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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

ठा

Reference :-

C.O.882/11

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON!

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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set forth, for the sympathetic consideration of Government, certain important facts and circumstances so that those sections of the population that are affected by the definitions under reference may receive the relief and indulgence they so carnestly, albeit humbly, seek at Your Excellency's hands.

The Indian inhabitants of Ceylon may be broadly grouped under two heads : those domiciled in Ceylon, and those not. These divisions closely coincide with the non-mercantile and the mercantile sections respectively of the entire Indian popula- tion, and are, also, referable to the race, religious and linguistic variations of the community, as will be evident from the following particulars: North Indians resident in Ceylon are mainly Muhammadans of the Shiah persuasion, or, if Hindus, mem- bers of the Vaishnavite sect, while Indians from the South are mostly Hindus of the Saivite sect, or, if Muhammadans, members of the Sunni persuasion. Those North Indians who are not Muhammadans or Hindus are generally Parsees, Jains or Sikhs; while South Indians, whether Hindus or Muhammadans, are Tamils, Malayalis, Telegus, or Canarese by race, speaking one or other of these Dravidian Longues which are unfamiliar to North Indians whose customary medium is either Hindustani or Gujarati. Aregards social customs, also, there is a wide divergence between North and South Indians, while there is comparatively more sympathy between South Indians and the permanent population of this island, with the natural result that there is a disinclination on the part of Parsees, Borahs, Khojas. Memons, Bengalis, Marathis. Gujaratis, Sindhis. Punjabis, and other North Indians-all of whom are exclusively engaged in trade, and belong to the proprietary classes—to make a permanent home in Ceylon; while, on the other hand, many South Indians, with the exception, perhaps, of the Nattukottai Nagarathars, feel persuaded to reside permanently in Ceylon, where they find a more profitable field for their endeavours than they can command in their country, and greater opportunities for advancement provided by a freedom from unjust social restraints such as they cannot The approximate number of such domiciled enjoy even in their own homeland. Indians not engaged in trade may be computed from data furnished by statistical records, and is estimated to be well over ten thousand, mostly professing the Christian faith, and the larger number of them comprising workers in commercial firms; in Government offices; in education, the ministry, and the professions; and in a variety of other callings and vocations.

iii.

From this it will be seen that for the masses of estate labourers who obviously cannot be enfranchised, although they have acquired no Ceylon domicile, as well as for the numerous sections of Indians who have lived in Ceylon for more than one generation, but who have nevertheless continued in sentiment and in all their habits of life and thought loyally and characteristically Indian, there is no representation whatever possible under the new Order in Council except in territorial electorates where their numbers are bound to be swamped and their interests over- ridden by those seeking political domination through the establishment of the terri- torial principle of election: whereas, for Indians not domiciled in Ceylon, and com- posing chiefly the capitalist and mercantile classes and the non-Christian population. as well as for Muhammadans. Burghers, Europeans, and Ceylon Tamils, separate communal electorates have been provided in addition to the privilege accorded to them to vote in territorial electorates. This fact is submitted by the Association, not as a matter of complaint, because the Associatiof heartily approves of the safe- guards accorded to these minorities through the institution of the plural vote, but as a circumstance which will, it is hoped. induce Your Excellency to give equally sympathetic consideration to the interests of another important minority which has apparently escaped attention.

iv. The qualifications for voters in the various communal electorates emphasize the noint which the Association wishes to make clear, of the disadvantage suffered by Indians domiciled in Cevlon by reason only of such domicile, a consequence which does not overtake any other community of the island's population. In the case of Europeans, for instance, it is only necessary that a voter should be of European descent in the case of Burghers, any ancestor on either side of the voter's parentage. traced to remote Dutch times. must be a Burgher; in the case of Muhammadans, the voter must be of the Muhammadan faith; and in the case of Cevlon Tamils the voter must be of indigenous Tamil stock, and not merely an Indian horn in Ceylon or descended from other. Indian non-Muhammadan families, whether Hindu or While these, therefore, are the privi- Christian, who have settled down in Ceylon.

leges of members of other minorities. in the case of the Indian copulation alone it

