The Kingdom Of Kandy In Sri Lanka: Challenging Narratives Of British Colonialism
Dr Sujit Sivasundaram
European
early modern empires in South Asia are sometimes described as water-borne
parasites: they command the sea, but only take up small stretches of territory
and factories along the coasts. In such a picture, the British win out against
their European rivals at sea, and then start forming alliances with South Asian
states; they work closely with land-based Indian financiers and merchants and
protect the rights of landowners. It is from this ground of mutual interest that
British conquest takes shape. By picking up the context of Sri Lanka – placed in
the middle of the Indian Ocean and at the subcontinent’s extreme tip – my
research aims to challenge this narrative. It takes issue with a series of
opposites that are fundamental to the way we think about the British invasion of
the subcontinent. Amongst these opposites are: the pre-colonial kingdom versus
the colonial state, the indigenous versus the foreign, the maritime versus the
landed, and the highland versus the coastal.
The
origins of these dichotomies lie in the colonial period. In the interior
highlands of the island stood the kingdom of Kandy, which only fell to the
British in 1815. In the words of a mid-nineteenth century historian of Ceylon,
the Kandyan kingdom was protected by a ‘species of natural circular
fortification’, which allowed the Kandyans to defy European modes of warfare for
three centuries. Writing in 1841, Lieutenant De Butts noted that the
‘physiognomy of mountaineers is influenced by the bold scenery amid which they
reside, and which is supposed to impart somewhat of hardiesse to their
manners and aspect.’ This physiognomic difference was said to map on to a
divergence in character, evident in the ‘servility’ and ‘effeminate’ nature of
the lowlanders, which contrasted with the elevated manliness of the highlanders.
In a popular commentary, Robert Percival wrote of how Europeans who were brought
into contact with the climate of Kandy fell ill with debilitating ‘hill or
jungle fever.’ Added to this was the trope of the oriental despot, which was
quickly attached to the last king of Kandy, Sri Vickrama Rajasimha, by the
British. One tale that the British publicised was how the king allegedly
slaughtered the family of a fleeing minister, Ahalepola, by ordering the heads
of Ahalepola’s children to be put into a mortar and pounded with a pestle by
their mother.
How
should these notions of opposition – weighted with a colonial politics – be
displaced at long last? In my new book “Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean
Colony”, I argue that there was an evocative similarity between the kingdom
of Kandy and the colonial state. Unlike any of the European powers who preceded
them, the British could be seen to stand in the lineage of Buddhist kings
because they took into captivity the last king of Kandy and into possession the
Tooth Relic of the Buddha, as the sacred signifier of their right to rule.
Another way in which extant traditions of rule and colonial ones were entangled
was around the notion of the island as a unit of governance. The Kandyan kings
believed that the island was a territory specially sanctified by the Buddha, who
had appeared magically three times on the island after his enlightenment. There
was a way of referring to the entire island—as Tri Simhala. When the British
took over Kandy their convention announced: ‘The religion of Boodhoo, professed
by the chiefs and inhabitants of these provinces is declared inviolable, and its
rights, ministers, and places of worship are to be maintained and
protected.’
Yet
this is not an argument for simple continuities: for the indigenous and the
foreign were mutating in definitional terms as the British took over. The
British recycled and redefined the laws, religious customs, languages and ethnic
affiliations of the island. Unlike India, Ceylon was a Crown colony, and
initially, a garrison state under military Governors. This is important, because
the rivalry between the Company in India and Crown in Ceylon meant that in
governmental terms, the island was cast off from the mainland by the 1830s. It
became a separable island colony, and there was a concerted attempt to dredge a
channel between the island and the mainland to prevent Company vessels from
needing to go around the island in travelling between Bombay and Calcutta.
The
apparatus through which Ceylon was unified under a centralised regime of what
was expressly declared as ‘colonialism’ amongst Indian observers, set in sway a
discursive and intellectual way of thinking and writing of this space as a
romanticised and sexualised island, a lost Eden, and a place which was very
different to the barren and Hindu mainland. The island’s Buddhism was seen to
hold a key to the mainland’s past, but this religious system was seen to have
lessened the force of some of the norms of society in India, such as caste or
gender oppression.
