Changing Socio-Economic Relations in the Kandyan Countryside Newton Gunhsjygae. SOCIAL SCIENTISTS’ ASSOCIATION COLOMBO, SRI LANKA. 1990Foteword Dr. Newton Gunasinghe was a founder member of the Social Scientists, Association and the secretary of its Council of Management in 1987 and 1988. He was also the principal researcher in a major project undertaken by the Association on agrarian rela- tions and the capitalist transformation of agriculture in Sri Lanka. His untimely death in October 1988 was a grievous loss to the As- sociation and to all his friends and colleagues. It is in tribute to his memory that the Association has undertaken the publication of his doctoral thesis on ‘Changing Socio-economic Relations in the Kandyan Countryside.’ Born in Nawalapitiya in 1946, Newton Gunasinghe went to school in Nawalapitiya and Gampola and entered the Univer- sity of Peradeniya in 1963. He read sociology and anthropology under Professors Ralph Pieris and Gananath Obeysekera and graduated in 1967. He worked for a few years as a research officer in the National Commission for Higher Education and as a visit- ing lecturer at the Vidyodaya University. He then left for Austra- lia for higher studies, obtaining his Master’s degree from the Uni- vérsity of Monash. From there he proceeded to England, studying first at the University of Manchester and later at the University of Sussex where he obtained his D. Phil degree in 1979. On his return to Sri Lanka, he became the principal researcher on the . SSA project; later he joined the University of Colombo as a lec- turer in Sociology. Dr. Gunasinghe was always proud of the fact that he had been at Manchester the pupil of Max Gluckman. According to what Newton told us, Gluckman had tried to pursuade him to do his research in Africa as he himself had done, even offering him the Rhodes-Livingstone fellowship for this purpose. This was also no doubt in accord with general practice in academic anthro- pological research then that a researcher should work outside his own society. However, a meeting with Prof. Leach at Cambridge was instrumental in pushing Newton into research in Sri Lanka.Actually his first wish was to do a new study of Puleliya, the village which Leach had originally studied in the 1950s. Even though he ultimately moved to the Kandyan countryside, the desire to re-study Puleliya was never far from Newton's thoughts; he held on to this idea because Leach’s study had wide- spread influence on notions of kinship and economic change and he was anxious to see how far these concepts had stood the test of time. We believe that Dr. Gunasinghe’s thesis which we now publish is important for several reasons. It is in fact the first anthropological or sociological study of Sri Lankan society which combines Marxist scholarship with intensive field research. In studying in very concrete terms production relations and the processes of class formation in rural Sri Lankan society, he was also contributing to what became known later among Marxist aca- demics as the ‘Mode of Production Debate’. This debate began with a criticism of dependency theories on the basis that they analysed the capitalist system, imposed throughout the world by imperialism, at the level of exchange and circulation rather than at the level of production and therefore ignored the complex inter- nal character of peripheral societies; many academics from third world countries particularly from India took part in this debate from the point of view of developments in their own societies. To them capitalist growth was not a simple phenomenon; the impo- sition of capitalism and of capitalist production systems on tradi- tional societies had created new social formations specific to their contexts in which the segmentation of societies on caste or other traditional heirarchical systems interacted with new class based segmentations. Dr. Gunasinghe’s thesis was situated in this con- text. Based on his study of Kandyan agrarian society, he argued that capitalism in peripheral countries had a specific characteris- tic in that it reproduced, under its hegemony, production rela- tions of the previous pre-capitalist era; he formulated this concept theoretically as the ‘reactivation of archaic production relations in peasant agriculture under conditions of peripheral capitalism’. He drew particular inspiration in his theorising from Grmsci and Althusser. Ina sense his subsequent work on the SSA research pro- ject, published in our ‘Capital and Peasant Production’ was a con- tinuation as well as a modification of these theoretical approaches. Dr. Gunasinghe was possessed of a lively, active and growing mind, always conscious of new developments in his field. We have no doubt that had he lived he would have introduced many modifications to the concepts and arguments advanced in his thesis; however, we now publish it as it stood with only minor editorial and structural changes in the conviction that it is a very important and significant landmark in Sri Lankan studies. Dr. Gunasinghe was not only a University teacher or an academic researcher; he also sought through pamphlets and lec- tures to convey his ideas and thoughts to a much wider public. He was also a political activist fighting for a democratic multi- ethnic society. These aspects have been discussed elsewhere. It re- mains only to say that Newton Gunasinghe was a good friend and a gifted scholar from whom we at the SSA learnt much. We hope that this publication will stand as a memorial to him.Contents Preface Chapters IL pig vill Introduction The Kandyan Social Formation The Disintegration of the Kandyan Social Formation and the Growth of Peripheral Capitalism Delumgoda: Social Relations of Agricultural Production The Dialectic of Caste and Class in Delumgoda Yakadagama: Social Relations of Agricultural and Craft Production The Dialectic of Caste and Class in Yakadagama Conclusion: Peripheral Capitalism and the Reactivation of Archaic Relations Bibliography 1-17 19-41 43-70 71-104 105-135 137-170 171-193 195-216 217-222Preface Research and fieldwork for this thesis was caried out under the auspices of a research project administered by the Institute of Deve- lopment Studies at the University of Sussex- ‘A Cross-cultural Study of Population Growth and Rural Poverty’ - directed by Prof. Scarlett Epstein. Ispent nearly two years in the field in Sri Lanka, 1974-1975 in Delumgoda and 1976 in Yakadagama with a short break in between at the IDS, Sussex. In the course of this work, Ihave become indebted to many individuals and a number of institutions both in Sri Lanka and England. First of all, I must thank Prof. Scarlett Epstein who encouraged, supervised and advised me during the long period during which this work has been in progress. Not only did she direct the project with great ability but also proved to be a superb teacher who guided us in methodology and analysis, while encouraging us to develop our own approaches in the interpretation of data. I have greatly benefitted from the discussions I had with my colleagues in the project, especially Mukul Dube, Vinod Jairath and W. M. Tilakaratne. Darrell Jackson as project coordinator, always went out of his way to help us in disentangling many bureaucratic muddles that inevitably crop up in running a project with research workers scattered in three different continents. The IDS was generous in providing us with facilities for research and the highly competent librarians of the Institute were always ready to lend us a helping hand in tracing even the most obscure document. While doing fieldwork in Sri Lanka benefitted from informal associations with the Marga Institute, the Agrarian Research and Training Institute and the University of Sri Lanka at Peradeniya, whose members generously helped me with their considerable expertise. Some sections of this thesis were read at the Ceylon Study Seminar at Peradeniya as working papers. I am greatly indebted to the participants for their insightful comments.It need not be mentioned that intensive village research of this type cannot be carried out without the generous cooperation of the villagers themselves. The people of Delumgoda and Yakad agama have assisted me most generously and tolerated good- naturedly my frequent visits to their houses and never ending querries. They displayed a lively intellectual interest in conversing with me, especially on matters pertaining to religion, politics and class and thus acted as my teachers. The debt that I owe them is the greatest. Gamini Keerawella, now a lecturer at the University of Sri Lanka at Peradeniya, assisted me in collecting land record docu- ments pertaining to Delumgoda. Wijeratne who stayed with me in Yakadagama and accompanied me in almost all the interviews [had with the villagers gave me valuable assistance in collecting infor- mation. I owe a special debt of gratitude to both these friends, who were closely associated with me in my fieldwork. Prof. A.M. Shah of the University of Delhi, a sociologist who has always been interested in historical analysis, went through the historical chapters and offered valuable comments. Prof. B.S. Minhas of the Indian Statistical Institute, an economist well known for his in-depth knowledge of the South Asian agrarian scene, read the chapters on agrarian relations and gave me valuable advice. Atthe IDS, Ihad the opportunity of having many discussions with Prof. Bernard Schaffer, Prof. Ronald Dore, Dr. Gordon White and Dr. Alan Rew, not only pertaining to this thesis, but on social theory in general. I must also thank Manik Sen and Akmal Hussein with whom Ihad the opportunity of discussing aspects of this thesis in detail. Ialone, however, am responsible for the analysis offered in the following pages. Newton Gunasinghe January, 1980 Brighton. Sussex Chapter 1 Introduction “In adopting Marx's materialism as the epistemological horizon of critical work in the social sciences, we must discover and examine, by ways yet to be found, the invisible network of causes linking together forms, functions, modes of articulation and the hierarchy, appearance and disappearance of particular social structures. If we follow such routes we shall arrive at a position where the distinction and difference between anthropology and history disappear and where it will no longer be possible to construct a single autonomous, fetishised domain where economic relations and systems are analysed. We shall arrive at a position beyond impotent functionalist empiricism and the limitations of stru- cturalism: (Godelier; 1977:4). This is basically a study of transition from feudalism to capita- lism ina peripheral area of international capitalism. This formulation of the object of the investigation consists of three vital elements; feudalism, transition and capitalism in the periphery. These are vital elements as they run against some established theoretical streams and in so doing demarcate and locate the scope of this study. a) I shall employ the concept of feudalism in the analysis of the pre- capitalist formation in the region. This involves a rejection by implication of those theories that hold Asian social formations to be unique, including Marx's concept of the Asiatic mode of production!. The object of this study is not to offer a theoretical 1. According to Marx, pre-capitalist social formations in Asia (especially those «t India) are characterised by some unique elements: (i) absence of private property In land, (i) large scale irrigation works, (iii) an agrarian bureaucracy that aupervines these and (iv) an absolutist state that emerges at the pinnacle of this bureaucracy, The crafts, services and agriculture are united at the village level and the villagecritique of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production. Anderson (1974:462-549) Hindess and Hirst (1975: 178-220) et. al. have done that. The attempt here is limited to the historical reconstruction of a concrete social formation in the region and explaining its articulation in terms of the concept of feudalism. b) The presentation of the problem of social change as transition from the hegemony of one mode of production to that of another sets a different line of enquiry from that adopted by the theories of modernisation, culture change etc. Theories of modernisation present ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ as polar opposites and con- ceive of change as passage from the former to the latter. Both these types are used as blanket terms to refer to different social formations. What is ‘traditional’ / ‘modern’ is never precisely defined; the description of these polar opposites often takes an empirical character and cannot be used as general categories in history. Moreover, some ‘traditional societies’ have been under colonial domination for centuries apparently without becoming ‘modern’. Theories of modernisation are ahistorical and often limit their enquiry to two or three decades as if structural change commenced in these societies only two or three decades ago. As such these theories are incapable of explaining structural changes in social formations. Theories of cultural change - the most recent example of which is the work of Harris (1968) - rest on technological determinism; theapproach to social change is uni- directional and mechanical. It fails to take into account the reciprocal impact of ideology, consciousness and juridico- political superstructure on the economic structure (Friedman; 1974). It also fails to grasp the integration of superstructural and infrastructural relations that takes place in certain social forma- tions; for instance, the encapsulation of production relations in the kinship organisation of some tribal societies. It does not differentiate the concrete social formations from the concept of the mode of production, and as a result fails to take into account the presence of various modes of production in certain social formations and the relations of hegemony and subordination among them (Legros; 1977). c) The emphasis on the specificity of peripheral capitalism as dis- tinct from both metropolitan capitalism as well as precapita- community is a self-sufficient and mainly self-governing unit. The rise and fall of ‘empire has little impact on the village community. It is continuously reproduced at the same level without any structural changes. In this sense, India has no history. (cf. Avineri’s Edition of Marx's writings on Asia: 1969). 2 lism, opens up a different path of investigation from that pursued by various theories of economic development, which in the last analysis are also theories of social change. Here] take the general path laid down by Baran (1957), Frank (1967, 1969) and Amin (1974, 1976, 1977) though certain disagreements in detail will become apparent?. The social formations in the periphery of the world capitalist system are not at a lower stage of development which metropolitan capitalism has already passed; neither are they advancing towards metropolitan capitalism. On the con- trary, the exploitative relationship of the metropolis to the periphery develops underdevelopment in the periphery. A substantial part of the surplus realised in the periphery is extracted by the metropolis which uses it for economic growth in the centre. This leaves the periphery devoid of any significant domestic accumulation; the stagnation of the productive forces is perpetuated. Frank has summarised the specificity of peri- pheral capitalism in terms of its relations to metropolitan capi- talism. (i) Contradictions of expropriation /appropriation of economic surplus; this contradiction which is basic to all capi- talist societies, takes a specific form in the periphery. “External monopoly has always resulted in the expropriation (and con- sequent unavailability to Chile) of a significant part of the economic surplus produced in Chile and its appropriation by another part of the world capitalist system”. (Frank; 1967). (ii) Contradiction of metropolis-satellite polarisation: world capitalist system is organised as a series of metropolis satellite relations, where surplus continuously flows to the metropolis. Ina peripheral country rural areas relate to urban centres as sat- elites. The peripheral country as a whole relates to the metro- politan centres as a satellite. “Thus the metropolis expropriates economic surplus from its satellites and appropriates it for its own economic development. The satellites remain underdeve- loped for the lack of access to their own surplus and as a 2. Laclau’s criticism of Frank for basing his analysis on the relations of circulation rather than on the relations of production is in the main valid. Nevertheless, the unity of development in the centre and underdevelopment in the periphery can be estab- lished at the level of production relations. As Laclau has argued the growth of the world capitalist system depends “on the accumulation of capital, the rhythm of this accumulation depends on the average rate of profit, and the level of this rate depends in its turn on the consolidation and expansion of pre-capitalist relationships in the peripheral areas” (1971). However, I would not call these archaic production relations ‘pre-capitalist’ as they are subordinate to the hegemonic capitalist system and function as grounds of surplus creation to be expropriated by capitalist interests. 3consequence of the same polarization and exploitative con- tradictions which the metropolis introduces and maintains in the satellites’ domestic economic structure” (Frank ; 1967: 9). (iii) Contradiction of continuity in change: the essential elements of development and underdevelopment continue respectively in the metropolis and the periphery. Discon- tinuities arose in history where it was possible to break away from the satellite status, but very few countries managed to do so within the capitalist framework. (Frank; 1967: 13-14). Thus economic development and underdevelopment are the oppo- site sides of the same coin. The difference between development and underdevelopment is not merely relative and quantitative, in that the former represent ‘more’ and the latter ‘less’. The difference is qualitative as well as structural, but they are the product of a single, dialectically contradictory process of capi- talism. Theory of the development of underdevelopment sheds light on many aspects of the Kandyan economic structure; perpetuation of archaic production relations which are never- theless subject to surplus appropriation by the metropolis, extreme underutilisation of machines in agriculture and in general the stagnation of productive forces. The concept of the mode of production is central to my ana- lysis. Marx developed the concept of the mode of production prima- rily in relation to capitalism. But he could not historically locate capitalism nor account for its emergence without reference to other modes of production. So in Marx's writings not only do we have a fully worked out theory of the capitalist mode of production, but also fundamental guidelines relating to other modes of production: Asiatic, ancient, feudal etc. In the well known preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx summarised some of the basic tenets of the concept of the mode of production; ”...inthe social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relat:yns of production which correspond toa definite stage of development of their material productive forces. Thesum total of these relations of production constitute the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life condi- tions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Marx; 1971: 21). 4 This crucial passage contains a number of vital elements of the concept: productive forces, relations of production, economic struc- ture, legal and political superstructure, and social consciousness. Productive forces encapsulate both labour power and means of production, which in turn are: determined by the level of development attained. Thus a Kandyan blacksmith during the period of the King- dom who worked with his simple tools and trained labour power represents productive forces at a particular level of development. A contemporary worker ina factory who works with the use of complex machinery and trained labour power represents productive forces at a different level of development. Productive forces, as they always rely on an accumulated fund of knowledge, an accumulated fund of the means of production, inevitably acquire a social character. Thus productive forces are not a simple technological level, but are dependent on the social relations in the last instance *. No production has ever occured in the form of an isolated individual confronting nature. Even Robinson Crusoe relied on the accumulated knowledge he obtained from previous social experi- ence. Production has always been social production, where men enter into manifold relations with each other. These relations are termed social relations of production. In classless societies, such as some hunter-gatherer social formations, relations of production may simultaneously express themselves as other relations; religio-ideo- logical relations or kin relations. Here the instance of production relations is not differentiated from other instances‘. Though patterns of dominance and subordination are built into these relations, they are generally relations among producers; non- producers who constitute a class are rarely found in such social formations. In class societies, such as feudalism and capitalism the dominant relations of production are by no means those among the 3. From the correct position that productive forces are not a simple technological instance, Balibar proceeds to confuse the distinction between forces and relations and comes to the incorrect conclusion that from a “theoretical point of view the ‘productive forces’ too are a connection of a certain type within the mode of production, in other words, they, too, are a relation of production” (Balibar; 1970: 235). If this is the case, it would not be possible to talk of a contradiction between productive forces and relations, which Marx assumed to be a major dialectic in the historical process. 4. Godelier, commenting on Australian aboriginal social formations says “We are here clearly dealing with kinship relations that function simultaneously as infrastruc- ture and superstructure. Kin relations here controlled economic activity, regulated marriage, provided a framework for politico-ritual activity and also functioned as an ideology providing a symbolic code to express human relations and those between men and nature, "(Godelier; 1975).producers themselves; the non-producers too maintain relations with the producers. Thus in the Kandyan social formation, tenants culti- vating the land of a particular lord may have relations of production among themselves such as exchange labour. But in addition to this, there are relations between the tenants and the landlord. In the social formations that come within my study itis these relations between the producers and the non-producers that constitute the dominant form of social relations of production. Marx made an enormous advance over classical political economy’ when he formulated the question- what is the value of labour-power? Marx's answer to this question - the value of labour power is equal to the value of the subsistence goods necessary for the main tenance and reproduction of labour-power, given parti- cular economic, social and cultural conditions in turn generated another question. What happens to the product, that is over and above, that which goes to maintain and reproduce the labour-power? This question laid the foundation of the analysis of surplus value and the various methods of its extraction. Marx cited three basic types of surplus extraction in feudal agriculture in his analysis of ground rent. (1973: II: 782-813). (i) The most elementary form is where the lord’s demense is separated from the plot possessed by the tenant. The maintenance and reproduction of tenant’s labour power depends on the product of ‘his’ plot. In addition he is obliged to work the demense and render its total product to the lord. The tenantreceives no payments for this workand it is clearly surplus labour. It flows to the lord as surplus labour and is hence termed labour rent. (ii) Share-cropping where no such divi- sion of the demense and the tenant's plot exists is somewhat more advanced than the former. Here the land is generally divided among anumber of tenants who render a portion of the harvest to the lord. Surplus labour is converted into surplus product and it is the product that reaches the landlord; hence this form is termed produce rent. (ii When feudal formations are in dissolution and commodity produc- tion and monetary circulation are in emergence, money rent makes its appearance. Here the rent is paid in money and often has no relation to the harvest reaped, the tenant periodically paying an agreed sum of money to the Jandlord. It is important to note that in all these forms the tenant is in possession of his means of production, land and tools. 