4: Indigenizing Space and the Elite Responses to Colonialism

97

4Indigenizing Colonial Spaces:

Ceylonese Adaptations to the ColonialSystem

British imperialism, British hegemony among core capitalist states, and the

expansion of the European world-economy all reached their highest point in the late

nineteenth century. Towards the end of the century, Britain was subjected to1

increasing economic and political competition by countries following in its path,

particularly the United States and Germany. The ending of the British lead by its

Western competitors, however, produced what Arrighi calls “systemic chaos,”2

leading to two world wars. The vital sign of the crisis in power balance among the

metropolitan powers was the return of war to Europe after a long period. At the

same time, the Third (Communist) International posed the first serious political

threat to the capitalist world-economy, a threat that turned out to be real with the

Soviet Revolution of 1917. Terence K. Hopkins suggests that the Dutch, British,

and United States hegemonies can be conceptualized as historic “moments” in the

rise, dominion, and demise of the capitalist world-economy. In this sense, these3

events marked the beginning of a long term decline of the Europe-centered world,

particularly the capitalist world-economy and its constituent political structure.

Concurrent with US and German emulation of Britain, the nascent elite of

Ceylon also followed British (colonial) models of wealth, power, and prestige. This

process of emulation was articulated by elites seeking to rise to the topmost

positions in colonial political, economic, and administrative systems, particularly

the Legislative Council and the plantation system. However, the socialist

movement that emerged in the 1930s chose to contest colonial rule as a whole. In

this chapter, I focus on the processes by which the Ceylonese advanced their

political, economic, and cultural positions within the colonial society, especially

where these had spatial implications. I shall also shift the vantage point of my

inquiry from the European construction of a world-space (and society), and a

98 Indigenizing Space

Ceylon within this, to Ceylonese responses and reactions to these structures, with

their ensuing spatial outcomes.

This strategy I employ to separate this and the following chapter thematically

should not suggest that indigenous reactions and responses to the colonial society

and space were constructed within a simple duality of emulations and challenges.

In some way or another, all Ceylonese adapted themselves to colonial structures as

well as contested them. I have, therefore, expanded the scope of this chapter to

include discussion of a broader array of institutions, processes, and agencies that

did not explicitly collide with the colonial system, such as the village and internal

migrants. I begin by sketching out the transformations of British imperial space and

the capitalist world-economy during the decline of British hegemony.

The Demise of Empires and Post-Imperial Space

The demise of British hegemony was to bring about the collapse of the particular

system of states and empires constructed by west European powers from the

seventeenth century and led to the reorganization of the European world-space. By

the last decades of the nineteenth century, the United States and Germany had

advanced themselves to the position of prospective leading economic and political

powers of the capitalist world. The policies of these two countries towards the

states and empires contrasted with each other. Germany’s quest to strengthen its

position within the capitalist world-system had moved it towards a strategy of

territorial expansion within Europe, culminating in the two world wars. Although

it rescued the system of states, the United States did not favor the continuation of

west European empires. The territorial outcome of this was an expanded global

version of the Euro-American inter-state system, institutionalized through world

organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank. In addition, mass

decolonization produced a series of new states, the social and spatial structures of

which were largely determined by their colonial predecessors.

In contrast to other European imperial powers such as the French and

Portuguese, the British were quick to decolonize. British governments had already

begun to reorganize their imperial space into what was called the British

Commonwealth as early as the 1920s. According to Tinker, both Conservative and

Labour Parties alike perceived the British Empire as a series of territories to which

the British people could emigrate.4

The most significant British objective, however, was to retain its naval and

airborne strength, if not superiority, in the world. This was evident in its retention

of geo-strategic nodes, such as Singapore and Diego Garcia, in the India Ocean.5

British concession of dominion status for Ceylon in the 1930s was aimed at

retaining “the island as a loyal member of the Commonwealth, with its naval and

air installations available as important links in the chain of imperial communications

and defense.” Ceylon not only provided the only existing fleet base between Malta6

and Singapore, it also occupied a commanding position as a base for defense

communication without which control over the Indian Ocean would be weakened.7

Indigenizing Space 99

Hence, the British were cautious not to antagonize the Ceylonese political elite.

Although the new system of states expanded the European inter-state system

across the world, the space of the ex-Empire was inscribed within it. Technical

assistance programs such as the Colombo Plan, the Commonwealth Games, and the

Crown acted as symbols of unity for the ex-Empire. Ex-colonial states were

represented in the high commission buildings constructed in the new capital cities

of Commonwealth states. By the 1960s, the post-colonial leaders had made the

Commonwealth a convenient and constitutionally undemanding club of rulers who

had taken over from the British.8

Elite Adaptation of Colonial Institutions and Spaces

In Ceylon, the late 1870s and 1880s also marked the turning point in important

socio-spatial processes, from production of colonial subjects to the indigenizing of

colonial economic, political, and administrative structures, in the process making

a proto-“national space.” Where confrontation with the colonial order of things had

at first disoriented the native, subsequently--and due to power relations--the colonial

system became a world of which the native was envious. The merging of subjects9

and colonial structures took place through both the westernizing of subjects and the

indigenization of larger social and political structures and spaces. The changes

caused by these developments were wide-ranging, and included Buddhist and Hindu

revivals. This section, however, concentrates on the activities of three significant

groups; the nascent Ceylonese entrepreneurs, politicians, and administrators.

Ceylonese penetration into the capitalist space economy of Ceylon began as

early as the first decades following the construction of plantations. This process

gained momentum in the 1880s and eventually culminated with independence.

British concentration on plantations, banking, and long distance trade, directed

Ceylonese entrepreneurs, lacking in capital, to invest in such sectors as

transportation, consumer services, and arrack renting. As these areas were

complementary to those of the British, Ceylonese entrepreneurs therefore expanded

and strengthened the colonial capitalist structure.

Despite their worldwide naval superiority, and prior to the introduction of

railways in the 1860s, the British had no more efficient means of overland

transportation in Ceylon than had the Ceylonese. This advantage was immediately

captured by the latter, who monopolized the system of transportation, largely

consisting of bullock carts, especially between Colombo and Kandy. In this way,

these investors established the vital economic link between the plantations around

Kandy and the economic command functions in Colombo, unifying the capitalist

space. With the introduction of railways, however, the colonial state re-

appropriated the control of this communication axis.

Ceylonese entrepreneurs who undertook the more difficult task of penetrating

into the plantation arena were more successful in the longer run. Unlike in India

where indigenous capitalists competed with the British, Ceylonese planters

surreptitiously sneaked into the plantation complex without generating conflict.


They eventually appropriated the peasant grown coconut as a plantation crop--as the

British had done with coffee. Coconut cultivation along the western coast was

dominated by the Low-Country Sinhalese, with the European planters never

exceeding five percent of the total. By 1900, the area under coconut had increased

to 41% of the total cultivated land in Ceylon, compared to 32% of paddy and 20%

of tea.10

In this way, Ceylonese entrepreneurs expanded the plantation complex,

increasing the overall area of plantations to over three times that owned by the

British, and also diversifying the crop. However, tea remained the core of the

production system in Ceylon, and the main export earner of Ceylon until the 1980s.

Within the plantation complex, Ceylonese investments were, therefore,

supplementary and subordinate to those of the British.

The new Ceylonese entrepreneurial class emerged from the south-western

quadrant, subsequently known as the Low-Country. Over a century of violent

resistance, adaptation to the colonial system had become a significant aspect of the

Low-Country inhabitants’ response to foreign military power. Elite formation in the

Low-Country largely began within particular castes--Karava, Salagama, and

Durawa (primarily fisher, cinnamon peeling, and toddy tapping). The leadership

of the anti-colonial Kandyan aristocracy was thus being replaced by this emerging

entrepreneurial class of the Low-Country.

