CO885-11 — Page 322

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O.882/11

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

Я

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obedience to a Sinhalese or Tamil officer, more especially if he chance to be very junior in age. The Malays have a proverb which runs as follows:-

..

If thou must be struck, let it he by a hand that wears a ring; if kicked, by a foot that wears a sandal.**

"

It is obvious that a blow with a ringed hand or a kick with a shod foot is likely to hurt more than similar blows inflicted by a hand or a foot that is not thus accoutred; but the wearer of the ring or sandal is a superior person, a blow or kick from whom is no such insult as would be one delivered by an equal or by an inferior. I believe the sentiment thus expressed to be, not peculiar to the Malayan, but one that, consciously or unconsciously, is very generally entertained by most Asiatics; and, therefore, though the clamour for the employment of Ceylonese in the higher posts of all branches of the Civil and Public Services is insistent, the actual results which are experienced by the indigenous population themselves as a consequence of the granting of the concessions made in compliance with this demand are not in practice, I think, a source of general satisfaction. The high rates of pay, too, which are to-day enjoyed by quite young Ceylonese, who have won their way into the Civil and Public Services, Lave been spoken of to me, since my return to the Island, by men and omen of the old school (who chanced to be their relatives and who therefore benefited indirectly by the premature and unexpected affluence of their kinsmen) not with pride and satisfaction, but with a sort of aggrieved surprise, as being indicative of the sort of extravagant follies of which the Colonial Government, as at present constituted. Ceylonisation" of may nowadays be expected to be capable. In fact, the rapid the Civil and Public Services-though highly approved in theory and daily acclaimed in the Press as one of the principal measures that is destined to create in Ceylon a new Heaven and a new Earth-is in practice viewed with very mixed feelings by even the educated classes. If challenged on the subject, any average member of these classes would strenuously and even fiercely deny the accuracy of this statement; but actions carry more conviction than words. It is perhaps the least attractive of all the charac- teristics of the people of Ceylon-Sinhalese and Tamil alike—that the success of their fellows occasions to the bulk of them really poignant distress; and that almost any one of them would rather accept failure as his abiding lot in life than be compelled to witness the triumphs of a fellow-countryman. The present Roman Catholic Arch- bishop of Colombo, who has lived among these people for more than forty years and who speaks both Sinhalese and Tamil with the utmost ease and fluency, in a recent conversation with me, described Envy as the outstanding vice of the Ceylonese; and the opinion of this high authority is confirmed by all the European officials and others who know the people most intiniately, and by my own observations. So long as this continues to be the case, the setting up in authority of individuals drawn from the indigenous population of Ceylon can never bring, even to those who most passionately advocate it as a political measure, any genuine or abiding satisfaction.

G. Within a few weeks of my arrival in the Island as its Governor, the Kandyan aristocracy, at a session of the Kandyan National Congress, publicly claimed that none should be suffered to hold Government save Kanilyans and ** European gentlemen

posts of any description in any of the Kandyan Provinces; thus showing in an unmis- Ceylonisation of the Civil and Public takable fashion their attitude toward the Services.

7. The phenomenon is one that is only beginning slowly to dawn upon the bulk of the rural population, and is observed by them, for the most part, with a rather weary bewilderment. They have always regarded the actions of the Colonial Govern- ment as mysterious, rather than easily explicable; and the sudden appearance of recent years in their midst of voluble and eloquent gentlemen (who, in some extraordinary fashion, have contrived to emancipate themselves from the control of the hitherto all-powerful Government Agent of the Province) making to them all manner of will promises, entreating their support, exaggerating, and on occasion inventing, their grievances, and savouring impassioned discourses with every sort of reckless charge against constituted Authority, is a latter-day development which is to them more difficult satisfactorily to account for than any of the strange doings of Government by which it has been preceded. The Maha Jana Sabhas, too-the self-constituted Tax-Payers' Associations which have of late years sprung into being in such numbers throughout the Island, similarly deprive the old-world Sinhalese (whose Ceylon is still the Ceylon of twenty years ago) of his breath, through sheer astonishment that their persistent and virulent defamation of the Government does not draw down upon their members the destructive thunderbolts of Authority. Why the Government tolerates these anties of so many packs of youthful spouters-for most of the members are comparatively