5, _ Classical political economy too discussed the value of labour. But as Althusser has very convincingly demonstrated, labour in itselfis only a potential category; hence to talk of value of labour is misleading. Marx by formulating the concept of labour- power changed the entire terrain of discourse (Althusser 1970: 22-24). 6 Hence in feudal formations the non-producers are obliged to resort to non-economic pressure to extract the surplus from the producers. Expropriation of the surplus from the producers is intensified and continues under capitalism. Here the worker is alienated from all the means of production and has nothing to sell except his labour- power. The capitalist buys this labour-power to produce a commo- dity which has an exchange-value. “That exchange value is deter- mined, according to Marx, by the amount of socially necessary labour realised in the final product. This would include the amount of labour embodied in the machines and other capital resources used in the production of the commodity in addition to the actual labour expended in the act of production. The labourer however will not be paid the value of what has been produced but will receive the equivalent of the value of his or her labour. Marx assumes that the use of labour-power in the form of labour will produce more value than labour-power itself is worth. There is, then, a quantitative difference between the value of the product of labour and the value of labour- power the difference being called surplus-value.” (Roseberry; 1976). Unlike in the case of feudalism, the producer in capitalism (the worker) is not in possession of his means of production. The process of surplus extraction is built into the capitalist structure and requires no intervention from a non-economic instance to realise it. The economic structure consists of productive forces, relations of production and methods of surplus extraction. This infra-structure determines in the last instance, the character of the superstructural institutions, juridico-political institutions, social consciousness and ideology. The methods of surplus extraction are the dominant deter- minants in shaping the form of the politico-economic community. “The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows out of the production relations themselves, thereby simul- taneously its specific political form”. (Marx; 1973: III: 79) The determination in the last instance by the economic struc- tureshould not be taken as a mechanical unidirectional process. The instances in the superstructure react back on the ‘basis’ and in so doing fashion the character of the ‘basis’ itself. In the quotation cited above for instance, Marx takes this dialectical relationship into account. The methods of surplus extraction “determine the relation- ship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself 7and, in turn reacts upon it as a determining element’. The various instances within a mode and its superstruture enjoy a relative auto nomy; the changes in productive forces are not immediately trans- ferred to the realm of ideology and consciousness. Commenting on Greek art and literature Marx observed that “The case of art shows clearly that certain golden periods of its developmentare by no means related to the general development of society” (1971 (b): 195). Thus the concept of the determination in the last instance carries within itself the relative autonomy of the superstructural instances as well as the reciprocal reactions of the superstructure on the base. (cf. Althusser; 1977: 121). The process of determination in the last instance acquires a highly complex form in pre-capitalist social formations. Marx observes that the determinations of the character of the social, politi- cal and intellectual life in general by the mode of production” is very true for our times... but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics reigned supreme... This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics and there Catholicism, played the chief part”. (1972: I: 82). Thus in pre-capitalist modes, the economic structure determines in the last instance, which particular level in the superstructure will be the immediately determinant one. The ‘supreme reign’ of the non- economicinstances in theancient world or the middle agesis certainly Not a ‘sovereign reign’. The supremacy of politics and Catholicism rested in the last analysis on the mode of production itself. Marx laid down a guideline to the change from one mode of production to another in the following terms. “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From form of deve- lopment of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution”. (Marx; 1971:21). The conflict between productive forces and the relations of production is not a simple, abstract contradiction that develops only within the economic entrails of a society. On the contrary, it expresses itself as a conflict between active human agents who embody old property relations and those who carry the advanced productive forces. In the period of the dissolution of European feudalism for instance, the bourgeoisie concentrated in the towns and engaged in merchant 8 capitalism and trade, represented advanced productive forces in comparison to the feudal aristocracy who together with the Catholic Church embodied the old property relations. The conflict between the productive forces and production relations, thus expresses itself as class struggle between emergent classes and declining classes. In capitalist society, the proletariat is the emergent class: being pro- pertyless, it embodies an advanced form of productive forces and comes into conflict with the old bourgeois property relations. The juridico-political institutions of a particular mode cor- respond with the interests of the dominant class or the ruling class of a society. In fact, Marx interpreted the birth of the state in relation to the emergence of classes and class struggle. The state is the major coercive apparatus by which the ruling class wages its struggle against dominated classes. The legal institutions in a class society which constitute parts of the state apparatus too express the interests of the ruling class in the last analysis. The forms of ideology and consciousness in a class society are generally dialectical and contradictory. On the one hand there is the ideology of the ruling class, manufactured, preached and popula- tised by the ideologues of the ruling class. On the other hand, there are the varieties of ideology that emanate from the dominated classes which oppose the ruling ideology toa greater or a lesser degree®. The success of any ruling class depends to a great degree on its ability to win over the mass of the dominated classes toits ideology. This it does through the state and its organs as well as through the established religious organisations. Marx’‘s theory of the capitalist mode of production, though it takes the concrete reality of mid-nineteenth century capitalism in England as the point of departure cannot be reduced to the level of anempirical investigation. In fact, he ‘purifies’ the empirical situation and attempts to present only an ‘ideal average’. “We need present only the inner organisation of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average, as it were”. (Marx; 1973: III: 831). Althusser observes in this connection that “Marx does not even study the English ex- ample however classical and pure it may be, but a non-existent example, precisely what he calls the ‘ideal average’ of the capitalist mode of production” (1970: 194-195). 6. For instance, during the period of the Reformation three ideological streams representing different class‘interests were at war with each other. According to Engels, the ideology of the Catholic Church represented the interests of the feudal aristocracy, Martin Luther that of the rising bourgeoisie and Thomas Munzer that of the peasantry. (Engels; 1924)Thisis not merely a methodological approach adopted by Marx; the concept of the mode of production by its very nature could only be stated as an ideal average. In fact, I would assert that the ideal typical character of the concept of the mode of production is not something limited to capitalism. It extends to all possible modes of production. Slavery, feudalism or capitalism can never exist as pure types; due to the historic dynamic of the constitution and dissolution of the modes of production which tend to reactivate some elements of the antecedent formations. The ideal typical character of the concept of the mode of produc- tion necessitates the formulation of another concept that could directly deal with concrete social realities, i.e. the concept of the social formation. Unlike the concept of the mode of production it grasps the concrete character of a society located in time and space. “The notion ‘social and economic formation’ seems useful, above all, in the ana- lysis of concrete historical realities, found at some actual irrevocable point in time and at one fixed period in history”. (Godelier; 1977: 63). Asocial formation often consists of a number of different modes of production; these modes stand in contradictory relations to each other but are nevertheless hierarchically arranged. Dominance and subordination is the basic principle of the relations among these modes. These modes are not self-encapsulated entities, on the con- trary each mode penetrates in to the other. Surplus generated in one mode of production flows into the dominant mode. The forms of domination of subordinate modes by the dominant one rest precisely uponsuch surplus transfers from one mode of production toanother. Any mode of production that lasts for a definite historical period, is compelled not only to produce consumable articles, butalso to continuously reproduce social relations that correspond to it. In reproducing these social relations, the modealso reproduces juridico- political institutions and varieties of ideology. Hence, the process of reproduction is necessarily an interlinked one; it presupposes and necessitates each instance in the mode. Balibar has presented the concept of reproduction in terms of a triple link or a triple continuity: (i) a link between different individual capitals and the reproduction of capital as the study of this linkage, (ii) a link between different levels of the social structure and reproduction as the relative perma~ nence of the non-economic instances,especially the juridico-political instance, and (iii) reproduction as the continuity of the process of production itself (1970; 258-259). The process of reproduction. is crucial to an understanding of the constitution and dissolution of various modes; a mode that is prevented from reproducing itself 10 withers away. And such prevention could only occur when the reproductive process of another modeis posited against the old forms of reproduction. The foregoing summary of the concepts of the mode of produc- tion, the social formation and their articulation: makes essential points of departure in this study. These concepts and notions will occur and recur in the analysis that follows. Though Marx laid down the basic guidelines for a study of transition from one mode of production to another, he did not construct a general theory of this change. Althusser has correctly observed that “Marx did not give us any theory of the transition from one mode of production to another: i.e. of the constitution of a mode of pro- duction. We know this theory is indispensable: without it we shall be unable to complete what is called the construction of socialism, in which the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production is at stake, or even to solve the problems ed by the so-called ‘under-developed’ countries of the Third World.” (1970 : 197). The basic guidelines laid down by Marx for the study of transi- tion - the conflict between productive forces and social relations which take the form of class struggle - is only partially relevant for the objective of our study. The dissolution of the feudal mode and the emergence of capitalism in the Kandyan region, did not occur as a result of the intensification of contradictions within the feudal mode of production. The capitalistmode was superimposed by theimperial power; in this sense imperialism was the first stage of capitalism in this region . Marx certainly did not limit the transition from one mode to another exclusively to the internal contradictions. He took into account changes that result from the intervention of other modes into asocial formation. “Conquest may lead to either of three results. The conquering nation may impose its own mode of production upon the conquered people (this was done, for example, by the English in Ireland during this century, and to some extent in India); or it may refrain from interfering in the old mode of production and be content with tribute (e.g. the Turks and the Romans); or interaction may take place between the two, giving rise toa new systemasa synthesis (this occured partly in the Germanic conquests).” (Marx; 1971: 203). It is clear that a superior mode of production does not always wipe out the old mode of production. In certain cases (Turks and Romans) old production relationsaresubordinated, but preserved. Whatiscommon utoall these three types howeveris the flow of surplus from the colony to the conquerer. Marx’s writings on India make an interesting case study of the results of colonial penetration into a pre-capitalist society. Marx formulated the problem in the following terms. “England has to fulfil adouble mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, aud the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.” (1969: 132-133). How did he assess England’s performance ? Marx is quite emphatic about the success of the mission of destruction. (i) Craft production: “It was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand-loom and destroyed the spinning wheel. England began with driving the Indian cottons from the European market; it then introduced twist into Hindustan and in the end. inundated the very mother of cotton with cottons.” (Marx: 1969: 90- 91). (ii) Decline of old towns: “From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist from Great Britain to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5200, In 1824 the export of British muslins to India hardly amounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 yards. But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000.” (Marx; 1969: 91). (iii) Unity of agriculture and crafts: “English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilised com- munities, by blowing up their economical basis (village level union of crafts and agriculture) and thus produced the greatest, and tospeak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.” (Marx; 1969: 93). The old systems of land tenure too were blown up. In Bengal a caricature of English landlordism was created; in Madras a carica- ture of the small holding French peasantry was created. “Thus in Bengal, we have a combination of English landlordism, of the Irish middlemen system, of the Austrian system, transforming the land- lord into the tax-gatherer, and of the Asiatic system making the State the real landlord. In Madras and Bombay we have a French peasant proprietor who is at the same time a serf, and a metayer of the State. The drawbacks of all these various systems accumulate upon him wihout his enjoying any of their redeeming features. The ryot is subject, like the French peasant, to the extortion of the private usurer; but he has no hereditary, nor permanent title in his land like the French peasant. Like the serf he is forced to cultivation, but he is not secured against want like the serf. Like the metayer he has to divide 12 his produce with the State, but the State is not obliged, with regard to him, to advance the funds and the stock, as it is obliged to do with regard to the metayer.” (Marx; 1969: 130). Thus old patterns of land tenure had been altered by the British almost beyond recognition. But what results from this process of dissolution is not ‘pure’ bourgeois relations of production. Instead of English landlordism it is a caricature that comes into being; instead of French peasant proprietorship it is a caricature that is created. In spite of the fact that Marx uses the term ‘social revolution’ there is no radical replacement of pre-capitalist relations by bourgeois relations of pro- duction. On the one hand, some pre-capitalist elements are retained and reinforced, on the other hand various incongruous forms of land tenure are artificially grafted on to it. The colonial state flourishes on the basis of these contradictory agrarian relations. As Marx observed, » these reforms were not made “for the people, who cultivate the soil, nor for the holder, who owns it, but for the Government that taxes it.” (1969: 129). Marx’s statements on the regenerative role of English colo- nialism are guarded and cautious. “England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of recon- stitution yet appearing” (Marx; 1969: 90). Further, “The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins, nevertheless it has begun” (Marx; 1969; 133). Among the positive achievements noted by Marx are political unification of India, creation of a free press, introduction of private property in land, emergence of an English educated class and improvements in communications (rail, roads and steam ships). But at the concrete level of production relations, both in agriculture and in industry no regenerative re- volution, in the sense of introducing bourgeoisrelations of the Western’ type has occured. The crafts were destroyed; but the English did not create heavy industries in India to replace them. The old agrarian relations were shattered; but no large-scale capitalist farmers or independent peasants directly dealing with the market arose. Inother words, the mission of destruction was carried out but the mission of reconstruction turned into merely the creation of a caricature of bourgeois society. The neglect of irrigation, which Marx takes to be the technologi- cal foundation of Indian agriculture led to a serious deterioration of agricultural production. High rates of taxation, usury and the con- fused state of agrarian relations caused a mass scale pauperisation of the Indian peasantry. “The Zamindar tenure, the ryot war, and the salt tax, combined with the Indian climate, were the hotbeds of 13cholera - India’s ravages upon the Western world - a striking and severe example of the solidarity of human woes and wrongs.” (Marx; 1969: 131). Thus though Marx posed the question of the regenerative role of English colonialism, he did not emphctically affirm that it would necessarily take this direction. He observed the process of de-indus- trialisation, the decline of old manufacturing centres, deterioration of agricultural production and pauperisation of the peasantry ‘without any symptoms of reconstruction yet appearing.” In this sense the seeds of the theory of underdevelopment are already present in his analysis. Melotti says; “All things considered, it can be confidently said that although Marx always maintained that the English conquest of India was ultimately progressive, he went against the stream of uncritical optimism from bourgeois social-democratic unilinearists and in many ways anticipated the concept, which in recent years the American school of Marxists has expounded as a theory, that capitalism generates development in the homelands and under- development in colonial countries.” (1977: 125). Huberman and Sweezy have also argued; “There is no doubt that Marx was fully aware of the causal re- lationship between the development of capitalism in Europe and the development of underdevelopment in the rest of the world. He had the basic elements of a theory of capitalism as a global system and the pity is that his followers did not see this in good time and understand the importance of extending, and developing his ideas. If they had, they surely could not have believed that the colonies and dependencies of the capitalist empires were in a state of ‘feudalisny’ or that their crippled and dependent economies could produce other than a crippled and dependent bourgeoisie.” (1969: 8). Marx’s observations on the role of English colonialism in India, make a necessary point of departure in my analysis of social change in the Kandyan countryside. Just as it was the case for India, here too the catalyst of change came in the form of British colonialism. Its intervention dissolved the pre-capitalist mode of production. The erosion of the craft industries, the dissolution of the regional unity of the crafts and agriculture, the dismantling of the feudal state etc., are the results of this process. But the mission of regeneration, that is the ale introduction of bourgeois relations of production into the 4 villages did not take place. Share-cropping and labour rent in agri- culture, craft production based on an artisan’s workshop etc. con- tinue to exist, albeit in a travestied form. The transition from the hegemony of one mode of production to that of another occurs in these colonial conditions not as an unilinear progression where all the pre-capitalist relations are wiped out and replaced by bourgeois relations of production. In fact many relations of production are extracted from the old mode and grafted on to the emerging capitalist structure. What is more, unlike in the metropoli- tan countries, the growth of the capitalist structure is notan indepen- dent process. On the contrary, the nascent capitalist structure leans heavily on the metropolis and the surplus that it generates is mainly absorbed by the metropolis. This sets definite limits to the domestic capital formation and extended reproduction, which act asa breakon any possible revolutionisation of the production relations at the grass-root level in the villages. Share-cropping, labour rent cte., thou; gh they were undoub- tedly present in the pre-capitalist social formation are not necessarily survivals from the past. The term survival in this context has three implications; it is a remnant left by the old mode, it crops up as an incongruous sore thumb with an individuality of its own, the new mode is at war with it and has failed yet to eliminate it, but will surely do so given sufficient time. It is impossible to employ the term survivals to these ‘old’ relations with the above implications. These ‘old’ relations are inextricably interlinked with the dominant capita- list mode and pump out in spite of their archaic character constitute one of the major methods of surplus realisation in peripheral capita- lism. Althusser has dealt with the problem of ‘survivals’ in a similar manner. “... the new society produced by the Revolution may itself ensure the survival, that is, the reactivation, of older elements through both the forms of its new superstructures and specific (national and inter- national) ‘circumstances’.” (1969: 116). No relation of production can survive without being reproduced, in other words without being reactivated by the structure. The peripheral capitalist mode repro- duces and reactivates not only ‘pure’ bourgeois relations of produc- tion, but also those archaic relations which are an organic part of it. These complex determinants involved in the reactivation of old forms, lead me to the basic problem that this study examines; the nature of transition from feudalism to capitalism in an ex-colonial peripheral area. The definitional problems are so intricate here that 15Ishall resort to a negative