By Sena Thoradeniya

From time to time Sri Lankan Ministers in charge of Agriculture and Livestock Development and their officials attempted to improve the breed of cattle by means of imported animals. A few decades ago, it was alleged that a stock of cattle imported from a foreign country was infected with various types of worm diseases deliberately done to ruin the country’s fledgling dairy industry. Milch cows imported and distributed among dairy farmers during Yahapalana regime brought utter disaster to dairy farmers who bought these cows. The then State Minister, now a stalwart of SJB in the NCP and his officials went scot-free from this scandal.

In the early 1860s the colonial government imported two bulls from India to improve the breed of cattle and the beasts were sent to Central Province. One died; the other could not induce to serve the purpose for which it was imported, according to the Administrative Report of the Government Agent of Central Province H. S. O. Russell. It should be noted that at that time the Central Province consisted of Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya and Badulla districts.

Instead of making a self-assessment of their experiment” Russell blames the Kandyans. The Kandyans are entirely ignorant of any method of rearing cattle and they show no desire to improve the breed of their beasts.” This colonial administrator was ignorant of Sri Lanka’s ancient methods of curing cattle diseases and the vast number of ola books on cattle diseases available transferring that knowledge to future generations and that there was a veterinarian in every village.

He sees the traditional ways the Kandyans kept cattle as a drawback in cattle rearing in the country. From time immemorial the animals have roamed at will over the Patanas and through the forests of the country and as the strongest male drove weakly rivals from the herd breeding took place of the principle of natural selection”.

True, traditional pasturelands were Patanas and forests as Sri Lanka did not have vast grasslands as in the temperate zones.

Even now villagers in Laggala-Pallegama at the end of the ploughing season drive their herds of buffaloes into the mountains of Kalupahana and erect blockades. Pasturing in the cooler climes inside the jungles they become fat, well-nourished and healthy free of any diseases. Scenting the aroma of ripening rice, they dash back to the villages breaking the blockades. Then only mating begins. The main pastureland Pitawala Patana was abandoned due to the influx of local” tourists, lovers and boozers, after the invasion” of foreign-funded environmentalists and ecologists!

Russell cannot hide the devastation done by the Waste Lands Ordinance” and the subsequent land grab by the British speculators. He adds: I think the yearly more restricted area of their pasture grounds is the principal cause of degeneration in the Kandyan cattle of the present day, inasmuch as it is no longer possible for the beasts to live in herds. Moreover, the forests protected them from the heat of the sun and from the inclemency of the weather and always afforded them a plentiful supply of food and water. The case is very different with the animals which nowadays skulk over bleak Patanas or along the high road in search of such scanty nourishment as may be found there. It is certain that both jungle buffaloes and black cattle which have been allowed to relapse into a wild state are fine and healthy as compared with the domesticated beasts.  I have little doubt that in the former times and under more favourable conditions of existence, the cattle of the Kandyan yeomanry and peasants were equally well conditioned”.

Here Russell contradicts himself. But he was very immoral enough to hide the root cause, the expropriation of land owned by the Kandyan peasantry by the colonialists depriving not only their chena lands, but also their traditional pasturelands.

At the same time, Russell loses sight to ignore a lot of emaciated local tavalam cattle used to transport coffee from the plantations up to the nearby cart roads, descending and ascending rugged, precipitous mountain paths, sometimes trekking more than 30-40 miles carrying a heavy load of 40-60 pounds of coffee. An example from my own area Dumbara was the Laggala tavalam road, starting from Kabaragala Gap the highest point on the Kelebokka cart road passing over Hulankanda wind gap winding and zigzagging down a precipice to Kalupahana group of estates and thence to Nitre Cave estates in Meemure. Once I trekked this path from the abandoned Brae Group tea estate to Kabaragala crawling in all fours.

The other devastation caused to cattle owned by the Kandyan villagers was impounding and shooting of cattle when they trespassed on coffee plantations. Russell admits this as he had received many complaints while he was on the circuit. Here Russell discloses something which did not receive the attention of our economic historians if there were such a breed. Tamil coolies drew cattle into the estates and tied them up and either extorted a large fine for the release of the impounded animals or slaughtered them for their flesh. This happened because the cattle were deprived of their traditional pasturelands as they were auctioned and sold for coffee cultivation.

This is a case of foreign indentured labour riding roughshod over the traditional inhabitants of the soil. No doubt, a law-abiding timid lot like them may have done that at the instigation of their masters and kanganis.

The new Grain Tax imposed by the colonial government in 1876 brought misery and caused loss of land, pauperisation, starvation, famine, abandonment of traditional homesteads and death. With the depletion of the bovine population in the villages, the first to be sold, the peasants had to sell ploughs and other agricultural implements and household goods to pay the obnoxious tax and arrears. The writer vividly portrayed the misery of Kandyan peasantry as a consequence of Grain Tax in his award-winning novel titled Madaran” (2020).