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will be observed that a member of the community must have no domicile in Ceylon if he is to possess the franchise: and that, if he has a domicile, he is to lose the privilege of voting not only in the Indian Electorate but also in any other communal electorate for which he may otherwise be qualified. In the case of an Indian Muhammadan, the position is somewhat different, for he, at least, enjoys the privilege of voting in the Muhammadan Electorate, the only qualification for which is that a voter must subscribe to the Muhammadan faith, whatever his race or language; but a non- Muhammadan Indiau domiciled in Ceylon is strictly limited to the territorial franchise which, in effect, is as though he enjoyed no franchise at all, since he can It is noteworthy, reasonably have no chance of influencing the poll in his area. therefore, that this disability as regards domicile falls chiefly upon the Tamil section of the Indian population for the unfortunate reason, undoubtedly, that there have been more considerable migrations from India to this country of members of the Tamil population than of members of the Muhammadan, Parsee, or any other class of Indian population. Thus, a Parsee or a Borah, irrespective of the term of the residence of his family in Ceylon, is entitled to be enumerated statistically as an Indian, while a Tamil from India, under the same conditions, is subject to be classi- fied as a Ceylonese, although, even in point of language there are dialectic differences between the Tamil spoken by Ceylon Tamils and the Tamil employed by Indian Tamils, and socially and otherwise the two sections of Tamils invariably make wide mutual exclusions and discriminations and try to conserve, so far as they can, their separate communal and national interests and traditions.

"'. More important than this is the consideration which the Association asks. leave to submit that materially the most resourceful and capable section of the Indian population, comprising the North and South Indians, and including among other communities. the Borahs. Memons. Khojas, Monlahs, and Coast Moors, who form the bulk of the wealthy trading classes, are permitted, under the new Order in Council, to have as many as six votes, namely, one vote as members of a territorial electorate, because of their residence in the territory; two votes as members of the Indian Electorate because they have no domicile in Cevlon; and three votes as mem- hers of the Muhammadan Electorate, because of their Muhammadan faith: while non-Muhammadan Indian's domiciled in Ceylon are entitled to no vote whatever except on the territorial basis, which, as has been pointed out, cannot make their influence on the poll aught but negligible, although it will be readily granted that such domiciled Indians include a large section of the most enlightened Indian inhabi. tants who obviously have the greatest concern in the orderly progress of the country in which they have invested their lives and fortunes.

vi. The Association desires to refer, in this connexion, to the observation made by Your Excellency to its President, when he had the honour of being spokesman for a deputation which waited on Your Excellency on the occasion on which the question of Indian representation in the Ceylon Legislative Council was first urged, that the floating character of the bulk of the Indian population in Ceylon, as contrasted with the character of the Indian population in Mauritius, British Guiana, East Africa, and elsewhere, was a circumstance which militated against the success of the pro- posals then put forward. The new Order in Council, however, in seeking to provide for the demands of certain sections of the population, has unwittingly done an injustice to the claims of precisely that class of the Indian inhabitants of the island whom Your Excellency desired to recognize because of their substantial stake in its prosperity and the unlikelihood of their securing representation through the terri- torial electorate.

vii. It is in these circumstances that the Association, acting in this behalf for a numerous section of the Indian population permanently resident in Ceylon, begs leave humbly to request that the interests of the section of the community to which it refers, and which consists of those who, from every point of view, will appear to Your Excellency to be most deserving of the franchise and most capable of wisely and responsibly exercising their rights and privileges, but who, under the new Order in Council, have been left without any facilities for the direct representation of their interests, he provided for in the Reformed Legislature in such manner as to Your Excellency may seem just and desirable. And the Association takes the opportunity. at the same time, to confide the hope that, since such provision. if need be, may he extended to include also the representation of the interests of Indian immigrant workers in both rural and urban areas, and since such direct representation of labour

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in the Legislature is desirable in view of the continued critical and unfriendly atti- tude of the Nationalist Press and the popular party in power, and of the significant and sinister trend of political events in India. Your Excellency will be pleased favourably to consider the suggestion of the Association which is calculated timely to alla and arrest the anti-emigration agitation in India, and, by reassuring the Government and leaders of public opinion in that country of the adequacy of protection available to Indian immigrants into this Colony, to ensure for the planting enterprise, which is the source of this island's prosperity, a free flow of labour from the mainland and such as is indispensable for its growth and existence.

And for the sympathetic consideration of its prayer the Association will always remain truly grateful.

THE INDIAN ASSOCIATION OF CEYLON.

LAWRIE MUTHUKrishna,

Tc

President.

His Excellency Brigadier-General

Sir William Manning, G.C.M.G.. K.B.E.. C.B..

Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Island of

Ceylon and its Dependencies.

C. 32020/27 [No. 17]

Colombo.

No. 4.

COLONIAL OFFICE to THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE.

Downing Street, 6th August, 1927.

MY LORD,

I AM directed to inform you that the Secretary of State has appointed you to be Chairman of a Special Commission to visit Ceylon with the following terms of reference:

"To visit Ceylon and to report on the working of the existing constitu- tion and on any difficulties which may have arisen in connexion with it.