Cooperation of the Ceylonese elite with the British also extended to the political

arena. As in the plantations, Ceylonese participation in the colonial government

began as early as the 1830s with the establishment of the Executive and Legislative

Councils. Caste competition, central to elite formation in Ceylon, continued in the

arena of appointment of legislators; in this context the Karava elite strove to enlarge

and reform the Council through gradual constitutional reform. The development of

a constitutionalist approach in order to increase Ceylonese representation in the

colonial legislature was, to a large degree, the result of Western education that had

taught them about British government and Western democracy.11

The third important group groomed under colonialism was that of the

administrators. In the early days of their rule, the British mainly employed the sons

of former Lankan administrators, Mudliyars. Low-Country Mudliyars were first12

incorporated into the Portuguese administration and their adaptation to the British

service was represented in their wearing of sixteenth century Portuguese uniforms

even in the early twentieth century. Their aristocratic family origins, political13

power, and “modern attainments” such as English education made them part of the

elite. In 1870, for example, five out of eight Ceylonese in the civil service were

from Low-Country Mudliyar families.14

What the British colonial culture achieved in Ceylon was a high degree of

hegemony among the elite, families of owners of plantations and mines and native

administrators, with their sons educated in England and being Christian in faith.

According to Singer, it was forgivable for a graduate of Royal or St. Thomas

College not to know who followed King Rajasinghe I to the Lion Throne, but

downright unthinkable for him not to know who signed the Magna Carta. The first15


Ceylonese to seek higher education in England were a full three decades ahead of

the Indian pioneers of 1844. The elite jealously guarded their culture from further16

diffusion, using this to symbolize their privileged position among the Ceylonese,

and perhaps increasingly exaggerating their metropolitan culture as a buttress to

maintain their social and cultural identity. The elite sub-culture was not British,17

but an elite construction that adapted British colonial culture to Ceylonese cultural

conditions in a way that would represent their power to the average Ceylonese, and

their worthiness to the colonial community. Governor Henry MacCallum wrote in

1910,

[it] is precisely the acquisition of European ideas and the adoption of European inpreference to Ceylonese civilization that differentiates this class from theircountrymen. ... [and separates them] by a wide gulf from the majority of the nativeinhabitants of the colony. Their ideas, their aspirations, their interests ... are allmoulded upon European models and are no longer those of the majority of their

countrymen.18

Emulating the British model, the elite, who were nevertheless not allowed

membership of British clubs, also created their own, the exclusive Oriental Club in

the vicinity of Cinnamon Gardens.19

Indigenizing the colonial administration was therefore a challenge since the

Ceylonese had to comply with the rigorous rules of the administration and also had

to face competition from the metropolitan British. According to Singer, apart from

being a Lankan chief--who controlled enough power locally to force the British to

incorporate him and his function into their administration--the only hope of joining

the colonial administration was by “out-Englishing” Englishmen. Yet competition

from England largely ensured a complete British domination of the administration.

Even as late as the 1920s, Ceylonese held only eleven out of a total of ninety20

administrative positions. By that time, however, the upper class Ceylonese had

become sufficiently vocal to win concessions from the colonial regime, so that by

the 1930s, Ceylonese civil service were in a majority. The Ceylon State Council

officially resolved in 1934 to implement a policy of Ceylonization in all branches

of public services.21

Ambiguities in the National Spatial Structure

For the elite, therefore, independence was merely a peaceful transfer of power

and did not imply significant changes in the larger economic, administrative, and

ideological structures. The first decade after independence was marked by a

matching of the interests, intentions, and desires of the ruling national elite with the

“post-colonial” political, economic, and cultural systems constructed by the British

in consultation with them. Hence, independent Ceylon was largely a constituent22

element of both the larger world-wide system of states and the British post-imperial

space. In this section, I examine the spatial construction of the “national space” of

post-independent Ceylon.


The consciousness of Ceylon becoming a single state precipitated the

reconstruction of cultural differences and identities within the society. This was23

manifest in the increased intra-group competition among the elite. For example, in

1931, the Tamil elite had shifted its policy of 1910, of having reasonable

representation for Tamils in the Legislative Council, to wanting equal weight for

Tamils and Sinhalese. In the environmental realm, the Sinhalese were already24

reclaiming and restoring the historic and sacred places belonging to the Rajarata

civilization, the locus of which is the north of the central mountainous region. I

refer here to the restoring of sacred places, including Ven Naranvita Sumanasara

taking residence at a main temple site of Anuradhapura, Ruwanveliseya, in the

1870s, and irrigation systems, making the ancient Lankan capital, Anuradhapura,

the focus of this effort. Important markers in this development include the25

formation of the Sinhalese-nationalist party, Sinhala Mahajana Sabhawa in 1919,

and the decision of a prominent Tamil leader, Ponnambalam Arunachalam, to leave

the Ceylon National Congress in 1921 with its Low-Country Sinhalese majority.

For the constitutionalists, however, independence largely meant gaining control

over the colonial state. As in seventeenth century Europe, the form of nation

building in the post-colonial periphery was also a process of first creating the state

and then homogenizing its space and subjects to produce “nations.” Ironically, a

particular homogenization of the society and space of Ceylon had already been

carried out by the colonial regime, through the subduing of cultural differences.

This society was, therefore, not produced through the articulation of various groups

within a single Ceylonese society, but rather by imposition from outside, and by

forces external to it.

The central characteristics of colonial Ceylon did not change much after

independence; even the British naval and airborne installations were retained until

the mid-1950s. Raised within the colonial system, the post-colonial elite did not

question the appropriateness of colonial administrative divisions, or of a national

urban structure with the territoriality peripheral colonial port city, Colombo, at its

head. Hence, the territories and societies which the Lankans had lost in the

sixteenth century to European imperial powers and what the Ceylonese recovered

in the twentieth were radically different. Historically, what the single post-colonial

state replaced were four Lankan kingdoms and a number of principalities and port

cities that existed prior to colonization.

Nonetheless, the post-colonial rulers of Ceylon used their new authority to

restructure certain aspects of the society and space of Ceylon. Crucially, the post-

colonial regime viewed Ceylon as their space, and did not readily accept all colonial

subjects as nationals. To begin with, the Sinhalese elite were not ready to accept

the plantation workers of southern Indian origin, classifying them as “Indian

Tamils” and reaffirmed that they were a foreign population. This was despite the

words of D.S. Senanayake, who later became the first Prime Minister of

independent Ceylon, who wrote in 1928, “We do not consider the Indians as aliens.

We tell them ‘become part of ourselves, become Ceylonese, and then share in the

government of the country.’”26


Within two years, the United National Party government of 1948 deprived the

plantation workers of southern Indian origin of both their citizenship and voting

rights. They had already participated in the socialist-led struggles for independence

in the 1940s and their voting pattern had helped many socialist candidates win in

the 1947 elections. If anti-colonial struggles had brought these plantation workers

into Ceylonese politics and the “national” space, the post-colonial state denied

these. As the planters had attempted, the post-colonial rulers of Ceylon also

resorted to apartheid, re-directing the hatred shown by Kandyan peasantry against

plantation owners into one against plantation workers.

Another major concern of the post-colonial rulers was economic and political

“self-sufficiency.” Since Ceylon had been part of the British Empire, its self-

sufficiency was not a principal concern. The state was more concerned with its

military and political interests until the 1820s, and with the plantation enterprise in

the three decades that followed. The colonial state had, therefore, let the Lankan27

system of rice production and irrigation fall into disrepair, making the colony

dependent upon imports. For the colonial state, the principal economic unit was the

Empire. Yet within the perception of a self-contained national unit, the post-

colonial rulers viewed the self-sufficiency of Ceylon as an essential national

requirement.

This national policy had three premises. First, the notion of “development” that

became hegemonic in the 1950s also implied self-sufficiency for most states in the

post-colonial periphery. Second, the state assumed that self-sufficiency in rice

could be achieved, as the ancients had done, by revitalizing and expanding the

ancient, but partly ruined, irrigation infrastructure. Third, this assumes an earlier

Lankan historic period in which self-sufficiency was a societal norm. Although

historically this may have operated at the level of the village, and under colonialism

at an imperial scale, the post-colonial concern was to achieve self-sufficiency at the

national level.

