The commitment to social change and the reformist attitudes, which were so marked in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, had given way to a more conservative mood by the beginning of the 1870s. This persisted till the end of the century and beyond it into the twentieth century. After the events of 1848, there developed, slowly at first but quite emphatically in time, a suspicion of social change and what began as a keener—and politic—appreciation of the religious sensibilities of the people, especially in regard to the Kandyan areas, now also became evident in other aspects of social policy. Except in education, there was a notable lack of innovation in all fields and the retreat from innovation, which had started in social policy, tended to affect administrative policies and emerging political attitudes as well.
There had been a far-reaching reappraisal of the policy on Buddhism almost immediately after the ‘rebellion’ of 1848. The British government recoiled from the evangelical zeal which had pervaded its Buddhist policy in the years preceding its outbreak and paid more heed to the sensibilities of the Kandyans when legislation affecting them was prepared. Thus the Colonial Office’s reaction to an ordinance of 1852, which sought to assimilate the law of the Kandyan provinces ‘so far as regards the persons and properties of all persons other than Kandyans’ to that of the maritime regions, is worth noting. Sir John Pakington, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, gave his approval to this with a word of caution; he informed Governor Sir George Anderson: ‘I have advised this confirmation in reliance on your judgement and that of the Legislative Council in not hastily introducing legal changes which might shake the confidence of the people of the Kandyan provinces in the intention of the Government to maintain their rights and usages; and I have no doubt that you will attentively consider this point in undertaking such reforms as may affect them.’1 The sensitivity to Kandyan feelings was further illustrated in the manner in which the abolition of Kandyan polyandry was handled. Despite the loathing in which British officials held polyandry, great pains were taken to show that the initiative in preparing Ordinance 13 of 1859 ‘to amend the laws of marriage in the Kandyan province’ came not from the government but from a group of Kandyan chiefs.
When innovation was attempted, quite often it took the form of restoration of institutions, the value and utility of which had been disregarded in the earlier reformist era. The revival of the gansabh•vas illustrates this. The Irrigation Ordinance of 1856 made provision for the establishment of gansabh•vas with powers to make rules for the control of cultivation and the use of water in villages dependent on irrigation. In 1871, these powers were extended to cover other aspects of village life and the regulations framed for these purposes were enforceable by the gansabh•vas by effective legal sanctions. These tribunals also exercised a limited criminal and civil jurisdiction locally. This resuscitation of an indigenous institution, one of the most constructive achievements of this period, also marked the one notable—though far from decisive—deviation from the general trend towards ‘anglicization’ of the administration of justice. The reluctance to initiate change and reform became more pronounced in the 1860s and 1870s. Thus, when the question of service tenures within viharagam and dēv•lēgam became a matter of public discussion again in 1869–70, Sir Hercules Robinson would agree to nothing more drastic than a purely permissive measure, despite the cogently argued case made mainly on humanitarian grounds by E.L. Mitford for the immediate and compulsory abolition of these tenures.2 And the memory of 1848 lingered on even in matters relating to taxation policy: as late as 1877, Governor Gregory urged, as a serious objection to the introduction of a land tax, that it would be imposing a direct tax on the people—‘a very serious matter the consequences of which no one can foretell.’
It will be shown in the discussion that follows that by the 1870s the retreat from innovation began to have its impact on administrative policy as well, especially in relation to the role of native headmen in the administration. Although there is evidence of a change in the government’s attitude to the native chiefs within a decade of the ‘rebellion’ of 1848, it was Gregory who boldly reversed the trend, discernible since the Great Rebellion of 1817–18, of being wary of the Kandyan chiefs. He began a policy of resuscitation of aristocratic influence in the administration, continued by men like Gordon and McCallum and given added impetus in an attempt to build up a bloc of loyalists as a counterweight to the more assertive sections of the emerging elite, who were brashly demanding a share of political power in the country.
