By
Janaka Perera
November
26th
mark the 189th anniversary of the execution at Bogambara,
Kandy of patriot and national hero Monarawila Keppettipola,
who led the 1817-18 Uva rebellion against the British
two years after the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom.
The
British in fact never conquered the kingdom but seized
it through craft and deceit taking advantage of the public
opposition to Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe's tyrannical rule
and the divisions and intrigue among the Sinhala aristocracy.
No English soldier was killed or wounded in the process
although they had suffered many casualties an earlier
unsuccessful attempt in 1803 to capture the kingdom by
armed force.
The
alien occupation of the kingdom in March 1815 signaled
the end of over two thousand years of self-rule and the
whole island became part of the British Empire, paying
homage to an English monarch who was the tutelary head
of the Anglican Church. In should be noted here that the
former Nayakkar Kings of Kandy - though their ancestral
religion was Hinduism - ruled according to Sinhala customs
and recognized Buddhism as the State religion.
Before
long the Kandyan Chiefs and the people realized their
freedom had been bartered. The bhikkus joined the people
in demanding the King of their own to protect Sinhala
way of life and to uphold age-old Buddhist religious traditions.
The
British – in accordance with their divide-and-rule
policy - appointed a Muslim, one Hadjee as Muhandiram
of Wellassa in Uva. Elated by his power the muhandiram
began to harass Sinhala villagers by forcibly requisitioning
their grain, cattle and temple property causing a racial
and cultural conflict. In the midst of this there appeared
a pretender to the Kandyan Throne, known as Wilbawe alias
Doraisamy who proclaimed himself king claiming relationship
to the late King Rajadhi Rajasinghe (1782-1798).
This
gave the people a good reason to rise against the British
in 1817. The then Assistant Government Agent, Badulla,
S.D. Wilson immediately dispatched a small force under
the Muhandiram Hadjee's command to investigate and report.
But the rebels captured and killed him along with the
guards. Bewildered, Wilson himself led a larger contingent
of troops but he too was killed. This prompted the British
to declare Martial Law in the entire Kandyan Kingdom.
By
1818 the entire hill country - except part of Sabaragamuwa
- had risen against the British. The colonial rulers then
sent Monarawila Keppettipola Dissawe with a squad of English
soldiers to suppress the rebellion. However the pleadings
of his fellow countrymen very much disturbed his conscience.
Keppettipola decided to join the patriots and before taking
over their command, dismissed his foreign troops, asking
them to take back with them their ammunition and guns.
In doing so he declared that it was unbecoming of the
Sinhala nation to use the enemy's weapons against the
enemy.
The
rebellion flared up under Keppettipola and spread through
Wellassa, Bintenne, Ulapane, Hewaheta, Kotmale and Dumabara
and continued for a year (October 1817 – October
1818). But the rebel force was no match for the superiorly
armed British who, with the arrival of foreign reinforcements,
eventually captured top rebels – all Kandyan Chieftains
- one by one.
The
rebels fought more in spirit than in might.
In
an act of revenge against the Sinhala peasants for daring
to rise against the King of England, the British ordered
their troops to destroy all property belonging to the
peasants. Soldiers entered villages and completely destroyed
houses by setting them on fire, cutting down their fruit
trees, jak, bread fruit and coconut. The marauders destroyed
harvest having killed or robbed their cattle.
Sinhala
peasants were subjected to horrible deaths – by
execution, hunger and disease. The British laid waste
to the entire area of Wellassa (meaning hundred thousand
paddy lands). Many a Sinhala noble and bhikku linked to
the rebellion were beheaded to terrorize the population.
No
Sri Lankan Government will be able to totally undo the
damage that the British did to the Uva Province socially,
economically and culturally, in the course of brutally
crushing the uprising. The repercussions of this genocidal
scorched earth policy are felt to this day in the region,
where entire villages were wiped out and crops and livestock
destroyed.
The
London Times of October 7, 1818, reported: ``the plan
of destroying all the grain and fruit trees in the neighbourhood
of Badulla seems to have been completely carried into
effect, a dreadful measure.''
