The social scientist in Amunugama and the many facets of Lanka’s socio-political transformation
Dreams of Change: Land, Labour and Conflict in Sri Lanka by Sarath Amunugama Reviewed by Dhammika Amarasinghe
This book is a collection of essays written by Sarath Amunugama over many years on a variety of subjects relating to socio-economic change and political conflict in Sri Lanka. Jayadeva Uyangoda positions these essays in the following way.
“In this collection of essays, Sarath Amunugama deals with one of the central themes of Sri Lanka’s socio-political transformation during the colonial and post-colonial phases; the land question. Land has provided the material basis for modern Sri Lanka’s development policies, electoral politics, inter class political alliances, ethnic conflict and civil war, Left-wing insurgencies, inter-ethnic relations as well as political and religio-social ideologies”.
The intellectual approach of the book is brought out in its main title: ‘Dreams of Change’. The cover of the book has a set of pictures: On one side is D.S, Senanayake, independent Sri Lanka’s first Prime Minister and the reputed regenerator of the ‘Rajarata’, dressed in an amude in the company of several young men representing the new generation of the emergent nation. (The unsaid interesting story about this picture is that one of the youths in shorts happens to be C.P. de Silva, then a school boy at S. Thomas’ College and destined to be DS’s Civil Service lieutenant and later a Minister of Lands in a rival administration. The boy behind the camera was Dudley Senanayake, destined to carry forward DS’s legacy in agricultural development in later years and to be Prime Minister himself.) If DS’s dream for the new nation was a sturdy yeoman peasantry, the man in the companion picture, Rohana Wijeweera, arriving for his trial in the courts had other dreams -- of a more violent and revolutionary kind.
Sarath Amunugama is well qualified for the task of providing an analytical narrative. His intellectual equipment was honed in the Sociology Department of the then prestigious University of Ceylon, at Peradeniya, under teachers like Ralph Pieris, Stanley Tambiah and Gananath Obeyesekere, most of whom later adorned the faculties of front rank universities abroad. He obtained his doctorate in anthropology at the Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociale in Paris. As a member of the elite Ceylon Civil Service (CCS), Dr Amunugama had the good fortune to work in the early years of his public service career (before he ended up as a Ministry Secretary and later as an international Civil Servant) in rural administration, ending up as a Government Agent. These assignments enabled him to work closely with the people at grassroots level and to be intimately involved in numerous development projects.
He was in fact the official in charge of the Chandrikawewa ‘colonisation’ scheme, the subject of one of the essays in this book. Quite appositely Amunugama raises the important methodological issue of a bureaucrat’s eligibility and competence to comment academically as an independent observer. He challenges the view held by some anthropologists that administrators do not have access to accurate information from informants with whom they have an official relationship.
Amunugama’s later experience of three decades as a politician and a Minister has certainly enhanced his experience in relation to the subjects dealt with in the book, as surely it must have deepened his insights with regard to them. Therefore, one can conclude that he ‘knows what he is talking about’ – whether or not one agrees with his point of view on some matters.
Land problems
The book provides invaluable background material in respect of several subjects. For instance, there is a good summary of the genesis of the land problem starting with Sri Lanka’s equivalent of the ‘Enclosure movement’ enabled by the abolition of ‘Rajakariya’ by the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms and the promulgation of Wasteland Ordinances. Despite the existence of a school of thought that there was no actual dispossession of the Kandyan peasant by colonial land legislation, Amunugama points out that, for instance, Gananath Obeyesekere in his research at Medagama in Hinidumpattu, in which Amunugama was his assistant, had found that the area of the village as claimed by its inhabitants had in fact shrunk to one seventh of that size in the official settlement, graphically demonstrating the validity of the ‘dispossession theory’ and the origin of the problem of rural landlessness.
