Albert Gray

“ It cannot, in truth, be asserted that the people have as yet shown any radical change of habit or character. They are proud of the work they have accomplished and willing to continue it, but if the present strain be removed, they will quietly relapse into their old listless ways. The individual leopard has a proverbial difficulty in changing his spots, yet it is possible that they may disappear from the leopard-race by a slow evolution. So it may be that the rural Sinhalese will in generations progress from an inherited torpor to inherited activity. ”

“ But if communities of men have three or four months of leisure time in the year, and that period is employed for a year or two at the king’s command in throwing up a great embankment, which may not prove a success for want of water, it cannot be contended that this is a wasteful expense in the same sense as the sinking of some thousands of pounds of public money in the building of a barrack that can never be lived in, or a bridge with its piers in the shifting sand. ”

“ It may, without exaggeration, be said that in Ceylon the people are quieter and more contented than in any part of India, taxation is considerably lighter, labor is more amply rewarded; while alongside of "bankrupt India" we find the Ceylon revenue providing without any strain for large railway, irrigation, and other public works.
The island has not, however, been always prosperous in English hands. From the acquisition of the whole of it in 1815 down to 1850, at the close of the last Kandyan rebellion, the government had considerable difficulty in paying its way. ”

“ What the government of Ceylon actually looked for was the increase of the land revenue, the increase of population, and the general development of the district. The province is about one-sixth in extent of the whole island, and its broad valleys once provided with a regular water supply are the most fertile in the country: yet its population is at present only sixteen to the square mile, while the average for the rest of Ceylon is considerably over one hundred. Its regeneration is therefore of general importance to the whole country. ”

“ And so men, when asked where they come from, say they are men of the “tamarind-tree tank,” or of the “tank of mango-trees,” as the case may be; and it is owing to the common interests which the management of the tank involves that so much of the ancient village community system survives here. Each little republic has its president, the gamarāla (chief of the village) , who, though in the village council only primus inter pares, is the representative of the village, and responsible for its revenue and police to the higher powers. ”

“ Every village is opened up to light and air by having the jungle cut back so as to give a large space of cleared ground round it, and the bund of every inhabited village has been thoroughly cleared of jungle. The whole outward appearance of the province has been changed. But at a large number of tanks in divisions of. the district in which the available engineers had been stationed, the more important earthworks of the villagers were commenced, and rapidly carried on, sometimes concurrently with the government sluice works, but in most cases in anticipation of the promised boon. ”

“ The island of Ceylon has been at all times part and parcel of India, and if the term body politic can be fitly employed with respect to that strange medley of races, castes, and creeds, it is a constituent part of that body politic. ”

“ Between the village community, with the gamarāla at its head, and the government agent, the mouthpiece of government, are a series of intermediate native officers. The duties of these several officers are principally connected with the revenue, but they are also in their several degrees responsible for the police. In the whole province there is not a single police constable; and in no part of the island is there so little crime. ”

“ Up to this time the sum expended by government on village tank sluices had reached one hundred and thirty thousand rupees; in other words, the villagers had given nearly three rupees’ worth of work for one. A government composed of Carlyles and Ruskins might possibly be satisfied with this result; but less sentimental economists would require some more tangible return for large sums spent for the benefit of the people than the mere execution by the people of other work, even to the value of three times the government expenditure. ”

“ The unskilled labor of the villagers could only be employed in the easier work of digging and gravelling, and the difficulties involved in calling together and superintending heterogeneous gangs have led to the general adoption of commutation, and the mass of the people regularly pay their three shillings a year as road-tax. The aim of their rulers to get the country Sinhalese to do manual labor for their own benefit was thus found to be impracticable so far as the public roads were concerned. ”

“ A native gentleman of the highest position is appointed president of a large district, and holds circuit courts in the smaller divisions of that district, where he is assisted by assessors drawn from a list similar to that of our special jurymen. There is a right of appeal from the village tribunal to the government agent or collector of the province, and from him to the governor in council. The small number of appeals even to the government agent testifies to the quality of the justice administered. ”

“ Sir Hercules Robinson’s law was passed with a view to saving this time-honored institution from the decadence with which it was threatened by the extension of the police courts, and to relieving the police courts of a mass of frivolous lawsuits of which they had become the scene. The Sinhalese people, though not wanting in wit and humor, have no national drama and few games or other amusements, and it is not surprising to find that the English courts have become to them all that the theatre is to the French. ”

“ The people would cordially resent the presence among them of the low-caste aliens who compose the majority of the police force whose officious interference and subtile tyranny would only aggravate the petty quarrels of village life. ”

“ Assisted by government in all that required expenditure of money and engineering apparatus, the main part of the work—the clearing of jungle and the repairs of the earth embankments of the tanks—might be done by the people themselves, if only they could be organized. The Village Communities Ordinance provided the necessary machinery for the compulsory performance of works for the common benefit, and the constitution of the province was aptly fitted for the working of that machinery. ”