There was one other notable development under Gregory. Revision of provincial boundaries, hitherto used as an administrative device to keep Kandyan ‘nationality’ in check, was now utilized for the exactly opposite purpose. His reasons for the establishment of the North-central Province seem in retrospect a damning condemnation of the principles behind Colebrooke’s redrawing of provincial boundaries in 1833. These reasons were: ‘[The] wretched state of this huge extent of territory; its totally neglected condition; the impossibility of a Government Agent residing at Jaffna, the northern part of the island being able to supervise the immediate improvement necessary; and last, but not least, that this portion of the Northern Province was Kandyan in its population whereas in the North it was Tamil, and generally ruled by a Government Agent who was more conversant with Tamils than with Singhalese [sic]...’.3 Two more Kandyan provinces were carved out in the 1880s: Uva in 1886 and Sabaragamuva in 1889. These changes in provincial boundaries stretching over the years 1873–89 marked a distinct change of attitude to the Kandyan problem. The policy which had prevailed since 1833 was abandoned, because the political factor on which it was based—the fear that a ‘traditional’ nationalism guided by an aristocratic leadership was a threat to British rule—had lost its validity. It indicated a shrewd grasp of the realities of a changed political situation. Between the 1880s and the attainment of independence in the twentieth century, the Kandyans mostly took satisfaction in a new role—that of associates of the British and a counterweight to the reform and nationalist movements dominated by the emerging elite of the maritime districts. The leaders of Kandyan opinion seldom showed much sympathy for the political aspirations of these movements; when not positively hostile, they stood aloof and suspicious.
This discussion of the redrawing of provincial boundaries is an appropriate point of departure for a brief review of an important aspect of the process of consolidation of British rule in the last quarter of the nineteenth century—the increasingly effective control of the secretariat in Colombo over the provincial administration. During much of the nineteenth century, the main strength of British colonial administration on the island lay in its provincial organization. The provinces were divided into a varying number of districts, the total number being twenty-one, of which fourteen were administered by assistant government agents while the government agent who was in overall control of the province had sole charge of the principal district of his province. The government agent, as the chief government representative in his province, was vested with the executive authority of the state. The further away from the Centre and the more difficult the communications, the greater was the power wielded by the government agent and his subordinates. Although officials of the higher bureaucracy held judicial appointments too, their judicial and executive powers were separated except in some of the remoter districts—Anuradhapura, Trincomalee, Vavuniya and Mannar—where the assistant government agents were also district judges.
The network of roads constructed during the second quarter of the nineteenth century and expanded thereafter to keep pace with the growth of the plantations facilitated communications between Colombo and the provinces. The telegraph and, later, the railway brought the provincial administration under closer supervision from Colombo. A decision taken by Gregory in 1873 was a foretaste of the future: in that year the first of what was to be a series of annual conferences of government agents was held under his auspices. Its purpose was to promote uniformity in provincial administration. At this annual ‘durbar’ the government agents were ‘enjoined to bring a list of works [they] required, and each had full time to give all necessary explanations...’. It was ‘a general meeting to discuss various subjects of public interest on which the Agents had been invited to prepare themselves’. This annual ‘durbar’ marked the beginning of the decline of the government agents’ powers vis-ä-vis the secretariat in Colombo.
