Speeches and Writings of Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam
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Speeches and Writings of Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam Introduced by H. Kumarasingham i Publisher: Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Colombo, Sri Lanka. Editor: Harshan Kumarasingham Reproduction Date: April 2019 (first published 1936) ISBN number - ISBN978-955-4746-88-6 Bar Code - 9 789554 746886 Copyright © The Editor and CPA ii Table of Contents Introduction v Foreword xx Constitutional Reform I. A Message to the Country 1 II. Our Political Needs 11 III. Constitutional Reforms I 61 IV. Constitutional Reforms II 80 V. Case for Constitutional Reform 124 VI. Address to Sinhalese Conference 139 VII. The Present Political Situation I 148 VIII. Address to National Congress 172 IX. Interview with Sir William Manning 195 X. Address to Congress Committee 199 XI. Welcome to Congress Delegates 207 XII. The Present Political Situation II 214 Social Service XIII. Foundation of the Ceylon Social Service League 242 XIV. Labour and the Cooly of Ceylon 269 XV. Address on Indian Emigration 276 XVI. Imprisonment for Labour Offences 286 iii XVII. First Reception to Col. Wedgwood 306 XVIII. Second Reception to Col. Wedgwood 317 Miscellanea Lord Crewe's Testimony 327 References in Parliament 328 Earliest Labours on Constitutional Reform 329 Education XIX. A Plea for a Ceylon University 342 XX. A University for Ceylon 372 Appendix Retrenchment Committee Report 399 Government Policy and Public Opinion 411 Riots and Martial Law, 1915 415 Hindu Revival 419 Address to Ceylon Tamil League 423 Incidence of Taxation 426 Conference of Co-operative Societies 428 Education in Ceylon 431 The Necessity for Swaraj 447 The Ceylon Workers' Federation 451 iv Introduction One hundred years ago on 11 December 1919, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam addressed the inaugural session of the Ceylon National Congress as its first president. At 66 years of age the veteran Ceylonese statesman and scholar was not looking back on a career of accomplishments and accolades, but instead was daring to lead his country’s men and women into a new political age. In fact, Arunachalam born into a privileged and patrician background and who had diligently given near unbroken service to the Crown and Colony since returning from Cambridge in April 1875, entered the most radical phase of his life on retirement from the Ceylon Civil Service in 1913. Rather than enJoy rest from his long labours, the chance to answer the call to lead Ceylon towards self-government and its political awakening was fuelled by the need for such action and being released from the neutrality demanded of his public offices. Looking back, his time prior was in preparation for this political moment. After almost forty years in the Civil Service, Arunachalam had had a chance to professionally and intellectually delve deep into the affairs of Ceylon. For v example, his ground-breaking Census Report of 1901, which was described in The Times of London as the “most comprehensive authority on the ethnology of Ceylon and of its varied people, their history, their religions, languages and literature”,* enabled a thorough examination of the country and its people and also their predicament and promise. Additionally, in 1910 the first volume of A Digest of the Civil Law of Ceylon appeared (further volumes never came), which charted expertly and elegantly the rich and diverse legal traditions of Ceylon, and which received ‘advice and encouragement’ from his friend from undergraduate days in Cambridge, the great F. W. Maitland.† During these years Arunachalam was also very active in other spheres that encouraged and gave vent to his aspirations for Ceylon. As a student at what would become Royal College and then gaining a place at Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1871 where he flourished in Classics and Mathematics, among other subJects, he knew the importance of education, history, and sense of national worth. In this he mirrored similar views * James T. Rutnum, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam – Scholar and Statesman 1853-1924, Colombo, 1953, p 11 † T. Nadaraja, The Legal System of Ceylon in its Historical Setting, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972, pp xiv-xv vi held by his friends at Christ’s, Ananda Mohan Bose and Syed Mahmood, who achieved comparable eminence and contributed respectively to what he described as the ‘intellectual and political regeneration’ in what would become India and Pakistan. Arunachalam was the critical force in the Ceylon University Association founded in 1906 to create a university in the island emulating Cambridge, and the same year authored Sketches of Ceylon History, which not only was one of the first popular books on Ceylonese history, but also was at pains to show the multi-civilizational splendour and significance of the pre-European colonial age. Even as a Civil Servant, Arunachalam, had flirted with controversy by publishing two articles in the Ceylon Observer in 1902 under the telling pseudonym ‘Reform’, which strongly advocated that Ceylon was ‘ripe’ for self- government almost half a century before independence. Suspicions of his political views possibly held back his government career and very likely blocked his appointment to the Supreme Court.