Generations
of poverty-stricken peasants of Wellassa have been paying
the price of the havoc wrought by British troops. Nearly
50,000 Sinhala villagers have been suffering from malaria
– a direct result of the British destroying thousands
of acres of paddy land, irrigation works, many reservoirs
and water ways to starve the population to death. The
water that spilled into the surrounding areas turned Wellassa
into a large mosquito breeding ground. Gradually, the
jungle claimed the once-flourishing Wellassa, following
over a century of neglect. The devastation was such that
it was virtually impossible to restore the place to what
it was before.
Justice
Lawrie, Senior Puisne Judge in colonial Ceylon in A Gazetteer
of the Central Province of Ceylon wrote: ``… The
story of English rule in the Kandyan country during 1817
and 1818 cannot be related without shame. In 1819 hardly
a member of the leading families, the heads of the people,
remained alive; those whom the sword and the gun had spared,
cholera and small pox and privations had slain by the
hundred.'' (Revolt in the Temple )
Keppettipola
was arrested at Nuwara Kalaviya, Anuradhapura in October
1818. Following his arrest and that of his lieutenant
Madugalle, both were tried by a Court Martial on November
13 and sentenced to death on November 26, 1818. Both of
them were beheaded.
Altogether,
the death penalty was imposed on 29 rebel leaders while
27 others, including Pilimathalawe, Ihagama, were banished
from the country. Ihagama, once a bhikku, was the guiding
force behind the rebellion that Keppettipola led.
The
then British Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals in
Sri Lanka Henry Marshall was sympathetic to Keppettipola
and visited him in prison on several occasions. To Marshall
(a Scotsman) Keppettipola was like the Scottish Freedom
Fighter, Sir William Wallace, whom the English executed
in 1306 for `treason' after he rebelled against King Edward
I.
Marshall
was so impressed by the Kandyan Chief's bravery and intellect
that he took possession of the rebel leader's skull after
the execution and presented it to the Phrenological Society
of Edinburgh. Returned to Sri Lanka in 1955, the skull
now rests in a monument in the Kandy esplanade. A statue
of him stands on the Nuwara-Eliya-Badulla road backing
the Uva hills where he fought for his motherland.
A
very fair British historian, Marshall's believed that
``had the insurrection been successful he would have been
honoured and characterized as a patriot instead of being
stigmatized and punished as a traitor.''
To
this day, tiny villages are found in the Uva Province
– up in the mountains and deep down in the valleys.
In these huts scattered in the most inaccessible areas
live the descendants of the few survivors who escaped
the wrath of British troops and hid in remote hamlets.
There
were no international human rights organizations in that
era to condemn British barbarism in Uva whereas today
they are the very people - among others - who periodically
pontificate on HR situations in Sri Lanka and elsewhere
in the crisis-ridden Third World.
After
the Uva rebellion was crushed the British Colonial Government
embarked on a policy of appropriating on one pretext or
another millions of acres of land belonging to peasants
in the Kandyan provinces and sold them to British capitalists
at the nominal price of one shilling per acre. There is
no record of the number of Kandyan peasants rendered landless
and homeless by this inhuman act perpetrated between 1833
and 1886.
Six
years ago the Uva Provincial Council decided to explore
the possibility of seeking compensation from the UK Government
for the mindless destruction the British colonialists
caused to Wellassa. The then Uva Chief Minister Samaraweera
Weerawanni, UNP Parliamentarians W.J.M. Lokubandara (present
Speaker) and Dharmadasa Banda were among those who mooted
the idea.
The
failure of the 1818 rebellion was the beginning of the
end of Sri Lanka's dignity as a nation. As Justice Lawrie
noted: ``The descendants of the higher classes of the
Kandyan times rapidly died out, the lower classes became
ignorant and apathetic.''
Today
a considerable segment of Sri Lankan society has no sense
of history, culture or national pride. And once again
foreign powers and their proxies are dictating terms to
us and telling us how to run our crisis-ridden country.
Courtesy - Sinhalanet