The Ceylon Civil Service

by Gamini Seneviratne

The photograph below was taken by D C L Amarasinghe (squatting extreme right) who had served as Deputy Secretary to the Treasury (DST). He had graduated in Oriental Studies, habitually spoke English, was a leading member of our Photographic Society and widely regarded as the true inheritor of the work done by Lionel Wendt. He went beyond such work and produced a movie that related to Sigiri Kassapa. (The closest that Wendt had got to cinema was to give voice to the narration in Basil Wright’s ‘Song of Ceylon’ that won the top awards at the Brussels Festival in 1935). I (squatting extreme left) was Assistant Controller of Establishments in charge of the G Branch (which had to do with the recruitment, transfer and disciplinary control of the ‘Combined Services’, principally the General Clerical Service but included the Accountants, Stenographers and Typists services), when D C L replaced Eardley Goonewardena as Controller of Establishments – probably the most powerful position in the management of our public services. His first request / order was for an English stenographer. I posted to his office the best by record. He wasn’t happy with the man. After another couple of mis-selections on my part he sent word through my immediate boss, the Additional Controller, Keerthi Weerakkody, that while I was scanning dozens of personal files, I had missed a perfectly good English stenographer who worked in the floor below us in the Ministry of Health. As it turned out the stenographer he had in mind was a typist; she was competent and helped D C L to return to Sinhala as his working language.

A bit of a complication occurred in our working arrangement when Tilak Gooneratne, the Additional Deputy Secretary to the Treasury had designations changed as from ‘Controller’ to ‘Director’ and incorporated in the structure a new position of ‘Assistant Director, Language Policy’ with a broken line of command down there from the Director (D C L) and a direct, unbroken one from [and to] the top, the S.T. (Secretary to the Treasury). D C L’s and my familiarity with and orientation relating to issues in language policy differed and some hiccups occurred. One contentious matter on which we agreed had to do with the extension of service and/or promotion of Somasunderam, a government accountant who was on secondment to the CTB. Many years later I learnt that when D C L was quite ill, that accountant’s son, a doctor, had checked on him from time to time. After several decades as a hematologist in the UK, that man, Dr. Manohitharajah, returned ‘for good’ as we say, last year: he wished to die within sight of the sands of Batticaloa yet resident in his memory.

Of those in the center in the photograph I had had a brief encounter, while a teacher at Ananda, with H Jinadasa Samarakkody (ST in 1964). It had to do with the need for a tutor in English literature for his daughter. I had been recommended by S A Wijetilleke, the Principal, who had failed to tell her parents that I was just out of University. Those were days when young men who had acquired some distinction at Uni, never mind how, married wealth or the promise of wealth. That usually meant vast acres of coconut, paddy, rubber, maybe a bit of tea: one clan arising from that was referred to as ‘the Horana horde’. For young men from Jaffna it was different – access, in matrimony, for a Staff Officer to the daughter of, let us for convenience say, a Doctor or an Engineer or a PWD overseer lay through a clear path that usually involved some form of barter. For aspirants to the CCS who lacked an outstanding academic record another route could be opened: if one were the daughter of a lecturer / examiner who could provide plenty of extra marks to propel the agreed-to-be-betrothed into the CCS, such a marriage often did take place.

The panel that interviewed us for the CCS consisted of M. Rajendra, Max Caspersz, N Q Dias, Samarakkody (the most senior of them) and was chaired by Nicholas Attygalle, the Vice Chancellor. As I left the room, I overheard the marks assigned to me: the lowest was by “Jin”, (as we came to know he was referred to), Rajendra’s quite high and Atty’s the highest. Evidently Jin had not liked my assessment of Patrick Fernando’s poetry (the best we had at the time). Jin ragged me for quite some time, finishing his inquisition with, “So-so-so, apart from writing poetry at university what did you do” At that point, the VC took him by his neck and said, “What do you think he did? He did politics”! When, a year or two later, Shirley Amerasinghe had me posted to the Treasury and Jin succeeded him as ST, he was quite stern-but-pleasant towards me: he could be jolly but was not given to being friendly. (I have deleted here an account of Jin being short and sharp with presumption in a ‘war-time recruit’ to the CCS).

At this point I must say, for the record, that I checked with Godfrey Gunatilleke, Chandi Chanmugam (both in their ‘90s), Dharmasiri Pieris and R M B Senanayake for the identity of several in the photograph. They are not to blame for any errors.

It should also be noted before I proceed that these are personal recollections and, besides, have the character of ‘field notes’ since I was moved hither and thither much more than others of our vintage.

