The tension between Sinhalese Catholics and Buddhists has overridden other potential forms of conflict, particularly between Sinhalese and Tamils. Many Tamils are also C a t h o l i c . There is a story popular among Chilaw Catholics dating from the early 1 9 7 0 's w h i c h tells of a wealthy Sinhalese Buddhist businessman (originally from Matara in the south) who claimed that he w o uld make Chilaw
into a Buddhist town and proposed to build a Buddhist shrine at the Town's main road junction. Before he could proceed, a shrine had been erected for Mary and, moreover, shortly after, he sickened and died. Chilaw Catholics explain that the Virgin Mary keeps special care of Chilaw and the Church in Chilaw and they thereby imply that Mary caused the businessman's demise.
In Chilaw town, therefore, social tensions exist between Catholics and Buddhists within the Sinhalese community far more than between Sinhalese and Tamils. In the anti-Tamil riots of 1983, there were only two incidents in Chilaw and one death resulted from one incident. It was explained to me, however, that this murder was a private affair which took advantage of the chaotic conditions. Otherwise, Chilaw remained quiet. Several told of how, when the army appeared to give people petrol w ith which to burn Tamil houses, the people's uncomprehending reaction led the soldiers to wonder about their patriotism. The violent passions that overtook Sinhalese all over the country, including non- Buddhist Sinhalese (see Stirrat 1984), did not consume the inhabitants of Chilaw. The civil disturbances that have wreaked havoc on Sri Lanka since the 1987 Indo-Lankan Peace Accord, have similarly been barely felt in Chilaw.
This is less the case in the Sinhalese villages in the area, most of which are Buddhist. These villagers espouse a certain amount of anti-Tamil sentiment, but it is nothing in the order of what is espoused elsewhere. There are many reasons for this, one being that, like the Catholic fishing
people, m any of these villagers k now of their Tamil ancestry. Another reason is that the villagers personally know m a n y of the Tamils in neighbouring villages and know them to be very like themselves. However, there is and has been enmity in some of the settlements south of Chilaw town, such as Madampe and Kuliyapitiya. In one of the first incidents of anti-Tamil rioting by Sinhalese in 1958, Tamils were burnt out of Kuliyapitiya and some have since settled in Munnesvaram village. In Munnesvaram village I knew a few chauvinist Sinhalese, one of w h o m was convinced that the chief priest of Munnesvaram kept a cache of weapons in the temple and in the evenings gave lessons to young Tamils about making bombs. The matter was eventually
investigated by the Colombo police, after the Chilaw police had dismissed the idea as nonsense. In a few other villages, similar ideas were expressed, and from one village, neighbouring the Tamil village where I conducted research, some villagers reported the suspicious foreigner liaising with their even more suspicious Tamil neighbours. The Chilaw police were similarly unimpressed. But these incidents were quite isolated and unusual. In 1983, at the height of the rioting in Colombo, Munnesvaram held its Adi festival, admittedly w ith a strong police guard and very few in attendance. It was nevertheless one of the few Hindu temples in the Sinhalese areas to do so.
What is indicated, then, is that Chilaw continues to hold a marginal location w ith respect to modern political, religious and ethnic movements in Sri Lanka, thus forging its own character. I stress that a major factor in this is
the nature of the coconut plantation economy.
Conclusion
I commenced this historical survey with evidence of the ambiguity of ethnic identity in the Chil a w area and structured m y presentation around a consideration of the different factors which have contributed to this ambiguity.