presentation. | will formulate a hypotheti- cal vulgar-mechanical model and define the problematique in rela- tion to it, (i) The bourgeoisie is a revolutionary class; it wages a relentless war against all pre-capitalist production and exchange relations whenever it happens to be dominant, dissolves all pre-capitalist modes and introduces capitalism. (ii) The hegemonic class force behind English colonial rule was the bourgeoisie; in the colonies they shattered pre-capitalist production relations and laid the foundations for a capitalist economy no different from that in the metropoles. (ii) The destruction of the old production relations and the laying down of the foundations for a new capitalist mode also gave rise to an indigenous bourgeoisie, who came into conflict with the old mode of production. They too struggled to wipe out the pre-capitalist relations of production. (iv) The political power in the colonies was transferred to the indigenous bourgeoisie, who now continue to struggle against pre-capitalist relations as the ruling class. (v) Given time, the indigenous bourgeoisie will wipe out all the pre-capitalist relations and a capitalist mode of production not different from the one in the metropolitan countries, will come into existence in the peripheral regions, including rural areas. Now I can highlight the major themes of this study in relation to this vulgar-mechanical mode. A) Whatarethespecific characteristics of the process of destruction of old production relations by the colonial power? What old elements were destroyed and what old elements were reactivated? What are the structural determinants of this process of destruction and reacti- vation? B) Does the contradiction between the colonial power and the pre- capitalist mode of production give rise to a similar contradiction with the classes representing the old mode? Forinstance, whatis thenature of the contradiction between the colonial power and the feudal aristocracy, if there is any? C) Whatis the precise nature of the relations between the systems - of production and exchange created by the colonial power and now controlled by the indigenous bourgeoisie (commercial towns, planta- tion etc.) on the one hand and the reactivated old systems of produc- tion in the villages on the other hand? D) Do production relations, class differentiation and political organisation in Kandyan villages proceed towards a capitalist mode of the metropolitan type? 16 E) What is the character of the contemporary social formation? Whatis the dominant mode within it and what are the precise means by which it subordinates other forms of production? An investigation that attempts to answer these questions cannot limit itself only to the analysis of the current social reality of one or two villages. It is necessary, to integrate the dyachronic and syn- chronic approaches, to integrate historical analysis of institutional change with the analysis of the articulation of the contemporary social formation. As Goldman pointed out “Every social fact is a historical fact and vice-versa... Itis not...... a matter of combining the findings of sociology and history but of abandoning all abstract sociology and all abstract history in order to achieve a concrete science of human reality which can only be historical sociology or sociological history”. (1970:23). Since the transition to capitalism in the countryside takes the form of a penetration from outside, a process that binds the rural dwellers to the national and international market ina double capacity, as producers selling ina market and as consumers buying ina market, it is not possible to analyse the villages as if they were self-sufficient, independent communities. At every step of analysis, the relations villagers maintain with urban areas as well as other villages will be taken into account. To arrive at a methodological framework that integrates syn- chronic and dyachronic approaches on the one hand, and places the villages in the macro social formation (with all the manifold relations that it implies) on the other, I shall follow a number of different steps of analysis. Step one: historical reconstruction of the pre-capitalist social formation in the region and an analysis of transition from feudalism to capitalism in the region as a whole; the region here is defined in general as the geographical area the former kingdom occupied and in particular as the core-area of the kingdom, consisting of disavani (districts) surrounding the capital, Kandy, Step two: a detailed study of two villages from the core-area with an emphasis on their external relations and the articulation of their economic, social and political instances. Step three: general synthesis of the historic- structural and village-regional approaches leading towardsa general explanation of the articulation of the contemporary social formation in the Kandyan countryside. 17Chapter II The Kandyan Social Formation “Now Knox's Kandyan Monarch is an oriental despot straight out of Wittfogel’s imagination, but Knox's Kandyan state is a society organised on principles closely resembling those of European feuda- lism.” (Leach; 1959) Kandy, a city located in the central hill country of Sri Lanka, becamea royal seat in 1591, when Vimala Dharmasuriya I (1591-1604) established a Kingdom in opposition to the Portuguese who were occupying the coastal areas of the island. In this sense it was a response to colonialism. In its more than two centuries of existence, the Kingdom was perpetually at war with the colonial powers, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British who occupied the coastal areas in turn, and consequently its borders changed often. But the central hill country - where Delumgoda and Yakadagama are located - the province of Uva in the east and Nuwarakalaviya in the north central area remained under the control of the Kandyan monarchs till 1815. The emergence of Kandy as a royal seat in the late sixteenth century does not necessarily imply that an entirely new social forma- tion came into existence. A town ten miles away, Gampola, was the royal seat in the mid-fourteenth century; the Kandyan social forma- tion derived most of its structural elements from the organisational patterns already present when it emerged. Nevertheless, the colonial danger was not present in the fourteenth century; whereas, the Kandyan Kingdom existed in continuous fear of invasion, attempting to play the foreign powers against each other. This couldnot but influence the structure of the social formation, especially the relations between the people and the state, as military mobilisations were quite frequent. In spite of this ever present danger to the state, the social formation acquired a high degree of structural stability. Davy, for 19instance, has referred to the static character of the Kandyan social formation. “During the period alluded to (i.e. three centuries of European rule in the coastal areas) no corresponding change we know of has occured among the highland Sinhalese”. (1969:82). Forbes affirmed this view; “Such as he (Knox) described them in 1680, they were found to be in 1815”. (1840: II: 201). A) Social Relations of Production: The land in the village was divided into gardens (goda) and irrigated paddy fields (mada). The economy revolved around produc- tion and mada land was of great importance. Apart from being the staple diet of the people; paddy, was also used as a form of money in settling payments. “For money being scarce, Corn passeth instead of Money, and every man mets by his own measure”. (Knox; 1966: 184). The Kandyan system of land measures derived from an ethos which emphasised the importance of paddy land. The estimation of the extent of land was based on the extent of sowing. “Strictly, they have no land measure; they apply that of grain to land and taking the nature of soil into account form their estimate by the quantity of seed required; an amunam of land being that which requires an amunam of seed”. (Davy; 1969: 181-182). An amunam of paddy approximately equals 5 bushels, which covers a sowing extent of roughly two acres. Goda land is also measured on the same basis, sowing extents hypo- thetically superimposed on highland'. The Kandyan land grant document also emphasises the im- portance of paddy land by laying down the exact boundaries and specifying its extent. But highland is most often mentioned simply as land adjoining the paddy land referred to. The tenants who held land from the Crown, temples or nobles had to perform various duties without payment. These duties too, often related to paddy plots; highland appears in the records, where it does, as peripheral Jand. Degaldoruwa temple for instance, owned almost all the land in Athirahapitiya, a hamlet of Yakadagama. The temple tenants held paddy plots which were related to specific prescribed duties, culti- vating the temple demesne, supplying pottery, washing the linen, musical performance, supplying salt and providing metal imple- ments. Highland plots were related to various paddy plots, but had no service obligations by themselves. All this evidence highlights the importance of paddy production in the economy. 1, In the north-central area sowing extents sometimes referred to millet. Paddy sowing extent refers to direct sowing, rather than to sowing oriented to transplanting. 20 But in the basically subsistence-oriented Kandyan economy, highland formed an essential component element of the productive land, supplying the peasants with fruit, vegetables and fodder for the animals. Knox gives a list of trees commonly found in the gardens; arecanut, jak trees, coconut, orange, lemon, cinnamon and many other fruit trees. (1966:23-24). Though an essential element in the process of production, highland occupied a secondary position. This is attested by th e disorganised nature of cultivation as observed by a contemporary writer. “Gardening among the Sinhalese is hardly known as an art; they plant indeed different kinds of palm-trees and fruit trees round their houses, and flowering shrubs about their temples; and they occasionally cultivate a few vegetables, as yams, sweet potatoes and onions in their fields; but in no part of the country isa garden according to our ideas to be seen”. (Davy; 1969: 206). Davy is probably referring to the absence of intensive cultivation and crop specialisation. Inaddition to paddy land and highland within the village, there was forest land or waste land. These generally belonged to the Crown, but could be cultivated with the permission of the district adminis- trator (disava). In the central hill country, forest land mainly consisted of hill tops. This land too played an important role in the village economy. The hills were used as pastures for cattle and for chena (‘slash and burn’) cultivation. The hill tops also provided the village with firewood. Indirectly, the hill forests created a balance in the ecology; they ensured an adequate rainfall, prevented soil erosion and constituted the fountainhead of the numerous.streams that fed the paddy fields. Allland in the Kingdom was theoretically vested in the Crown and was related to an elaborate system of service tenure. The King as the ancient ideology affirmed was the ‘lord of the soil’. Knox is clearly influenced by this ideological perception of reality. “The Countrey being wholly His the King Farms out his Land, not for Money, but Service. And the people enjoy Portions of Land from the King’s appointments.” (Knox; 1966: 81). But he hastens to add “Many Towns are in the King’s hand, the inhabitants whereof are to Till and Manure a quantity of the Land according to their Ability, and lay up the Corn for the King’s use. These Towns the King often bestows upon some of his Nobles for their Encouragement and Maintenance, with all the fruits and benefits that before came to the King from them ”. (Knox 1966: 81). Thus in spite of the de jure position of the king as the lord 21of the soil, nobles owned extensive tracts of land. They obtained the income and the services emanating from land. If the King directly owned all land there is no need to specify particular areas as royal land. But the king directly owned gabadagam (store-villages) and certain forest tracts: the gabadagam were admi- nistered by a state department and the services and the revenue directly went to the Crown. Udawattakele (north of Kandy lake) and Hantana (near Peradeniya) were royal forests; no one could gather firewood or hunt in these forests, though people engaged in these activities, in other forests theoretically vested in the Crown. Exceptionally wholesome fruit grown inany garden were picked up by the royal officers to be presented to the king. The de facto owner did not receive any payment on these occasions. This practice empha- sised the king’s de jure ownership of all land in the Kingdom. As the nobles and the temples directly owned large tracts of land, the ideology of the king’s ownership of land could not have referred to the actual state of affairs. This in fact, was the way of expressing the king's sovereign power in an agrarian society, where land was the principal object of labour. The fields of a royal ‘village’ (gabadagam) were broadly divided into three categories”. Muttettuzwa, the area equivalent to the European lord’s demesne, was cultivated by the tenants and the total product was rendered to the Crown. Pangu were plots held by superior tenants generally of the goigama caste, who tilled the demesne and obtained the total product of pangu for themselves. Nilapangu were plots held by inferior tenants generally of service duties and obtained the total product of nilapangu for themselves. The inferior tenants holding nilapangu were also obliged to carry the grain to the royal stores and work as menial servants at the district administrator's residence. (Pieris; 1956: 53-54). In relation to gabadagam the king is clearly the landlord; the rent is mainly realised in terms of labour. But unlike in the case of European feudalism a complicating instance, caste, enters the picture. Here, labour rent is not simply undifferentiated labour power engaged only in agriculture. The caste oriented division of 2. The Sinhala term gama (plural gam) refers to a village; but in the terminology of land tenure it also refers to land. Thus the word gama when used with appropriate prefix gabada, ninda, vihara, devala etc. can refer to a whole village owned by an overlord as well as particular plots of land. It is quite possible that the land in a particular village may be owned bya number of overlords and some freeholders. This terminology survives to this day; one villager in Delumgoda pointing at the small wned by Lankatilaka temple in the Delumgoda fields said, “these are lere the word gam is employed to refer to land rather than to villages. 22 labour, differentiated labour rent into various forms of specialised services and the production of craft goods. On appointment to various bureaucratic positions, officials received land grants from the Crown. Usually these grants came from the royal gabadagam. But there were some villages specifically attached to bureaucratic positions. Thus the five ‘lower’ villages near Kandy, by tradition went to the king’s first councillor. (adikarama), whereas the five ‘upper’ villages went to the second councillor. (Davy; 1969: 108). The land grants associated with specific bureau- cratic positions, went to whoever the incumbent was till he held the position. Such land grants were called badavadili and reverted back to the Crown whenever an official died or was dismissed. Land wasalso granted to noble men and their descendents to be held ‘in perpetuity’ in recognition of exceptional service to the Crown’. Such land called nindagam was the direct property of the nobles, inherited by their descendents. Unlike badavadili, nindagam were not related to any specific office. In actual practice, the senior officials in the Kingdom owned, inherited or obtained sindagam, in addition to the badavadili that came with office. Land located in nindagam was cultivated in two major ways. On labour rent, where the plots of the tenants were separated from the lord’s demesne, the tenants paying the total product of the demesne to the lord and subsisting on the product of their ‘own’ plots. On produce rent, where the division into a demesne and plots did not exist, the land being divided into plots among a multitude of share- croppers, who paid a stipulated portion of the harvest. Ina nindagama held by Ahelepola, the first councillor of the last Kandyan king, sixteen smiths cultivated twelve amunam of land and performed the following duties. At the annual procession they brought sixteen flag-staffs (one for each man), thirty two sticks for dancers, sixteen pointed stick ends for sealing poles. They also kept guard at the councillor’s residence, being relieved every fifteen days, 3. For instance the following royal grant from a village adjoining Yakadagama; “(1657 A.D.) Whereas, Wijewardhara Senevirat Pandita Vahala Mudiyaram of Rat- watta, in Udasiyapattuwa of Matale Disavani, successfully fought at the risk oflifeand served (the king) with extreme sincerity, therefore the lands, Halmillapitiya 2 amunu, Medambuwa 1 amunu, Hapukanuwaya, 2 pelas, Akarahida 2 pelas, Iriyakottawele- pihiti Kumbura 1 amunu, Wewakumbura 3 pelas, ...etc..., the boundaries of the highland are east by Patunge, south Rilaketiye-cla, west by the rock in the ridge, north Atketawala-Rambuk-Oluwa., within these boundaries all the muddy land in extent 21 amunu and 3 pelas were granted by the virtue of the command given through the grace of the king....unto (the said) Ratwatta... Vahala Mudiyara (Lawrie; 1898: 11-782). 23in lieu of which service they could pay one piece of silver. (Pieris; 1956: 65). The recipients of nindagam enjoyed absolute control over the villages, only paying a nominal sum of five pieces of silver to the Crown at the annual ceremony of appearance in Kandy. (Pieris; 1956: 61) The temples were also recipients of large tracts of land from the Crown as well as from the nobles. Land granted to the temples of the Buddha were known as viharagam and those granted to the temples of deities as devalagam. Viharagam were held by the chief priest of the temple and were passed in pupilary succession. Devalagam were controlled by a lay-trustee. Lankatilaka temple which stands in Delumgoda owns the following paddy land; viharagam: 143.5 acres of paddy land scattered in seven villages; devalagam: 64.5 acres of paddy similarly scattered. In Delumgoda, viharagam portions were; @a portion held by a tenent of cultivator caste to be on guard six times per month at night, supply three baskets of flowers daily and keep the court-yard clean, to be in attendance at the festivals and the annual procession, to apply fresh cow dung on the temple floor, to white- wash the temple oncea year and to supply the high priest with sweets and betel, (ii) a portion held by a tenant of washerman caste, to supply 500 cotton wicks for temple festivals and (iii) a portion held by a tenant of dancer’s caste, to beat a drum six times per month and at the festivals, to guard the temple at night, to weed the court-yard, to thatch the out-houses, to assist in supplying clay for making tiles and to present vegetables and betel to the high priest. The devalagam portions in Delumgoda were two portions held by tenants of wash- erman caste, to wash the linen, to tie up a canopy of white cloth in the interior of the temple, to supply rags for the torches to be carried at the annual procession, to provide 500 cotton wicks for a festival, to be present at the festivals and to present betel twice a year to the temple trustees. (Lawrie: 1896: I: 359). In addition to these plots associated with specific duties, there were the temple muttettu fields (demesne) located in surrounding villages, the total produce of which had to be rendered to the temple authorities. In addition to villages and land controlled by the Crown, the nobles and the temples, there were villages called to serve the state, when the Kingdom was in danger. They paid the stipulated taxes, but were not subjected to the authority of a landlord. The land that Knox purchased in the mid-seventeenth century in Eladatta, a village only one and a half miles away from Delumgoda, seems to be such a ‘free- hold’. Knox went to the Governor of that same Countrey and inquired whether “he may lawfully buy that small piece of Land”. The official 24 approved the transaction: “saying, that such kind of Lands only were lawful here to be bought and sold; and that this was not in the least litigious,” (1966: 271-272). It is not merely the cultivation rights that Knox purchased, but the title to the land. This is affirmed by the fact that he did not pay ground rent to a landlord or perform any duties in lieu of holding it. Moreover, these ‘free-hold’ were sold‘. Such sellings of land were by no means rare, the land record offices are full of land sale documents. Thus,though the king was the de jure owner of all land in the Kingdom, his de facto ownership extended only to the gabadagam and forests near Kandy which he directly held. He of course, had the power of confiscating the nindagam of the nobles, but here he acted not in the capacity of a landlord but in the capacity of the sovereign. Such confiscations were always punishments meted out to the nobles for the real or imaginary crimes they committed. The last king, for instance, dismissed his first councillor Pilimatalawa for misusing his office. The dismissal removed Pilimatalawa’s control over the ‘lower’ five villages, which were badavadili that went with his office. But his nindagam held by the family ‘in perpetuity’ were not affected by the dismissal. It was only after the discovery that Pilimatalawa prevailed upon the chiefs of Udunuwara and Yatinuwara to rise up in rebellion and bribed the Malay household guard to assassinate the king, that he was put to death and his land confiscated. (Marshall; 1969: 100). The king here does not actas a landlord claiming back the land he had given to a tenant, but as a sovereign punishing the political crime of treason on the part of a leading noble. The extensive land donations made to the temples were also effectively outside the authority of the king as a landlord. The viharagam were not subjected to taxation by the state; the monastic landlords, the Buddhist priests paid no tax in money or produce. The lay trustees in charge of devalagam paid an annual tax varying in between 500 to 3,000 ridis to the district administrator or the king. (Pieris; 1956: 74-75). The property held by the temples were made sacred by religious ideology and the Crown usually kept at a distance from the temple authority. In the latter Kandyan period, a time of 4. Forinstance the following land sale document from a village adjoining Yakadag- ama: (1793 A. D.) “On Friday, the fifth day of the increasing moon of the month of Wesak, in the year of Saka 1715. I, Kaly Etana being destitute and helpless, transferred to Halliyadde Muhandiram Rala, my land property, being 2 pelas of Kahattekakum- bura, the garden and house in which I reside, and Naluwetennehena of 2 Pe-as, and received the sum of 160 ridis witness to this are Dahanayaka Vidane, ...... (names of 8 Persons).” (Lawrie; 1898: II: 954). 