* * K. M. de Silva, “Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam (1853-1924), in Legal Personalities – Sri Lanka, volume I, Colombo: Law & Society Trust, 2005, pp 117-119 vii As the first Ceylonese to be President of the local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1916, he sought, perhaps mindful of the ethos of the Athenaeum Club in London of which he was a long-time member, to encourage discussion, exchange, and the promotion of literary and scholarly excellence among the leaders of society. Just as Arunachalam in Cambridge or London never became a ‘brown sahib’ that digested Western ideas and styles unquestionably and over-enthusiastically, nor was he in Ceylon beguiled by Eastern philosophy and traditions to such a degree that other influences were not welcome. As Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer commented after Arunachalam’s death, his mind had ‘embedded in it much original thought’ as someone ‘to whom Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Tamil literature were equally open books’.* To this list Sinhala traditions and texts can also be added. Arunachalam was especially interested in the ancient ‘great chronicle’ the Mahavamsa, and also had the skill to see how the legend of King ViJaya recalled the adventures and life of Ulysses in the * Sir P. Arunachalam, Studies and Translations (Philosophical and Religious) with a Foreword by Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1937, p vii viii Odyssey and be able to cite precisely from each book the pertinent passages.* Like his famous cousin, Ananda Coomaraswamy, he soaked in and savoured eastern art, philosophy, and literature. However, this and his eloquent attacks on colonial rule as practiced in Ceylon, did not lead to callow denunciations of the West or what it represented. Indeed, as Robert Aldrich has argued, “Despite his coruscating critiques of British imperialism and Western commercialisation, he never rejected Europeans, European cultures or the forms of democratic government that he witnessed in Britain.” He was also not immune to the ‘undoctrinaire socialism’ that wafted around Cambridge and his group of friends like Edward Carpenter.† While there is no reason to doubt his intellectual curiosity, erudition or scholarship, it is not too much of an assertion to claim that Arunachalam’s interest and propagation of history, particularly when it embraced Ceylon, was motivated by a keen Whiggish political desire to craft Ceylon’s own ‘Island story’ that would foster a * For example see P. Arunachalam, Sketches of Ceylon History, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1993 [Colombo, 1906], p 20 † Robert Aldrich, Cultural Encounters and Homoeroticism in Sri Lanka – Sex and Serendipity, London: Routledge, 2014, p 38 ix political message and a banner for all communities to march under. In turn this would, ideally, forge support for a political programme leavened with an Arunachalam credo consisting of patriotism, education, spirituality, and development appealing to all Ceylonese groups that would make the call for self-government and reform irresistible. Despite being preferred with ancestral and imperial titles, landed wealth, and inhabiting a grand residence, ‘Ponklar’, in Colombo’s socially walled Cinnamon Gardens,* he attempted to reach out to those less fortunate, founding the first workers’ union in the country one hundred years ago on 25 June 1919, the Ceylon Workers’ Welfare League, becoming its first president with an obJective to ameliorate conditions of ‘coolie’ labour. E. W. Perera stated that in face of gross injustice, such as the colonial government’s heavy handling of 1915 riots, Arunachalam would be “blazing with indignation like a lambent flame…doing all he possibly could to burn up and withdraw these iniquities.”† * Despite living there he stated in a speech included here in “Constitutional Reforms – II”: ‘Look at the houses in the Cinnamon Gardens, the utterly bourgeois ideal they enshrine, the vulgar show the frippery, aping the villadom of a fifth-rate English town. They spread their poisonous influence far and wide….’ † Rutnam, Arunachalam, pp 21-22 x Arunachalam in one assessment “belonged to the mainstream of Gladstonian liberalism, and was a man of radical outlook in politics, and a strong social conscience. To the end of his days he remained consistent to these principles.”* The 1915 riots led to Arunachalam creating, leading and contributing in his sixties to various political fora such as