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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
PELLICO.882/11
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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-the one of Dhobi the other of Fisher-caste- headed the poll in the contest for the urban seat of Kandy itself, was not only a severe blow to the pride and self-respect of the Kandyans, but served to impress the more thoughtful among them with an appreciation of the extent to which the application of democratic principles of popular representation was calculated to afford to strangers a stranglehold upon the It was the shock which this Kandyan country and upon the control of its affairs. event inflicted upon the leading Kandyans that awoke them suddenly to an under- standing of the actualities of the situation that had almost insensibly been created by the concessions made by the Government of Ceylon, in a series of instalments, from 1909 to 1924, in deference to the constantly increasing demands of political agitators, and an examination of that situation filled them with acute apprehensions. It is characteristic of the Kandyans that they should have been slow to appreciate the effects that were almost certain to result from the granting of these successive measures of political reformn: that they should. while the nature and the extent of the reforms were under discussion, have failed effectively to oppose or criticize them : that they should have lacked any efficient organization capable of laying their case before the Government at a time when all the other sections of the Ceylonese popula- tion were busy organizing more or less efficient machinery for the protection of their special interests and for the effective enunciation of their views; and that they should have postponed action of any kind until the eleventh hour itself was well-nigh spent. All these failures are to be accounted for by the fact that the Kandyans are the least subtle and sophisticated section of the Ceylonese community, and that, as is usually the case with simple peoples, they lack foresight to an extraordinary degree. The fact that their protest is helated, however, must not be regarded as evidence that it is not the result of very strong sentiment; and, indeed, for those of us who know and, in some degree, understand the Kandyan people and their mentality, the marvel is that they should ever have summoned up sufficient intellectual energy to make the strong stand against the trend of public events that the agitation of the past two years and their present Memorial represent. I submit, therefore, that the views set forth in this Memorial cannot lightly be set aside as matters deserving little serious consideration. Those views and the constructive proposals, such as they are, which are contained in the Appendix to the Memorial, are based upon sentiments which are very deeply rooted in the hearts and in the minds of the more thoughtful of the Kandyan people; and I think that it has to be admitted that the Government of Ceylon, which of recent years has been somewhat dazed and deafened by the clamour for political reform, of which certain Low Country Sinhalese and Tamils have been the principal protagonists, has been apt to be unmindful, if not neglectful, of the Kandyan point of view and of Kandyan interests, mainly because the Kandyans were occasioning them much less trouble and vexation than were other more noisy and more forceful sections of the community. This, as comparatively recent history in South Africa and in Ireland has illustrated, is an attitude into which Governments which are harassed and beset by agitators find it singularly easy to fall; but the Government of Ceylon will. in my judgment, he guilty alike of injustice and of unwisdom if it treats the views and the claims of the Kandyans as negligible, and thereby alienates and engenders a strong sense of grievance in a section of the indigenous population of Ceylon which is indubitably the most loyal in the Island.
12. The memorialists ask :—
(1) That the Kandyan nation be granted the Treaty Rights to which the Kandyans are fully entitled: and
(2) That the Kandyan Kingdom he treated as a separate country; and be restored to its national status as existed at the time that the Kandyan Nation elected His Gracious Majesty George III, of sacred memory, as their Monarch.
The claim thus set forth is that the Kandvan Chiefs and people in 1812 and again in 1815 agreed to be governed by the King of Great Britain, and by his Heirs and Successors, through British officers duly appointed by him for the purpose: that this did not carry with it any undertaking, actual or implied, that if, at some future date, His Majesty the King elected to delegate the authority, hitherto vested in and exercised by himself and his servants, to an elected majority of the members of a Legislative Council, upon which the representatives of the Kandvans are hopelessly outnumbered, the latter would accent the said elected members as their rulers; and that if for reason's that appear sufficient to His Majesty the King and to His Majesty's advisers abdication of authority in favour of elected unofficial members of the Legislative Council is expedient in the interests of the remainder of Ceylon.
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the Kandyaus, who alone have with the British Government a formal Treaty that regulates their relations with it, can justly claim exemption from the provisions of a Constitution the effect of which would be to subject them, not to the rule of Ilis Majesty and of His Majesty's servants, but to that of Low Country Sinhalese. Tamils and others, to whose governance the Kandyans neither owe nor have ever promised allegiance.
13. The weak point in this contention is that the Kandyans, ever since a Legis- lative Council was first set up many decades ago. have never raised any protest against that Body legislating for the Island of Ceylon, as a whole, including the Kandyan Provinces; but to this the memorialists would reply that they were prepared to accept this position so long as the Colonial Government retained an effective control over that Council, but that now that that control has been voluntarily surrendered by the Colonial Government the whole position has undergone a radical alteration, and Kandyans are being required to accept the rule of a Body upon which they are in a permanent minority and to which they owe no sort of loyalty or allegiance.
14. The technical question how far the terms of the Treaty of 1815 can be held to justify the claim of the Kandyans to be governed only by the King of Great Britain and by his duly accredited representatives and servants, is one upon which I do not feel competent to express an opinion. It is important to note. however, that this is the interpretation generally placed upon its provisiens by the leading Kandyans, and that they are little likely to be convinced or satisfied by any mere forensic arguments or expositions. On the other hand, it has to he realized that admission of the Kandyan claims in this matter would deal a death-blow to one of the most cherished contentions of the Low Country Sinhalese politicians, who are never weary of reiterating, in defiance of all actualities, the theory that the extraordinarily heterogeneous population of Ceylon (with the implied exception of Europeans and others who do not, as a rule, make their permanent home in the Island) forms a quited Ceylonese Nation. Upon this theory reposes the further contention, to which again the Low Country Sinhalese are the most fervid subscribers, that democratic government, based upon a system of popular representation that would place their section of the population in a permanent majority upon the legislative Council, would inaugurate for Ceylon a Golden Age, in which the leonine majority would lie down side by side with a number of lamblike minorities to the exceeding content and advantage of the latter. In this connexion it is well to remember that, out of a total estimated population of some 5,125,000 souls, the Low Country Sinhalese number rather more than 2,000,000: the Kandyans not quite 1,200,000; and the Ceylon Tamils about 533,000 souls. As, however, the franchise is exercisable only by literate persons, and as the proportion of literacy among the Ceylon Tamils and the Low Country Sinhalese is much higher than is the case among the Kandyans, the latter exercise a comparatively speaking feeble influence at elections; while the Low Country Sinhalese, owing to their preponderating numbers, combined with a fairly high percentage of literacy, would be in a position to out-vote the Tamils and the Kandyans alike if they could succeed in their constant endeavour to do away, once for all, with all communal representation.
15. The remedy which the memorialists suggest for the evils of which they complain is interesting. They propose, in effect, that Ceylon should be divided up into a number of separate States-Low Country Sinhalese, Kandyan and Tamil- and that these States should be placed each under its own Local Government, all of which would be under some form of Federal Government. I do not think that there is anything to be gained by attempting to explore the obvious difficulties, or the possible advantages of this proposal. A Special Commission is to visit Ceylon in a few months' time in order to examine the existing situation on the spot, and to report to the Secretary of State concerning the measures of constitutional reform which are desirable in order to extricate the Colony from a political position which. so far as it is possible to judge, was never intended to be permanent and which, in practice, has proved to be unsatisfactory and even demoralising alike to the Executive and its officers and to the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council. By that Commission, doubtless. the claims of the Kandyans, as set forth in their present Memorial, and in an earlier document of the same kind, which was submitted to me early in 1926, will be fully examined and considered; and it is in the hope