25turmoil, some priests were beheaded by the king and their temples were given over to other priests. For instance, the deputy high priest Paranatela, the chief incumbant of Degaldoruwa temple was be- headed in 1814, the temple and its land were given to another priest Kobbekaduwa. What is of importance here is that the land is attached to the temple; he who controls the temple also controls the land. Once land was granted to a temple, it remained under the control of the temple with little interference from the state. The king definitely did not relate to the temple land as a landlord. The king also did not relate to the ‘free hold’ land asa landlord. Thus, a man who after obtaining the necessary permission.converted a forest land into a paddy field was not required to pay any tax. He enjoyed the paddy land without interference from an overlord and could give or sell it to someone else. Davy observed that if an individual held land for more than 30 years, “he would be entitled to retain itand dispose of it”; and quotes the following saying in support: “That the devil himself may call a thing his own, that he has had possession of thirty years”. (1969: 139). Anumber of patterns in the ownership of land emerge; (i) land directly owned by the royals, gabadagam and bisogam (ii) land that went with bureaucratic positions, badavadili (iii) land owned by noble families, nindagam (iv) land owned by temples, viharagam and deva- lagam and (v) land held by small holders not subjected to the control of an overlord. Peasant agricultural production of this type cannot be carried out without being supported by craft industries. It was the caste system which laid down the principles of the division of labour that provided the society with its specialists; smiths, potters, weavers, lime-burners et. al. Some of the members of the service castes were organised as state departments and were liable to perform various duties to the Crown. and the district administrators. Those service caste people who were tenants in the lands controlled by temples or nobles performed specific duties to their overlords. Peasant families were attached by traditional links to various families of artificers. Knox outlines these exchange relations; “The ordinary work they (smiths) do for themis mending their Tools, for which every Man pays to his Smith Certain Rate of Corn in Harvest time according to ancient Custom. But if any hath work extraordinary, as making new Tools or the like, besides the aforesaid Rate of Corn, he must pay him for it. In order to this, they come in an humble manner to the Smith with a Present being Rice, Hens, and other sorts of Provision, or a Bottle of Arrnck...” (1966: 128). All these service caste people, in addition to 26 plying their own trade, were also cultivators. They usually held land from an overlord or sometimes owned small plots of land, thus emphasising the fundamentally agrarian nature of the economy. B) Patterns of Surplus Extraction: The dominant form of surplus extraction in the Kandyan social formation was the labour rent. The essential principle on which labour rent rests, is the separation of the lord’s demesne from the plot held by the cultivator. In the Kandyan social formation, the separation of the muttettuwa from the pangu provided this essential basis of labour rent. The cultivator using his labour, his family’s labour and his implements cultivated the pangu for his sustenance, the total product of the pangu going to him. This isnecessary labour in thesense that production of cultivator’s labour power is based on the product of the pangu. The labour he spends in the muttettuwa or/and perfor- ming various caste-specific duties is surplus labour which is spent in addition tonecessary labour. Marx commenting on labour rentstated: “...in this case rent and surplus value are identical”, (1973: II: 770). The identity of the surplus and rent arises here as the cultivator renders the total product of the demesne to the lord and also performs other caste-specific duties. All forms of labour rent, some forms of taxation and duties to be performed to the state in national tasks, were all knownas ‘rajakariya’, service to the king. It is necessary to break away from this termino- logical confusion, and analytically differentiate various forms of service included under this broad term. (i) Labour rent: This is a form of ground rent, which occurs in a land controlled by an overlord, where the fields are divided into a demesne and plots of tenants. Though the word ‘rajakariya’ is still employed by tenants of temple land in referring to the services to be rendered, these services never went to the king, but to the landlord. (ii) Tax: Pieris cites “Duty to the king in the form of kat hal rajakariya or grain tax reckoned in pingo- loads” (1956: 95) as a variety of rajakariya and includes it in the same listas other varieties of labour rent. It is important to differentiate rent from tax; the former is paid by tenants to a landlord, the latter by subjects to a sovereign. Though the word rajakariya occurs in the term for grain tax, itis not a service or a rent. However as Marx pointed out, there are instances where rent and tax could coincide; “Should the direct producers not be confronted by a private landowner, but rather, as in Asia, under the direct subordination of the state which stands over them as their landlord and simultaneously as sovereign, then rent and taxes coincide or rather there exists no tax which differs from this form of ground rent.” (1973: IIL 771). In the Kandyan social forma- 27tion, there were a number of categories of landlords whose owner- ship of land did not derive from the positions they occupied in the state; noble families holding nindagam, monks holding viharagam and lay trustees holding devalagam. In these estates, the ‘direct producer’, the tenant was not directly subordinated to the state. He was con- fronted by the landlord, to whom he paid rent. In such a social formation the distinction between rent and tax exists and they must not be confused. Kat hal rajakariya irrespective of the deceptive term is not a form of rent, but a fax paid in grain. (iii) Service: in times of national emergencies, the people were expected to join the militia and as the Kandyan Kingdom was often threatened by hostile forces, this form of rajakariya too, acquired importance. In addition, people were mobilised to work for the state, without payment, as when the last king repaired and extended the Kandy lake. This type of service is neither a rent nor a tax, but a general political obligation that people performed as members of a political society. In these three forms of extraction, the first and the third are extracted in labour while the second is rendered in grain or sometimes in money. The second and the third forms went to the state and the first went to the immediate overlord. Alongside labour rent, produce rent or ande also existed. The basic form was where a tenant paid in between 1/3 to 1/2 of the produce to the lord. “Those that are lazy or loath to Plow, or that are Poor and want Corn to sow, the Custom is to let out their grounds to others to Till at Ande, that is at halves; but fees and accoustomable dues taken out by the Husbandman that tills it, the Owner of the Land receives not much above a third part’. (Knox; 1966: 191). In ande proper, the expenses were shared by the lord and the tenant, seed paddy often came from the lord to be returned with interest at harvest time. But there were many variations of this theme. In otu-ande for instance, the tenant worked the field entirely at his own expense and an amount not exceeding one-half of the product was paid to the landlord. Irrespective of such variations, share-cropping comes under the category of produce rent out-lined by Marx. The basis of this form of rent was the absence of the division of the field into ademesne and tillers’ plots. The field was a single area in terms of tenure, but may be divided into many plots held by many tenants. Each tenant cultivated the plot possessed by him and rendered a part of the product to the landlord. In this form of surplus extraction, the exploited labour does not appear as such but as labour already con- verted into produce. Ande tenure, assumes a higher degree of com- plexity in agrarian relations. In labour rent the surplus labour of the 28 tenant is completely at the disposal of the landlord, whereas in produce rent his labour power asa whole achievesa degree of relative autonomy in relation to the plot that he cultivates. As Marx noted, “rent in kind presupposes a high state of civilisation for the direct producer, i.e. a higher level of development of his labour and of society in general”. (Marx; 1973: III: 775). In addition to service bound tenants and share-croppers there were also slaves in the Kandyan Kingdom. They were the absolute property of the master and could be gifted, sold or inherited. The children of a slave woman were regarded as slaves by birth. For the maintenance of the slaves “Their Masters allow them Land and Cattle” and the masters usually did not take away what they had acquired by “their Diligence and Industry”. (Knox: 1966: 131). But the slaves worked the fields of the master without possessing any culti- vation rights over the land; this distinguished them from tenants and share-croppers who possessed cultivation rights and also the de jure right to withold their labour. But the slave mode of extraction did not occupy a dominant position in the economy. Their number was small, which Davy estimates to be in the region 3,000. (1969: 138). According to a census taken in 1829, fourteen years after the annexation, they amounted only to 2,113. (Pieris; 1956: 190). Slavery did not amount to a distinct mode of production in the Kandyan social formation. People were also subjected to various taxes, another method of surplus extraction. Since money was scarce, the tax was mainly paid in grain. “Three times in the year they usually carry their Rents unto the king. The one is at the New Year... The other is for the first fruits... And the last is at a certain sacrifice in the month of November... But besides these, whatsoever is wanting in the king’s house at any other time, and they have it, they must upon the king’s Order bring it. These Rents are but little Money, but chiefly Corn, Rice, or what grows out of the Ground”. (Knox; 1966: 87-88). I have already referred to the grain tax known as kat hal rajakariya. The amount paid varied in relation to the extent of land held, but differed from one district to another. In Yatinuwara and Udunuwara (where Delumgoda is located) for one amunam of paddy land, one pingo load was paid; whereas in Hatara Korale it was one pingo load for three amunam and in Hat Korale one twelve measures of rice and eight coconuts. All land except viharagam and land exempted from taxation as a mark of great royal favour were taxed. Craftsmen were subjected to a special tax; “All sorts of Tradesmen also, and suchas by their skill canin any way get Money, at the New Yearare to pay into Treasury each one acertain rate”. (Knox; 1966: 89). There was also a death duty; “That whenso- 29ever any man dies, that hath a stock of Cattle, immediately out thence must be paid a Bull and a Cow with a Calf and a Male and Female Buffalo, which tax they call Maral”. (Knox; 1966: 90). Women were exempt from this tax. Though money was not dominant in exchange transactions, the peasants were also subjected to usury. As the rents and taxes were high, many peasants did not have enough paddy to last the year; “Until this Corn is ripe” says Knox “the owner is fain to go a borrowing Corn to sustain himself and Family”. (1966: 192). Rate of interest was fifty percent, the borrower returning one and half bushel for each bushel of paddy borrowed. If not returned within a year the debt doubled. The methods of recovering the debts were drastic. “, Yet it is lawful for the Creditor, missing Corn, to lay hands upon any of his goods: or if the sum be somewhat considerable, on his Cattle or Children, first taking out a License from the Magistrate so to do, orif he have none, on himself or his wife; if she came with him to fetch the debt, ifnot she is clear from this violence; but his: children arenot”. (Knox; 1966: 193). The muslim entrepreneurs were the principal money lenders; their interest was twenty percent per annum. The relatives of the last king also practised usury at the rate of forty percent per annum till the king forbade it. (Davy; 1969: 138). Thus, there were a number of forms of surplus extraction from. the real producer; labour rent, produce rent, service to the state, taxation, usury and slavery. But since most of the land in the fertile area of the Kingdom was directly under the Crown or an overlord, the dominant method of surplus extraction was the labour rent. Indeed, it is precisely due to the ethos generated in such a social formation where the labour rent is hegemonic, that even the grain tax is perceived as a form of labour rent and called kat hal rajakariya, service to the king rendered in pingo loads of rice. C) Social Stratification and Ideology: The Kandyan caste system, divides the society into two broad groups, a ritually high group of cultivators (goigama) who were the numerical majority and a ritually inferior group of service castes. The goigama caste had its internal subdivisions, hierarchically arranged. Thereis hierarchy among the service castes, though the exact position gets somewhat confused in the middle of the ladder. The caste principle, laid down the law of endogamy, occupational specialisa- tion and ritual standing among these different castes. In the absence of the priestly role of the brahmin caste, though ritual prestations and 30 avoidance were practised among different castes, the entire system acquired a certain degree of secularisation. Atthe top of the goigama caste stood astratum of aristocrats, the radala, almost constituting a sub-caste. The radala were the leading landholding families, who manned the upper echelons of the state bureaucracy and the priesthood. “Under the old monarchy both the office of disave and rate mahatmaya (district administrators) was con- fined to the first families in the country, partly from customand partly because the people were averse to obey any excepting men of the most distinguished rank”. (Davy; 1969: IIl).At the bottom were the rodiya, social outcastes who eked out a living by leather work and begging. All the others, except the radala and rodiya were actually working peasants irrespective of their caste origin. The service caste people held land from various overlords to perform specific services; thus the potter in addition to making earthenware tilled his plot of land, the smith while not making metal implements cultivated a plot of land. In fact the goigama were full-time cultivators whereas the people of service castes were part-time cultivators. Caste oriented division of labour in the last analysis related to the state. The continuance of the radala as an aristocracy depended to a large extent on their appointment to high office and consequent control of badavadili. Some of the service-caste people were organised as state departments; artificers’ department incorporating various smiths, transport department comprising of fishermen and Muslims*, earthenware department consisting of potters. In addition, there were a carpenters’ department, elephant department, plasterers’ depart- ment, dancers' department and mat makers’ department all consist- ing of the members of the corresponding castes. (Pieris; 1956: 180- 187). Some service castes, such as the barbers and the tailors did not constitute departments but had to perform various duties to the state. The ritual division of society into goigama and service castes, of course, does not imply that the goigama as a whole were economically better off than the other castes.Knox observes perceptively, “Riches are not here valued, nor make any the more Honourable. For many of the lower sorts do far exceed these Hondrews (i.e. goigama) in Estates”. (1966: 126). Infrequently, non-goigama were also appointed to high office. Hulangomuwe Sittara Mohottala a smith by trade, for instance, held the high office of district administrator and was the secretary to the royal wardrobe (Codrington; 1909). The actual eco- nomic position of the majority of the goigama differed little from the 5. castr of carters 31lot of their ritually lower countrymen.The majority of the people of gvigama as well as non goigama origin were tenant cultivators paying labour rent or produce rent to their overlords. They were equally subjected to the authority of the land-holding state officials. Thus, along with the ritual hierarchy established by the caste system, there was a system of politico-economic stratification. At the top of the hierarchy stood the royal family, who in the late Kandyan period were nayakkar of south Indian origin. Immediately below the royals, there was the radala substratum, the recruiting ground for the high offices of the state, higher echelons of the priesthood and temple lay trusteeships. Then came a group of small landholders, akin to a yeomanry who were of heterogenous caste origin. The majority of the people of different castes were at the bottom and could be the ‘com- mon people’. In locating the ruling class in this formation, it is not at the goigama caste in general that one should look but at the radala substra- tum. In the early Kandyan period, this stratum lacked cohesion, but already in the mid-seventeenth century caste endogamy was prac- tised by them “Of these Hondrews (goigama) there be two sorts, the one somewhat Inferior to other as touching Marriage; but not other things”. (Knox; 1966: 126). By the late eighteenth century, marital alliances were established between the major landholding families, to be reinforced by cross-cousin marriage. The first councillor of the last king was Pilimatalawa, who was the second councillor Ehelepola’ s mother’s brother. Molligoda, who became the first councillor after the demise of Pilimatalawa and Ehelepola was district administrator Ratwatte’s sister's son. The radala stratum thus formed a closely related property and power holding oligarchy. The dominant ideology was fashioned by Sinhalese Buddhism, avariety of peasant religion that incorporated Hindu-Buddhisticsyn- cretism and Magico-animism. AsI have demonstrated elsewhere, the religion practised in the Kandyan Kingdom had long lost the radical orientation it possessed in the days of its emergence in the Gangetic valley and had become a justificatory of feudalism. (Gunasinghe; 1972: 50-87). The central concept in the religious ideology was the notion of karma; volitional action that could give good or bad results in this life or later-lives. Good volitional actions termed pin are capable of causing a person to be born in an exalted position leading to well being, while bad volitional actions termed pav caused birth in aninferior position leading tomuch suffering. Thus ifa person is born toa low station in life, he has no one to blame but himself as this only proved bad actions in his past-lives. Similarly, if a person was born 32 asa radala and held property and power, it merely indicated his good actions in the past births. This ideology was preached by the monks to the population and was demonstrated with numerous stories of the re-birth cycle of the Buddha. Among the recommended good actions, feeding the monks, building temples and donating land to the temples figured prominently. Conversely any interference with temple pro- perty was taken to be a grievous sin. The councillor Sena Lanka expressed this ideology aptly after granting extensive land donations, 200 slaves and 400 head of cattle etc... to the Lankatilaka temple. "Those who rob the temple of these will be deprived of the bliss of seeing the future Buddha, and will be born crows and dogs ever in hunger and thirst and as pretaya (lowly spirit) more degraded than the outcaste. For thus it is said, that anyone stealing a blade of grass, a stick of firewood, a flower or even a fruit from a temple land will be born a gigantic pretaya. It is the prayer of Sena Lanka councillor,that those who wish bliss and happiness in this world and the next will contribute towards this meritorious act, even by word of mouth may attain in heaven and nirvana.” (Lawrie; 1898: II: 754). The notion of karma justified social inequality and also explained the turns of fortune of the individual peasant; one would get a bad harvest or lose ason due to bad karma. It also compelled the peasant to engage in meritorious activity, with the hope of bettering his station in the next life, as there was very little opportunity of bettering it in the present life. The ideology of karma causation oriented the consciousness of the peasant to another worldly direction. In social life, caste consciousness and ideology also played an important role. The division of common people who are identically located in production relations (as tenant cultivators) into mutually exclusive groups prevented them from realising their common inter- ests. The religious justification of the caste system (though absent in classical Buddhism) in terms of karma theory reinforced the ‘superi- ority complex’ of the goigama, who were the majority of the popula- tion. This worked as a major ideological plank in support of the status quo. D) The Role of the State in the Articulation of the Structure: The Kandyan state was an absolute monarchy. In the admini- stration of the country, the king followed the customary law, but the law itself provided the king with sufficient elbow room for operation. “As to the manner of his (king’s) Government” wrote Knox, “it is Tyrannical and Arbitrary in the highest degree: For he ruleth Abso- lute, and after his own will and Pleasure: his own Head being his only Councellor.” (Knox: 1966: 99). 