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speaking young fellows, whose education has been mainly, or entirely, paid for from public funds--is a conundrum that completely baffles the older generation of Sinhalese peasants; but it is the considered opinion of many of the Chief Headmen, who know their people intimately, that the impression is gradually but very widely spreading throughout Ceylon that if Government is silent in the face of these organised floods of abuse, it is because it knows itself to be guilty of the crimes so freely imputed to it. Thus, by slow but sure degrees, a sense of grievance, where no grievance actually exists, is being engendered in the minds of the rank and file of the Ceylonese population in even the most favoured districts, thus making matchwood of the "pathetic con- which I, personally, have never been able to number among the many tragic things wherewith Asia is over-stocked; while in the dry zone, where, alas, the life of the average peasant is always

tentment

"A long-drawn question between a crop and a crop.”

which the people are being taught that the Government is responsible for every ill fever-stricken bags of bones, rather than flesh, are heirs As the younger generations, nurtured in this atmosphere, come to maturity, the Government of Ceylon will be called upon to administer the affairs of an Island of which the indigenous population-- while being dry-nursed and cosseted by the Colonial Government. not only from birth but, in ever-increasing numbers, while still in their mothers' wombs, and that to an extent unknown in any other tropical Dependency of the Crown with which I am acquainted—will have been taught from infancy that their Benefactor is the arch- enemy of mankind, and that taunts as fantastic as those levelled at Napoleon in the parody in Rejected Addresses, e.g.,

"Who filled the butchers' shops with large blue flies?

Who sought in plumes St. James's Court to pinch? Who stole the jewels of poor Lady Finch? "

are quite valid, if made in the form of charges against the Government. All this means, in my judgment, that no matter what form the Central Administration of this Colony may by then have assumed the personnel of the Civil and the Public Services will inevitably have allotted to them a task of very great difficulty. Though the multiplica- tion of offices-especially of those occupied by Ceylonese--is quite certain to be one of the most immediate results of the passing of complete financial control from European into Ceylonese hands, the numerical strength of the holders of such posts will always and inevitably be insignificant, compared with the numbers of the total population of Ceylon. In the past we have carried on the administration of this Island with the aid of what amounts to only a handful of Europeans, with a large body of Ceylonese, working under their immediate direction and supervision; and in this way we have experienced no real difficulty in governing a population which, in the space of seventy years, has increased from a little over 1,700,000 to 5,125,000 souls; and we have done this with the aid of no greater show of physical strength than is repre- sented by a locally-recruited Police Force which, even at the present time, numbers only about 700 men, including recruits under training. We have been able to do this because we have throughout taken measures to insure that Authority was respected from one end of the Island to the other, and to impress upon an impressionable. excitable but, naturally, very docile, gentle and far from courageous people, the fact that kicking against the pricks is an adventure fraught with the most painful conse- quences. Lessons such as these, however, are to-day in a fair way to be forgotten: and it is for these reasons that I am convinced that it is essentially necessary, not only for the maintenance of good government in the Island, but for the carrying on of any sort of efficient administration whatsoever, that no seeds of dissension-nothing that is calculated in any degree to weaken or destroy the homogeneity and cohesion of the Government Services themselves-should be suffered, where it is avoidable, to take root in our system.

8. I fear that I have inflicted upon you an essay concerning the present and the visible future effects of recent political developments in Ceylon which is, perhaps, hardly justified by the comparatively simple question put to me by you in the despatch under reply; but, having regard to the fact that my tenure of the office of Governor of the Island is ended, the temptation to place on record opinions which I have slowly but very deliberately formed, during the period of nineteen months during which I occupied that post is, I confess, overpoweringly strong. Seeing that I was in a specially favourable position from which to make a close study of the conditions and of the people of this Island when I served here as Colonial Secretary of Ceylon from May, 1907, to September. 1912, and that since my return to the Island at the end of