Research, Ideology & State Policy In Relation To Trincomalee

By Rajan Hoole –November 19, 2016 

Dr. Rajan Hoole

The Dress Rehearsal In Trincomalee – Part IV

The New Bosses

Transplanted from settings where they had the help of family and friends, and thrown into a new environment as ‘driftwood’, the experience of the colonists was increasingly one of disillusionment and pauperisation. This made them more dependent on state patronage, and on politicians who held out to them the prospect of it. Their use as shock troops by politicians in the late 50s to break up meetings of the rival party and to harass delegates travelling to the Federal Party convention from the East have been mentioned by Vittachi.

To cabinet ministers dealing with land and resettlement, or with some other subject placing large resources at their command, furthering the party’s reach through settling more Sinhalese in areas having a Tamil association became a means of enhancing their prestige and influence. The prestige came from being seen as the torch- bearers of the Sinhalese cause into hostile territory. Settlement meant in time new electorates and their proteges becoming new MPs, strengthening in turn their position in competition for power within the party.

This gives us an idea of the role Gamini Dissanayake was playing as a minister in the government of 1977 with the huge resources at his command. Trincomalee District, where the Tamil population had declined from 76.5% in 1824 to 60% in 1901 to 37% in 1981, became a target of concerted attempts to tilt the ethnic (i.e. electoral) balance in favour of the Sinhalese. The proportion of the latter had increased from about 5% in 1901 to 33% in 1981. Sinhalisation lay at the root of the administrative policy of appointing Sinhalese GAs for Trincomalee, which has been followed by all governments.

At local level, the thrust of demographic transformation was led by administrators, security officials and persons who had entered politics as proteges of powerful ministers and had established themselves in the area or in the neighbourhood.

Abeysinghe (see above) describes a particular class of persons who acquire political influence (p 108), having come to the schemes as landless casual workhands, often with small time contractors: “These elements slowly get established through accumulative capital. They get hold of the alienated land from the weaker, lazy and unsuccessful farmers/settlers who come within their orbit for funds or help… He accumulates capital, finances production, lends money for settler needs… provides tractors/bullocks on hire, purchases the produce in bulk and becomes a ‘godfather’ to the settlers. He then extends his purview into local politics… links himself to an established family…through marriage. He then commands political power through economic power and becomes a benevolent leader”.

This is a class of persons to whom extending Sinhalese settlements into neighbouring Tamil speaking areas made, in theory at least, good economic sense, and also by this means extended their political influence. H.G.P.Nelson is a politician in this class described by Abeysinghe: “Nelson in Polonnaruwa came from Tangalle as a labourer… He first worked as a labourer, and later as a tea maker in his uncle’s shop. He encroached a canal reservation and gradually made his way up. He entered local politics and ended up an MP”.

He was appointed District Minister for Trincomalee in 1981. He narrowly escaped a JVP attempt on his life in October 1987 during the Southern insurgency of 1987-90. Later the Disappearance Commission for his region named him along with several leading politicians as being implicated in disappearances by witnesses who testified. As district minister of Trincomalee, the local Tamils did not regard Mr. Nelson as personally harmful. But he was symbolic of the power interests behind him.

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