Musings: David actually began the Independence Movement of Lanka

by Padma Edirisinghe

To the query as to who engineered the above movement if the answer is given as, "A migrant group from the lowlands who settled in the coffee growing areas of Gampola" that may raise a laugh. But I have substantial evidence that this was so.

I must begin with the evening stroll I was having years ago, along Mount Ambalawa that rises above the Gangasiripura terrain, like a massive giant. Watching the giant from my own state quarters in the Gampola TC I was heading in the early 80s, I got so enthralled with the giant that in a mood of impetuosity I bought a vacated bungalow on this hill.

Even after I quit the TC and went onto work at Kegalle office that lay on the other side of the Mount (excuse me, the geography entailed is rather quizzical), I occupied this abode roaming on foot, come even, dusk, for transport was rare. It was on one of these treks that I met almost accidentally a female (no ghost) who took me home and over a cup of tea made me listen to a tale which to this day is a mystery to me for she denied the tale later.

Again a quiz for she gained nothing by telling me a fabricated story. So the only explanation I can give is that she had heard the story and quite enchanted by it (She herself being a writer and an ex-teacher of Jinaraja School, Gampola) planted herself as a character in an actual train of events that flared up the first boost to the country's independence movement that is if, by such a movement is meant a sincere attempt to guarantee the predominance of a country's main culture, this time webbed with religion...

Rattled

Since you may be rather irritated and rattled by the complexity of it all, I recount the relevant incidents here as told by my informant.

"I was almost past my toddling age and playing at the feet of my uncle (a David Silva) when a person walking on the highway shouted at maama, "Here you are relaxing happily but strange things are happening in town".

I must pause here to open a window on the community of Silvas who had migrated from the South to work on Byrds' coffee plantations. The Silvas of the low country had taken on Portuguese surnames, a phenomenon of colonial times. Even their religion they had taken on but later given up... It was the golden period of that colonial product of King Coffee and the natives of Gampola , mostly farmers, were too proud to work as labourers on the extensive land of Sinhapitiya (the venue of the ancient royal lineage that later shifted to Mahanuwara). So labour from the lowlands was encouraged to come and settle down. This family belonged to them.

Informant

Coming back to my own encounter that eve, my informant related to me that David Silva was told of a religious debacle that was to take place in town that night when a Buddhist procession wended its way along the streets. It was planned to stone it. All that later took place is now etched in history and better not detailed now when attempts at racial and religious harmony are being orchestrated.

But when this encounter of mine with the above female went into circulation, my informant hotly denied it. Some of the points she made did sound plausible, as the alibi about her age. In fact, she herself had migrated to the uplands from Weligama in the South much later and had not even been born at the time these events took place. Then what made her relate me a made up story? According to my own simple logic, simply that she wished to have been physically present in that dynamic scenario. She sensed the importance of the event in the country's political history and wished to web herself in the tale.

David Silva, her immediate uncle in her imagination, but a grand uncle in reality later became the ringleader of the uprising that began at Gampola over the stoning of the Buddhist perahara that started from Vallahagoda temple.

The movement was suppressed by the then government. as a national movement by a governor, who paradoxically was the only Pali scholar among the British governors. Yet, the kachal spread to Kandy and then to Colombo, culminating with events such as the shooting of young Pedris.

Back to Ambalawa Hill of Gampola. David Silva had on that day, on the tip given by a neighbour, risen from his lounge chair to "Do or Die" and in the prison house he was confined to, for several months, for the charge of rabble rousing, he weaved another lounge or arm chair.

Role

Can one consider this as the first phase of our independence movement taking into consideration, the events that followed it? And what was my friend's role in it? Very theatrical, is the word I can use.

"Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing". But David Silva, the rustic lowlander knew what he was doing. He was trying to prioritize, phenomena that kindled the first fires of an independence movement tantamount to giving predominance to the interests of the major community and in a rightful cause too.