To consider any proposals for the revision of the constitution that may be put forward and to report what, if any, amendment of the Orders in Council now in force should be made.

2. The date on which the Commission will sail for Ceylon has not yet been decided, but it is proposed that it should leave England towards the end of October on whatever date may be found most convenient to yourself and the members of the Commission. The arrangements for your passages to and from Ceylon will be made by the Colonial Office.

3. Arrangements for the accommodation of the Commission during its stay in Travelling expenses to and from the the Colony will also be made at a later date. Colony will be defrayed by His Majesty's Government, and you will be paid subsist- ence allowance at the rate of £2 a night on land in Ceylon and 5s. a night on board ship during the voyages to and from the Colony.

4. Besides yourself the Commission will consist of The Right Honourable Sir Matthew Nathan, P.C., G.C.M.G., Sir Geoffrey Butler, K.B.E., M.P., and Dr. D. Shiels, M.P., with Mr. P. A. Clutterbuck, M.C., of the Colonial Office, as Secretary.

It is expected that the total period which will be occupied by the work of the' Commission, including the voyages to and from Ceylon, will not exceed three months.

I am, &c.,

S. H. WILSON.

G. 32020/27 [No. 54]

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No. 5.

THE GOVERNOR to THE SECRETARY OF STATE. (Received 11th October, 1927.)

~~(Confidential.)

Sig.

Queen's House, Colombo, 19th September, 1927. THE enclosed correspondence may be of interest to the Special Commission which is to visit Ceylon towards the end of this year, and I venture to suggest that a copy might be communicated by you to Lord Donoughmore for the confidential Information of himself and his colleagues.

2. The first document* is a Memorial which was prepared by the Executive Committee of the Kandyan National Assembly for submission to His Majesty the King. It is dated the 9th May, 1927, and it was handed by the President of the Assembly to Sir Hugh Clifford before his departure from Ceylon, with a request that he might deal with it personally.

3.

Sir Hugh Clifford took the Memorial to Malaya and in due course forwarded it officially to Mr. A. G. M. Fletcher, at that time Officer Administering the Govern- ment of this Colony, with a long and very interesting memorandum, dated the 26th July, of which a copy is attached.

+. While awaiting my arrival, Mr. Fletcher obtained the observations of Mr. H. W. Codrington, the present Government Agent, Province of Uva, who is an acknowledged expert in Kandyan history and affairs. I append a copy of Mr. Cod- His comments on the Memorial are rington's minute, dated the 11th August. trenchant and valuable. The memorandum referred to in the sixth paragraph of his minute is that of Sir Hugh Clifford.

5. Finally, I enclose a copy of a minute by Mr. Fletcher, dated the 18th August, in which he records the substance of a discussion with the Executive Committee of the Kandyan National Assembly when he met them at Kandy on the 16th August. It was then agreed that the Memorial should not go forward, but that representations would be made by the Kandyan Assembly (or its Committee) to the Special Commission.

6. In these circumstances, the Memorial may be regarded as withdrawn, and I should not have forwarded it, had I not thought that confidential knowledge of the whole incident might perhaps be helpful to the Commission. Moreover, the suppres- sion of the Memorial would have deprived me of the opportunity of bringing to your notice, and to that of the Commission, the very important observations of Sir Hugh Clifford and Mr. Codrington upon the Kandyan aspects of the Constitutional question.

7. I am not aware as yet what will be the precise nature of the Kandyan representations to the Commission. My impression is that any written evidence which may be tendered by any Kandyan organization will not be likely to differ very widely in general purport from the contents of the withdrawn Memorial. There can be little doubt, I think, that the Kandyans are genuinely desirous of emancipation from the present political dominance of the Low Country Sinhalese, but I am sceptical of their ability to formulate proposals for an effective and feasible measure of relief. That, however, does not necessarily involve the conclusion that nothing can or should be done to help them towards the attainment of a greater degree of control of their own affairs in their own part of the country. The suggestion made in the Appendix to the Memorial that a series of provincial Governments under a federal Colonial Government should he established in the Island will not, I should surmise, be likely to commend itself to the judgment of the Commission, but there are various possibilities which might perhaps merit consideration.

Among such possibilities I may mention the following:-

In the Legislative Council the Kandyans might have a larger number of seats, which might be given in proportion to population: it might be enacted that the elected representative of a Kandyan Province must be a Kandvan: the electorate might be remodelled so as to give more voting power to the small agriculturist.

In the provincial Administration a larger proportion of posts might be given to Kandyans; local posts in the Civil Service might be confined to Europeans and

*No reprinted.