KAMALIKA PIERIS

TAMIL SETTLEMENTS 

Tamil Separatist Movement steadily  established new Tamil settlements in the north and east   after Independence. The purpose was to strengthen the  Tamil population   on  the Eastern coast. The northern and eastern provinces were under populated   and there was lot of empty space which had to be filled up.

J. D. Arudpragasam’s father, J. Arulappu, bought land owned by the Catholic Church in Kannadi near the Madhu Church and set up his own farm in 1964. That encouraged others to migrate to the agriculturally rich Vanni. [1]

Vavuniya  district   had many small and large farms owned by Tamils or held on long lease by Tamil-owned business enterprises. [2]   The 99-year lease was granted by the government in 1965.  The  individual holdings varied from ten to fifty acres. Business concerns held large farms and 16 of them were a thousand acres and more.  Among the large farms were: Navalar farm, Ceylon Theatres farm, Kent farm, Railway Group Farm, Postmaster Group Farm and Dollar arm. the rich Jaffna Tamils who had obtained  these large tracts of land employed  illicit immigrants to work the land.[3]

New  Tamil settlements were  also created. In the  late 1960s there was new colonization scheme in the North, at  Muthuiyyan Kaddu kulam,   near Oddusuddan.

When there was competition for settlement between Sinhala and Tamil, the Tamil Separatist Movement   managed to obtain something. In 1966  the Youth League of the Federal Party  heard that Sinhala farmers were to be settled around a renovated tank in Kithul Oorttu  in Trincomalee district, Tamil youths forcibly occupied the settlement.

Government  Agent, Trincomalee a Sinhalese, ordered them to evacuate the area. When they refused, with the help of the police and his officials set fire to the huts and got them arrested. The Federal Party, which was in the Dudley Senanayake government, persuaded the Prime Minister to work out a settlement whereby some of the allotments were given to the Tamils, said Sabaratnam.

Gamini Iriyagolle in his book ‘Tamil claims to land[4]  said that though the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact  (1957)and Dudley Chelva Pact  (1965) were publicly  torn up,  the government secretly permitted Tamils  to exclusively settle in the   north  and east.

Since 1957 ,there  were secret agreements   between successive governments and   Tamil  political parties,  that land in the north and east  would  be exclusively given to Tamils. Neville Jayaweera  who was  GA in Jaffna, Trincomalee and Vavuniya in the 1960s confirmed this. The BC and DC pacts were torn up but their contents were applied scrupulously,”  he said.[5]    

The  Tamils in Jaffna were not interested in helping to start new settlements. They  wanted government jobs. Young Tamil school leavers refused to join new settlements  . [6] Therefore Tamil refugees from the hill country  were settled in these areas.

Estate Tamils were willing to settle down in the northeast and  do agriculture. Their lives had been disrupted following the nationalization of British-owned estates in the 1970s. Some had been forcibly evicted from the estates where they had lived for generations and were unemployed. They drifted towards the northeast, especially to Vavuniya and Batticaloa.

Estate Tamils due for repatriation to India were also taken into the north and east. The Sirima-Shastri Pact of 1964 had agreed that 525,000 estate Tamils would be repatriated to India.   The period of repatriation was 15 years starting 1964.These persons were picked up from the estates and taken  away, but they never got to India . The Tamil Separatist Movement intercepted these Tamils and settled  them in the north and east, such as the Vanni. This was done silently without the knowledge of the public

Anil Ameresekera said, at Menik Farm, I found several Indian Tamils who spoke good Sinhalese. They were estate Tamils who had lived in the hill country, they were to be repatriated under the Sirima Shastri pact to India, but had been resettled in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi by NGOs such as Redd Barna.[7]  

Jayatissa Bandaragoda  noted that a large number of families of estate Tamils had been settled on state land in Mannar, Vavuniya, and Kilinochchi district between 1971  and  1981. about 80,000 people had been added to the population of these three districts. They were persons repatriated in Sirima- Shastri pact. They were presumably stopped on their way to India and taken to these areas for settlement, A number of NGOs were involved in providing financial and organization assistance to these settlers.

Ceylon Workers Congress had given leadership to this and had retained the full loyalty of the Tamils. Each house we visited in the new settlements had Thondaman’s photo and each house donated a rupee per month to the CWC fund. The new land cleared by the settlers was cultivated with green gram. The government did not eject them and later they were given citizenship.[8]   

Jayatissa Bandaragoda was GA Trincomalee in the period 1978- 1981.   During this time Bandaragoda had come across clandestine Tamil settlements in jungle areas inside Trincomalee, in China Bay, Kuchchaveli, Morawewa and Tampalagamam areas. This was a  well-planned scheme intended to colonize vacant land with Tamils, he said.  