Another essay deals with Dry Zone colonisation schemes initiated by D.S. Senanayake, partly for relieving the pressure on land in the western and southern segments of the island. The economic arguments advanced against these schemes by contemporary leftist critics, notably Philip Gunawardene and S.A.Wickramasinghe, are also analysed in the book. Reference to other attempts at relieving the problem of landlessness -- like Village Expansion Schemes -rounds up a concise presentation of the rural land situation.
In the context of several of the essays to follow, the introduction of some elements of the social structure in the southern dry zone, particularly the institution of gambaraya and other patron-client relationships in village life, forms a necessary complement to the foregoing analysis of the land problem.
Still another useful section of the introductory chapter is the account of the social amelioration measures taken by the government following the grant of universal adult franchise in 1931. We see here that a significant first step taken was the first ever scientific socio-economic survey carried out in the country, the B.B. Dasgupta Economic and Industrial Survey, commissioned by the State Council in 1935. (Dasgupta with his engaging Indian-English pronunciation and the perennial blue jacket was the first Economics professor for many of us at Peradeniya). This survey for the first time had provided the government, and the society at large, with an objective presentation of the contours of the socio-economic problems confronting the country. One of the significant findings of the survey was the prevalent incidence of rural indebtedness and landlessness. The findings of the survey prompted the initiation of various measures of social amelioration which resulted in the achievement of high rankings by the country in the Human Development Index, while still remaining a poor country in economic terms. The resulting situation was an essential background to the later violent political upheavals analysed in the book.
The next chapter is on the Chandrikawewa colonisation scheme with which the author had been personally involved as a Civil Servant. The author draws on the official diaries of the colonial era Government Agents of Ratnapura, reminiscent of the published diaries of Leonard Woolf at Hambantota, to paint the pathetic situation in which the area which came under the scheme was in earlier times. The author narrates in detail the selection of allotees for land in the Chandrikawewa scheme, from different parts of the Ratnapura and adjoining Matara and Hambantota districts, the travails of their settling down process and the problems of growing up as a new community. As a professional sociologist, he does not simply narrate but analyses such problems, backing his analysis with sociological theory. He describes the undercurrent of human relationships underlying the officially ordained superstructure.
The many facets of rural credit constitute the subject matter of the next chapter. A considerable amount of information relating to the subject, drawn from two official socio-economic surveys is presented by the author. Although this information relates to a past period, it is unlikely that, in the slow moving rural sector, the basic contours of the problem would have changed much. The author quotes with approval the well-known economic historian R.H. Tawney who has said “In all countries where farming is in the hands of small producers, the fundamental problem of rural society is not that of wages but that of credit”. In regard to rural credit, Amunugama makes two important points: (a) that the entire spectrum of credit needs of the individual who happens to be a peasant needs to be taken into consideration and not just his needs as a producer and (b) his credit needs are highly time-sensitive and are closely tied up with the community farming calendar. The author also refers to the perennial problem of collateral in a yet undeveloped economy and sees a solution only in a system tied to a ‘broad based’ crop insurance scheme.
In another essay, Amunugama examines the dynamics of Rural Development and Shramadana in a colony in the Southern Dry Zone. The setting is a relatively small village that had developed in the previous 50 years with migrants from near and far settling down periodically. Hence the use of the ‘colony’ nomenclature. However, interestingly enough, the seemingly ubiquitous gambaraya, is present here too. The author starts with a useful historical account of the Rural Development movement and the Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka. The fluctuating fortunes of the Rural Development Society in the Andalla village (Alibokkuwa) are then recounted, bringing out the interplay of the different social segments of the village and the part played by local politics. There is no reason to doubt that Andalla is typical of the Southern village and indeed shorn of its ecological features, typical of the local villages, in its social dynamics, except perhaps in respect of this particular Gambaraya who plays no role at all in the public activities there even for the sake of prestige, unlike many other ‘lords of the manor’ all over the country.