33The king governed with the help of two councillors (adikarama), a number of district administrators (disava and rate mahatmaya) and heads ofstatedepartments (lekam). All these officials enjoyed badavadili land that came with these positions and also nindagam land inherited or obtained from the Crown. Irrespective of their total subjection to the King, while being in the capital, the councillors and district administrators enjoyed tremendous authority in their own areas. TI he Kandyan officials, but particularly the disava ... possessed kingly power in their own district and assumed a state and dignity nearly allied to royalty.” (Marshall; 1969: 17). Marshall however is overstating his case, by likening the district administrators to petty- kings. Nevertheless, it it true that the power of the chieftains in- creased as the distance from the capital increased. In the remote area of Vanniya for instance, the local landlords, the Vanniyars enjoyed a degree of autonomy, subjected to the supervision of the disava. The exact nature of the relationship between the Crown and the nobles however should be examined in the core-land of the Kingdom in relation to the senior officials. Due to absolute monarchy, the Pressure the nobles were able to exercise in formulating the state policy was limited. Major disagreements between the king and the nobles led to the rebellions on the part of the latter, not due to the power of the king being limited, but on the contrary it being absolute. Confronted with such a phenomenon, the nobles had only one alter- native, to depose the monarch and place another prince on the throne. It is interesting to note that irrespective of a foreign dynasty being in power from 1739 to 1813, no noble attempted to capture power for himself. This is probably due to factional quarrels among the nobility itself. But whenever a new prince ascended the throne, the very logic of the system compelled him to be an absolute ruler thus recreating the old conflicts anew. In 1798, the Kandyan nobles had the oppor- tunity of selecting as the king one of the two contending nayakkar princes. Kannasamy was chosen as the king, as Pilimatalawa, the first councillor thought him to be more amenable to his pressures. But after ascending the throne the prince refused to lend his ear to Pilimatalawa, which in turn led to the councillor’s underhand deal- ings with the British, culminating in his dismissal and execution. But at the same time, it must be borne in mind that the nobles, especially the leading ones enjoyed enough authority in their areas to rise up in rebellion. But the unwritten constitution of the Kingdom gave abso- lute power to the king and apart from resorting to rebellion there was no other way by which the nobles could oppose royal policy. Here we are confronted with an apparently contradictory phe- nomenon. Onone hand there are powerful feudal lords, on the other hand there is an absolute monarchy, whose power at least in the immediate sense is not curtailed by that of the nobles. Leach attempted to solve this dilemma by drawing a close parallel with European feudalism of the middle ages; i.e. by denying the absolute power of the monarch. “In Ceylon, as in feudal Europe, the monarch’s overriding and perpetual problem was to devise a means of keeping his feudal barons under control. The extreme frequency of insurrection and civil war shows that effective power usually lay with the local landlords rather than with the Crown.” (Leach: 1959). “In theory the outer provinces of the realm were ruled by governers (disava) appointed by the king; in practice the lordship of the local hereditary baron (vanniyar) was virtually absolute. In many cases the rank of disava was simply the titular office of a court official who never went near his domain. When the customary law of the north central province was being recorded in 1820 it was stated that: “from ancient time the vanniyar had been deemed to possess power nearly equal to that of the disava, but he is restrained in the exercise of it when the disava is in residence.” (Leach; 1959). Central to Leach’s argument is the distinction that he draws between disava as the court official and vanniyar as the local landlord. Sucha distinction can only besustained in the remote area of Vanniya, asparsely populated peripheral region. But the relations between the nobles and the Crown in the working of the Kingdom cannot be examined in relation toa peripheral area. AsI pointed outearlier, one must travel to the core-land of the Kingdom to examine this. In the core-land of the Kingdom district administrators (disava) and country administrators (rate mahatmaya) came from the major landholding families of the region. In other words, the distinction that Leach draws between the court official and the local landlord did not exist in the core-land of the Kingdom. Hence, to assert that the disava “ever went near his domain” is absolutely incorrect in the core-land of the Kingdom. The power of the nobles did not emanate solely from the hereditary nindagam that they held. Italso emanated toa great degree from the senior positions in the state bureaucracy that they occupied and the badavadili land that went with it, The king exercised absolute authority over these appointments; not only did he possess the power toappoint and dismiss all the senior officials, but also the power over their life and death. The most senior officers of the Kingdom were often executed and their nindagam confiscated as punishments for 35their real or imaginary crimes. Surely in such circumstances, one cannot suggest that the real power was held by the local landlords rather than the Crown ? The absolute power of the monarch was also symbolically represented in the court ritual. Unlike the European monarch, the Kandyan king assumed almost god-like attributes. “When they come before him (the king) they fall flat down on their faces to the Ground at three several times, and then they sit with their legs under them upon their Knees all the time they are in his presence: And when he bids them to be absent, they go backwards, until they are out of his sight, or a great distance from him .:.... Nay, he takes on him all the Ceremonies and Solemnities of Honour, which they show unto their Gods making his account that as he is now their king, so hereafter he shall be one of their Gods. And the people did call him God.” (Knox: 1966: 71). Such symbolic representations are not totally devoid of interest; they expressed and simultaneously reinforced the king’s absolute power. To solve the apparent contradiction between feudalism and absolute monarchy, one should understand the particular determina- tions that govern the Kandyan social formation. As Marx pointed out it is the dominant method of surplus extraction that determines the relationship between the rulers and the ruled. (1973: III: 791). The dominant method of surplus extraction in the Kingdom was the labour rent. Its dominant position in the production relations caused it to‘overflow’ beyond the production relations, as service to the state in emergencies and national tasks, so that the state acquired central importance in labour mobilisation. The villages of the Kingdom, at least in the sphere of the division of labour constituted the anti-thesis of the ‘village community’ in India. The Kandyan villages were basically single caste settlements; each village did not have its blacksmith, potter, washerman etc. On the contrary, there were villages of blacksmiths, villages of cultivators and villages of potters. A village of blacksmiths can hardly be self- sufficient. For the economy to function, the products of these specia- lised villages have to reach the other villages. Thus the flow of goods and services among the villages reached a peak that can never be realised in a social formation of ‘village communities’. The state stepped in to control this flow and organised the craft castes as departments of the state, which was a means by which thestate could extract surplus from the craft sector. Ina social formation of this type, where the division of labour realised at the regional level, the neces- 36 sity of state intervention grows directly out from the organisation of production and exchange. ‘The ever present danger from the colonial powers in the mari- time provinces caused thestate to effectively intervene inthe building up of a militia. When the danger of war arose the disava toured their districts recruiting people for the militia. Thus the relations between, therulers and the ruled in the Kingdom were ‘overdetermined’ by the presence of the colonial powers*. Itmade the state intervention in the life of the ruled more immediate and frequent. The absolute power of the monarch and the overriding impor- tance of thestate in the Kandyan social formation, raises an important problem relating to “the determination in the last instance by the economic structure”. Marx pointed out that in the pre-capitalist formations, the economic structure does not directly determine the other instances, but the conditions of production determine which particular instance will exercise dominance over other instances. (Marx; I: 1972:82) Due to the dominance of labour rent in the system of surplus extraction which caused surplus to ‘overflow’ to the state (as in the case of craft production), due to the necessity of state intervention in controlling the circulation of goods and services among the villages, due to the ‘overdetermination’ caused by the protracted warfare which converted the ruled intoa potential militia, the political system became the dominant instance which exercised hegemonic control cover the articulation of the structure. The absolute authority of the sovereign, the deification of the king and the cringing obeisance paid to him is nothing but the symbolic expression of the hegemonic position of the political instance which expressed itself as an absolu- tist monarchy. From the early nineteenth century onwards, various writers have attempted to compare and contrast the Kandyan Kingdom with European feudalism. “All tenures of land amongst the Sinhalese ... as far as I could ascertain, had nothing of a feudal nature; a great proprietor, indeed might give land to individuals for certain services, 6. _ Tamusing the term overdetermination in the sense that Althusser has employed it. The nature of a particular contradiction is determined not only by its internal dynamic but also by the structure that surrounds it. The contradiction between the rulers and the ruled in the Kingdom was over-determined by the presence of the colonial powers outside the Kingdom (Althusser; 1969 89: 116), a result of marital alliances. For many, no alternative source of employment was available. Hence, irrespective of the legal situation, the overwhelming majority of the peasants should have been actually bound to the soil. 37to be held whilst those services were performed; but the individuals were not bound to the soil, owned no allegiance to the proprietor and might quit his service when they pleased.” (Davy; 1969: 139). Unlike in Europe, the tenant was not bound to the soil and he was legally free to leave his land. But at the empirical level it is doubtful whether the tillers left land as often as Davy seems to imply. There was little internal migration, except people going to settle in different villages as Pieris draws an analogy between the Kandyan Kingdom and European feudalism; “The analogy with European feudalism lies not in the similarity of social gradations, but in the fact that economic obligation generally was linked to the system of land tenure.” (1952). But linkage with land tenure is too general a way to present the analogy. The analogy should be grasped concretely at the level of production relations. As Dobb has emphasised, in defining feudalism one should lay emphasis “not in the juridical relation between vassal and sovereign, nor in the relation between production and the desti- nation of the product, butin the relations between the direct producer (whether he be artisan in some workshop or peasant cultivator on land) and his immediate superior or overlord and in the socio- economic content of the obligation which connects them ... As such itwill be virtually identical with what we generally mean by serfdom: an obligation laid on the producer by force and independently of his own volition to fulfill certain economic demands of an overlord, whether these demands take the form of services to be performed or of dues to be paid in money or in kind ... This coersive force may be fi of pilfary strength, possessed by the feudal superior, or of custom bat some kind of juridi Ta ages oo. juridical procedure, or the force of The feudal mode of production rests on these indispensable foundations; (i) a system of production which leaves the real pro- ducer in possession of his plot of land (or his tools) (ii) realisation of the surplus in terms of rent which flows to the landlord and tax which flows to the state and (iii) the necessity of the intervention of a non- economic instance in the expropriation of the surplus’. The Kandyan social formation left the tenant cultivator in possession of his plot of 7. 7 Twoelements of this definition, the right of possession of the direct producer and the intervention of the non-economic instance, I have obtained from Dobb. The essential distinction between rent and tax which I have added to Dobb’s definition 4s the result of an inversion of a statement by Marx. Marx, who incorrectly maintained the state to be the sole land owner in the pre-capitalist Asian social formations, argued that the distinction between rent and tax does not hold in Asia, thus implying that this iy a distinction that pertains to feudal Europe. Anderson, in his important study of the absolutist monarchy lays emphasis on 38 land, realised the surplus in terms of rent and tax and relied on custom, ideology and law in extracting the surplus, ultimately backed by the coersive power of the state. But were the Kandyan peasants serfs? I have already referred to the fact that they were free to leave the land and cease the services performed. But as Dobb has correctly pointed out what is important here is not the juridical relations, but whether concrete conditions were present to actualise the ‘freedom’ granted by law. These concrete conditions are mainly the presence of the superstructural forms and comes out with the following definition of feudalism. ,, feudalism typically involves the juridical serfdom and military protection of the peasantry by a social class of nobles, enjoying individual authority and property, and exercising an exclusive monopoly of law and private rights of justice, within a political framework of fragmented sovereignty and subordinate fiscality, and an aristocratic ideology exalting rural life’. (Anderson; 1974: 407). The crucial element in this definition is the fragmented nature of sovereignty. Anderson correctly disagrees with Engels’s characterisation of the absolute monarchy as an equilibrium between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and maintains that it was nothing but a redeployed and recharged apparatus for feudal domination. If this is the case, the dominant mode of production in the absolutist period should be feudalism and feudal aristocracy the ruling class: Absolutist monarchy was also the negation of fragmented sovereignty and the concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign. According to Anderson western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries is characterised by the dominance of the feudal mode of production (though capitalism was already making significant inroads into the social formation) and absolute monarchy, which is the very negation of fragmented sovereignty. If fragmented sovereignty is an essential defining charac- teristic of feudalism it is not possible to have feudalism as the dominant mode of production and an absolutist state with concentrated power. Thus even within the context of western Europe, Anderson’s definition does not hold ground for all the historical phases of feudalism. Kula's definition of feudalism which centres on the manorial economy is gene- rally applicable to muttettuwa type tenure I outlined above. “Feudalism refers here to a socio-economic system which is predominantly agrarian and characterized by a low level of productive forces and of commercialization; at the same time it refers to a corporate system in which the basic unit of production is a large landed estate surrounded by the small plots of peasants who are dependent on the former both economically and juridically, and who have to furnish various services to the lord and submit to his authority’. (Kula; 1976:9). However, this definition is too descriptive and lacks the theoretical rigour present in the definitions advanced by Dobb and Ander- son. ‘The eminent social historian, Mare Bloch comes close to a definition of European feudalism in the following statement. “A subject peasantry, widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. the fief) instead of a salary, which was out of the question, the supremacy of a class of specialized warriors, ties of obedience and protection which bind man to man and, within the warrior class assume the distinctive form called vassalage; fragmentation of authority - leading inevitably to disorder; and in the midst ofall this, the survival of the other forms of association, family and state, of which the latter, during the second feudal age was to acquire renewed strength- such then seem tobe the fundamental features of European feudalism” (Bloch; 1971: Il: 446). He does 39analternative system of production to which the tenants can ‘escape’. The presence of politically semi-autonomous towns, the geographical proximity of a different system of production, the availability of virgin land outside feudal control etc. could be taken as these possible alternatives. None of these alternatives existed in the Kandyan King- dom. As Knox pointed out the border area between the colonial maritime areas and the Kingdom was tightly closed and guarded by sentries. No semi-autonomous townships or virgin land outside feudal control existed. Under such conditions the freedom to with- hold labour and leave the land remained merely a legal fiction as the producer had no alternative means of sustenance that he could resort to. Dobb’s definition of serfdom as the obligation of the producer to perform stipulated services independent of his volition subjected to force fits the de facto position of Kandyan tenants (some of whom were craftsmen). The Kandyan state was based on an uneasy alliance between the monarch and the nobles to extract surplus out of the peasant population and to keep the peasant population under their domination. The peasants were certainly conscious of the oppressive rule to which they were subjected. Forbes, around 1828 witnessed a performance of Kandyan folk singers, where “Any sly hint against rajakariya was sure to be received with unusual satisfaction”. (1840: IT: 200). Sometimes the peasants rebelled when a particular aspect of state policy displeased them. In 1806 for instance, when the king appointed two administrators to Hat Korale district, instead of one administrator, the people who assumed that two administrators would require double the service, rebelled. Unlike the rebellions led by the nobles against the monarch, this was of grass-root origin, expressing peasant interest. The Kandyan social formation was a specific variation on the general theme of the feudal mode of production. Labour rent was not only the dominant form of surplus extraction; it was also the form of rent that was exhaustively elaborated to cover all the possible ser- vices. The dominance of the state in the articulation of the structure, in the last analysis, rests on this extraordinary elaboration of labour rent. The difference between the European and Kandyan feudal formation does not lie in the fact that in Europe land tenure was associated with military service, whereas in the Kandyan Kingdom not present this definition as one pertaining to feudalism in general. Bloch goes on to observe “Yet just as the matrilineal or agantic clan or even certain types of economic enterprise are found in much the same forms in very different societies, it is by no means impossible that societies different from our own should have passed through ‘a phase closely resembling that which has just been defined. If so, it is legitimate to call them feudal during that phase”. (Bloch: Il; 446). 40 it was linked to various caste services as Leach (1959) has suggested. The crucial distinction that sets apart these two formations is the dominance of the political instance in the Kandyan social formation, which expresses itself as an absolute monarchy, a form of state absent in feudal Europe of the middle ages. 41Chapter III The Disintegration of the Kandyan Social Formation and the Growth of Peripheral Capitalism “While at the centre the capitalist mode of production tends to become exclusive, the same is not true of the periphery. Consequently, the formations in the periphery are fundamen- tally different from those in the centre. The forms assumed by these peripheral formations depend, on the one hand, on the nature of the pre-capitalist formations that were there previ- ously, and on the other, on the forms and epochs in which they were integrated into the world system”. (Amin; 1974: 393). It was not the intensification of the internal contradictions within the Kandyan social formation that led to its disintegration. Unlike in western Europe, transition from feudalism to capitalism was not an internal and independent process. Capitalism came in the form of outside intervention, in the form of imperialism. To invert Lenin’s famous phrase, imperialism was not the last but the first phase of capitalism on a pre-capitalist formation, a mode that is politically separated from its external markets, fashions thestructureand growth of capitalism in the periphery. Unlike capitalism in the metropolitan centre, peripheral capitalism does not tend to wipe out the archaic production relations. It tears off the most exploitative relations from the pre-capitalist formation, reinforces and reactivates them as rela- tions of surplus extraction in the interests of capital. In the Kandyan region, the activities of the imperial power, opening up large plantations, procuring local labour for jungle clear- ing and road building, flooding the local market with imported goods etc. disrupted the pre-capitalist social fabric to its very foundations. The peasants were inevitably drawn into this vortex of change and disruptive inroads were made into the basically self-sufficient 43regional economy. In the prgcess, peasant production, exchange and consumption were integrated and made subservient to the emergent capitalist structure. But this integration and subservience did not lead to an exhaustive elimination of old production relations and their replacement by bourgeois relations nor to a revolutionisation of the techniques of production. The major part of the surplus generated in the agrarian and craft sector was expropriated by the colonial power, the aristocracy or the low country speculators who either invested it in other areas or used it to sustain their conspicuous consumption. Thus the peasant economy was reduced toa level of not having access toits own surplus; it could barely reproduce the conditions of produc- tion, not to mention any advancement in the techniques. The process of integration and domination of the peasant eco- nomy by the capitalist structure was simultaneously a process of concerting the Kandyan region into a periphery of international capi- talism. Prior to colonial rule, the Kandyan region constituted a ‘centre in itself’ in the sense that surplus expropriated in the Kingdom (mainly labour rent, produce rent, and grain tax) was available for appropriation within the region. With colonial occupation, a substan- tial part of the surplus generated in the region was transfered to the imperial metropolis and coastal areas. Moreover, the region became dependent on the metropolitan market from which it was politically separated. Thus the growth of dependent capitalism introduced by colonialism, converted the Kandyan region into a periphery in a double sense; (i) an area of surplus export and (ii) a producer politi- cally separated from the market. A framework for the analysis of this process should take the economic sphere - production, exchange, consumption, patterns of surplus extraction - as its point of departure, but should lay due emphasis on class differentiation and alignments as well as political action. The dynamics of the growth and structural articulation of peripheral capitalism could only be understood in relation to the total social ensemble. I shall adopt the following broad guidelines in the analysis of the structural transformation in the Kandyan region. 1. Economic dimension: (a) production-transition from regional self-sufficiency towards dependence on industrial inputs in agricultural and craft production, without revolutionary changes in old production relations or techniques of production. (b) con- sumption-transition from a primarily self-sufficient household economy to increasing dependence on consumer goods in the market. (c) surplus-transition from a situation where the sur- plus was expropriated and appropriated within the region 4 towardsa situation wherea substantial part of the surplus flows to national and international metrdpolises, thus converting the region into a periphery of international capitalism. 2. Structural dimension: transition from a basic bifurcation into landlords and tenants further differentiated into hereditary castes to a complex class differentiation, which nevertheless retains landlord /tenant division as well as elements of caste organisation. 