The estate Tamils who had been chased out of the hill country by Sinhalese mobs during the 1977 riots  also ended up in the north and east. One settler, Pandian was from a rubber estate in Avissawella.  The line room he lived in was burnt down during the 1977 riots.  He lived in a refugee camp for some time and then migrated to Vavuniya, where he had learnt Indian Tamil refugees were being settled. [9]   We were doing well.  We cultivated black grams and chillie.  We had good harvests., he told the interviewer. 

Dimbulagala told   ‘ Weekend’ newspaper in 1983  that   illegal settlers of Indian origin were  settled on state land in Vavuniya, Trincomalee and Batticaloa[10] .  

 He gave  them information on Tamil settlements  in Batticaloa area. There were large areas of barren land there which have been encroached on by Indian Tamils from the tea estates. They were illegal settlers. Nearly 15,000 acres have been colonized in this manner in Pullimalai, Unnichchai, Rugama and Pumnakuda. Devanayagam when he heard this replied that  Batticaloa was part of the Tamil homeland. It is the Sinhalese, who are encroaching into Kalkudah.

Dimbulagala also recalled that in 1971 K.W Devanayagam brought estate Tamils to Kalkudah and settled them in the area. I opposed this. Tamil in Batticaloa carried out a smear campaign against me. I wrote to   Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike.  Prime Minister summoned a meeting in which I participated. I explained the position and Prime Minister agreed to send officials to look into the matter.

 There was an inquiry and it was decided to remove the squatters but Devanayagam intervened and asked for time for the arrivals to reap the harvest. They were given three months but instead of leaving, the encroachers went into the jungle and hid. Later they got land in Vadumunai area and   assistance from Sarvodaya, World Food Programme and Gandhian Movement. 

Devanayagam admitted at the press conference called by him in September 1983  that there were Tamil settlements at Maduru Oya. In 1974. Ten Tamil families of Indian origin were allocated land in Wadamunai under an agreement Devanayagam had reached with the Irrigation Ministry. After the 1977 riots, 48 estate Tamil families were allocated 50 acres of  land at Wadamunai under another agreement  with Gamini Dissanayake, reported Sabaratnam. [11]  

A further 200 Sri Lankan Tamil families from these villages had encroached on 600 acres of the land earmarked for development under the Maduru Oya Right Bank Development Scheme, admitted Devanayagam. They have not been regularized but these encroachments are long standing, he said .   Under the scheme of regularization of encroachments of state land implemented by Gamini Dissanayake in 1979, these families were entitled to those lands.

Tamils were settled at Wadamunai and Uthuchanari  by KW Devanayagam in 1960s to protect the boundaries of Batticaloa district from Sinhala settlers said S Hisbullah. [12]  The colonization scheme of Wadamunai  had begun in 1958. It continued in he 1970s.

48 families  of stateless estate Tamils sent by GA Hambantota ,  were settled on  50 acres  at Meerandavillu   in Wadamunai.  Meerandavillu  had  are 5 LDO ( Land Development Ordinance) allotments and 52 enumerated allotments .    

AGA report as given in Malinga Gunaratne’s book, said,  there was 200 encroachments of about 600 acres  by person from the purana villages of Kallichenai and Oothuchenai  in Wadamunai .These encroachments are of long standing and would have  been  regularized except that they now fell  within the Mahaweli area.   Kallichenai and Oothuchenai  described as purana villages are not purana at all,   the villagers are estate Tamils who  came after 1977. Karadiurichakulam, near Punani  has lands  that have been alienated under Land Development Ordinance to local residents.

In the 1980s LTTE had encouraged Tamils to bring relatives from Tamilnadu over. Grama Niladhari was then bribed to state in an affidavit that they had been long time residents of Kilinochchi.[13]  

Redd Barna has carried out a resettlement programme of Tamil people from up country to Vavuniya in 1985, with the assistance of Sarvodaya, said Vijitha   Herath. in his 2008 interim report to Parliament as   Chairman, Select Committee of Parliament for investigation of the operations of NGOs and their impact.[14] 

Tamil Separatist Movement  also  suppressed the Sinhala settlements started in the north and east . Padaviya was started by  Prime Minister D.S.Senanayake in the late 1950s. Padaviya was one of the first  post-independence Sinhala settlements in the north . Padaviya had around 50,000 people in 1984.

 Padaviya  was created and then ignored, said critics. . It is only two miles  to the sea from Padaviya as the crow files if the   Padaviya  settlement  had gone up to the sea,  Eelam would not have been possible, critics observed.

https://mpclg.gov.lk/web/images/wardmaps/a_pura/05_Apura_PadaviyaPS.pdf

Ma Oya   which flows into Kokkilai,  lies between Padaviya in its south and the districts of Mullaitivu and Vavuniya  in the north.  Tamil politicians had  for years objected to the linking up of Mullaitivu district  with Padaviya  . But a small causeway had been built across the Ma  Oya river, linking Padaviya to Mullaitivu during the Accelerated Mahaweli project. BH Hemapriya had initiated this, using a cable wire  obtained from Victoria dam.

