils try to fool the world that citizenship was denied what they are not admitting is that there was no requirement to grant people who were not Sri Lankan citizens of Sri Lanka. However, the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 did allow Indians who were born in Ceylon prior to November 1949 to a father born in Ceylon the right to citizenship. 145,000 Indian Tamils also gained citizenship from the Indian & Pakistani (Residents) Citizenship Act of 1949 to which G G Ponnambalam leader of All Ceylon Tamil Congress supported. In 1964 and 1974 following negotiations with India further citizenship was given. However, we became saddled with Malabars that the British brought for their own profit.
Vaddukodai Resolution of the TULF in 1976 speaks of ‘Tamils in possession of northern and eastern districts from the dawn of history’ which itself is a lie since there was no separate Tamil kingdom while the East was never part of any Tamil kingdom.
East was part of the Kandyan Kingdom. This is proved when on 14 May 1638 Rajasinghe II, King of Kandy proceeded to Batticoloa to sign a treaty with Adam Westerwold of the Dutch Navy sealing an alliance between the Dutch and the Sinhalese against the Portuguese. This was known as the Kandyan Treaty of 1638. It was signed 18 years after Sankili was deposed by the Portuguese and showcases that the King of Kandy was in control of the East. Let us also not forget that when Robert Knox, the Englishmen landed in Trincomalee (East Sri Lanka) in 1659 he was apprehended by the Tambalagama Disawa and produced before the Sinhalese King of Kandy. That Treaties were signed by the Dutch in 1638 and 1776 clearly shows that East was under the Sinhala Kandyan Kingdom.
Let us also remind everyone that in was in 1833 through the Colebrooke and Cameron reforms that the British divided then Ceylon into 5 provinces – Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central. Nuwara Kalaviya (present North Central province) was annexed to Northern province while Thamankaduwa (Polonnaruwa) was annexed to Eastern province. In 1899 British increased the provinces to 9. The important fact is that the British demarcations were based on their administrative needs and for revenue making and not based on ethnicity or religious basis and completely ignored the historical realities. No one can use the British demarcations to claim rights based on ethno-religious division that British created.
What is interesting is that the Tamil separatists are using the minute by Hugh Cleghorn, British colonial secretary in 1779 as the basis for Tamil Homeland. However, Cleghorn’s famous minute refers to ‘MALABARS’ (there is no mention of Tamils) and given that the British were bringing Malabars from India and settling them in both North and East and Malabars are from India the homeland notion has to get thrown out the window!
That the colonials began bringing in boat loads of Malabars to Ceylon and settling them here provides weightage to Captain Robert Percival who writes in his book ‘An Account of the Island of Ceylon’ (1805) “the inhabitants of Jaffna consists of a collection of various races…these different tribes of foreign settlers greatly exceeded the number of the native Ceylonese in the district of Jaffna” (page 71-72) Proving that colonial tactic to change the demography by bringing foreigners worked. Dr Chandre Dharmawardana’s interactive map will give the original correct names use which have now been replaced with Tamilize versions. http://dh-web.org/place.names/maps/jaff1Bu.html / http://dh-web.org/place.names/maps/vanni1bu.html / http://dh-web.org/place.names/map_trinco1.jpg
The cries for self-determination & homelands has provided an excellent opportunity to correct the lies that have been floated over the years by separatist elements.
Finally the Sinhalese themselves are beginning to now realize that no part of Sri Lanka can be divided using the homeland tagline as is being done by those drafting the new constitution who are toying with the plan to re-introduce CBK’s 2000 draft constitution with some frills added.
This is an excellent time for people to finally acknowledge beyond doubt that Tamils were always known as Malabars coming or brought by colonials from India’s South to Sri Lanka. Colonials settled them in both North and East as evident from colonial records. Artefacts found in every area dug in the North and East are Sinhala Buddhist and nothing else to showcase any other civilizational existence. The destruction of these and construction of kovils, churches and mosques on top of them highlights attempt to hide the true history but requires these sites to be returned to the rightful owners.
Viscount Torrington’s letter to the British Colonial Office in 1848 the same year as the famous rebellion highlights how the colonials brought in Malabar foreigners and attempted to change the demography of the country to their advantage. When the British Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn calls for self-determination for the very people his ancestors brought from India to Sri Lanka, it exposes the British mischief once again.
There can be no new constitution placing a federal set up for self-rule/autonomy for Malabar Tamils based on the lies that have been floated all these years. It will only serve as a hand over of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty to India who have been colonizing Sri Lanka over the years. The language and ethnic element are all part of this gameplan using the 13th amendment /Indo-Lanka Accord/ Indian trade pacts & ETCA. Goebbels has forgotten to tell all those that repeat a lie that even lies can’t counter the truth.
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