3. Political dimension: transition from subordination to a feudal bureaucracy to subordination to elected representatives and salaried bureaucracy, a process marked in the early phases by peasant revolts. In the following discussion, I will attempt to highlight the basic structural changes in the Kandyan society since British occupation in terms of these broad guidelines. This is not an attempt to write a descriptive or a comprehensive history of the region, but merely an attempt to put in a nutshell the basic structural changes, so that the detailed case studies that follow may stand in sufficient historical depth. A) A period of Storm and Stress 1815-1848: The Kandyan Kingdom was annexed by the British in 1815 with the support of the leading radala bureaucrats, who were plotting against the king. The king was dethroned and banished; an admini- stration that dealt with the peasantry through the radala bureaucrats wasinitially established by the British. Anagreement was signed with the leading radala where protection of the Buddhist religion, recog- nition of the privileges of the radala and respect for the laws and customs of the region appeared as important clauses. The British administration realised early that till a network of roads was laid down their hold over the region would at best be tenuous. The protracted guerilla warfare that the Kandyans waged prior to the annexation as well as the widespread rebellion in 1818 depended upon the very inaccessibility of the region. Skinner, the major road builder of this period says “So inaccesible were the interior districts at this time (around 1820) that Kandy was approachable by narrow jungle paths, so steep and rugged as to be quite impassable for any description of vehicle and often as dangerous asa bridle path”. (1974: 113). This situation was to be rectified. The Colombo-Kandy road via Kadugannawa was completed in 1836. A regular mail coach was started in 1831. From the late thirties onwards, when coffee plantations expanded, the planters formed a lobby pressurising the 45government to build more and better roads. The initial military interest in constructing roads gave way to economic interests and coffee plantations were linked with Kandy and other emergent towns. By the mid-forties every town of importance and every large planta- tion were linked to Colombo and Kandy by a network of roads. It was in road building activities that the colonial power initially came into contact with the feudal form of labour mobilisation, rajakariya. The Kandyan kings used the unpaid labour resulting from rajakariya, mostly for constructing water reservoirs and religious edifices, both highly meritorious activities in the ideology of Sinhalese Buddhism. The colonial government revived rajakariya to build roads and clear jungles. As this has had no religious justification from the peasants’ point of view, force often had to be used to get the people to work’. Sometimes thousands of people worked in the building of roads. Skinner says, “During the construction (of the Peradeniya bridge) we had a force of twelve hundred men employed in laying and filling up the approaches”. (1974: 101). The use of rajakariya labour by the British to build roads raises an important question relating to the ‘survivals’. Rajakariya is not a simple left-over from the Kandyan social formation; the colonial power consciously revived and reacti- vated it with the use of force. Rajakariya within the Kandyan social formation was a feudal method of labour mobilisation that kept the feudal structure going. But the revived form of rajakariya, under the British was used to build roads to reach capitalist coffee plantations: it was reactivated not to keep the feudal structure going but to serve the emergent capitalist structure. One could go further and state this relation of feudal service was torn away from the pre-capitalist formation and was used as a weapon to dismantle feudalism from its position of hegemony. Such are the dialectics of the preservation of “feudal relations’ in the growth of peripheral capitalism. Rajakariya was abolished in 1833 but was once again revived ina disguised form in 1848, The Government Gazette of 22nd July 1812 announced that land grants not exceeding 4,000 acres would be made to European appli- cants. The initial response to this announcement was poor. But once the tariff preferences for Caribbean coffee were removed in England, there was a rush to buy these land tracts. In the period 1836 to 1844 13. Old men and young boys (some under seven) were forced to work and at times flogged by zealous overseer. In 1829 the people of Walapare refused to work and there was widespread protest. The ring leader was tried, publicly flogged and jailed, after which the protest subsided. (Colebrooke-Cameron; 1956: 190-191). 46 the price of coffee in the English market rose nearly three hundred. percent. (Ludowyk; 1966: 59). As the demand for land increased on the part of the European planters, the government was forced to ‘find’ sufficient land to be sold. This was done with the enactment of the Ordinance 12, 1840, which declared all the forest: land, waste land and uncultivated land to be Crown property, if not proved otherwise. Though some Kandyans, especially the radala and the temples con- trolled by them had documents of royal grants in their possession, the peasantry at large found it difficult to prove their claims to forest, wasteand highland they were using for generations. The government alienated this land from them and sold it to European planters. In the period 1837-1845, 291, 504 acres of ‘Crown land’ were sold to the planters. (Tennent; 1860: II 230). By 1845, three decades after the annexation, many hill topsofthe Kandyan countryside and the waste land bordering the villages were covered by European- owned coffee plantations. This occupation had a disastrous impact on the Kandyan peasantry. It prevented the natural expansion of the villages as population grew. It intensified acute land hunger and fragmentation within the ranks of the poor peasantry. The loss of hill land meant less fodder and less cattle, the disappearance of slash and burn cultivation and significant drop in the supply of firewood. Further, a number of water springs were lost to the villages, if and when that part of waste land became plantation property. Pieris has compared this take over of land by coffee planters to the European enclosure movement (1952). There is however, a crucial distinction between the enclosure movement and the expansion of plantations in the Kandyan region. In England, for instance, arable land was converted into pasture and tenants’ holding and commons were swallowed up in sheep walks resulting in a mass scale eviction of peasants from land. Inthe Kandyan region, land surrounding the villages was taken over; but the plantations did not penetrate into the paddy fields and the residential compounds of the peasants. Unlike in the case of the enclosure movement, no mass scale eviction of the peasants from the land they possessed occured. The plantations encapsulated the villages, entrapping the peasantry, as it were, but in the main leaving the old production relations intact within the village. The village economy, though seriously battered by the expansion of the planta- tions continued to reproduce these old production relations. The buying of land, clearing of jungles, laying down of roads reached a peak of feverish activity in the forties. “The coffee mania 47was at its climax in 1845. The governor and the council, the military, the judges, the clergy and one half of the civil servants penetrated the hills and became purchasers of Crown lands. The East India Com- pany’s officers crowded to Ceylon to invest their savings, and capi- talists from England arrived by every packet’. (Tennent: 1860: 11281). ‘After the abolition of rajakariya in 1833, the peasants worked in clearing the forests and building roads usually at a wage of six pence a day. This did introduce wage labour into the countryside, but still there were only few who totally depended on selling their labour power. In the peak periods of agricultural activity-they reverted back to the village economy. The coffee plantations needed not simply wage labour, but regular wage labour. The planters could not yet expect such regular labour from the Kandyan villages. As a pioneer coffee planter W. Boyd remarked: “They (Kandyans) have as a general rule, their own paddy fields, their own cows, bullocks, their own fruit gardens; and the tending and managing of these occupy all their attention. Their wants are few and easily supplied, and unless they wish to present their wives with a new cloth, or to procure a gun or powder and shot for themselves, they really have no inducement to work on the coffee plantations”. (De. Silva; 1961). As the coffee plantations expanded an alternative source of labour had to be discovered. In the mid-thirties this alternative source was dis- covered, in South India. During the period 1843-1848, 305,300 Indian workers arrived, whereas in the same period 105,000 of them left the country. As the mortality rate among the immigrant workers was unusually high, it seems reasonable to assume that around 150,000 Indian workers were employed in the coffee plantations during the mid-forties. (Pieris; 1952). The arrival of cheap Indian labour effec- tively closed the plantations as an area where the Kandyan peasant may find employment". Indian labourers were not the only new migrants into Kandyan region. The low country Sinhalese who had already been in contact with the European for more than three centuries and hence more familiar with the commercial ethos saw possibility of making easy money in the tremendous transformation taking placein the Kandyan region moved in the form of traders, peddlers, bullock cart operators, tavern keepers and speculators. The low country men too comprised —_——————_— 14. Though regular workers in sufficient numbers were not available from the Kandyan villages in the third and the fourth decades of the nineteenth century, it is certain that as peripheral capitalism progressed expanding the group of landless peasants, they eventually would have turned to the plantations in search of work, if the immigrant workers had not been already present. 48 an external tentacle of surplus expropriation in relation to the Kandyan peasantry. The structure of liquor trade controlled by them illustrates the disruptive effects they exercised on the peasantry. Itis also important to note here, that it was the manufacturing and trade of liquor that formed the fundamental base of capital accumulation in the case of the nascent coastal bourgeoisie. The, government having, discovered an additional source of revenue in the regulation of arrack (coconut liquor) trade, sold at auction the exclusive rights of selling arrack in various districts to low country speculators. They in turn sub-let the taverns newly established in the villages toa lowerstratum ofspeculators leading toa lucrative commerce. Taverns, says Skinner “are established in every district, almost in every village of any size throughout the interior, often to the great annoyance of the inhabi- tants and in opposition to the headmen” (1974: 136). Pieris estimates the arrack consumption in the second decade of the nineteenth cen- tury to be 300,000 gallons per annum for the whole island, whereas the adult male population was only 156,400 in 1821. (1950: 378). Skinner goes on to observe “The rise of intemperance had become an enormous evil, and that it has left no room for doubt ...... I have known districts of the population of which, some years ago, not one in a hundred could be induced to taste spirits, where drunkenness now prevails to such an extent that villagers have been known to pawn their crops upon the ground to tavern keepers for arrack. (1974: 137). Asubstantial amount of the money the peasants earned whether by wage labour or by selling their produce found its way into the pockets of the tavern keepers and liquor manufacturers. The defeat of the 1818 rebellion, an aristocratic reaction against the British rule and the consequent suppression seriously eroded the wealth and power of the upper echelon radala. Some leading radala were executed or banished from the country. Their land was confis- cated and in some cases was sold to the coffee planters. The British bureaucracy performed an increasingly important role in administer- ing the districts after the reforms of 1833, which in this initial period also helped to erode aristocratic authority; nevertheless many rural areas were still not in regular contact with the district towns. The lessening of aristocratic authority with no other immediate authority structure to replace it led to asituation of anarchy. In Seven Korale, “one of the principal headmen of the district (was) obliged to abandon his own village, and compelled to reside in the bazaar of Kurunegala seeees a mile beyond the precinct of which he dared not ride, unless armed and protected by a European gentleman; ruffians who had escaped from gaol, or had evaded the law, and for whose apprehen- 49sion rewards were advertised by the government, had fortified the huts in which they were living at a short distance from Kurunegala, defied alike the government agent, fiscal and native headmen, to capture them.” (Skinner; 1974: 141). Amidst these anarchic tendencies in the countryside, the feverish expansion of coffee plantations came to a sudden haltin 1846, as the European depression hit the coffee industry. “In the midst of these visions of riches, a crash suddenly came which awoke victims to the reality of ruin. The financial explosion of 1845 in Great Britain speedily extended its destructive influence to Ceylon; remittances ceased, prices fell, credit failed ...... ‘The consternation thus produced. in Ceylon was proportionate to the extravagance of the hopes that were blasted; estates were forced into the market and madly sold for a twentieth part of the outlay incurred in forming them.” (Tennent; 1860: II: 231-233). An estate of £ 15,000 in 1843, fetched only £40 in 1847. (Pieris; 1950: 383). The trade depression hit the Kandyan peasants: it hit those who cultivated coffee on a small scale in their gardens and also those who earned some money from the road building and jungle clearance activities in the boom time. Some of them had already been absorbed into the emergent capitalist structure and had no means or intention of returning back to subsistance farming. Out of their ranks emerged groups of itinerant labour bands who roamed the region in search of work or tillage. “ society in its various, but especially in the lower grades, has been ...... demoralised, and so palpably so of late, that it required no great power of discrimination to predict, twelve months before it manifested itself in open revolt, the anarchy to which some of the districts were approaching.” (Skinner; 1974: 140). The mounting dissatisfaction of the peasantry amidst economic depression and erosion of aristocratic authority burst out in a ple- beian revolt in 1848, The government provided the spark to light the fire by introducing a number of new taxes" and services in 1848. The Roads Ordinance of 1848 required every inhabitant (except monks) in the age group of 16-60 to work on roads six days per annum or pay a commutation tax of 3 shillings. This in effect was a restoration of rajakariya, and was interpreted as such by the people. Though the commissioners from London decreed the abolition of rajakariya in 1833, the on the spot managers of the colony realised the worth of this archaic system, to serve the needs of the new peripheral economy 15. Anannual tax of 2 shillings and 6 pence on each fire-arm, £ 1 on all shop owners, carriages and carts, and one shilling on each dog were these new taxes. 50 they were building. But there was widespread opposition to the restoration of unpaid services on the part of the people, which was aptly expressed to a British planter by a headman. “J entered into conversation with the spokesman, who was an aratchi (headman), and told him the advantages the road would be to himself and the surrounding villages. He became very excited, and ina very insolent manner, said - “who sent for you white people here, we did very well without you; look there; (pointing toa coffev estate) that forest was mine”; thentoasugar plantation, “that was mine”; then to open ground, upon which some estate cattle were grazing; “that was mine; you have felled our forests, seized our chenas (highland), and now you are turning our paddy fields into roads. But we have a man there vase Who will soon get rid of you; he will cut ... every one of you ...” This statement of the aratchi’s betrayed the voice and feelings of the Kandyans in general.” (Pieris; 1952). In Colombo a protest march against the taxes and compulsory labour was held under the leadership of a radical Irishman, Elliot. Elliot's newspaper “The Colombo Observer” published an article call- ing the people to follow the example of the French, refuse to pay the taxes and agitate for the establishment of a radical democratic society based on racial equality and universal suffrage. (De Silva; 1964). This article was translated to Sinhalese and distributed in the Kandyan area. It is unlikely that it had much influence in the Kandyan region: but the Kandyans organised an armed resistance of their own. After a protest gathering in Kandy on the 6th of July 1848, a pretender to the Kandyan throne emerged and rallied elements of dislocated peasantry and low country migrants around him. The revolt was crushed easily by the British and violent confrontations lasted only for a month. The 1848 revolt nevertheless is an important historical event, not only because 1848 was the year of peasant uprisings right through- out Europe. In fact if not at the level of shared consciousness, at least at the level of common causation (the economic depression) the events in the Kandyan region were not entirely unrelated to those of Europe. More important however is the character and the orientation of the revolt. Unlike the rebellion of 1818, this was not an aristocratic reaction to the colonial rule to restore the ancien regime. No radala man of standing was involved in it. Its leader Gongallegoda Banda has been described as a man from the low-country who was a bullock cart driver. The 1848 revolt emerged from the ranks of the dislocated peasantry and low country elements thrown out of work in the 51depression. As Pieris has correctly remarked., “The revolt of 1848 differed from all previous insurrections in that it was not mainly an effort to crown a pretender. The appearance of pretenders was only incidental to widespread agrarian discontent.” (1950: 388). The defeat of the 1848 revolt closes the period of storm and stress. The social formation that emerges in the mid-nineteenth century already possesses the fundamental characteristics of peri- pheral capitalism. The plantation economy, integration of the pea- sants into the market, erosion of the crafts etc. without any revolu- tionisation of the production relations at the village level, already characterised the social formation. 1. Economic dimension: (a) Production - Peasant production did not become virtually dependent on industrial inputs in this period. Agricultural production continued basically with the help of organic manure and implements turned out by the local blacksmiths. Nevertheless, the imported implements were in competition with the products of the blacksmith who was beginning to feel the erosion of his market. The general condi- tion of anarchy that prevailed affected the agricultural produc- tion; “...... the cultivation of the staple article of food of the country (rice) declined; large tracts of land were thrown out of cultivation.” (Skinner; 1974: 139). The decrease in rice produc- tion compelled poor peasants, labourers and Indian plantation workers to turn to the market for food. Between 1837 and 1843, 4,544,000 bushels of rice were imported from India. (Pieris; 1952a). (b) Consumption - Not only did the peasantry turn to imported rice for their food requirements but British manufac- tured products also were becoming popular. Forbes observed in 1836 that”...... every article of British manufacture, which the native might require or could afford to purchase, was hawked through the most remote native hamlets, was offered for sale at every cabin-door, and might be procured at prices which would barely remunerate the importing merchant and the native ped- dler.” (1840: II: 16-17). Thus incorporation of the peasant as a consumer in the market proceeded far in this period, though significant inroads into peasant production had yet to be made. (c) Surplus - The substantial surplus realised in the coffee plantations was exported to the metropolis as profits. The profits realised in converting the peasant into a consumer of British manufactured products too directly went to the me- tropolis. A significant amount of surplus was also realised by the low country speculators especially in the liquor trade which 52 mainly went to the coastal areas. Old patterns of surplus extrac- tion such as labour rent and share-cropping continued and here the surplus was absorbed by the Kandyan radala. 2. Structural dimension: The basic bifurcation into landlords and tenants still remained; but into the midst of the Kandyan society, three new social groups were introduced, European planters, low-country speculators and Indian labourers. A section of the Kandyan peasantry were de-peasantised and turned to wage- labour in road building and jungle clearing activities. They came into close contact with ‘the outside elements’ and formed apart of the dissatisfied group who took part in the 1848 revolt. Aristocratic authority declined, but the basic elements of the caste system continued. Thearrival of thelow-country: elements who belonged to non-Kandyan castes and claimed. high status however, created a certain degree of confusion in the inter-caste relations. Class differentiation at the embryonic level was already occuring, especially at the level of displaced peasantry who were turning into an agrarian proletariat, and at the level of the low country speculators who were turning into a petty bourgeoisie. But the bulk of the Kandyan peasantry still remained undifferentiated, as cultivators who possessed culti- vation rights. 3. Political dimension: The decline of aristocratic authority with nothing to replace it at the immediate level led to an anarchic situation. The peasants when dissatisfied resorted to arms; there were minor revolts in 1820, 1823, 1824, and 1842. These minor revolts were not only feeble attempts to get rid of British rule, but also means by which attention was brought to bear upon unacceptable facets of policy and miscarriages of justice. B) Consolidation of the Capitalist Structure 1848-1915: The coffee industry gradually recovered as the British economy emerged from the crisis and the price of coffee went up. The planta- tions and production expanded. In 1855. the coffee plantations covered 85,000 acres; 506,500 cwts. of coffee valued at £ 1,125,300 were exported. In 1865 the area almost doubled to 160,000 acres; 927,400 cwts. of coffee valued at £ 2,343,500 were exported. In 1875 the plantations covered 249, 600 acres; 924,300 cwts. of coffee valued at £ 4,506,900.were exported. In the early seventies coffee became the mainstay of the country’s economy and accounted for 98% of the value of total exports. 53The expansion of coffee plantations also meant the rigorous implementation of the Ordinance 12, 1840 and the alienation of jungle land and waste land from the peasants even in the remote areas. Expansion of plantations was also accompanied by more and better roads. In spite of the 1848 revolt, unpaid labour for road building continued to be extracted; the ordinance in question was notrepealed. By 1870 even the remote Kandyan parts could be reached by roads. In this period, coffee was carried to Colombo by bullock carts by low country Sinhalese operators. As the costs of transport rose, demand. for railways mounted. The first railway line linking Colombo and Kandy was completed in 1867 and the railway reached the remote Kandyan province of Uva by 1880. From 1869 however, a fungus disease - ‘Hemelia Vastatrix’ - affected the coffee plants. By 1875 the pest had spread to almost all the plantations. However, the high price of coffee shielded the indus- try from the full effect of the leaf disease. But the entry of Brazilian coffee on the market from the mid-seventies, brought down the prices and the plantations in Sri Lanka had to face the disastrous effects of the disease. A substitute for coffee was found in tea. The introduction of tea did not structurally change the plantation economy; except for further dislocating a stratum of peasants who cultivated coffee in small garden plots. Tea is not a small cultivator product as the leaf has to be carefully tended by experienced hands; the small peasant cul- tivator could not change to tea, when the large plantations changed their crop. In 1885, tea covered 102,000 acres and by 1900, 384,000 acres. By this time large scale coffee plantations had almost dis- appeared. Indian migration to man the plantations continued. In the early period Indian workers often returned back after working for one or two years. But as the plantations acquired a regular character, per- manently resident population of workers grew. In the period 1851- 1890, 281,000 Indian workers migrated to Sri Lanka and only 59,000 of them went back to India. With the 1848 revolt, the British administration realised the dangerous consequences of the lessening of aristocratic authority over the peasantry. Though initially there was an attempt to relate the revolt to aristocratic instigation (confusing its character with the 1818 rebellion), it was soon realised that the aristocracy stood aloof from it. Indeed, the revolt would not have broken out if there had been no serious erosion of the aristocratic authority. The weakening of the authority of the chieftains, says Skinner, has left “large sections of the rural districts without any sufficient restraint on the vicious and 54 disorderlyness of the lower classes...We have no alternative but to use the native as a means for carrying out our Government and the higher he stands in his own esteem and in the respect of others, the more effective instrumnent shall we find him”. (1974: 140-145). By the mid-fifties the rising generation of Kandyan aristocrats were already attending English schools in the urban centres. This process of accul- turisation made them even more suitable for the role Governor Brownrigg envisaged for themas far back as 1818; to reduce the chiefs “from an aristocratic faction to the rank and office of stipendiary organs for effecting the regulations and orders of the supreme execu- tive authority”. (Pieris; 1950: 359). But due to the suppression of the 1818 rebellion, the upper echelon of Kandyan aristocratic families who held high office during the days of the Kingdom had almost vanished.'