The revitalization of segments of ancient irrigation infrastructure had already

begun under the colonial regime in the late nineteenth century. It was thought in the

1860s that irrigation works would generate greater revenue for the colonial state,

promoting the production of paddy and providing a stimulus to trade and industry.28

This policy has been continued by the post-colonial government and, by 1980,

nearly 90,000 farming families had been settled in 105 major irrigation projects

consisting of about a million acres. Rice paddy production rose from about 450,000

tons in 1953 to two million tons in 1983.29

Settlers for colonies were easily found in those the authorities saw as

overcrowding the so-called Wet Zone--the southwestern quadrant which receives

sufficient annual rainfall not to require irrigation for paddy cultivation. The Land

Commission in 1929 had defined “colonization” as “the relief of congestion in

certain localities by the settlement of peasants on vacant lands outside their own

villages.” The post-colonial state completely ignored the existing old villages,30

purana gam, and incorporated them into colonies stamped out on a much larger

scale. In the Chandrikawewa area, for example, purana gam had been small


hamlets of about fifty to sixty people and had small clearings of about two acres

each of highland crops land. These villagers’ voices were not heard until Tamil31

political parties made ethnicity-based allegations about these settlements.

For the post-colonial government, colonization was a “national planning”

strategy. First, it was a strategy for integrating remote areas into the national space

by means of government sponsored settlement of peasants from more integrated

areas, a process of “internal colonization.” Second, it was aimed at redistributing

the population nationally, moving them from what the authorities saw as more

congested areas to “vacant lands,” with national economic goals such as increased

employment and self-sufficiency in mind. The original criteria for the selection of

settlers had been dominated by what was considered to be the [economic] needs of

the prospective settlers, determined by the size of the family, landlessness, and

unemployment. In 1968, this was complemented by a concern for reliability, adding

the criteria of previous experience in irrigation-based cultivation, familiarity with

so-called improved farming practices, and credit-worthiness.32

Although the desirability of a lot, large by peasant standards, was never

thoroughly investigated, its size was calculated to match the land requirement of33

a self-sufficient farming family. Hence, settlers were not allowed to subdivide these

lots among their children, but required to pass on the full parcel to one child. The

standard allotment of eight acres (five of paddy and three highland), was reduced

to five acres (three of paddy and two highland) in 1952, and to three acres (two of

paddy and one highland) after the introduction in the 1970s of new high yield

varieties of rice. In the late 1960’s, however, the authorities of the most ambitious34

irrigation scheme, the Mahaweli Project, clarified the objective of fixing the

standard allotment as the optimum utilization of basic resources of land, labor, and

capital, bearing in mind that land and capital are scarce national resources while

labor is an abundant resource.35

Colonization was, therefore, not the revitalization of former Lankan villages, but

rather a compromise between creating villages and plantations; modern villages that

produce a food crop for the market in addition to looking after its own subsistence

needs. They were not organically developed, but planned from Colombo according

to a model in which settlement units were replicated with very little variation. The36

mass produced hamlets did not have names, but simply identification tags--a tract

number, a tract being a sub-unit of the colony--useful for the colonizing agency in

Colombo to differentiate each unit.

What the government has provided were primarily large reservoirs that

constituted large irrigation systems. For example, Chandrikawewa was expected

to irrigate 5,000 acres of virgin forest. Planning and development was also carried

out at that scale and not at village scale, using heavy machinery for the clearing of

land, ridging of paddy fields, and construction of canals and roads, homogenizing

the landscape. The methods of mass construction were complemented by the mass

production of smaller building units across the settlements. (figure 4.1) The use of

type plans for infrastructure buildings and houses and the replication of service


FIGURE 4.1 Colonization Projects: Coredevelopment project.

houses provided in the Uda Walawa

centers homogenized the built environment, undermining the identity of each

individual settlement.37

In contrast to villages, “colonies” were more commercialized, the population

was heterogenous, and the settlers were more individualized. The commodification

of land emphasized the ownership of land over the traditional right to water. In

early stages, however, land ownership was attractive to prospective settlers.

Despite the settlers’ desire to lessen the cost of cultivation, the employment of

customary self-help methods, such as attam and kaiyya, was deterred by large

landholding and individualism. Attam “contract” requires the settlers to free up

time to work on others’ fields, but large individual lots would not allow this. The

settlers’ response was to employ paid labor and “build” communities with those

from their home villages. They continued to maintain strong ties with their home

villages, and also brought labor from their home village.38

Colonization became very expensive for the post-colonial state. The World39

Bank mission of 1951 recommended the reduction of the standard allotment, the

cost of clearance borne by the government, and the government subsidy on

colonists’ (sic) dwelling houses. In 1966, a Bank mission highlighted the urgent

need to increase productivity per acre. Despite the increasing cost on the principal

irrigation structures, however, governments have attempted to reduce the direct

expenditure on settlers.

Independence produced an ambivalence in the spatial order of Ceylon,

particularly reinforced by the post-colonial adoption of the colonial administrative

center, Colombo, as its capital. Unlike historic Lankan “urban centers,” which were

associated with temples, Colombo was a secular city which linked the Ceylonese

political economy with that of the metropole. While Colombo continued to function

as the center of the Ceylonese polity, economy, as well as the capitalist culture, the

religious and cultural organization of Ceylon reproduced the centrality of their

historic centers, for example, Anuradhapura, Kandy, and Jaffna. This

multicentricity, however, did not generate any disorder in Ceylonese society and

space, but rather a split-site until the 1980s.

In addition to producing a Ceylon which expressed their values, the elite had

also to transform themselves to be a part of the this new state. The increasing use

of national dress by the members of the Legislative Council was part of this process.


Yet the views of the national leadership epitomized the paternalism of the elite

towards the villagers. Reconnecting with Sinhalese history, though to a lesser40

degree, the state also assumed the patronage of Buddhism. Buddhism in this

context might be understood as the “reformed version” which many of the elite

studied in English, and some in Oxford, for the first time. Although only implicit41

at times, the increase in significance of historic Buddhist centers in the post-colonial

political arena is illustrated by the fact that every ministerial cabinet of newly

formed governments made a pilgrimage to the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy. The

height of this new “tradition” was reached in 1977, when Prime Minister J.R.

Jayawardene, following a former royal tradition, addressed the “nation” from the

octagonal Pattirippuwa of the Temple. Since the Low-Country elite changed their

religion many times in order to retain power, this can be seen as part of the process

of the re-adapting of the elite.42

What we see, therefore, in the post-colonial, national territorial and urban spatial

structures is a multivalence. Although the elite had developed their identity within

a system of colonial values, and focusing on the colonial port city, independence

changed the ground beneath it, making Colombo the capital of Ceylon. If the elite

had derived its political power principally by peaceful bargaining with the

authorities in London, with independence they had to rely on, and negotiate with,

the average Ceylonese. It is this transition that brought about a multivalent social,

cultural, and spatial formation.

The Restructuring of Marginalized Institutions and Spaces

Despite its dominance, the colonial socio-spatial structure was not total, but

incomplete; many Lankan social and cultural institutions and practices continued

inside, and outside, but marginal to, the principal colonial structures. The village

and Buddhism are two such institutions which carried Lankan traditional

worldviews across the colonial rupture of time. The continuity of Lankan

institutions and practices within a colonial and capitalist society, however, required

their restructuring. This section discusses on the restructuring of Lankan rural

villages (gamas) under colonialism.