The consolidation of British rule has so far been discussed in terms of two problems—the Kandyan question and the relationship between the secretariat in Colombo and the provincial administration. The processes of consolidation comprised other features as well and all these latter had one common element—a conservative outlook. Three of these salient features are reviewed next: the erection of barriers to the entry of Sri Lankans to positions of influence in the higher bureaucracy; the reconciliation between the British and the traditional elite and a retreat from the policy of even-handed treatment of caste problems. In all these there was a distinct reversal of enlightened policies enunciated during the age of reforms in the decade following the publication of the Colebrooke-Cameron reports and the introduction of reforms based on them. To turn to the first of these problems, it was natural that appointment to the higher bureaucracy should become an object of ambition among educated Sri Lankans. Entry to the higher bureaucracy was cherished because it amounted to admission into the charmed circle of the ruling elite. The early policy of educating mostly young men from among the traditional elite tended to reduce considerably both the pressure for government employment and competition between different social groups, but the expansion of educational opportunities increased competition
Appointment to the civil service—as the closed division of the higher bureaucracy was called—was in the patronage jointly of the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the governor of the colony; from 1852 this patronage was equally divided. Since 1845 nominees of the Secretary of State had been required to pass the Haileybury entrance examination and from 1856 the open competitive examination instituted by the Macaulay Committee was applied to Sri Lanka. No such examination, however, was required for candidates nominated by the governor. Ward successfully resisted moves to establish a competitive examination for the governor’s nominees, believing that it was possible to obtain more suitable men through the prevailing system of personal selection. In 1863, his successor, C.J. MacCarthy modified the policy, and thereafter the governor’s candidates were required to pass a non-competitive examination on ‘general attainments’. For a few years this examination was of a lower standard than that set by the British Civil Service Commission, but from 1870 they were required to sit for the same examination in Colombo as did the candidates in London. This system of simultaneous examinations for entry to the civil service was abolished in 1880 and thereafter all candidates were required to vie in open competition in London. The purpose of this change was quite explicitly to compel candidates to obtain their education in London. Governor Longden himself argued that ‘it was impossible for any young man without leaving the island to shake himself free of local ties and local feelings of caste prejudice and insular narrowness as to acquire any independence of thought’.4 The injustice of this requirement was hardly mitigated by the award—begun in 1870—of Queen’s Scholarships for study in British universities. Within three years of making the comment quoted earlier, Longden was complaining that the unintentional effect of throwing open the cadetships to competition by public examination in England was the virtual exclusion of natives of the island from the civil service proper. In 1868 (well before Longden’s administration), there had been seventy-four Britons and ten Sri Lankans including Burghers in the higher bureaucracy; by 1881 the proportion was reduced, the numbers being eighty-four to seven respectively.
This virtual exclusion of Sri Lankans from the higher bureaucracy was resented all the more because the public pronouncements in the 1870s and 1880s of successive governors of the colony, who had repeatedly and emphatically raised expectations regarding increased opportunities for Sri Lankans to enter the civil service, were so much at variance with the actual policy followed. These gubernatorial declarations were reduced to vacuous good intentions by the higher bureaucracy who justified their resistance to any large-scale addition of Sri Lankans to their ranks with the argument that it would lead to a lowering of standards and efficiency in administration. The rationale behind this virtual exclusion of Sri Lankans from the civil service was the contention that expatriate British officials were and would be more responsible and jealous trustees of the people’s interests than their potential replacements from among the educated Sri Lankans. Total exclusion from the civil service was impossible, but those who secured admission were quickly diverted to the judicial side of the administration. In the 1870s, all the Sri Lankans in the higher bureaucracy were in judicial posts, a trend which continued unchanged till well into the twentieth century. Whereas in India, civil servants were entitled to a choice between the executive and judicial line, in Sri Lanka there was no choice and it was the less able—or those less socially acceptable—who were most often appointed judges. These judicial appointments were much less prestigious and desirable than administrative and revenue posts; judges had less chance to show initiative and to influence policy. It was precisely these latter posts to which nationally conscious or socially sensitive Sri Lankans aspired, but which they did not get. In this period, no Sri Lankan attained the status of assistant government agent, much less that of a government agent. The rationale for this restriction of Sri Lankans to judicial appointments was the argument that while they might have gained distinction in the fields of law and medicine, they had yet to demonstrate the qualities which were necessary in the more pragmatic field of administration where the ability to direct and control people was the key requirement.