* But the second echelon of the aristocracy remained more or less intact. It was to this section that the British turned to mould a loyal faction. The intermediate positions in the provincial bureau- cracy were occupied by persons of this stratum. The British govern- ment agent administered the province through a rate mahatmaya. The rate mahatmaya dealt with the peasantry through lesser chieftains and headmen. Meanwhile, other official positions were open for those who acquired English education. Governor William Gregory (1872- 1877) expressed his approval of this system, “There was no doubt that matters went far more smoothly and efficiently when the native officers were selected from ancient lineage rather from men, who, though of excellent character and of experience, had risen from the ranks”. (Pieris; 1950: 370). Thus, the aristocratic authority which reasserted itself after the mid-nineteenth century, though it deceptively looks like a survival from the past, as it is based on ownership of land and occupation of bureaucratic sinecures, nevertheless is not a simple left-over from the Kandyan social formation. I demonstrated how aristocratic authority was seriously undermined due to British activities after 1818; left to itself, it would have suffered further erosion. But as the colonial power needed a loyal faction to keep ‘the vicious and disorderly of the lower classes’ under control, the state consciously stepped in to reactivate and reinforce aristocratic authority. Reactivation of aristocratic authority and preservation of feudal tenure received another firm legal foundation, in the inquiries of the Temple Land Commission (1856-1868). 379, 413 acres of land in the 16. The major aristocratic lineages of the Kingdom, Pilimatalawa, Ehelepol Keppetipola, Madugalla, Molligoda etc. vanished due to execution, banjshient, impoverishment, debauchery or lack or issue. 55Kandyan region were officially recognised to be temple lands; out of a rough total of 2,316 villages in the Central Province, 610 villages were recognised as viharagam or devalagam (temple villages) and 298 as nindagam (feudal villages). The tenants holding land in such villages were legally compelled to perform the feudal services at- tached to various plots. As the commissioners themselves report, in the late fifties and sixties many tenants were not performing their feudal duties to the temple lords. It is certain that without state intervention to reactivate these feudal services, they would not have gained a new lease of life. When the British annexed the Kingdom a grain tax not different in essence from the grain tax of the Kandyan Kingdom was intro- duced. The tax was collected by state officials generally at the rate of 10% of the harvest. In case of total crop failure no tax was due. In 1832 this method was dropped and a system of renting was introduced. The right to collect the tax of a particular village was sold at auction to the highest bidder and the peasant was obliged to pay the tax to the renter. These renters were low country speculators who were bent upon making a quick profit. The Ordinance 14, 1840, established the renter’s right to take the defaulting peasant to court. The peasant was required to give written notice to the renter specifying the days of reaping and threshing and pay 10% of the product. The system was open to much abuse and the renter often collected more than his due. As District Judge Adams pointed out in 1872, “Noordinance...enacted under the British rule in Ceylon has been so grossly abused, or has become so systematic an instrument of oppression and extortion, as this one (14, 1840) has been...the majority of cultivators cannot write...and the provision for giving written notice is a dead-letter in most villages...It is easy to see how completely the renter has the cultivator at his mercy. (Even when the crop has failed) the renter has paid the government for the one-tenth of a good crop, he demands that or its value; or the crop of a field has been larger than estimated and the renter demands considerably more than the share to which he is entitled”. (Roberts; 1968). The renters were cogs in the wheels of local power structure and made use of it in extracting the grain from the peasants. As an assistant government agent stated, the renter “is as a rule treated with much consideration by the minor officers of the courts, and is hand-in-glove with the village headmen. Heregards the cultivator as his legitimate prey and is generally quite without scruple in making full use of his advantage”. (Roberts; 1968). The renting system, though it lasted only for two decades or so, illustrates another important facet of the growth of peripheral capitalism; the creation of 56 a parasitic bourgeois faction. An important faction of the bourgeoisie emerges not on the basis of commerce and industry, but on the usurial exploitation of the peasantry. The tax renters constitute a typical example of such a parasitic bourgeoisie. 1. Economicdimension:(a) Production: peasantagriculture con- tinued to rely on traditional seed, locally available organic manure and traditional methods of pest control. But agriculture turns increasingly away from the local metal products to imported implements. The drop in the cattle population too affects the agricultural techniques adversely. Firstly, less buffa- loes mean inadequate ploughing and high labour threshing. Secondly it implies insufficient organic manure. The average yield was low and static. In 1888 the average yield in Kandy district was 12 fold; in 1893 it was 10 fold in Udahewaheta and only 9 fold in Walapane. (Ali; 1972). Paddy cultivation in the main was done by owner cultivators or share-croppers in small plots; though land ownership was highly concentrated, nolarge paddy farms emerged as the basic production relation was share-cropping. The prevalence of share-cropping however did not prevent wage labour or monetary expenses from penetra- ting paddy agriculture. As an Assistant Government Agent pointed outin 1883, “The idea is pretty general that the Kandyan cultivator wants nothing beyond his labour to bring his field into cultivation. This is incorrect. He requires cattle for plough- ing and must pay for their hire either in money or paddy. The number of cattle has decreased immensely in recent years and now they are possessed by a few... The cultivator, therefore, when he wants to plough his field, has usually to go far to find an owner of buffaloes. Having found one, he has to make him a present... Then he has to pay hire at the rate of 50 cents to Rs. 1.00 a day for each pair of buffaloes and he has to feed the drivers of the buffaloes while they are engaged in working for him.” (Ali; 1972). What one witnesses in paddy agriculture is the prevalence of share-cropping and the simultaneous emergence of wage labour which does not necessarily run against share- cropping and such other archaic production relations. The craft industries got seriously affected as imports grew. It was during this period that the iron smelters of Athirahapitiya ceased production. The blacksmiths turned to the market for imported iron and steel sheets. Thus a highly autonomous craft became dependent on imported raw materials. (b) Consumption: as Indian migration went up and local paddy agriculture 57stagnated, the volume of imported rice went up, from 4,544,000 bushels in 1837-1843 to 7,385, 000 bushels in 1888-1892. The share of the locally produced rice in the domestic consumption decreased from 51% in 1848-1852 to 37% in 1888-1892. The import of rice kept the domestic rice prices low and thus acted as a restraint on production. The dependence on imported rice grew not only among the urban elments but also among rural labourers. Thus the peasantry was integrated not only with the national market, but also with the global market. Imported products captured the market in other areas too. The number of textile looms declined from 3,972 in 1850 to 1,582 in 1870, and to 1,222 in 1890. Consequently the value of imported textiles went up from £202,411 in 1849-1853 to £532,570 in 1889-1893. As Governor Gordon (1883-1890) pointed out “It is cheaper to import hideous woolen shawls of black and red checked ‘Mac Gregor tartan’ than to manufacture native clothes and muslins.” Consequently, the common people now wrap themselves up in these...‘plaid’ shawls instead of the national ‘Comboy’” (Ali; 1972). Kerosene entered the peasant hut as a domestic fuel. Before it was introduced, oil was extracted from various jungle nuts, seeds and coconut. Either earthenware lamps made by local potters or brass lamps made by brass-founders were used. The value of imported kerosene oil went up from Rs. 124,526 in 1883 to Rs. 693,501 in 1892. As a chief headman remarked in 1901, “Now all the villagers use kerosene oil. Instead of costly lamps they use locally made tin lamps made out of kerosene oil cans. Some use little glass bottles with a tin capsule and tube” (Ali; 1972). No revolutionisation of production relations or techniques occured in the paddy fields; on the contrary, due to the importation of rice and the fall of the buffalo population paddy agriculture stagnated; in some areas even declined. The crafts declined and lost the market to the imported products thus firmly integrating even the humblest peasant hut with the global market. (c) Surplus: in the methods of surplus extrac- tion and the flow of surplus this period does not greatly differ from the former. What is new is the intensification of the extractive process converting the bulk of the Kandyan pea- santry into a pauperised mass. Structural dimension: The restoration of aristocratic authority in the Kandyan areas put an end to the period of anarchy and the imperial-radala bloc firmly established its control over the peasantry. In the meantime, the flow of ‘outsiders’, European 58 planters, low country Sinhalese and Indian workers continued. The peasantry lost the jungle land and waste land to the still expanding plantations, an increasing section of the peasantry lost their paddy land to money lenders and tax renters. But no stratum of kulaks grew out from the Kandyan peasantry, though peasant differentiation was occuring ‘downwards’, inthe growth of the ranks of those landless. The non-emergence of a class of rich peasants is the direct result of the absence of the accumu- lation of a substantial surplus within the peasant sector. More- over the few enterprising owner cultivators could not expand their holdings as the land within the villages was either directly owned or controlled (i.e.. temple land) by the aristocratic fami- lies. As exchange relations, trade, money lending, tax gathering etc. were controlled by the low countrymen and Muslims, no surplus generated within peasant agriculture accumulated within a peasant stratum. The class structure in the Kandyan countryside in this period basically consisted of a land owning aristocracy, a non-Kandyan petty bourgeoisie and a basically undifferentiated peasantry which however contributed more and more to the stratum of landless workers. The loss of land, neglect of paddy agriculture, tax burden, control exercised by the middlemen and money lenders led to a general pauperisa- tion of the Kandyan peasantry. Le Mesurier described the con- ditions of Walapane area in 1885 as follows; “It is really pitiable tosee the poor half starved people, principally women and chil- dren and fever stricken men with scarcely a rag on their bodies feeble and emaciated”. (Wickremaratne; 1973). Thus, in general, it is not a proper class differentiation of the peasantry that took place in this period, but rather a general pauperisation of the peasantry as a whole. Political dimension: This period is singular in its absence of revolts except a minor disturbance in 1854. This lack of peasant violence is remarkable as the period is also characterised by growing hardship. This is most certainly due to the reactivation of the aristocratic authority. Brownrigg’s hope of converting the chiefs from an aristocratic faction (that is an independent force) to a stipendiary organ was realised after the defeat of the 1848 revolt. Village politics centred primarily around the appoint- ment of the headmanand the field supervisor (vel-vidane). These petty officials were appointed by the British Government Agent on the advice of the rate mahatmaya. But the peasants had no say in these matters; on the whole, this is a period of political apathy on the part of the Kandyan peasants. 59C) Cracks in Pax Brittanica 1915-1956: The year 1915 was not only the centenary of the collapse of the Kandyan Kingdom. It was also the year of the anti-Muslim riots in all the Sinhalese dominated areas. The immediate cause that led to rioting was a dispute between the Muslims and the Sinhalese Bud- dhists in the Kandyan town of Gampola. The Muslims objected to the passage of a traditional Buddhist procession through a street where anewly built mosque stood. The anti-Muslim feeling however was not purely religious; it had deep politico-economic undertones. In the Kandyan areas, the Muslims were primarily traders, shopkeepers and money lenders. Byrde, a special commissioner reporting on the riots said, “In the ordinary course of events the Coast Moor is unpopular in the villages...He is thrifty and prosperous...a money lender and a land grabber”. (jayawardena; 1970). Governor Chalmers (1913-1916) expressed a similar opinion. Muslim traders had “always been viewed by the villager with feelings enter-tained at all times and in all lands towards transitory aliens who make money out of the local peasantry by supplying their wants at the ‘shops’ and frequently securing mortgages of the lands of thriftless debtors.” (Jayawardena; 1970). The outbreak of the First World War led to restrictions on import- export trade and a consequent fall in the price of major plantation products. There was retrenchment of labour in the plantations and the allied economic activities. The shortage of imported commodities resulted in a sharp inflation of the food prices. The peasants saw in the Muslim trader, the man immediately responsible for these in- creasing hardships. The riots commenced in Kandy on the 29th of May 1915, Wesak day, the Buddha's birthday. It spread to provincial Kandyan areas soon and covered Colombo and the southern province by early June. The government declared martial law on the 2nd of June and ruthless repression followed. Whereas only 39 persons were killed during the riots, the police and the military killed 63 persons; further 34 were executed after judiciary enquiries. The bourgeois-professional class in Colombo who were just commencing their nationalist agitation were suspected of complicity and many of their leading representa- tives were arrested. In the Kandyan area, those who rioted mainly consisted of peasants, itinerant agrarian workers and the low country petty bourgeoisie. The peasants and agrarian workers viewed the Muslims as exploitative and played a leading role in rioting. The Kandyan aristocracy took no part in rioting; in fact they assisted the state tus. appara' 60 The aftermath of the riots led to a campaign for justice on the part of bourgeois-professionals in Colombo. The campaign developed into a sustained agitation for constitutional reform which characte- rised the 1915-1948 period. But unlike in India, agitation for ‘home tule’ in Sri Lanka did not reach the peasant masses. It was exclusively abourgeois-professional affair carried out mainly in the form of meet- ings in Colombo, newspaper articles, deputations to England and petitions to the Crown. There was no civil disobedience movement or any other form of mass struggle where the peasantry could take part. “As for the ordinary worker on the land, he was as yet no one’s concern. The educated elite in Colombo had been bothered in 1920 about the problem of who was going to represent the territorial electorates. But in them the villager had no vote.” (Ludowyk; 1966: 153). The Kandyan aristocracy as a class were not involved in the nationalist agitation in Colombo; in the main they were to British rule. The recommendations of the Donoughmore commission led to important constitutional reforms in 1931, the most important of which is the granting of universal suffrage. The nationalist leaders had madeit clear to the commission that they would not welcome any extension of the franchise. The existing qualifications included a monthly income of Rs. 50.00 and a literacy test and the electorate was less than five percent of the population. The introduction of universal suffrage, however did not make an immediate impact on the peasant masses (who in fact did not demand it), but nevertheless for the first time they became the object of wooing on the part of the politicians. The outbreak of the Second World War was a significant land- mark in the further integration of the Kandyan peasantry to the capitalist structure. The transfer of the headquarters of the South East Asia Command to Kandy, necessitated improving the roads and constructing many buildings. Erection of special bridges, construc- tion of military barracks to house soldiers as well as prisoners of war, released an enormous flow of cash from the imperial coffers. In the Kandyan areas, a substantial part of this money found its way to the pockets of low country and Muslim entrepreneurs who did contract work. However, some members of the Kandyan service castes too emerged as able businessmen in this period. Significant inroads to the regulation of peasant consumption were made. The introduction of rice rationing and issuing of ration cards recognised and regularised the peasant dependency on foodstuff coming from outside. Later the rationing system was used to sell rice at a subsidised price and even issue a ration of rice free. 61The winning of independence in 1948 did not register any important change in the life of the Kandyan peasantry. In fact, many members of the new cabinet were ministers from the days of the Donoughmore constitution; independence merely meant that this oligarchy now had total authority, unlike the partial authority they enjoyed under the previous constitution. As the peasants did not participate in a struggle for independence there was no spontaneous jubilation on their part. As Ladowyk remarked, “To the mass of the people in the country - the ‘everybodies’ - independence conjured up no pleasurable vision. It had not altered their status or their standard of living. Independence, the British Commonwealth of Nations, Freedom, were sounds with little meaning. Their immediate con- cerns were the drying up of wartime employment, the demand that the standard of living kept up on government subsidies should be maintained and the increasing number of school - leavers, particu- larly from the Sinhalese and Tamil schools, be absorbed in gainful work.” (1962: 276-277). One of the first acts of the independent government was to disenfranchise the plantation workers of Indian origin. The Act No. 18 of 1948 limited citizenship to those who claimed it by descent or registration on certain conditions. Nearly one tenth of the country’s population was declared ‘stateless’. As a result plantation workers lost their power to influence the outcome of elections. Henceforth, the peasant vote acquired a decisive say in the outcome of elections in the Kandyan region. 1. Economic dimension: (a) Production: the government took steps to restore the ancient irrigation network and construct new reservoirs in the north-central and eastern provinces. Though somestepsin this direction were taken as far backas late nineteenth century, the prevalence of malaria prevented mass migration to this area till the late thirties. The Gal Oya project, the independent government's most spectacular project irri- gated 45,000 acres. Some of the land hungry peasants migrated to these newly opened up projects and obtained land there. But the land opened up was by no means sufficient to absorb all the landless peasants. As population achieved sustained growth rates from the mid-thirties, land fragmentation became acute. Peasant paddy production still continued on traditional lines. Attempts were made to introduce ‘Japanese methods’ of culti- vation (transplanting in rows, usage of high yielding varieties etc.), But some of these methods were more labourintensiveand meant the employment of more labour, which pushed up the 62 costs of cultivation. Hence the modern methods did not become popular at once. The peasant was offered a government gua- ranteed price for paddy (Rs. 9.00 per bushel in 1951) and peasant cooperatives that had come into existence by this time were authorised to purchase paddy on behalf of the government. On the other hand, the government offered the rice ration at twenty five cents per measure (1951) to the consumers, including the peasants. Thus the state directly intervened in controlling the purchase of peasant productionas wellas consumption. Though the peasants still sold their paddy mainly to the middlemen, the guaranteed price svt a norm in the market from which the paddy price was drawn; thus it stabilised the paddy price and played arolein the further incorporation of the peasant into the market. (b) Consumption: the war and rationing decisively affected the consumption patterns of the people. As wheat flour was also issued on the rationing system, baked bread entered the peasant hut as a food item. A home made pastry called roti became popular among the rural poor. Imported cloth, kerosene and foodstuffs dominated the market. The subsidised rice ration sold by the government sponsored cooperatives become an essential part of the diet of the poor peasants and agrarian workers. Some imported foodstuff, Maldive fish, canned fish, dried fish, lentils etc. too crept into the diet of the peasantry. The basic direction of change hereis towards increasing dependence onimported goods on the part of the peasantry. (c) Surplus: the patterns of surplus appropriation introduced in the former periods more or less remained intact. What is new in this period is the intensified integration of the peasant as a consumer, not only in other consumer géods, but also in the crucial matter of subsistence. Structural dimension: the flow of money during the war period and the expansion of education in the Kandyan countryside, introduced a local petty bourgeoisie into the rural scene. The emergent businessmen came from the ‘low’ castes, particularly the batgama. As they did not have any specific occupational orientation even during the Kingdom, and assome of them were middle peasants in villages not directly subject to overlords, a small mincrity of them availed themselves of the opportunity of entering small business during the years of the war boom. Education was spreading in the rural areas; in 1946 there were 1,109 schools in the central province where 134,700 pupils were enrolled. The rural schools mainly managed by the government 63used Sinhala as the medium of instruction. As the official language was still English, the possibility of higher education or of joining the government service was closed to the graduates of the rural schools. However certain avenues of employment were present ; one could become a Sinhalese school teacher, an ayurvedic physician or an employee of one of the minor business ventures. A stratum of Sinhala educated intelligentsia