I have concluded with evidence of Chilaw's relative inertia with respect to ethnic conflict in the recent history of the country. Chilaw is well known to Sri Lankan scholars as something of an ethnic melting-pot (Roberts 1979a) and it is a knowledge held more generally as well. The melting-pot is the product of history, a history that is also the history of the Munnesvaram temple. The aspect I highlight is that for centuries before the destabilising influence of the Portuguese, the Chilaw area occupied a marginal location to the Sinhalese and Tamil state structures, as
15
well as having a prominence as a port . The Dutch period saw the increased importance of Chilaw to Kandy and it was in this time that Munnesvaram was reconstructed. Then the Dutch took over Chilaw, paving the w a y for the eventual fall of Kandy, and the Chilaw area and Munnesvaram temple declined again. Finally, the area boomed in the 19th century because of c o c o n u t s . The population increased and included Tamil Hindus and Sinhalese Buddhists. Both groups began to patronise Munnesvaram temple, reconstructed in the 1870's, in growing numbers and the temple became famous i s l a n d - w i d e .
Although the coconut boom invigorated the Chilaw area, increasing its population and incorporating it in the national economy centred in Colombo, the pattern of large- scale investment by southern capitalists, contributed to keep Chilaw on the margins. As an expression of this, Roman Catholicism has not been seriously challenged in the Chilaw area as it has been in the south, and remains an autonomous political force shaping ethnic relations in the District. Moreover, the questions of ambiguous ethnic identity, bilingualism, combined Tamil and Sinhala names, and syncretic religious practice reveal Chilaw's relative isolation from m a n y contemporary political influences.
But this relative isolation is not without significance. I refer back to the myths of the previous chapter, noting again that the Sinhalese Buddhist myth stresses Chilaw's marginal identity with respect to the centre of the polity. The history of Chilaw reveals the rational world with which that m yth is congruent.
The historical factors that changed the face of Chilaw in the 19th and 20th centuries were factors felt all over Sri Lanka in different ways. They have led to the massive urbanisation of the Wet Zone littoral from Negombo almost down to Galle, and to the emergence of an urban bourgeoisie and proletariat. I have dealt with the Chilaw area in some detail in order to explain the location of Chilaw in modern Sri Lanka. I now consider the emergence of modern revivalist religion in Sri Lanka and the material conditions underlying it. The detailed analysis of the
Chilaw area is to be regarded as a concentrated study of these general material c o n d i t i o n s .
Chapter 4, Revivalism in the British Period
Throughout the period of Munnesvaram temple's renaissance amidst the burgeoning coconut plantations in the Chilaw District, the dominant social movement among indigenous Hindu and Buddhist Sri Lankans was religious revivalism. Rebuilt in the 1870's, when revivalism was gathering momentum, Munnesvaram temple displays both Hindu and Buddhist revivalist i n f l u e n c e s . But it does so in different ways for each religion as a consequence of the stance each revival took in relation to the other. Both Hindus and Buddhists sought to establish a pure religious form uncorrupted by what were seen as historical degradations; but in the Buddhist case this involved taking a position vis-ci-vis Hinduism that has profoundly influenced all the temples at Munnesvaram.
Both Hindu and Buddhist revivalism grew in the context and as a consequence of the major social changes of the later colonial period. Both movements share the following elements: they emerged from an intellectual struggle with European Christianity and framed their arguments accordingly; they developed a strong textual orientation, an orientation to a "Great Tradition"; and they were enmeshed in the changing class processes of the British period and in the cultural articulation of these processes as changes in the caste order of each society. Both movements were retrospective, looking back to an ideal pre colonial order of society and religion. From the past were drawn traditions, but the process was a selective one meaning that traditions were not so m u c h revived as
invented. Thus the movements share similarities with movements described elsewhere (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983). They took place in a context of colonial hegemony, a discursive field which was bureaucratic, rational and p u r i t a n i c a l . One whose language was understood to be an authentic language of power. Through their location in the colonial order, as entrepreneurs, professionals and agents of the colonial state, the protagonists of the revival knew this language well.
Hindu Revivalism
Under the freedom of religion officially tolerated by the British, there was a revival of Hinduism in Jaffna during the 19th century. It is important to note that at this time, the majority of the population in Jaffna were Hindu, or, in the language of the 1827 census, "Heathens", revealing that after more than 300 years of religious persecution by the Catholic Portuguese and Protestant Dutch, the Jaffna inhabitants had clung tenaciously to their faith. Hence, the revival was not simply the abandonment of Christianity and the reappropriation of previous beliefs. More correctly it involved a major re expression of Hindu beliefs in the context of European colonial power and the hegemonic quality European ideas assumed^. Revivalist ideology assumed a similar quality, but it did so antagonistically to European thought.