JVP: Defeated dreams
Amunugama has written three essays relating to the JVP and its activities. The essay titled ‘Defeated Dreams: the JVP insurrection of 1971’ sets the insurrection of 1971 against the background of a crisis which had been developing since before the gaining of independence, in a scenario of remarkable improvements of social indicators in health, education and social welfare against the background of a stagnant insular economy – a crisis in expectations. Among other matters relevant to the origin of the JVP and its militancy, the essay touches on the much speculated upon caste factor. The post mortem verdict of the author is: “The insurrection of 1971 failed due to a contradiction between theory and practice, the failure to win over a peasantry who were correctly identified as the most oppressed of the local poor, the lack of rapport with the organised working class and the inability to win over the ‘other ranks’ of the armed services”. While this article focuses on the 1971 insurrection, the second article on the JVP, though its title has a personal flavour, being worded ‘Wijeweera and the Leadership of the JVP’, provides a detailed account of the formation of the JVP and its development. It is an invaluable source of information for the student of contemporary politics. The aura of supreme authority which Wijeweera, unprepossessing in personal appearance, seemed to excercise over the rank and file of his supporters (in the leadership circles, of course, it is now known that there were detractors) has always been an enigma. Amunugama provides what to him appears as an explanation: “His predominance is related to his uncompromising critique of the Capitalist state which is based on an orthodox reading of Marx and Engels and a Leninist theory regarding the nature of the state”. Anyway, the equation of super-predominance has two sides – the super hero and the disciples. Its understanding may require looking at both sides and not just at the ‘super hero’.
The third of Amunugama’s essays relevant to the JVP as well as present day radical nationalist movements is appropriately titled ‘Buddhaputra and Bhumiputra; Dilemmas of Modern Monks in relation to Ethnic and Political Conflict’. Given the rationale of the radical nationalist (however strongly one may personally disagree with their ideology) one must concede that at the level of the lone individual, this indeed would be a painful soul crushing dilemma for the authentic Buddhist monk, who is a radical nationalist or a dedicated social revolutionary, at the same time.
Media and ethnic relations
The essay titled ‘Media and Ethnic Relations’ is an interesting one, though it only confirms by statistical analysis what intelligent observers of the media scene have always known in this era of ‘fake news’. This article also records the disreputable episode of a certain newspaper carrying on a campaign of highly irrational vilification against an internationally reputed academic of Sri Lankan origin and his scholarly work, on thinly veiled ethnic grounds. The author has done a great service by recording this disgraceful episode for posterity.
The book contains other useful articles on subjects as varied as new trends in recruitment to the Sri Lanka Administrative Service (an eye opener in the context of present popularly held views about this service), social science research in family planning, providing useful insights for policy making and programme designing and the sociology of radio and television broadcasting in Sri Lanka (containing, inter alia, a first hand account of the political, financial and technical issues that were involved in the introduction of television in Sri Lanka).
Lastly, the author, being a good Sri Lankan, has performed his guru upahaara ( veneration of the teacher) by devoting his final chapter to pay tribute to his old teacher at the University of Ceylon (now Peradeniya), the Late Ralph Pieris – the man who “loved an argument, never stifled dissent and stood for individuality and freedom”
The author deserves to be congratulated for revising several social science conclusions regarding recent events in the country. This will help in providing a more rounded view of our recent history than now available through the works of other social scientists.
As Professor H.L. Seneviratne, says “Within this broad canvas, Amunugama provides the reader with a rich body of data that reveals an unparalleled intimacy with the contemporary social and cultural processes of the island. While the topics dealt with are familiar from numerous studies of these subjects by professional scholars as well and other observers, the unique perspective of the book derives from the author’s wide experience well beyond the narrowly academic, and consisting of the perceptions of a senior administrator and a “participant observer” of the second wave of colonisation schemes; a former media specialist of the UNESCO; and outstanding scholar with a PhD completed under the guidance of the distinguished French anthropologist Louis Dumont; a poet and literary critic, and a political activist who was to become one of the country’s leading politicians.”
As always Amunugama’s writing is simple, lucid and a pleasure to read. “Dreams of Change” is a worthy successor to his award winning book on Anagarika Dharmapala, entitled “The Lion’s Roar”.