The colonial regime had periodically attempted to make the village useful to its

economic system. In the early stages, the state desired to transform villages into a

source of tax revenue. In creating plantations, the state appropriated land from

certain villages, coercing the inhabitants into plantation lines. In the 1840s and

1850s, colonial officials proposed to restore the ancient reservoirs in the Dry Zone

and settle south Indians, transforming this region into an area of cash crop

production and a more convenient source of labor for the plantations. Later, with43

“colonization,” sporadically distributed purana gam were incorporated into its

planned settlement system. These developments indicate that rural Ceylon was

marginal to the colonial system and the state wished to transform it into a more

meaningful and useful element of colonial Ceylon.

The villagers’ initial response was one of apathy. Their refusal to join the


plantations, as well as rebellions, were also typical reactions of the villagers,

particularly in Kandy. In the longer run, however, villagers restructured their

gamas within the new conditions. According to Cohen, “Anthropological <others’

are part of the colonial world. ... [yet] these <others’ had to restructure their world

to encompass the fact of white domination and their own powerlessness.”44

Although the villages were never fully integrated into the colonial society, the

colonial policies towards them gradually eroded their foundations. The neglect of

the irrigation infrastructure, much needed for the production of food crops,

weakened the economic base of the village; the abolition of rajakariya had the

effect of a sudden demolition of the communal machinery which maintained village

irrigation facilities.45

The restructuring efforts from within the village were complemented by state

intervention. From the 1860s, the colonial regime developed a concern for what

they saw as “deteriorating” villages and began supporting these through the

revitalization of ancient irrigation schemes, financial assistance, technical

supervision, and facilitating the enforcement of customs relating to paddy

cultivation. The reintroduction of the ancient gamsabhava in the 1850s marked the

changing point in the balance of forces, between the village and the state, from

conflict to corporation. As the mutual co-operation in former villages was

undermined by the new forces of trade, individualism, and ownership, disputes over

the ownership of land and the use of water began to rise. Litigation prospered as

a means of negotiating this transition. The original purpose of the new gamsabhava

was to reduce the number of cases that came to courts and to reduce the cost by

passing over the responsibility to the village itself.46

The reintroduction of the gamsabhava was, therefore, an endeavor to make use

of ancient regulations and institutions to pass the responsibility of solving these

disputes to the village. The new gamsabhavas were under the chairmanship of the

Government Agent (or his nominee). These were called into action only when a47

‘rule’ was broken, and were to enforce their decisions through fines. Simple in

form and summary in action, gamsabhavas were resuscitated in partial form to act

as liaison between people and the white govt. This was also the beginning of the48

state’s co-opting of the village into the colonial society and space.

More profound changes took place in rural areas in the early twentieth century.

Intervening into the so-called problem of rural debt, the colonial state created

Cooperative Credit Associations in 1911. By 1927, there were more than 303

societies with a membership of 35,112 operating under state supervision.49

Despite the slow integration process, paths and roads gained increasing

significance in gamas. This development demonstrates the integration of former

self-sufficient, inward-oriented gamas into the larger urban structure and division

of labor as food production units of Ceylon. The infiltration of norms of private

property into villages is reflected in the separation of private lots, the appearance

of the fence demarcating the significance of private property and public paths

connecting to the larger urban system, and the use of paths as a central device for

organizing dwellings and farm land.


The most glaring transformation was, however, in the increasing replacement of

communal spaces by more institutionalized social infrastructure, such as schools,

cooperative stores, and sub-post offices. In this process, while some of the

communal spaces disappeared others were absorbed into the private sphere. For

example, the function of storing grain in courtyards, bihi, formed by a particular

layout of dwellings, was largely absorbed by individual dwellings. And the

meaning of central spaces, known as tisbamba, has been replaced by modern

“village centers.” In this way the villages became increasingly centrally organized,

after the urban model, around administrative, commercial and, most importantly,

communication facilities that connected these to the “outer world,” replacing the

former centrality of the temple and the irrigation reservoir.

Yet none of these developments was capable of completely “modernizing” the

rural built environment, nor of radically transforming rural building methods and

building forms. Most notably, villagers continued their spatial traditions at the scale

of building and locale. The “small building tradition,” according to Andrew Boyd,

is a minor episode in the long and rich history of Lankan art, but it has the interest

of being alive when most of the other traditions have come to an almost complete

stop. (figure 4.2) The subordination of the Lankan upper classes and the50

destruction of their organization of state-craftsmen created a large decrease in the

“historic” building activity. Increasingly, the wealthier Ceylonese began imitating

European ideas and manners, supported by an English educational system which

marginalized Lankan history. Yet the ordinary peasant houses were always built by

peasants themselves and not by professional craftsmen. The Lankan cultural

tradition, therefore, passed out of the hands of the upper classes but lived on among

the common people.

Particularly, rural incomes did not increase sufficiently to transform rural

cultures or allow the successful mimicking of urban dwelling forms and methods.

Despite the introduction of industrially-produced materials such as cement, a large

proportion of house building activity in villages is still carried out by the villagers

themselves. Materials and technology used in house building activity, the use of

self-help methods, incrementally constructing over a long period of time, and the

transformability of the size and form of dwellings according to the changing size

and needs of their inhabitants, demonstrate the continuity of many aspects of former

villages. This continuity is also reflected in the large proportion (77%) of owner

occupation of rural dwellings.51

At a more abstract level, the time and space in which villagers operate, occupy,

and also construct their houses are significantly different from those of the so-called

urban middle classes. In addition to religions, their worldview includes astrology,52

vastu vidya--historic architectural principles of south Asia--and other customs.

Many villagers still get an astrologer to work out an auspicious time to begin

construction as well as to occupy a new dwelling. For example, they boil milk as

a sign of prosperity when entering a new house and, sometimes, invite Buddhist

bhikkus to chant pirith. Instead of adhering to the mundane norms of the city,

villagers continue to employ a degree of vastu vidya, infused with astrological


FIGURE 4.2 Cultural continuity: The rural house.

beliefs based on indigenous conceptions of time and space developed over two

thousand years.

The continuity of rural building methods suggests that most villagers were not

readily incorporated into so-called market economies under colonialism. Villagers

have continued to produce one of the most efficient house types, combining internal

and external spaces. Unlike the specialized monofunctional rooms of the upper

classes, villagers have continued their practice of building multi-functional spaces.53

According to Bandaranayake,

it has ... solved major problems of structural design, ventilation and insulation, whileproviding only a minimum necessary amount of internal accommodation, by aningenious combination of internal and external facilities for production, processing,storage and leisure activities. In short, it is a great historical invention and forms anessential part of the domestic economy, technology, social life and culture of thevillage.54

While the rhythm of rural life still contrasts with urban life, urban influences

have also seeped in over the last three hundred years. Following urbanistic values,

not only are there aspirations among villagers to build a so-called “permanent”

house one day, but many contemporary rural houses also have furniture (apart from

utensils), sometimes television, individual services such as a well and a toilet, and

specialized spaces for different functions such as sleeping and eating.

How people think affects how they build and what they build indicates their

cultural notions about space. The language used in building is therefore an55

indicator of what aspects of building have been influenced by what culture. The56

Portuguese, and particularly the Dutch, who had initial contact with the Lankans,

diffused a crucial set of terms covering a variety of elements, such as building

methods and the modern organization of conceptualized spaces and furniture,

defining space. The circular column and the Roman arch are two striking57

examples of colonial influences. The Sri Lankan building vocabulary suggests the58

direct transfer of a range of spaces, building elements, and methods. For example,

the gable, in some sense, evolved in Holland during the so-called Renaissance was

reproduced abroad, including in Ceylon. In other cases, it was simply the use of59


western terminology to identify an indigenous element. Even if colonial terms

renamed already existing Lankan spaces or building elements, the process of

naming transformed those. For example, although “veranda” resembles a traditional

Lankan space, it remains different from the pila or tinnai, which is an elevated

semi-outdoor space protected by a roof overhang.60

As much as buildings and building elements, furniture is also a constituent

element of interior space. Domestic furniture has also been radically transformed

during the colonial period. According to Percival, “where luxury seems almost

unknown, sumptuous furniture is not to be expected, even in the best houses” of the

Ceylonese. Instead, their so-called household furniture largely consisted of61

necessary utensils--as opposed to consumption- and comfort-oriented objects and

art work. According to Coomaraswami, Sinhalese furniture was not only simple,

there was also a hierarchy built into it; only the king sat on a “chair” with an arm.62

An Englishman once observed that, “if we may judge from the example of India, the

great art in furniture is to do without it.” In contrast, “the British equipped their

interiors with a variety of bulky objects.” This was a major influence in63

transforming the organization of the overall space and form of the dwelling which

accommodated such furniture and the practices attached to it.