The Europeans who came to Jaffna as missionaries assisted obliquely in the anti-colonial stance. They were American Wesleyans whom the British allowed to establish
schools in Jaffna. They actively encouraged the Tamil language, both learning it themselves and having it taught at their Methodist Central School. One of their students, Arumuga Navalar (1822 - 1879), became the champion of the revivalist movement. He took a teaching post at the school after graduation and assisted Reverend Percival w i t h the first Tamil translation of the Bible (Kailasapathy 1982:4). However, he quickly renounced this work, remorseful for having been instrumental in trying to convert Hindus to Christianity. After this, he actively began lobbying against Christianity in favour of Hinduism, or more precisely Saivism, and founded Saivite schools that espoused the same standards as the Wesleyens (Cartman
1957:55; Russell 1982:26).
The revivalist movement was entirely in hand with a renaissance of the Tamil language. Indeed, Kailasapathy argues that the Hindu revival developed into simply a Tamil revival, stressing more the glories of the language than the centrality of the religion (Kailasapathy i b id:11). This was in part due to the subsequent participation of non- Hindu Tamils. In this way, the revival was the seed of Tamil cultural nationalism. Initially, though, religion and language were inseparable.
The revival coincided with the increasing availability of cheap printed books and so it addressed an expanding audience in the Jaffna peninsula. The textual emphasis meant that the principal ideologues were scholars and these scholars, like Navalar, sought to establish the eminence of
s
Tamil Saivism through ancient textual sources, especially _
the Aqamas and the writings of the Saiva Siddhanta saints, in the T h e v a r a m . Hitherto, the principle Hindu scholars were Brahmin priests, experts in Sanskrit. "Navalar Revivalism" stressed Tamil Saivism and non-Brahmin scholarship, but did not place itself in radical opposition to the Brahmins who were not numerous in Jaffna. Sri Lanka never exhibited the anti-Brahmin movement as in parts of India. In its place, the tension was with Christians. Revivalist polemics were addressed directly at Christian tracts which had ridiculed Hindu practice (Kailasapathy ibid:4). There was no anti-clerical movement within the Hindu community.
The movement was predominantly an elite movement. Its textual orientation and celebration of Tamil language fed the exclusive tastes of the literate. Its audience was composed of "the local intelligentsia engaged in the professions and the self employed who were of respectable stock and generally landowners" (ibid:3). As more Jaffna Tamils received education from the high standard schools in the peninsula, the number of adherents grew and the movement gained more of an elitist orientation than a specifically elite membership. It became a movement of the emerging bourgeoisie.
Educated Jaffna Tamils took employment in large numbers in the Colonial Service as petty b u r e a u c r a t s . Not only did these jobs take them to Colombo and elsewhere in the country, but to Malaysia where they were active in running
the railways, the postal service and managing plantations. T hey carried the ideology of the revival with them and shaped it in relation to the managerial positions they held. They administered for the British their fellow Hindus, Indian born Tamils who worked as coolie labourers, as well as Sinhalese and Tamils from other parts of Sri Lanka. Many of them then returned to Jaffna to buy land with their savings and pensions and establish themselves as the landed gentry and principal temple patrons of the Northern Province. Revivalism thus operated as a ruling ideology under the umbrella of colonialism and shaped the nationalist ideology that subsequently supplanted colonialism.
In the 1911 elections to the Legislative Council, 36% of those entitled to vote, the "Educated Ceylonese", were Ceylon Tamils (Roberts 1977:ix). At this time, they constituted only 13% of the total population (Ceylon at the Census of 1 9 1 1 :199'). The vast majority of them were from Jaffna. The figures indicate the extent of Jaffna Tamil involvement in European education and the European political and social order. But they did so generally as H i n d u s ^ .