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, it was the specialized ‘technical’ departments—such as the Medical, Education and Public Works Departments—which provided Sri Lankans with the widest choice and greatest opportunities for responsible if not remunerative employment. Even so, appointments in some technical departments such as the Railway,5 Irrigation6 and Survey Departments were for long the exclusive preserve of Europeans. Moreover, within the ‘technical’ departments which were open to Sri Lankans, the positions available to them were less influential and prestigious and were the least important in decision making. As a sop to the Sri Lankans who continuously agitated for entry to the civil service, a local division of the civil service was created—as in India—with allegedly similar prospects but undeniably inferior status. This was done in 1891 and six civil service positions were reserved for Sri Lankans in this local or subordinate division. Needless to say, it did not satisfy educated Sri Lankans, who continued to press for equality of treatment with Europeans in civil service appointments.
There was scant sympathy for these aspirations from Governors Gordon and Havelock. On the contrary, they urged that appointments to the subordinate civil service should be by the governor’s nomination and not through competitive examination. Gordon argued that the examination system ‘shut out from all hope of higher employment just those men most fitted for it, and entitled to it; those who have already served well as Presidents [of Village Tribunals], Mudaliy•rs, Rate Mahatmayas, Acting Magistrates, or Acting Cadets... but who are too old to enter by competitive examination even if they would...’.7 In writing thus in a private letter to his successor Havelock, Gordon was preaching to the converted. Havelock contended that the Sinhalese and Burghers best suited for service were the young men who had had a gentleman’s education but who would be beaten in a competitive examination by those who were not gentlemen and were less fitted for the service than those whom they would have beaten. In a confidential despatch to Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Havelock expanded on this theme: ‘If the Governor could exercise such a power of appointment in favour of the de Sarams, de Liveras, Bandaranaikes and de Soysas8 etc., a much better class of officer would be obtained than the present system [of examinations] is likely to procure. I confess that I look to the future result of the present system with extreme apprehension...’.9
At the turn of the century, Governor Sir Joseph West Ridgeway sought to reverse these trends. He believed that the entry of Sri Lankans to the higher bureaucracy in increasing numbers was inevitable and that it was desirable to encourage it. Indeed, he foresaw the time when Europeans would be confined to a few key and sensitive posts in the civil service and would serve largely in a supervisory capacity. Once again, expectations were raised only to disappoint those who hoped for change. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the exclusion of Sri Lankans from the more important posts in the higher bureaucracy was maintained with renewed vigour. For example, an attempt was made to exclude them from employment in the higher ranks of the police. More significantly, Walter Pereira, a leading Sri Lankan lawyer, was not confirmed in the post of attorney general for which he was eminently qualified, although he had acted as attorney general with aplomb and distinction. In contrast, two Sri Lankans (both Burghers) had served as attorney general in the second half of the nineteenth century: Sir Richard Morgan and Sir Samuel Grenier. An official in Whitehall justified the decision to overlook Walter Pereira’s claims by arguing that the man chosen to be attorney general ‘must be a good lawyer and ought to be pure white...’.10
A parallel development to the successful resistance of the British civil servants to a large-scale entry of educated Sri Lankans to the higher bureaucracy was a more sympathetic view of the native chiefs. Despite an avowed policy—pursued with greater conviction if not with any dogged persistence since the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms—of undermining their influence in Sri Lankan society, the chiefs were still indispensable in the administrative structure at the district level11 and below. Many of these positions carried no remuneration and were held on a loose hereditary basis. They owed their survival within the administrative structure to a combination of factors—most of all, inertia: it was convenient to have them around in these subordinate posts, and in any case British officials felt more comfortable with them than with more educated Sri Lankans from lower strata of society. Second, they were indispensable because the alternative to their elimination was an increase in the number of British officials down to the chief headmen’s division and even below, and this was prohibitively expensive even if so large a number of officials could have been found.
