Michael Roberts, c0urtesy of transcurrents in early 2010
A Preamble from 2013 to set the scene: Lakruwan de Silva’s historical excursion in early 2010 was inspired by the Presidential contest early that year and General Sarath de Fonseka’s vicissitudes on the political front. His reference to the famous – or maybe infamous – competition between segments of the Govigama elite and segments of the Karava during the course of the electoral contest for the “Educated Ceylonese seat’ in the Legislative Council in 1911 seemed to encourage some commentators to argue that caste competition among the Sinhalese was far more momentous in the early 20th century than Sinhala-Tamil rivalry. This was, in my view, a sweeping generalization of a half-baked character which was not alive to the manifold strands of competitive politics — strands which did not preclude each other. Ethnic competition for jobs and political space, ‘internal’ caste jostling between Vellālar and others among the Tamils, caste rivalries among the Sinhalese (whether Wahumpura vs Batgam, Karāva vs Goi, Salāgama vs Karāva, et cetera) and arguments between Buddhist revivalists and Christian denominations and, for that matter, competition between Karāva clerics and Tamil clerics in the Methodist Church (as I was told by Dr. GC Mendis) co-existed in the same temporal moment in different realms. This assertion is based on a long engagement with the details of political history in the British colonial period, one which led to studies of the pogrom against the Mohammedan Moors in 1915, the various nationalist currents of that time and the thinking of Anagārika Dharmapala as revealed in his diaries. Continue reading
