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| Sunday, 25 July 2004 |
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Storm in a tea pot by Rohan Jayatilleke It is the innate nature of man, sometimes though sensible to loose his head, lash out in fury, regard everyone who does not agree with him as her natural enemy, and having exhausted his fury and anger, when equilibrium is restored, wonder what provoked him to such idiosyncrasies. There were no people subject to this trait than the pioneer British planters of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The planter was the lord of all he surveyed. He was energised with the Labour Ordinance, to arrest on warrants, decamping or shirking South Indian indentured labour and sentence them, their wives and children too to the jail at Bogambara. The jail was thus full to capacity. He was sort of a patriarchal despot over his coolies. A Malacca cane was sceptre, and sticking plaster and castor oil was his panacea for all ills. He resisted most vehementally any interference between him and the indentured labour by the government. The Dimbula and Dickoya planters lived in state and bounty. When the Duke of Edinburgh visited them, they gave a display of all music and dance and gave him a magnificinent hunt too. They ducked a high government official into a pool, after having cropped his hair with the hunting knives, for some lapse on his part. The welcoming pandal was covered with champagne bottles. When somebody suggested they put something by for a rainy day, the quick retort was, 'Supposing if I were to die tomorrow, what a blank fool I should look'. Bassawa Kangani was one of the greatest Kanganies in Dimbula, Kotagala. He was also a man of authority over the labour gang on the plantation. His word to the coolies was law. He also had many wives and was charged in the Police Magistrate Court of inciting coolies to disobey. The magistrate convicted him and ordered a fine of Rs. 50, a princely sum then. He appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Labour Ordinance on which the charges were framed did not authorise a fine, but an appeal he was sentenced to three months rigorous imprisonment. A case in Badulla where two British planters were charged for indiscipline, though a peculiar one, had an echo in the Bassawa case. The planters of Badulla, the Merry Men of Uva, generally took the law into their hands and went berserk on the race week. The highways were their arenas for fun and frolic. The Police thinking best, kept away. The streets were cleared and the planters raced on the highways. They played a game of football in the streets with the goals at each end of the town. It was not the usual limit of eleven players for each side, numbers were innumerable. They in their drunken stupor thought it was their prerogative to fire off the big gun at the Police Station. It was a big English cannon. They rushed to the Police Station, pulled down the pillar and dragged the gun in triumph to its usual place and fired, having placed the Police Inspector under arrest with the powers they were vested with through the Labour Ordinance. The law took its normal course. The planters were charged in courts and were fined for their indiscriminate and criminal act. James D' Alwis, lawyer kinsman of late Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike saw an opening in the Badulla case and took advantage of it. Citing this case as against Bassawa's sentence in the Supreme Court, the term of imprisonment was quashed by the Supreme Court and Bassawa like the planters only had pay the fine of Rs 50. Thus justice prevailed, only if the planters too were to be dealt with as Bassawa, then it would be a jail term for their own kinsmen. |
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