The Eastern Region and the 13th Amendment To The Sri Lankan Constitution

by K.Locana Gunaratna, PhD

Introduction

There is a claim made by some ethnic-based political groups in Sri Lanka about the areas of the Northern and Eastern regions of our country. Their claim is that the particular area are an integral part of a historic “Tamil Homeland”. Old Dutch maps are often used to substantiate their claim. Consequently, a demand has been strident among those particular political groups that these areas should be merged, have more political powers devolved to them by the Government and for this merged entity to have the right to maintain their own Police Force. During the late 1980s, an Indian military unit – the ‘Indian Peace-keeping Force’ (IPKF) – was deployed and active for a short while with intent to help the Sri Lankan government to curb the LTTE’s violence in the North and the East. At that very tense period, under strong pressure from the Indian government, a very rushed ‘accord’ was entered into between the two governments.

It required the so-called ‘temporary’ merger between the North and the East of Sri Lanka as one Province with devolved powers from the Central Government. This resulted in a hurriedly drafted 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution being enacted in November 1987. It provided for substantial devolved powers from the Central Government not only to the North and the East but also to all other former provinces of Sri Lanka, nine in all. These provinces had been delineated during the British Colonial past for purely their administrative purposes. Thus, elected Provincial Councils became a reality along with a merged North and East. The latter merger was was subsequently disallowed by our Supreme Court. The promised referendum in the East to decide whether the people of that province wished to remain with the North was never held.

The policing rights have also not materialized. The N&E merger still continues to be demands among those particular ethnic-based political groups. It is important to recognize that by 1974, Provincial administration as a left-over from the colonial past had already been abandoned in favour of a more effective decentralization process. This process had already progressed to the devolution of political authority well beyond the former nine provincial boundaries to each of the 24 defined Districts. The government that came to power in 1977 consolidated the devolution process by establishing District Ministers, one for each of these Districts. Thus, decentralization and democratic devolution of centralized powers were by 1987 very well under way.

There clearly was no real necessity to revert back to the colonially derived Provinces and create new political potentates and administrations in the provinces in addition to the already existing 24 Districts Ministries. This overlap of functions has resulted in substantial and unnecessary annually recurrent costs. This is the confused and wasteful context we are in right now and needs to be put right without delay.

The Eastern Region

As most Sri Lankans are aware, there were three distinct European colonial periods in our history: chronologically, the Portuguese, the Dutch and finally the British period. The Portuguese and the Dutch had initially gained control only over some of our coastal territories. They had no control over our central hill-country which in those years was firmly under the King of Kandy. What is most relevant to the specific discussion here on the Eastern region is the Dutch period. Dutch rule in Sri Lanka was not directly by their government but by the United Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Nederlandsche Oost Indische Compagnie) popularly known as the ‘VOC’. It was the resulting when, in the 17th Century, the Dutch government had successfully directed the of several rival Dutch trading companies.

Some important historical facts of the period relating to the Dutch occupation of Sri Lanka are to be found in the writings of a Dutch Priest Rev. Phillipus Baldeus. He was himself present here in the island during the time of his writings which were later published in 1672. These publications were translated in relatively recent times from the original Dutch into English by Pieter Brohier, a Sri Lankan scholar of Dutch origin. That English version entitled “A TRUE AND EXACT DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT ISLAND OF CEYLON” was itself first published here in the “Ceylon Historical Journal” (Volume VIII July 1958-April 1959 nos. 1-4). It was also published later as a book printed in September 1960 (Saman Press, Maharagama, Sri Lanka).

According to Rev. Baldeus, during the late period of Portuguese occupation, the VOC had wanted to get in touch with the King of Kandy. They thus sent Admiral Joris Van Spilbergen with two ships to Sri Lanka. He and his men arrived on May 31, 1602 on the East Coast in Batticaloa. They went to that location because it was not occupied by the Portuguese and was known to be an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy. He and some of his men then proceeded from Batticaloa to Kandy by foot with absolutely no hindrance from any, including the Portuguese.