In the Kandyan areas, the British had, on the whole, failed in such attempts as they made—not that there was any consistent effort—to build up a group of loyal collaborators who could have been used as a countervailing force to the detriment of the chiefs. But in the maritime districts, the traditional elite—the mudaliy•rs themselves—were evolving by the middle of the nineteenth century into precisely such a group of loyalists. By the 1850s one sees clear evidence of a tendency to rely on them as an auxiliary force of collaborators. The application of a similar policy to the Kandyan areas took longer, but with the revitalizing of the village communities and the creation of the village tribunals, there was a restoration of some of the powers lost by the chiefs in earlier decades. In 1871, the powers of the gansabh•vas, which originally had to do mainly with rules for the control of cultivation and the use of water in villages dependent on irrigation, were extended to cover other aspects of village life. The members of these bodies were chosen from among the principal landowners of the area. They were presided over by the chief headmen under the supervision of the government agents and had power to make rules for the regulation of village facilities. The village tribunals, it has been seen, were, in fact, local courts which not only tried breaches of village rules but also had jurisdiction in minor criminal and certain civil cases. These courts were at first presided over by the chief headmen, although presidents of village tribunals with some legal training were later appointed.
Under Gregory the growing reconciliation between the British and the Kandyan chiefs blossomed into a relationship of trust and mutual dependence. With Gordon this policy was extended to the low country as well. Where Gregory was impelled by sentiment, Gordon was purposeful in his policy of aristocratic resuscitation; he was after all the pioneer—while in Fiji—of the system of indirect rule in which the traditional elite were the key element. He extended the use of the ‘durbar’ by associating in it—for ceremonial purposes—the chief native headmen. This trend was continued and strengthened in the first decade of the twentieth century by Sir Henry McCallum who had the advantage of experience of similar gatherings of chiefs in Malaya, Nigeria and Natal, in a more formal, consultative and deliberative capacity. McCallum modelled his ‘durbars’ on the indabas of Natal, at which the chiefs discussed the vital issues of the day with the governor and his principal officials. Thus McCallum took the policy of aristocratic resuscitation a stage further and once again the reasons behind it were political, the anxiety to build a counterweight to the more assertive sections of the educated elite who were demanding a share of power in the colony. Gordon himself had explained the advantages of this line of policy: ‘It is my desire to preserve as long as possible a system which enlists all native local influences in support of authority, instead of arranging them against it; and which shields the government to a great degree from direct friction with those it governs...’.12 ‘The [office of] Ratemahatmaya’, Sir James Robert Longden (Gordon’s predecessor) declared, ‘is one which demands for the efficient performance of its duties, not so much efficient training as that the occupant should have among the natives the sort of influence that pertains to high birth, landed property and experience in affairs.’13 The hallmarks of the system were wealth, influence and social status. By the end of the nineteenth century, all posts of president of village tribunals were in the hands of the Kandyan chiefs and the mudaliy•rs in the low country. There were six Sinhalese police magistrates in 1901, all members of the same traditional elite families.
The bond between the government and the traditional elite was destined to have far-reaching political consequences on account of the caste problem. The policy of aristocratic resuscitation brought with it, almost inevitably, a reversal of the commitment to discourage caste privilege which had been a striking feature of the era of reforms that followed the introduction of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms.
Appointment of Kar•vas and Sal•gamas to posts of mudaliy•r of kōralēs was not infrequent in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Non-Goyigamas had even been raised to the status of mah• mudaliy•r in early British times. Adrian de Abrew Rajapakse, a Sal•gama scholar, was made mah• mudaliy•r and he held the post jointly with Conrad Peter Dias, a member of the Goyigama establishment. At this time more mudaliy•rs of these castes secured appointment as kōralē mudaliy•rs than in previous decades and the greater frequency of their entry to these posts marked a recognition of their equality with the Goyigamas, even though the latter never entirely lost their advantage for office or rank. Thus, till about the 1880s the policy of administering the country with the cooperation of the traditional Goyigama establishment had not necessarily implied the exclusion of other caste groups from favour. Indeed by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the non-Goyigama elite, increasingly self-assured and affluent, were not inclined to accept the claims of the Goyigama elite—‘the first-class’ Goyigamas, as they called themselves—to superiority in caste status over others. The most aggressive critics and the most formidable challengers of the Goyigama establishment were the Kar•vas. The government stayed aloof from these contests and its neutrality, if not ostentatious, was seldom in doubt.