Despite influences, however, the line of mimicry, with the indigenes imitating

the culture, knowledge, practices, and built forms produced in the metropole,

transmitted through Colombo, did not fully reach the village. In continuing Lankan

“traditions” (or proto-traditions), villages, religions, and the custom have kept alive

the prospect of developing new ideas based on these traditions. Some of such nodes

were later deployed by nationalists, socialists, separatists, as well as--in the realm

of architecture--“critical-vernacularists.” These issues will be addressed in the next

two chapters.

Migration and the Spatial Restructuring of Colombo

While the upper classes were Ceylonizing the main British sites in Colombo,

migrants complemented this process in other quarters. The population of Colombo

grew from a meager 28,000 in 1800, to about 150,000 in 1900. Migration, the64

immediate principal cause of this growth, transformed Colombo into a “primate

city,” a city with the largest population, many times larger than the next largest

cities. In the 1870s, Colombo Municipal Council area held twice as many people

as both Galle and Kandy. By the 1920s, this proportion had increased to six

times. Since Colombo represented only one level in the hierarchy of the colonial65

urban system, emigration continued to London, and later, to other settler colonies

in the Empire such as Australia and Canada, as well as the United States. In this

section, I briefly explore how a Colombo constructed by the colonial powers was

Ceylonized, feminized, and ruralized by migrants.

The colonial spatial structure created as part of metropolitan capital’s drive to

extract profits from rurally located plantations was different from the process of


surplus extraction in the metropole itself. Knox and Agnew have argued that there

was only a limited stimulus to the growth of a distinctive urban economy, as the

orientation of urban networks was towards exploitation of hinterlands rather than

an industry--and service--based urban economy. While the provincial and district66

capitals of Ceylon did not contain a significant proportion of production functions,

plantation areas did not have any significant urban centers. The principal towns of

Ceylon were, therefore, centers of administration, economic command, capital

accumulation, and consumption, and not industrial production. Although the hill

stations, Nuwara Eliya and Kandy, were important as centers of consumption during

colonialism, and some redistribution of resources took place in them, Colombo

represented by far the most dominant urban center. For the average Ceylonese,

therefore, the main attraction was Colombo, where all economic and administrative

functions culminated and most opportunities existed. Until the 1960s Colombo was

the only city with a population of over 100,000 people.

Urbanization in the “Third World” has sometimes been compared to the same

process as taken by the industrialized states of Europe and America, seen

anomalously, and expressed through notions such as urbanization without

industrialization, tertiary sector employment, and primate cities, all with negative

connotations. Yet there were 69 factories dispersed in and around Colombo in

1910. These factories included coconut oil mills, foundries for plantation67

machinery, other engineering workshops, saw mills, aerated water plants, printing

presses, and plants for processing crops for export. It was, however, not these

factories which gave rise to Colombo, as with Western industrial cities, but rather,

Colombo attracted them as an appropriate location.

Colonialism both underdeveloped and “modernized” the colonies

simultaneously. In regard to Colombo, Turner wrote in the 1920s,68

Of the towns of Ceylon, the most important and progressive is the capital, Colombo.... [It] possesses most of the refinements of modern civilization, up-to-date hotels;electric light, fans, and tramways; an excellent water supply; an up-to-date system

of water-borne drainage; and extensive emporia of all kinds of goods.69

In addition to modernizing Colombo and the colonial urban system, the colonial

state also produced modern subjects. In rural areas, the younger generations were

increasingly “modernized” through education, the principal means of diffusion of

Western urban-centric values. Young and aspiring men produced by this system

were unable to see much opportunity to succeed in the rural environment. Despite

the bias towards capitalist industrial societies, urban, capitalist, and industrial

spaces were limited in Ceylon. Many people, therefore, moved to Colombo, as

much for new opportunities as to escape from the limitations they saw in their

“traditional” environments, and looked towards the capitalist arena and cities for

opportunities, though not toward the plantations.

The introduction and expansion of communication networks facilitated the rural

to urban movement. The principal purpose of the communication infrastructure was


to organize the political, economic, and administrative systems and spread these

outward from Colombo to rural areas along a hierarchy of urban centers. Yet the

migrants reversed this directionality, employing the transport networks as a means

of moving to Colombo. This is evident in the influx of people to Colombo from the

1880s, especially the Tamils from Jaffna, particularly with the opening of the

Colombo-Jaffna railway line in 1905. Compared to the growth of the national

population by 18% between 1921 and 1931, the North Central Province grew by

less than 1%, and the Northern and Eastern Provinces by less than 10%. The70

migrants, in turn, used the communication network as a two-way system,

maintaining their relationships between their villages of origin and their new

residence in Colombo.71

As mentioned above, colonial Colombo was a relatively cosmopolitan city; a

large proportion of its population were not the residents of former Lankan

kingdoms. They also consisted of a variety of immigrants, including Muslims who

settled in Colombo, and the descendants of the Portuguese and the Dutch, the

“Burghers.” According to Roberts’ estimates, out of Colombo’s population of

31,188 in 1824, about 13,420 were Moors, 4,550 Burghers, and 2,450 Chetties;72

including the British residents of the fort area, more than two-thirds were “non-

Lankans.” Until the late nineteenth century, the large majority of Colombo’s

residents were not those who had migrated from inland. Both the space of Colombo

and its inhabitants had been imported over the years.

By the early twentieth century, Colombo had been Ceylonized in regard to its

population, through the naturalization of immigrants and migration from the interior

of the country. In addition to Muslims adopting Tamil as their daily language

(Arabic for prayers), caste also seeped into their communities. In this way,73

Muslim migrants who had settled in the island only temporarily for business

purposes became naturalized. Migration not only escalated between the 1880s and

1920s, increasing Colombo’s population by about 120%, but also changed the

ethnic and religious composition of the city. By 1921, 47% of Colombo’s

population were already Sinhalese, largely from the Low-Country, and the

Sinhalese, Ceylon Tamils, and (naturalized) Ceylon Moors and Burghers made up

63% of Colombo’s population.

The influx of migrants, however, created the basis for a new type of spatial

grouping in the city. The most known Tamil enclave of Wellawatta, then at the

outskirts of the city as defined by municipal boundaries, had already appeared by

the 1880s. Migrants brought ethnically defined quarters around the British74

compound of the Fort. After the mid-nineteenth century, the British also developed

several enclaves outside the fort, including the residential Cinnamon Gardens. By

the early twentieth century, however, the Sinhalese formed the main part of the

city’s population within which enclaves of other ethnicities were formed, but with

more permeable boundaries. In Ceylonizing Colombo, the Low-Country Sinhalese

have therefore replaced the Europeans four centuries after they had appropriated

Colombo from the Muslims.