Padaviya was bursting at the seams by 1980. The area could not accommodate the 2nd and 3rd generations. They would have had to fan out to Vavuniya and Mullaitivu on the north, Kokkilai   on the east and Yan Oya  on the south. Tamil Separatist Movement saw this and started installing Tamil settlements on the border of Padaviya leaving a massive buffer zone between the new Tamil settlement and Vavuniya and Mullaitivu. They were creating a buffer for Eelam.

In 1983  two Mahaweli Authority officers, Karunatilleke and Hemapriya reported to  Mahaweli Director General, NGP Panditeratne that the second generation of Padaviya settlers  were in serious difficulties. They are doing chena and rain fed paddy in about 10,000  to 15,000 acres in the last piece of chena land available to Padaviya settlers in the south. They cannot expand to west, east or north as these are occupied by  Tamil villages and encroachments.

At the rate of expansion of Tamil encroachments, this land will also go within a few months, they said. Tamil settlements will spread up to the boundary of Padaviya in a few months. Very soon the Padaviya settlement will be threatened. Settlers live in fear and some settlers are thinking of returning   to their place of origin,  they said in 1983.

Tamil settler colonialism was actively at  work during the Accelerated Mahaweli  project. Tamil Separatist Movement had studied the  Accelerated Mahaweli plan carefully and had marked out two strategic locations where Sinhala settlements   could puncture Eelam .They were Maduru Oya and Yan Oya deltas.  At Yan Oya illegal Tamil settlements were established by 1983.

there were Tamil settlements in Maduru Oya  as well. In1980 the engineers at Maduru Oya  had informed Mahaweli authorities that the Tamil officials in Batticaloa were creating illegal Tamil settlements at Maduru Oya. These settlements were known to the Tamil politicians. Sinhala politicians in the government were also supporting.  There will not be an inch of land left by the time the project is ready, they told him. 

In August 1983 Malinga Guneratne  received information of a massive encroachment of lands on Maduru Oya right bank. Maliga dispatched two Mahaweli officials  to Maduru Oya to report. They reported back that organized settlements around numerous small tanks were taking place in Maduru Oya. They were being made in a systematic and methodical manner. Food supplies were coming to the settler from an organized body. Houses were e coming up overnight.  Villages were given Tamil names,  district boundaries were altered. The  Tamil officials in Batticaloa were  behind  this. 

It was not possible to fill up all  the land with settlers, there were not enough Tamil settlers for that, therefore another strategy was  used. Large tracts of land in the area were demarcated as elephant corridors, forest reserves, national parks and no settlement was allowed in them. There are more elephant corridors and forest reserves   here than in the rest of Sri Lanka, said Hemapriya.

This is confirmed in the report made to KW Devanayagam, MP for Kalkudah, by GA Batticaloa, regarding the Maduru Oya Sinhala settlement  led by Dimbulagala Hamuduruwo in  September 1983. GA Batticaloa  complained in a report dated 4.9.83 that the new Sinhala settlement at Meeranadavillu  came within  the Barons Gap proposed reserve, and  Mathavanai Mahaella  settlement  came within the Umunugala Forest reserve. Punani settlement came under Koralai forest reserve .

There was also another tactic , that of  declaring grazing lands for cattle. The Barons Gap proposed reserve had also been used as traditional grazing land for cattle in the Kalkudah electorate, said Tamil officials. ( continued)

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[1] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-1-chap-33-knocking-out-the-base/

[2] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-2-chap-23-manal-aru-becomes-weli-oya/

[3] Bandu de Silva. Sunday Island. 17.7.2011 p 15 .

[4] This book  is now online at  https://www.infolanka.com/org/srilanka/issues/gamini.html

[5] Neville Jayaweera.  Vignettes of the public service, Jaffna.  Sunday Island 20.4.08 p 13.

[6] https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/post-july-1983-jossop-a-new-kind-of-war/

[7] Anil Ameresekera. Island 11.11.09 p 9.

[8] Jayatissa Bandaragoda, Path of destiny  Godage 2011 p 190-191

[9]  http://www.sangam.org/articles/view2/?uid=633

[10]  Malinga Gunaratne. For a sovereign state . ( most of the content in this essay is taken from this book)

[11] www.sangam.org/articles/view2/?uid=626

[12] S Hasbullah et al. a tale of two maps. ICES 2022 p 22

[13] Sunday Times editorial 2.5.10 p 10.

[14] Sunday Leader 14.12.08 p 15.