What
emerges to view then is the dynamism of the advent of colonialism – not as a
movement from the timeless to the newly rigid, nor as a story of borrowed
inheritances or radical ruptures – but as a process with a great deal of
energy. Colonialism’s long-term consequences come out of its ability to both
accommodate itself to and shape the difference between localities whilst
connecting the uneven past to the newly present.
Dr
Sujit Sivasundaram is a lecturer in World and Imperial History
Since 1500 at the University of Cambridge. He recently won the Philip Leverhulme
Prize for History, awarded to academics for contributions to research. He was
previously a lecturer at LSE’s Department of International History. This article
is first appeared in Blog India
at LSE
[TamilNet,
Wednesday, 01 February 2012, 01:48 GMT]Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe alias Ka’n’nuch-chaami, the last king of Kandy, from whom the British captured the sovereignty of the last remaining kingdom in the island then called Ceylon, was remembered by his heirs and relatives in Tamil Nadu at his memorial in Ve
aloor
(Vellore) in Tamil Nadu on his 181st death anniversary on Monday. Those who
claim and
uphold
‘uni
t remaining in the island, just because he was belonging to the Mathurai Naayakka dynasty of Tamil-Telugu origin. This is a small, but revealing example on the attitude of the sovereignty claim of the Sinhala state of Sri Lanka, showing why the sovereignty of genocide-affected Eezham Tamils in the island should never be vested into the hands of this state, commented an academic in Jaffna. tary’ sovereignty over the entire island today never care for the king, who fought against colonialism for native sovereignty las
The
paintings of the King and Queen made by a British Army officer before they were
take
n
to Vellore
In
1815, the invading British captured Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe and his queen after a
brutal war. Later, the chieftains of Kandy signed a treaty with the invaders,
agreeing for the transfer of sovereignty to the British
Crown.
The
Royal family was then taken to India and was imprisoned at the Fort of Vealoor
(Vellore) in Tamil Nadu. The Vellore fort was also once belonging to the dynasty
of Wikrama Rajasinghe, originating from the Vijayanagara Empire.
The
king died on 30 January 1832, at Vellore and was buried at the bed of the river
Paalaa’ru, nearby. His queen Saaviththiri Devi and children were also buried at
the same place after their death later.
The
crown, throne and other royal regalia taken by the British to London were later
returned to Ceylon and they are now in the display of Colombo Museum. The
personal items used by the imprisoned king, such as his dice-game set etc.,
could be found in the Tamil Nadu State museum at Vellore.
The
birth name of the king was Ka’n’nuch-chaami. Another contender for the throne of
Kandy from the same family, by the name Muththuch-chaami, was patronized by the
British who kept him in Va’n’naar-pa’n’nai in Jaffna in the locality where the
Kilner Building stands now. The British who wanted to appease Wikrama Rajasinghe
after their defeat in an earlier war, presented him the head of Muththuch-chaami
on a platter.
The
story of Wikrama Rajasinghe became folklore in Tamil in the 19th century itself.
Early plays by the name of Ka’ndi Raajan Kathai, and in the form of Kooththu
theatre, were composed and performed at Mathurai in Tamil Nadu as early as in
the late 19th century.
However,
in Sinhala historiography, the English version that Wikrama Rajasinghe was a
tyrant became easily accepted and the highlight was the king brutally torturing
and killing the family of a Sinhala chieftain for treason.
The
English historiography found it convenient to justify the transfer of
sovereignty, citing tyranny of the Naayakka king on the Kandyans.
But
in our times today, the powers of new imperialism contesting for the island and
the international system such as the UN, find it convenient to cite at ‘Sri
Lankan sovereignty’ in allowing even genocide of a nation.
Mahinda
Rajapaksa, who never hesitated to commit genocide of Eezham Tamils, justifies
all his actions in the name of ‘Sri Lankan sovereignty’ and he is the hero of
the ‘Mahavamsa’ he is composing.
The
international polity of the New World Order seems to have ‘matured’ enough in
making no pretensions over proclaiming shamelessly that ‘sovereignty’ is not a
people’s right to protect their nation, the academic in Jaffna
commented.