Segregation was not limited to racial and ethnic groups, but was also based on


class, status, and income. By 1973, what the Census Department defined as

“shanties” and “slums” accommodated almost half the city’s population. Yet the

concentration of these in particular areas forming so-called working class

neighborhoods, and their relative absence in elite and upper class suburbs,

demonstrate class and income-based segregation. The expansion of the port in

1883, and its associated industries, was primarily instrumental in converting large

areas, such as Kochchikade, and Gintupitiya, into dockland areas giving rise to a

particular clustering of working class tenements and small businesses.75

A distinctive demographic characteristic of the colonial community, and also of

the early immigrant and migrant communities in colonial port cities--as well as

plantations--was the relative absence of women. Cordiner notes that English76

society in Colombo in the 1820s consisted of one hundred “gents” and twenty

“ladies.” The significance of being single has been stressed from the beginning77

of European settlement; any Portuguese soldier who married was immediately

discharged from the service. This demographic aspect was accompanied by78

specific masculine institutions such as bachelors’ chummeries, clubs, and the

allocation of disproportionate space in the city to the provision of recreational

activities for the single male official. Brohier describes the club in terms of “An old

adage holds that wherever two Englishmen met away from Home, they founded a

“club”--in reality a nostalgic corner in a foreign field that was for ever England!”79

The clubs were principally for men and, according to Cordiner, “ladies” did not

attend the meetings of any of these societies. These clubs also reflected the system80

of social stratification and their membership was highly restricted. In regard to

Whist Bungalow, which had only twelve members, they were “chosen from among

the most respectable inhabitants, whose wealth or position entitled them to the

highest social honours.”81

The main component of the Ceylonese who migrated in the initial stages as also

male. These men lived in small rooms in lodging houses known among immigrants

from India as Kiddangies, sustained by the small shops and other marginal services

which are part of the so-called informal economy of the poor. In 1921, 61% of82

Colombo’s population was male. The gradual settlement of migrants in Colombo,83

later joined by their families, eventually feminized the city, bringing about a gender

balance by the 1960s.

In addition to Ceylonizing and feminizing, migrants also nativized and ruralized

Colombo. Even in what the authorities called “slum” areas of towns, attempts were

made to grow one or two papaya trees around each house thereby creating the sense

of a garden. McGee argues that characteristics of the city such as high-fertility84

and the persistence of the so-called “extended-family” are simply aspects of the

“ruralness” of “Third World” cities. A common solution to the lack of affordable85

dwellings was the construction of single-storied, mostly detached, small housing

units using less durable material. These dwellings, “shanties” in the language of

planners, represented 21% of Colombo’s housing stock in 1981. Building their86

own houses with materials available in the new environment and using self-help

methods to do so represents the transfer of rural housing methods to the city. These


buildings both helped the inhabitants to familiarize themselves with the city and, at

the same time, also ruralized a part of it.

Patterns of migration and other post-colonial developments, however, blurred

the urban-rural distinction. According to Moore, “The amorphousness of the

‘village’ in Sri Lanka and the lack of clear urban-rural boundaries are opposite sides

of the same coin. Both are in large part due to the preference for dispersed

settlement.” The rural emphasis of state development policies, nationalist and87

socialist influences, and the conservative characteristics of the westernized have

contributed to the continuation of this lack of urban-rural distinction until the late

1970s.

Urban Problems and Planning Solutions

From the late 1910s, Colombo Municipal authorities began to stereotype the

poor migrants in Colombo. The housing and landscapes they produced were seen

by the authorities as “unhealthy,” “overcrowded,” and undesirable for living. The

enactment of the Housing Ordinance of 1915 made municipal authorities view the

city as plagued with urban and housing problems. As an exported discourse, the

urban problems the municipal authorities found in Colombo did not differ much

from what the authorities in Manchester and London had found in those cities. The

difference is that Colombo’s problems were new and the means to perceive those

were exported to Colombo only in the first decades of the twentieth century.

As a result, colonial planners, such as Patrick Geddes, Clifford Holliday, and

Patrick Abercrombie, were invited from the metropole to solve these problems. It

was within these planning proposals that “town planning” developed and took root

in Ceylon. This led to the establishment of the Town Planning Department as a

national planning agency, with colonialism being the vehicle by which urban

planning was exported to Ceylon.

As the building of cities and urban and rural institutions go far back in history,

urban and regional planning, broadly defined as “environmental decision making,”

is clearly not a new phenomenon. The history of urban planning in any society,

therefore, demonstrates a long continuity, in terms of emerging ideas of social

policy, social and cultural values--the distribution of power and the development of

political institutions--between an age when there was no governmental

responsibility for “Town Planning” described as such and a period when there

was. Yet in Sri Lanka, these two stages were ruptured by colonialism.88

Governmental responsibility for, and how to understand and manage towns were

also taught by colonial officials who built them in the first place, thus subjugating

Lankan urban history to a British colonial one.

Ceylonese Adaption of Colonial Architecture and the Landscape

As both town planning, the field of post-colonial architecture had its roots in the

late colonial period, and was marked by the continuation of colonial practices. Yet

unlike with planning, the development of so-called “Modern Architecture”


transplanted hegemony in architecture from individual metropoles to a broader

Euro-American core. This discourse provided a culturally neutral context for a

continuing dependency on the imperial metropoles well into the post-colonial

period. I shall focus here on the process of the Ceylonese elite penetration of

colonial landscapes, and explore the post-colonial architecture of Ceylon.

The manifestation of a distinct cultural expression in architecture was not an

issue of any significance for Ceylon’s post-colonial rulers. The immediate post-

independence period was marked by drives for “development” and

“modernization,” still following the model of Europe. Architecturally, the same

process had enabled “architectural modernism” to climax in such “Third World”

cities as Brasilia and Chandigarh. Modernization was thus part of the post-colonial

phase of the “Westernization” of society and space and, from a nationalist point of

view, this minimized the need for institutional and spatial change.

Ceylonese leaders who continued to rule the country within the British-made

constitution of 1947 were quite at home adopting the symbols of the colonial elite.

They thus moved into former colonial spaces, reinventing their own identity, and

re-interpreting these spaces as those of their own nation. The colonial fort area,

where the colonial military and administrative apparatuses had long been located,

came to be identified simply as “Fort,” or Colombo Fort, a politically neutral name.

However, when national leaders had political power in their hands, they rapidly

Ceylonized the government sector and its built environment. The “Neo-Classical”

parliament house, built by the British, was transformed from its status of State

Council building to the House of Representatives and Secretariat. The building

itself was not changed, but the processional way and council chamber were altered

to accommodate more elected representatives. The former residence of the British89

Governor, the Queen’s House, was occupied by the new Governor-General, the

ceremonial head of the state representing the Queen. The colonial built

environment of the Fort area, therefore, did not change for three decades after

independence.

The elite followed the late colonial model of living in residential suburbs.

Colonial living styles had been of particular interest to the nascent elite from Dutch

times. Dutch country houses built to the north of Colombo, near Kelani River,

attracted the so-called “leading citizens” to Mutuwal, Hultsdorp, and Grandpass,

and remained a socially preferred location until the mid-nineteenth century. Later,

British residential neighborhoods to the south of the fort area, in Kollupitiya, and

later, Cinnamon Gardens, set a new trend for the Ceylonese elite to follow. With90

independence, they moved into the Cinnamon Gardens area in much larger

numbers.

These housing and locational choices were part of a broader emulation of British

colonial culture, which also included eating habits, dress, consumerism, and even

naming practices. The city of Colombo, and Cinnamon Gardens in particular,

became one of the prime sites for symbolic display. According to Roberts, the

construction of palatial mansions with neat driveways and gardens was just as much

a part of this status competition as forms of elegant dress, profligate wedding


receptions, and the use of material artifacts of Western origin. Conspicuous

consumption for symbolic purposes was played out through material forms.91

As Abu-Lughod argues in regard to Morocco, “the elite had moved into the

vacuum left by the foreign caste, and the privileges that accrued to these positions

so newly occupied were dependent in part upon maintaining the system that had

created them.” Although the physical-spatial forms of colonial urban development92

apparently strained the economic resources of the city, the elite’s ambition was93

clearly to occupy colonial spaces. Post-colonial cities largely retained their former

patterns of spatial stratification, although the boundaries were less rigid. Racial94

inequality built into the colonial urban form was now reproduced within the post-

colonial spheres of status and class.