“ The village is a compact entity, the name gama (village) being applied to the tank fields, hamlet, and surrounding jungle; the hamlet itself is termed gam-mædda (the centre of the village) . The houses composing the hamlet are close together, and generally placed under the embankment or bund of the tank, and surrounded by a strong stockade for the purpose of excluding wild beasts and roaming cattle. The villages hardly average fifty inhabitants apiece, and of these not more than fifteen will be adult males. ”

“ There is little doubt that it is due to our vast annual expenditure on paper, viz., surveys, plans, correspondence, reports, minutes, accounts, auditings, and to our failing to organize into working parties the natives themselves, that we so often find ourselves unable in India to restore the small and great irrigation works of the old regime, except at a cost for which no adequate return can be foreseen. ”

“ Dickson, “is composed of a number of small agricultural republics, each of which has its tank with the field below it, and the duty of maintaining the tank with its channels in repair properly by custom devolves on the community, each member being hound to contribute his share of labor in proportion to his share in the field. But under our rule there has been hitherto no simple machinery for compelling the idle and the absentee shareholders, who go and live in other villages but still retain their claims on the field, to perform their share of the work. ”

“ Every panguwa shall give annually such labor, not exceeding thirty days’ labor of an able-bodied adult, as the government agent may declare to be necessary for the repair or improvement of the tank on which it is dependent for its water-supply. When government provides a sluice or other works for the improvement of the tank, the labor declared to be necessary as above shall not exceed sixty days for one year, and thirty days for each succeeding year. ”

“ Although, therefore, the full measure of prosperity cannot be expected for many years to be reached it is gratifying to be able to point to some tangible results of the interesting reformation of the communes, attained after labors of only five years. The tanks which the villagers have repaired have caught a sufficiency of the rain which has fallen, and they have been found strong enough to withstand the flood of 1877, one of the heaviest within memory. Larger fields have been sown, and the paddy revenue (one-tenth of the produce) has swelled proportionately. ”

“ I have many a time, in inspecting the works, come upon a single man, perhaps the last to complete his task, assisted by wife and children working steadily at his pit, taking care not to excavate an inch too much, but knowing that his neighbors would complain if he failed to give to the bund the whole of his allotted soil. ”

“ By an accident of nature it is separated from the continent by a narrow streak of sea, but its people are more closely allied to the thoroughly Indian races than are some of the great tribes who now inhabit the Indian peninsula. The Sinhalese, who form about two-thirds of the population, are the descendants of Aryan emigrants who left their homes in the Ganges valley more than five centuries before the Christian era. ”

“ In 1834 it was annexed to the northern, a thoroughly Tamil province, the capital of which, Jaffna, is situate at the extreme north of the island; an assistant officer was stationed at Anuradhapura, and for the following forty years the prospects of the district were so far bettered in that it had a representative of government in its midst, through whom its cries might go up to headquarters. But the government agent at Jaffna was always an officer interested in the Tarnils, and generally ignorant of the Sinhalese and their language. The district was on all sides far removed from the sea. ”

“ It is not too much to say that if some such system had been brought into operation in parts of India where village communities are still extant, many lakhs of rupees might have been directed to other purposes than to dwindle away in the quicksands of the Public Works Department. ”

“ They must be content with the assurance that if the foundations are well laid, and if the work is carried on steadily and persistently, then in twenty or thirty years the face of this province will be changed; food and water will be abundant, the population will increase, and the government will receive largely increased revenues without having incurred any large or heavy expenditure. ”

“ Thus it happens that if the ganzabe or village council decide that only five acres of a ten-acre mulpota can be irrigated, a five-acre portion of the whole will be fenced in, and each share-holder will have a panguwa assigned to him of half the extent which he would have had if the whole could have been cultivated. The stretch of field so fenced in is divided into as many shares as there are shareholders and three shares more. ”

“ The government, on the other hand, hoped that by intrusting the trial of petty causes to the more intelligent of the natives themselves, with the right of appeal to competent European officers, not only would pressure be taken off the police courts, but the natives would gain a valuable schooling in self-government. ”

“ But it is apparent that with this sparse population having to battle with some difficulty for their daily bread, and having assumed. this great extra labor which they and their fathers thought too heavy to undertake, the complete restoration to prosperity need not be looked for as yet. As Mr. Dickson wrote when he commenced his task:—
Those who have to devise the system and commence the work must not look for immediate results; they must not even expect to see the results in their time. ”

“ Such a change cannot be effected in a day, but like other evolutions will result from a steady continuance in activity of the new forces brought to bear upon their life. And these forces are, in a word, the prompting, guiding, and assisting energies of the paternal despots to whom in turn their interests are confided. ”

“ The general improvement of the smaller village tanks may well be continued, but it is useless to look for absolute security against droughts, to which the backwoods are subject, until some of these larger works are completed and the secrets of the ancient system searched out and known. ”

“ It follows, therefore, that those who have shares assigned to them elsewhere than at the top or bottom of the field will have only a small piece of the side fence to construct and mend, and to defend against the irruption of wild beasts and cattle, while the two end pieces, requiring to be fenced all round three sides, are more liable to these attacks and to the ravages of birds. ”