سلتيسيا
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
1
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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Chiefs' complaints.
97
who have associated with the Kandyan people, that in the midst of these prodigious and progressive changes in everything around them, the Kandy- ans, themselves, are in every thing unaltered; and, from the highest ranks to the lowest, they exhibit the same habits of thought and custom of action by which they were characterized before these changes commenced.
We have let in upon them a concourse of strangers of Europeans, whom they dread: of Malabars, whom they detest: and of low country Singhalese, whom they despise; but the Kandyans, themselves, hold aloof, and mingle and associate
with none.
They look on in astonishment and irritation at the operations which are in progress around, but take no interest and no share in them. Even the increased demand for produce, which these opera- tions have created, they refuse to supply by ex- tended cultivation-and their own labour, which would be in extensive demand at highly remune- rating rates, they obstinately withhold-preferring to see thousands of Malabar Coolies, year after year, returning to their own country, enriched by the wages which the Kandyan peasants obstinately refuse to earn.
But it is not their habits or their convenience alone that we have interfered with. In the midst of these changes we have upset their ancient institutions with which they were familiar and con- tented, and introduced others on European models, which they cannot understand, and with which it has hitherto been found impracticable to reconcile them.
In fact in addition to all the causes of discon- tent which served as the pretext for rebellion in 1834, in the interval which has since elapsed, there have arisen innumerable others incident to the in- troduction of coffee planting in the Kandyan hills and consequent upon it; which have sustained and heightened the irritation and discontent of the Kandyans to an extensive degree.
1. The chiefs complain of the decrease of their influence, [and Mr. J. J. Staples, the district judge of Kandy, states of his own knowledge that they have been disaffected since the year 1888.] (Pago 14.)
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the priests of one of the great Buddhist establish-
ments at Kandy, presented a few days after the outbreak of the Rebellion, in which they recite the previous insurrections in 1817, 1822, 1834, and 1843, and notice the remarkable fact, that on no one of these occasions did the rebels proceed to so daring a length as on the present occasion, when they ventured to proclaim a king. They then distinctly state that the ringleaders in the Rebellion of 1848, "who have absconded, having failed to effect their object on any of these former occasions, have been since 1894 engaged in trying and planning this rebellion, and having thought that this was a favourable time, commenced it; but we cannot at all think that this rebellion ori- ginated owing to the recent tax ordinances, or on account of the Government having left off their interference with the Buddhist religion." Signed by the chief and nine priests of the Malwatte tem-
ple. (See Enclo. No. 3, page 206).
Nor in its arrangements and outbreak was there Hatred of the Kandyans to the low the remotest connexion or concert between the country Singhalese."
Kandyans and the rest of the population in the low. country. There is, in fact, no common interest and no mutual sympathy subsisting between the Kan- dyans and any other race in Ceylon-and the Sing- halese of the maritime provinces, the Kandyans regard with the dislike and contempt which almost all highlanders evince towards the natives of the low country.
This feeling is heightened by the belief, not altogether without foundation, that the low country Singhalese who resort to the Kandyan Hills for the purpose of traffic, have had their wits so sharp- ened by long intercourse with Europeans, that they overreach and deceive the ruder inhabitants of the hills, who avoid them invariably as sharpers and dishonest.
The real causes of the Kandyan Rebellion of Real causes of the Rebellion in
last year are to be sought not in such unsatisfac- tory explanations as a dog-tax, or an assessment for roads but in the whole tenor of British policy for the last thirty-five years, and the innumerable innovations which we have been the means of introducing, in the hope of improving the condition of the people.
1848.
It is a remarkable fact, too, perceptible to all Kandyan character,