The revival was predominantly, though not exclusively, a Vellalar caste undertaking. Importantly, Vellalars are
• * • •
both numerically dominant at just under half the Jaffna population, and economically dominant as the major land owners. As a group, however, they are internally divided in terms of relative status (e.g., the Satsudra Vellalar
regard themselves as superior to other V e l l a l a r ) and by the
* I
amount of land owned. Endogamous groups exist within the caste and they tend to be localised in different parts of the peninsula (Banks 1960:69-70). Some of these groups are poorer than members of lower castes. The history of the Jaffna economy during the colonial period reveals the stratification of this land-owning caste and to some extent explains the eagerness w i t h which Jaffna Tamils entered the Colonial Service.
The Jaffna economy was heavily monetised during the Dutch period with an emphasis on export agriculture. Tobacco was the main crop and export markets were mostly in India (Arasaratnam 1982). Tobacco cultivation was suited to small land-holdings and its intensification increased land values. The Dutch affirmed the position of the dominant Vellalar land-holders in their efforts to increase export
i •
revenues. They established slavery and imported slaves from South India (Pfaffenberger 1990:81), effectively routinising under Roman Dutch law the caste order thus creating rigid caste boundaries that favoured the Vellalar
• i
(ibid). The property laws of Jaffna were codified as the Thesamvalamai in this period. Three types of property were recognised: dowry property (seedhanam), property a man inherited from his parents (m u t h i s a m ), and property acquired after marriage (thedi y a t h e d d a m ) (Arasaratnam ibid:4).
The intensified tobacco economy radically decreased rice cultivation and necessitated rice imports. Cultivators were
thus even further articulated into the cash economy and were often in debt to the Indian tobacco export agents who bought the crops at prices they fixed (ibid:7). This fragile economy grew even more precarious during the British period when trade restictions were relaxed (ibid: 27-28) and this was matched by the British dismantling the slavery system. Rigid caste distinctions began to erode and m a n y hitherto non-Vellalar began to claim a Vellalar status (Pfaffenberger ibid:84). At the
* •
same time, population increase pressured land availability. Great incentives were thus provided for young Jaffna Tamil m e n to seek education and salaried employment in the professions and in government service. They mastered the scientific rationality of the ruling order. Such salary earners put even more pressure on land because they invested their capital in property, both houses and land, as these two items were essential for the dowries fathers
3
and brothers provided for their daughters or sisters .
Jaffna society was thus heavily stratified by the time of the British takeover and this stratification intensified during the 19th century. But it was a stratification conditioned by the large and growing presence of a single caste whose poorer members could claim an identity with the wealthy elite. They could do so especially in ritual contexts, but also in the terms of the traditional order of society the revival celebrated. The increasingly popular ideals of the revival constituted the authentic identity of the educated, land-owning, temple-going gentleman, providing the less-endowed with a model of behaviour many
of them could claim simply on the basis of their Vellalar
% •
caste backgrounds. With so m a n y Vellalar on the peninsula,
* *
the ideals were actively pursued, often in the absence of a strong capital foundation. These ideals and the struggle to express them manifested in two major domains, temples and s c h o o l s .
Temple reconstruction was highly valued by the revivalists with Navalar himself a m ain protagonist. For instance, in 1872 he urged the reconstruction of the famous ancient Thirukeethesvaram temple near Mannar (Vaithianathan 1960). Thus, it was not simply temple construction but ancient temple reconstruction as the assertion of the old order. From the 18GO'S, temples were rebuilt in Jaffna and other parts of the island. The reconstructions were done according to the Agamas, and, where possible, Brahmin priests were installed to perform the rituals in the most orthodox way. Craftsmen for temple reconstruction were often brought from India and it was still common in 1984 to see Indian craftsmen working at Jaffna temples, carving basalt statues and wooden juggernauts.
The emphasis on a Brahminic orthodoxy was a consequence both of the revival's retrospective textual orientation and