A change in policy came with Gordon, who intervened decisively in support of the claims to caste privilege advanced by standard-bearers of the Goyigama establishment, the Diases and Dias-Bandaranaikes. He refused to appoint a successor to Louis de Zoysa as mah• mudaliy•r when he died in 1884, even though the local press, English and Sinhalese, strongly backed the claims of gate-mudaliy•r Samson Rajapakse (Sal•gama) and C.H. de Soysa (Kar•va) to the post. Contemporary critics attributed Gordon’s discrimination against the non-Goyigama castes to the influence of his mah• mudaliy•r (a Dias-Bandaranaike), whose kinsfolk he favoured over better-qualified applicants. Gordon’s actions provoked acrimonious pamphleteering campaigns in which the Goyigama claims to superiority were challenged and similar and conflicting claims on behalf of other castes were advanced. The recrimination directed at Gordon by the non-Goyigama castes, in particular by the Kar•vas, was a reflection of their bitter disappointment that he had succeeded in emphasizing once more the relevance of caste as a determinant of elite status. Moreover, because of the feeling that government recognized caste distinctions, even minor officials began to discriminate against non-Goyigamas especially in selection to government posts. As for Gordon himself, his associations and instincts were essentially feudal; he revered the past and aspired to rule the Sinhalese in the spirit of the old rulers. But there were other reasons too for the decision to support the Goyigama establishment: the Goyigamas were by far the largest caste group, constituting nearly half the Sinhalese population and were the most contented section of the community. These more pragmatic considerations would have appealed to Gordon’s successors, for the exacerbation of caste rivalries undoubtedly impeded the growth of a sense of unity and nationality among the Sinhalese. Goyigama support was essential for any political movement to make an impact; lacking it, minority castes could make little headway in their political agitation. When these minority castes led a demand for reform, it could always be dismissed as the agitation of a small clique not representative of the country at large.
An interesting aspect of the link between the consolidation of British rule and triumph of conservatism was the attempt to develop a more accommodating attitude towards Buddhism. In the 1870s, Buddhism was, if not on the crest of a wave of recovery, at least very much on the upgrade. A Buddhist revival had been gaining ground steadily in an atmosphere of covert and overt hostility from missionary organizations and government officials (the neutrality of the state did not ensure the neutrality of its officials). The Buddhist revival proved a spur to the growth of national consciousness and the recovery of national pride. But before any attempt could be made to direct this stream of religious ‘nationalism’ into ‘political’ channels—indeed, before anyone thought of such a possibility—Gregory and Gordon sought to guide it into a conservative mould. Gregory, a Protestant and Liberal Irish landlord, initiated a policy of active interest in and sympathy for the Buddhist movement. This he did by according a measure of judicious patronage to the movement as well as by consciously seeking to emphasize the government’s neutrality in religious affairs. The fact that he was at the same time engaged in the attempt to disestablish the Anglican church appeared to demonstrate this neutrality in a manner which was at once vigorous and open (the disestablishment was actually achieved under Longden). Gordon not only continued this policy but also endeavoured to underscore the principle of a special obligation towards Buddhism: he hoped thereby to make the Buddhist movement a conservative force, something which would help to revitalize the traditional society in the face of the eroding effects of education and social change.
Both Gregory and Gordon viewed Buddhism as essentially conservative in the sense of being the bedrock of the traditional way of life. They valued it for its potential as a countervailing force against movements for change and reform which raised the prospect of disturbing the political balance which the British were seeking to maintain. But the forces behind the Buddhist revival were not necessarily conservative in a political sense. Gordon’s assumption that religious revivalism and political conservatism were twin forces which would blend harmoniously was too facile and simplistic. The Buddhist revival could not be thus contained. By the turn of the century a sustained temperance agitation with which it was inevitably linked gave it added momentum. This temperance agitation became, as we shall see, at once an integral element in religious revival and an introduction—tentative but astutely restrained—to political activity, which, far from helping to consolidate the forces of conservatism in Sinhalese society, actually helped to undermine them.