The continuation of the colonial administrative structure also required spaces to

house both post-colonial activities and subjects. Adaptation of the colonial

categorization of government servants, providing them with quarters with largely

the same facilities, is evident in the Report of the Committee Appointed to Advise

on the Type Plans of Quarters for Government Officers of 1952. Although the

committee noted post-colonial realities, such as the expense of maintaining

detached houses for higher ranking officers with a garden close to the work place

in Colombo and the furnishing of these, the actual provision of quarters was not

questioned.95

Its recommendations, rather, aimed at reducing the cost of housing for the lower

ranks of government servants, providing them with flats (apartment housing) and

reducing internal areas below the minimum requirements specified in the Housing

Ordinance. The committee, advised by (British) Government Architect, T.N.

Wynne Jones--who had designed grand “Neo-Classical” buildings in Colombo--did

not place value in what it called “conventional features in building,” “such as

extensive overhang of eaves, high valleys, embellishments, broken outlines, and

mouldings” and recommended avoiding such “non-essentials.” It was not96

therefore so much the structure that was at issue, but the cost and subsidies for low-

ranking government workers.

These modified colonial building practices also required architects capable of

producing them. From about the 1930s, compliant Ceylonese were trained in the

metropole; the Commonwealth also increased the capacity for post-colonial subjects

to travel to other Dominions to study architecture. These Ceylonese professionals

also studied the same material, culture, and history as their British predecessors had

done so that their products hardly transformed the colonial landscape. Although

Ceylonese architects gradually replaced the British, therefore, the PWD-based

structure of architectural production largely continued to dominate in the post-

colonial period.

Just like the production of architecture itself, the centralization of production of

architectural knowledge in the institutions of the metropole tended not only to

homogenize the landscape across the Empire, but also to obscure what we might

call “national” (or proto-national) cultural expressions. From a core-periphery

perspective, Goonatilake has argued that so-called significant knowledge assertions


in the dependent periphery resulted from the diffusion of ideas of the center, in

which the fundamental and basic core knowledge grows largely in the “West.”97

Holding on to the production of architectural knowledge, major schools of

architecture in the core states reproduced the former colonial monopoly on

architectural production, but on a global scale. For the professionals in the

periphery, therefore, the production of “meaningful architecture” was largely guided

by the process of mimicking Western buildings and architectural styles. The

metropole-colony dependency was thus carried over by the post-colonial state, its

departments, and its professionals. Architects educated in the metropole formed,

as a club, the Ceylon Institute of Architects in 1957. Decentralizing the diffusion

of architectural knowledge, this institution introduced architectural education into

Ceylon in 1961. Yet not only was its curriculum fashioned after the British model

but, until the 1980s, a representative from the Royal Institute of British Architects

sat on the final design review committee.

At the same time, a long standing process among European architects of

referring back to classical buildings in search of styles was profoundly challenged

from the 1920s under the rubric of “Modernism.” The ideology of what might be

called “architectural modernism” was produced in Europe under the leadership of

the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). What is significant98

to this discussion is that, breaking away from one kind of European history,

architectural modernists projected a new future, an alternative to historic

architecture as well as the industrial city. In the second place, the development of

building typologies and planning conventions were projected as instruments of

change, and seen as particularly useful in redefining the social functions of urban

organization. Moreover, the CIAM’s view relied on the state’s authority to achieve

the planning goals of the city. The leading figure of CIAM, Le Corbusier, claimed

that radical social change could be brought about through this new architecture

without social revolution, an appeal which attracted both revolutionaries as well as

their opponents.

These ideas were in keeping with the wishes of most post-colonial leaders whose

objective was to use the post-colonial state as an instrument of change in

constructing a modern nation. Furthermore, architectural modernism called for

massive state intervention and centralized coordination, and this certainly99

appealed to post-colonial states which undertook the task of “development” in place

of private capital. Moreover, CIAM’s projection of a common future, with no

reference to previous forms of European architecture, tended to underplay the

cultural context in which this ideology was produced. It was this de-historicization

of architecture and the aesthetics of erasure, particularly the capacity to represent

a future outside both colonial and “pre-colonial” histories, that made the adoption

of modernism more comfortable for post-colonial architects. The representation of

architectural modernism as a thrust towards, and an image of, progress made it even

more attractive to the post-colonial political leadership. This is evident in Nehru’s

employment of Le Corbusier as the architect-planner of independent India’s first

significant city building project, Chandigarh.100


1. Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of theCapitalist World-Economy,” ch. in Politics of the World-Economy: The States, theMovements, and the Civilizations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 46;Giovanni Arrighi, “The Three Hegemonies,” 396.

2. “a situation of total and apparently irremediable lack of organization.” (Arrighi, 369)3. Terence K. Hopkins, “Note on the concept of Hegemony” Review xiii (1990): 409-412.4. Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British

Commonwealth 1920-1950 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976), 36,355-6.

5. See P.K.S. Namboodiri, J.P. Anand, and Sreedhar, Interventions in the Indian Ocean(New Delhi: ABC Publishing House, 1982), 2-3.

The only reference in the modernist discourse to distinctive and a particular

place was found in the notion of “Tropical Architecture,” discussed in Chapter

Three. This suggests that architectural modernism was not just European, but was

also constructed within the premises of Eurocentrism, undermining the social and

cultural values of non-European people, and recognizing only a climatic difference

in relation to temperate Europe. Moreover, the notion of “Tropical Architecture”

was based on an assumption that the indigenous architectures of newly independent

states were “decadent,” “moribund,” and devoid of a living history. It claimed101

that modernism was of value in the production of “more efficient” buildings for the

“Tropics.” Its momentum was towards the homogenization, standardization, and

rationalization of the building process, opening up overseas markets for building

material and component producers of the metropole.

The decentralization of the design process, therefore, did not produce much

diversity in the post-colonial landscape. If Ceylonese architects were ambiguous

about post-colonial architecture and the relevance of so-called Gothic or Neo-

Classical buildings in Colombo, architectural modernism provided a spuriously

“neutral” terrain for the transfer of architectural ideas from the centers to the

peripheries. Within the budgetary constraints of post-colonial states, there also

seemed to be a belief that “ornament” is costly. Despite the cost of construction and

maintenance, modernist buildings were perceived as cheap to construct, and the

hegemony of “Modern Architecture” became strong in post-colonial Ceylon. The

main institutional buildings that appeared in Colombo until the 1970s, for example,

the Central Bank of Ceylon, the Irrigation Department Headquarters, Ceylinco

Building, St. Thomas’s Primary School (Kollupitiya), Peoples Bank headquarters,

were all designed in the so-called “modernist” mode.

In brief, the colonial society and space in Ceylon was not subjected to any

qualitative change immediately after independence. The colonial ideological

foundation within which cities had been built, and which provided the necessary

knowledge to understand, manage, and maintain the extant built environment,

persisted during the first decade after independence. The process of independence

largely took the form of indigenizing colonial social and spatial structures.

Notes


6. Tinker, Separate and Unequal, 264-5.7. H. Duncan Hall, Commonwealth: A History of the British Commonwealth of Nations

(London: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971).8. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third

World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 98.9. See Fanon, 52.10. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 287-8. The Ceylonese also invested in rubber,

making it fairly evenly owned between the Europeans and the Ceylonese.11. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 162; I.D.S. Weerawardana, Government and Politics

in Ceylon (1931-1946) (Colombo: Ceylon Economic Research Association, 1951), 3; Mills,Ceylon Under British, 105, 107, 266; Michael Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation:The Rise of the Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1982), 2, 166, 168.

12. Marshall R. Singer, The Emerging Elite (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964), 120.13. Peebles, “Governor Arthur Gordon,” 102.14. S.J. Tambiah, “Ethnic Population,” 113, 117.15. Singer, 75.16. Hugh Tinker, South Asia. A Short History (London: MacMillan, 1989), 163.17. See James S. Duncan, “The Power of Place in Kandy: 1780-1980,” in John A. Agnew

and James S. Duncan, eds., The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical andSociological Imaginations (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 191.