His mission (p33) was to convey greetings from Prince Mauritius de Nassau of the Netherlands to the King of Kandy, establish cordial relations and also to conspire against the Portuguese who were then in control of Sri Lanka’s Western and Northern seaboards. Seven years later, on October 5, 1609, Prince Mauritius de Nassau addressed a letter to the King of Kandy. The letter was delivered by one Marcellus Boschhouwer (p 47) who also arrived on the East Coast of Sri Lanka and proceeded to Kandy.

Two decades later in 1622, according to Rev. Baldeus, the Portuguese having by then come to the East, destroyed a “pagoda” in what is now Trincomalee, used the salvaged stone to build a military fort there (pp 84, 85). Five years later, the Portuguese took 13 companies of their soldiers to Batticaloa and erected another fortification there (p 87). Rev. Baldeus states that in both instances the King of Kandy sent troops to prevent this construction work from taking place within his territory, but those troops were repulsed by the Portuguese.

Rev. Baldeus continues to say that Adam Westerwold, Commander in Chief of the Dutch Fleet based in India, having routed the Portuguese in Goa, arrived on the east coast of Sri Lanka in 1638. They together with an army from Kandy captured the fortress in Batticaloa from the Portuguese. King Rajasingha of Kandy himself had made his appearance there as it was within his territory. The Dutch Admiral acting on behalf of the Prince of Orange then entered into a contract with the King of Kandy. Brohier’s translation (in footnote 1 on page 123) states that the Dutch also captured the Portuguese fort at Trincomalee on May 2, 1639 and that it was handed over to King Rajasingha of Kandy in the following year. That fort was thereafter dismantled. However, Batticaloa was not returned to the King of Kandy.

Rev. Baldeus goes on to convey that subsequently, Galle, Kalutara and eventually Colombo, all being in the Island’s Southwest coast, were also taken by the Dutch from the Portuguese with some military support from the King of Kandy. However, the relations between them became very strained. That was because the strategic coastal areas taken from the Portuguese including Batticaloa and Colombo were all not returned to the King of Kandy. The king therefore refused to reimburse the Dutch any of their expenses. Thus, much of the island excluding the Kandyan hill country but also including the Eastern region came under Dutch control as shown in maps drawn thereafter by the Dutch. Later, the same areas came under British control when the Dutch capitulated to the British.

Conclusions

There are no reasons to doubt the veracity of the learned Dutch Priest Rev. Baldeus and his “True and Exact Description…” of what took place between the VOC, the King of Kandy, the Portuguese, and also the VOC’s activities in the Eastern region of Sri Lanka. It is thus clear that Sri Lanka’s Eastern region at the time of the Portuguese presence was an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy. It provided for the Kingdom’s legitimate and ready access to the ocean at that time. That access was denied by the Dutch and later by the British, making the Kandyan Kingdom land-locked. The respective colonial maps were drawn accordingly.

It also becomes quite clear that the Eastern Region of Sri Lanka was not part of the currently claimed historical “Traditional Tamil Homeland”, neither in the 17thCentury nor before. There may well have been some Tamil villages existing harmoniously in the East among the majority Sinhalese under rule from Kandy. These Tamil families could well have been of a different caste than the dominant castes in the North.

There are several prominent ancient Buddhist sites of religious and archaeological merit in several districts of the East. Their original monuments would have taken a great many decades to construct. Thus, they clearly evidence the predominant earlier prolonged presence of Sinhalese settlements in the Eastern region. Even just before the outbreak of the 30-year war with the LTTE, the Eastern region was home not only to Tamils but also to many Muslims and Sinhalese who together outnumbered the Tamils.. It was one of the geographic contexts in which the LTTE’s many well-recorded brutal efforts at ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ were committed through mass massacres of Muslims and Sinhalese. Just two examples of such massacres were those committed respectively at Kattankudi and at Aranthalaawa.

(The writer is Fellow and Past President, National Academy of Sciences Sri Lanka, Past General President, Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and Past President, Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka, Fellow and Past President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects, Vice President Sri Lanka Economic Association.)