emerged from the middle peasantry and started exercising an important control over the consciousness of the rural masses. They consti- tuted an important subaltern class that triggered off the fall of the oligarchy in 1956. The differentiation of the peasantry was taking a unique direction. A class of kulaksstill failed toemerge, but from the ranks of the middle peasantry some enterprising ones were entering non-agrarian strata. Meanwhile, the pea- sants themselves were differentiating into three broad groups; a middle stratum that derived sufficient income from agricul- ture and hence not compelled to sell their labour, a poor stratum who possessed cultivation rights but were compelled to sell their labour, and a stratum of agrarian workers who had no cul- tivation rights and were totally dependent on wage labour. The aristocratic authority in the countryside continued, but this was being increasingly questioned by the petty bourgeoisie. In the latter half of the period some Kandyan aristocratic families established matrimonial alliances with members of the low country oligarchy, thus simultaneously relaxing its exclusive- ness and strengthening its power. Political dimension: though the peasants enjoyed voting rights from 1931, till the Indian workers were erased off the electoral list, they could not decisively influence the electoral outcome.in many Kandyan seats. But they became used to the election campaigns, house to house canvassing and various promises. The marxist oriented political activity in the urban areas in the mid-thirties did not as yet reach the Kandyan peasants (except in the case of the rubber belt in Sabaragamuwa). In the 1952 election, the first one after the erasing of the Indian workers from the register, out of the fourteen candidates elected in the Central province, seven belonged to the aristocracy, one to the local petty bourgeoisie and six were from the low country. In elec- torates consisting primarily of peasant villages, the aristocracy held sway. Thelow country men were elected from the commer- cial townships serving the plantations. The urban and coastal areas of the country shook with working class protest in 1953 64 when the government trebled the price of the rice ration. It failed to generate a similar response among the Kandyan peas- antry, who at this period were being drawn into the ideological influence of the local petty bourgeoisie. D) A Period of Reforms 1956 -1976: The alliance that came into power in 1956 was not as well knit either in terms of social composition or in the class interests it represented, as the oligarchy it replaced. The cabinet was a motley collection of conservatives, liberal nationalists and ex-marxists; however the social forces that pressurised the ruling group were much more broadly based than those of the former. Old landed and commercial interests were represented in the regime; but at the same time the voice of the commercial petty bourgeoisie bent on the estab- lishment of manufacturing industries and the voice of the rural petty bourgeoisie bent on various reforms in the cultural sphere too found expression. The urban petty bourgeois pressure and the worsening balance of payments situation compelled the government to make serious cuts in imports from the early sixties. The importation of biscuits, chocolate and mineral waters came to a virtual halt. The result was thecreation of a solid market for domestic products and the expansion of local industries specialising in these products. The establishment of a new state bank with the express purpose of helping the ‘rural masses’ provided capital at low interest rates to the industrialists and small businessmen. Thus what happened in 1956 is not the independent emergence ofanational bourgeoisie, that having grown strong captures political power, but the manipulation of the state apparatus by a commercial petty bourgeoisie to promote one of their factions to the rank of an industrial bourgeoisie. Hence, the link between the state and the ‘new class’ here is intensely organic. The rural petty bourgeoisie acted as a subaltern class of the government alliance; they did not rule but assisted other classes to rule and collected whatever crumbs that fell from the table. Their de- mands, making Sinhala the official language, ensuring a special position for Buddhism, state aid and official recognition for the ayur- vedic system of medicine etc. had a cultural character. At the same time these demands grew out from the class interests of the rural petty bourgeoisie who stood to gain most from their implementation. Of all these measures, the enactment of the Sinhala Only bill had the most lasting effect. The maintenance of English as the official language, 65prevented those from the Sinhala schools from entering the govern- ment service or big business employment except in the case of Sinhala school teachers. The government was under pressure from the trade union movement as well. This pressure led to the nationalisation of the bus companies. This had a significant impact on the Kandyan villages. The newly created Ceylon Transport Board as a countrywide organi- sation was able to introduce a fairly effective bus service to the rural areas, which the small provincial companies would not have been able to do. Cheap and regular motorised travel brought the village closer tothe town. The state industrial corporations initiated by the government absorbed a small section of the educated youth in the villages, thus creating a small stratum of industrial workers in the Kandyan countryside. The most important government action in relation to the pea- santry was the enactment of the Paddy Lands Act in 1958. It was directed at ensuring the tenancy, reducing the rent paid by the tenant and making tenancy inheritable. It was strongly opposed by the vested interests within the government. This bill irrespective of sub- sequent revisions is still a failure in the Kandyan villages as I will demonstrate later. There is another element in the Paddy Lands Act closely related to the problem of ‘survivals’. Though the legislators formulated the bill with the expressed intention of improving the lot of the tenant cultivator and regarded the enactment as a highly ‘progressive’ move, italso had the implication of freezing theagrarian relations at the level of tenancy. In other words, it constrained the expansion of wage labour in opposition to share-cropping. It pro- vided a legal base on which tenancy relations can be continuously reproduced along with a legal constraint to it moving in any other direction. All the institutes of higher learning, except a few teacher training colleges were closed to the Sinhala medium student. The enactment of the bill gradually caused the entry examinations to government service to be held in Sinhala and at least absorb some Sinhala educated youth. Two new universities, where the medium of instruction was Sinhala were opened up in 1959. The University of Ceylon started teaching in Sinhala in 1962. By the mid-sixties the former bifurcation of schools into English and Sinhala was largely overcome by introducing Sinhala as the medium of instruction in urban schools. The Sinhala educated intelligentsia, a fraction of the rural petty bourgeoisie, greatly strengthened their position with these reforms, But in a multi-ethnic society, all these pro-Sinhala Buddhist activities, inevitably acquired a chauvinist tone. The Tamil minority, especially in the north were dissatisfied with these moves, particu- larly the enactment of the Sinhala Only bill. When the government replaced the Roman characters on the number plates of vehicles with a Sinhala character, the northern Tamils reacted by disfiguring these number plates. The incident led to a Sinhala-Tamil ethnic confronta- tion. May and June 1958 were characterised by sporadic rioting leading to the killing of 158 people of both communities. On June 4 a state of emergency was declared and the country returned to nor- mality in late June. In the Kandyan areas, Sinhalese violence was not directed at the plantation workers. Every Kandyan town hasa group of Tamil shopkeepers, pawn brokers and lower level government servants. The low country shopkeepers who were in competition with them played a leading role in the riots. The system of village headmen was brought to an end in 1963. The headmen were appointed on the advice of the District Revenue Officers (who replaced rate mahatmayas) by the Government Agent. The village headmen generally were land owning patriarchal figures. The new system rested on a competitive examination, those success- ful being appointed as grama sevakas. The new system enabled some educated youth from the lower castes to become grama sevakas. The land reform legislations of 1972 set a limit of 50 acres for privately held land per person, the upper limit for paddy land being 25 acres. Within the Kandyan villages these limits were mainly redun- dant. The few who held more land than the ceiling stipulated could transfer the excess land to their adult children. The large holdings in the Kandyan countryside were not within the village but outside it. These were the plantations controlled by the companies. Subsequent legislation enacted in 1974 nationalised the plantations. But now they are run by a centralised bureaucratic organisation not structurally distinct from the former one. The major landlords controlling the coreland of some villages, the temples, did not get affected by nation- alisation. The temple land was excluded from the provisions of the reform bills. Thus land reform failed to usher in any radical changes in the village economy. Education continued to expand, but the primarily agrarian economy of the country was incapable of absorbing the youth who came through the education stream. This generated a frustrated, unemployed group of educated youth mainly from the ranks of the rural petty bourgeoisie and middle peasantry. These youth organised a widespread revolutionary movement and revolted against the 67regime in 1971with the intention of capturing political power. The fighting lasted for almost two months and the movement was sup- pressed. The Kandyan villages contributed their fair share of insur- gents. Though the agrarian workers and poor peasants did not get actively involved, the revolt on the part of the youth from the countryside indicated that the class contradictions were maturing in the Kandyan villages. ~ In 1965, the party that governed the country from 1948 to 1956 came back to power and continued in office till 1970. Butthis does not constitute a specific period as this regime did not alter“any of the reforms instituted by the previous government. The period from 1956 to 1976, though a period of reform left the fundamental structure intact. Irrespective of the availability of edu- cation, educated youth could not find sufficient employment oppor- tunities. Despite the land reform, the biggest landlords, the temples continued to control their land. In spite of the bills desigried to improve the lot of the tenants they could not be effectively imple- mented; they merely contributed towards freezing agrarian relations. As Ludowyk has aptly commented on this period, “Some of the older features were modernised, in the way a stockbroker’s Victorian mansion in Metro-land can be turned into a set of flats without in arty way altering the basic foundations, the four walls which enclose the old structure or the turrets which capit. The lodge at the gate was put to other uses, but the house itself still presented the same face as of old, but for the-disarray of the washing hanging out to dry fromsome of-the windows, unthinkable in the august old days. Those who re- membered the former dignity may well have shaken their heads at changes they lamented, but these did not amount to a revolution”. (1966: 237-238). 1 Economic dimension: (a) Production: sustained campaign on the part of the government led the peasantry to accept the high yielding varieties of paddy. These high yielding varieties ini- tially increased production. But their dependence on inputs, fertilizer and insecticide was high. When the price levels of these inputs were reasonably low, the peasants could use the high yielding varieties and reap a good harvest. In theseventies, (1970-1979), the price of fertilizer increased almost fourfold; the inflation of paddy price did not keep in line with those of the inputs. The small peasants found it difficult to use adequate inputs and their production declined. Further, the usage of | fértilizerand insecticideintegrated peasanteconomy at the level of production with the global market. The buffalo population J continued to decline with no mechanisation filling the gap. The result was the retrogression of the techniques of production especially in the small plots. Certain craft industries, such as blacksmithy stagnated despite the efforts of newly set up pro- duction cooperatives. But non-utilitarian crafts such as decora- tive brassware flourished due to the expansion of tourist and urban bourgeois demand. {b) Consumption: the poor peasants and agrarian workers who make up the bulk of the rural popu- lation became increasingly dependent on government rice ra- tion and other food rations. The poor peasant also sold a large part of his product in the market, but having finished his grain withina month or twoafter the harvest, had to purchase his food at the market. The circulation of grain from the peasant house- hold to the market and back to the peasant household became more intensified. The centralisation of the distribution system by the government through ‘cooperatives’ proceeded far. The villagers obtained rice, flour, spices and even clothes from the ‘cooperative’ store; in turn the ‘cooperative’ also acted as a purchasing agency, mainly buying paddy from the peasants. But the ‘cgoperatives’ which were organised as big bureaucratic organisations in the early seventies, lost their voluntarist and popular ¢haracter which they once possessed. (c) Non-agrarian employment: the expansion of various development oriented bureaucracies and state corporations created a significant non- agrarian sector in the economy, though it was not sufficiently large enough to absorb all the unemployed and underemployed labour. Some villagers found employment in these non-agra- rian ventures as teachers, clerks, postmen and transport and in- dustrial workers. Structural dimension: the strengthening of the position of the rural petty bourgeoisie led to an erosion of aristocraticauthority to a certain degree. A class of rich peasants still failed to make its appearance. But the division of the peasant population into middle and poor strata became more pronounced. The ranks of theagrarian workers expanded withouta corresponding expan- sion of agrarian or semi-agrarian activities where they may be employed. The urban workers resident in the villages added a new class to the countryside. This also brought the town, at the level of consciousness, closer to the village. Economic base of caste, the hereditary division of labour has almost disappeared; almost all the castes are divided into socio-economic strata, but this has not led to the disappearance of caste as an endogamous group, or to the overcoming of caste consciousness. 693. Political dimension: as the state acquired and expanded its economic ventures, political power became virtually power to manupulate scarce economic resources. With growing political control over the recruitment to government and semi-govern- ment ventures, the parliamentary representative became not merely a legislator, but a powerful oligarch who could dispense favours to those whom he liked and punish those whom he disliked. All classes in rural society became highly active in politics, though the lower strata were generally led by the petty bourgeoisie who used their support as a bargaining devise to obtain favours from the M.Ps. themselves. Though poor pea- sants and agrarian workers were not directly involved in it, the 1971 insurrection was nevertheless a plebeian challenge to this power structure. The subordination and incorporation of the peasantry within the context of peripheral capitalism is in essence a contradictory process. The laws of motion of thesubordinated peasant economy are not derived from itself, but from the dominant capitalist structure. The incorporation of the peasantry is realised by the absorption of the agrarian surplus by the non agrarian strata both in national as well as international metropolises. But as I demonstrated, this subordination and incorporation does not lead to an overall ‘bourgecisification’ of the countryside, i.e. to the general introduction of bourgeois produc- tion and exchange relations. On the contrary, archaic production relations such as labour rent and share-cropping are reactivated and reproduced by the peripheral capitalist structure to serve its own ends. Thus on the one hand, there is subordination and incorporation of the peasantry to the dominant capitalist structure, on the other hand there is the perpetuation of archaic production relations. This unity of opposites constitutes the basic structural logic of the growth of peripheral capitalism in the Kandyan countryside. Chapter IV Delumgoda: Social Relations of Agricultural Production The Village Scene “Though we find in current anthropological literature information on technology or, at best on exchange, we have hardly any information on the social organisation of production: who is working with whom and for whom? Where does the product of the labourer go? Who controls the product? How does the economic system reproduce itself?” (Meillassoux; 1972). In the Kandyan hill country in general, the hill tops are covered by large scale tea plantations. In the valleys beneath are paddy fields, basically relying on the rain fed little streams that run down from the hills. Sandwiched in between the plantations and the paddy fields at the foot hills are the dwellings of the villagers, which tend to form strips along the footpaths and the roads rather than nucleated settle- ments. The hills near Delumgoda are rock outcrops and hence not covered by large plantations. The valley however, is covered by the paddy plots. In between the rock outcrops and the paddy fields the houses stretch along, now and then forming fragmented clusters. It is difficult to talk of a village centre or a main street; the two roads that cutacross the village are motorable roads linking Kandy and Kadugan- nawa which have very little in common with a village street as it is generally understood. The absence of a centre makes it hard to set a limit to the village as far as social relations are concerned. Only a few yards away from the last house of Delumgoda, along the road to Kandy, is a house within the administrative boundaries of the neighbouring village. But still the village is not merely an administrative fiction. References to the village of Delumgoda go back to the fourteenth century, when the 71village name appears in the land grant documents of the Lankatilaka temple. The village in the past probably was a number of residential clusters; with population growth these clusters grew sprouts some- times coming close to, or even criss-crossing with sprouts from the other clusters including those of the neighbouring villages. The villagers themselves certainly do identify an entity called Delumgoda. They are aware of the village boundaries as stipulated by the administrative organs; as these boundaries have remained un- changed as long as any can remember, they take them in general to correspond with the boundaries of the village unless a geographically identifiable part of the area is inhabited by an alien community. Delumgoda has three major clusters; the nameless main cluster itself, Lankatilaka Vidiya and Kolaniya. The people in the two latter clusters refer precisely to the administrative boundaries to indicate that they are in Delumgoda. In the first month of my stay I asked a number of people from Lankatilaka Vidiya as to which village they belonged to. “Delumgoda” they answered without hesitation. “But don’t you live at Lankatilaka Vidiya”? I persisted. “Yes, but we obtain our ration cards from Delumgoda grama sevaka” they replied. Similarly, a group of landless agrarian workers who came from an adjoining village and settled down on a plot of government land - now termed Kolaniya - too believe that they live in Delumgoda. The social entity called Delumgoda in the following chapters roughly corresponds with the administrative area of the grama sevaka of Delumgoda subjected to an important qualification. The neigh- bouring village of Arawwawela consists of two major clusters, a Muslim one and a Sinhalese one. The Sinhalese cluster comes within the grama sevaka area of Hiddaula. But the Muslim cluster is within the administrative area of Delumgoda. The Muslim cluster is geographi- cally separated from the clusters of Delumgoda by a distance of nearly half a mile. The socio-economic activities of the inhabitants of the Muslim cluster centre around the bazaars of Davulagala and Ambekka, unlike in the case of the Sinhalese from the other clusters, the majority of whom work the land as peasants and agrarian work- ers, Though these Muslims come across the Sinhalese villagers as ped- dlers and petty traders, they comprisea tightly integrated community outside the social field of Delumgoda. The Sinhalese villagers of Delumgoda refer to themas “those Muslims from Arawwawela” thus by implication excluding them from Delumgoda and identifying them with Arawwawela, where indeed they stay. The Muslims them- selves: made only occasional appearances in Delumgoda clusters, mainly for trading purposes. Though the Muslim cluster technically 72 comes within the grama sevaka area, I have defined Delumgoda minus it, more or less in line with the perception of the villagers themselves. In the fourteenth century, when the capital of the Sinhalese Kingdom was in Gampola - a town ten miles away from Delumgoda - three major temples were built in the Udunuwara area, Ambekka (atemple of the god Skanda), Lankatilaka (a temple of the Buddha and numerous other deities) and Gadaladeniya (a temple of the Buddha). These are referred to as the ‘great royal temples’. These institutions were granted extensive land donations by the kings and other high court officials, the bulk of which they still continue to control. The temple Lankutilaka stands on the rock outcrops near Delumgoda and commands the landscape. The temple is the major landlord in Udunuwara, but it does not own much land in Delumgoda. There is a modern power loom which manufactures textiles in the village. There are 120 female workers attached to the factory but only 12 of them come from Delumgoda, The factory is controlled by the department of small industries and the produce goes to other workshops of the department for further industrial processing. Delumgoda is about eleven miles away from Kandy, the district capital, along the Panideniya-Kadugannawa road that branches off near the Peradeniya Junction railway station. It is located in the Udunuwara District Revenue Officer's division, Kandy district. There is a bus route that cuts across the village and a bus to Kandy or Kadugannawa (a market town) isavailable every thirty minutes or so. The nearest railway station is Peradeniya Junction which is six miles away from the village. The villagers travel to Peradeniya and Kandy fairly frequently. Some of the modern sector workers resident in the village commute daily for work, Peasant cultivators, especially those who grow vege- tables occasionally go to Peradeniya market to sell their produce. Some children of the affluent white collar families attend school in Kandy. The annual procession of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy too, does not fail to attract a crowd from Delumgoda. The socio-economic activity of the majority of the villagers however, who happen to be peasants and agrarian workers occurs in an area not larger than fifteen square miles. There are about ten villages and ‘bazaars’ in this area. Bazaars are formed by a series of shops at road junctions sometimes with a village post office and a small permanent shelter for commuters. A bazaar may have one or two tea boutiques, where persons may gather and exchange 73