18. In de Silva, A History of Ceylon, 327.19. Michael Roberts, “Problems of Social Stratification and the Demarcation of National

and Local Elites in British Ceylon,” Journal of Asian Studies xxxiii (1974): 558.20. Singer, 118-9.21. Tinker, Separate and Unequal, 156.22. For a critical appraisal of the concept of “post-colonial,” see McClinntock, “The Angel

of Progress;” Shohat, “Notes on the “Post-Colonial.”23. In conceptualizing globalization, Robertson refers to similar implications of various

groups becoming conscious of the world becoming a single place. (Globalization)24. Weerawardana, 15.25. Steven Kemper, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in

Sinhala Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 142; Elizabeth Nissan, “Historyin the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation” Social Analysis: Journalof Cultural and Social Practice 25 (September 1989): 64-77.

26. Tinker, South Asia, 118. Italics mine.27. See, Michael Roberts, “Irrigation Policy in British Ceylon During the Nineteenth

Century,” South Asia 2 (1972): 48.28. Roberts, “Irrigation Policy,” 51.29. Land Commissioner’s Department, Statistical Information of the Human Settlement

Schemes Under the Land Commissioner’s Department, 1981; R.D. Wanigaratne, The MinipeColonization Scheme: An Appraisal (Colombo: Agrarian Research and Training Institute,1979), 47; G. Gunatillake, Participatory Development and Dependence: The Case of SriLanka (New York: Overseas Development Council, 1980), table 7.4.

30. In Farmer, 163. Italics mine.31. Sarath Amunugama, “A Recent Attempt at Colonization on a Peasant Framework”

Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 8 (1965): 134.32. Farmer 113; Wanigaratne, 50.33. Farmer, “The Origins of Agricultural Colonization,” 233, 234.


34. Wanigaratne, 48, 50.35. Farmer, “The Origins of Agricultural Colonization,” 234.36. See Amunugama, 131, 134.37. Amunugama, 133; Roberts, “Irrigation Policy,” 59. See also Wanigaratne, 1; Farmer,

“The Origins of Agricultural Colonization,” 233-4; Marguerite S. Robinson, PoliticalStructure in a Changing Singhalese Village (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1975), 260.

38. Wickramasinghe, 250; Amunugama, 139, 143; Robinson, 260-1.39. Farmer, “The Origins of Agricultural Colonization,” 231; Wanigaratne, 47-9.40. See Mick Moore, The State and Peasant Policies in Sri Lanka (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1985), 218.41. See Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious

Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 447-8.42. See Bertolacci, A View of the Agricultural, Commercial and Financial Interests of

Ceylon, 24, 45; Major Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon. two vols. (Weatmead: GreggInternational Publishers, 1972 [1840]), 63-5; Tilak Hettiarachchi, The Sinhala Peasant ina Changing Society: Ecological Change Among the Sinhala Peasants from 1796 A.D. to1909 A.D. (Colombo: Lake House, 1982), 87-8.

43. J.W. Bennett, Ceylon and Its Capabilities (London: W.H. Allen, 1843) and Tennent’sreports of 1846 and 1847, cited in Roberts, “Irrigation Policy”, 48-9.

44. Bernard Cohen, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” ch. in AnAnthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press,1987), 44.

45. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 298.46. Ibid, 299-300; Michael Roberts, “The Paddy Lands Irrigation Ordinances and the

Revival of Traditional Irrigation Customs, 1856-1871,” Ceylon Journal of Historical andSocial Studies 10 (1967): 129-30.

47. In 1861, three choices were given to the proprietors of each irrigation division: thatof gamsabhava only, village headman only, or gamsabhavas in combination with headmen.While Northern Province favored headmen untrammeled by councils and Eastern Provincepreferred gamsabhavas only, the rest of the provinces picked the combined option. (Roberts,“The Paddy Lands,” 121)

48. Roberts “The Paddy Lands,” 117.49. Mills, Ceylon Under British, 261.50. Andrew Boyd, “A People's Tradition: An Account of the Small Peasant Tradition in

Ceylon,” Marg 1 (1947): 26, 28-9.51. See de Vos, “Some Aspects of Traditional Rural Housing,” 16; Census, 1981.52. See James S. Duncan, “Getting Respect in the Kandyan Highlands: The Home, The

Community, and the Self in a Third World Society,” in Setha Low and Erve Chambers, eds.,Housing, Culture, and Design: A Comparative Perspective (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1989), 229-250.

53. See MacDougall, 1971.54. Bandaranayake, “Form and Technique in Traditional Rural Housing,” 11.55. Amos Rapoport, “Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Determinants of Form,”

in Anthony D. King, ed., Buildings and Society, 292.56. Anthony D. King, “Rethinking Colonialism: An Epilogue,” in Nezar AlSayyad, ed.,

Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise(Aldershot: Avebury, 1992), 348.


57. See Brohier, Links Between Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, 93, 94, 97; Tinker, SouthAsia, 85; de Silva and Beumer, 118; Hulugalle, The Centenary Volume, 22.

58. Coomaraswami, Medieval Singhalese Art, 257.59. Brohier, Links Between Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, 9260. See G. Kalaeswaran, A Study of Traditional Domestic Architecture of Jaffna up to

‘Colonial-Influenced’ House (M.Sc. Thesis, University of Moratuwa, 1983).61. Percival, 173.62. Coomaraswami, 31.63. Evenson, 71. See also Clifford, The Predicament of Culture.64. Ferguson, 9; Hulugalle, Centenary Volume, 68.65. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 4. According to Turner, the population of

Colombo in 1921 was 244,000, while the next, Jaffna had only 42,400. Galle’s populationwas 39,100, while Kandy’s was 32,600. (Turner, 4)

66. Knox and Agnew, 247.67. Michael Roberts, Ismeth Rahim, and Percy Colin-Thome, People In Between: The

Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transition Within Sri Lanka 1790s-1960s (Colombo:Sarvodaya, 1989), I: 104; Kumari Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972).

68. See Chandra, “Colonialism.”69. Turner, 4.70. See de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 408.71. See Perera, “Exploring Colombo.” 72. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 5.73. Azeez, “The Muslims of Sri Lanka,” 13-14.74. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 5, 17.75. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 9.76. King, Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy, 35.77. Cordiner, 76. See also Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 6.78. Brohier, Changing Face of Colombo, 14.79. Ibid, 47.80. Cordiner, 77-9.81. Brohier, Changing Face of Colombo, 47.82. Roberts et al, 106.83. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 5-6.84. Morrison, et al, 24.85. McGee, The Urbanization Process, 55.86. Marga, 59.87. Moore, 126.88. King, “Exporting Planning,” 13.89. Lakshman Alwis, Rohan C. Aluwihare, and Dayapriya B. Navaratne, British Period

Architecture in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Sri Lanka United Kingdom Society, 1992), 60.90. Hulugalle, Colombo, 143, 144.91. Roberts, “Colombo in the Round,” 14-15.92. Janet Abu-Lughod, “Dependent Urbanism and decolonization: The Moroccan Case”

ASQ 1,1: 54.93. See King, Colonial Urban Development, 284.94. See Abu-Lughod, 60; Hugh Tinker, Race in the Third World City (New York: Ford

Foundation, 1971).


95. Ceylon Government, Report of the Committee Appointed to Advise on the Type Plansof Quarters for Government Officers (Colombo: Government Publication Bureau, 1952),1,2.

96. Ibid, 4.97. Susantha Goonatilake, Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World

(London: Zed Books Ltd, 1984), 110-111.98. A cogent examination of architectural modernism is found in James Holston, The

Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (Chicago: Chicago UniversityPress, 1989).

99. Ibid, 5.100. See Ravi Kalia, Chandigarh: In Search of an Identity (Carbondale and Edwardsville:

Southern Illinois University Press, 1987).101. Shanti Jayawardana, “Bawa: A contribution to cultural regeneration,” Mimar 19 (Jan-

Mar 1986): 48.

Documents

4: Indigenizing Space and the Elite Responses to Colonialism