Nissanka Wijewardena, (standing fourth from left), was my first boss. He was Government Agent (GA) Badulla and had me placed in the AGA, Devenesan Nesiah’s room. I mention that particular as, at some point Nissanka had been persuaded that his carefully structured program of training for me had, (God forbid), been dodged. The only rearrangements that had occurred had been done bona fide. I had merely arranged with the Second Clerk, Kamaldeen, to go through the following week’s paper-based work on the previous Saturday afternoon so as to be free to join a staff officer ‘on circuit’. I turned up on the Monday morning to find my desk missing and the Arachchi there, acutely embarrassed, gesturing to me to follow him – to the GA’s room. I had been parked right there unable to flee into the great outdoors of Udukinda, Yatikinda, Viyaluwa, Bintenna …. even Moneragala (some subjects were yet to be transferred there – which meant that I could have a look around the entire Uva Province). I must say that the misinformation given the GA by informants had created the wholly false impression that I was a slippery kind of dude.

The first such tidbit had come from Mr. Swaris, the Magistrate. Our knowledge of the law was derived from a hopefully assiduous study of the Evidence and the Courts Ordinance, the Penal Code, the Public Service Regulations plus an acquaintance with the Criminal and the Civil Procedure Codes. As part of our training, we were required to sit with the Magistrate and observe how Court affairs were conducted. On the first day the number of the section relevant to the case before him had slipped his mind and as ill-luck would have it, I had read that provision the previous night. And when on the third day he directed me to hear a case under the Vagrants Ordinance and I got the sentence right, it was time for me to put it to him that we were no longer to see service as Magistrate or Judge, that the bulk of our duties lay out in the field, so, it would make sense if I could be excused this trial on the Bench. He laughed right judicially and said, ‘Okay – but I was thinking of leaving you up here and taking a break myself!’

That had been the first leak, at the Club – Magistrate Swaris’s response to the GA asking him how I was doing. Unnerving.

Next came the problem of my lodgings. I had checked in at the Rest House run by the Urban Council. I suppose the room was okay but on the next day Stanley Kirinde, the District Land Officer (DLO) took me to his quarters at Puwakgodamulla, introduced me to Ira and little Ravi, and said ‘Why stay there? You come here.” Ira said endorsed the thought. She looked way junior to me, by no means an Akka, but I sensed good times ahead with Stanley. I had seen a couple of his paintings some years previously at an exhibition at Peradeniya when I served as president of the University Art Circle. The informant in this case had been the UC Chairman who had agreed to my paying room rent at a monthly rate. When he told the GA that I had moved out, inquiries had been made, I was sent for and told that Kirinde would be serving under me and it would be awkward for us both. I may have said I had known him from way before.

The dropping of that matter meant that we could sit on his doorstep, looking at the vistas falling away from Namunukula, drinking our bottles of Jubilee Ale and listening to North Indian flute music on Radio Ceylon. It also meant travel in his Volkswagen (in which I earned my driving license). And travel with Stanley was not only within the district but to Colombo – with stays at his place in Gampola and mine in Kandana and stops at Elie House road? Church for him to bask in the sight of Botticelli’s ‘the Birth of Venus’. And, once, a stop at Malkaduwawa to induce a little less chill from my wife to be. The last was galling because I had avoided the prospect of matrimony at Badulla and at Nuwara Eliya to guileless young women who were as bemused as I by the manouevers around us.

A month or two into my spell at Badulla I was sent to check on reports of large scale felling in the Ravanella forest. It could be a long story in the telling, so, suffice it to outline the results. There were twelve saw-pits not far from the road all equipped with sophisticated equipment plus guns to save the product of their labour from the intrusion of Forest Officers backed by armed Police. The Village Headman, quite a venerable looking figure said it was dangerous, forcing me to proceed into the forest with the one constable available and his 303 rifle which he didn’t quite know how to handle (but I did). The fellers fled, the sawn logs carried out with the help of the big mudalali there (who it turned out was master of the felling operation) and stored in his store-houses till the Land Commissioner’s lorry was sent the following day. The Headman was interdicted – I had to travel up for the inquiry more than once; he was defended by the President of the Village Headman’s Association, a big-made man in an ‘Arya-Sinhala suit’. Eventually the seized timber remained so, the saw pits were closed, the VH dismissed.

A visit to Kalugahakandura below Madulsima for a Land Kachcheri brought a chapter full of insights into what has passed for ‘land policy’ since the great thefts by the Brits in particular, – the great impoverisher of the world. That would have to wait.