© 2025    Mark E. Balmforth.    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative 
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any 
medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Article

DOI: 10.26812/caste.v6i2.2616

CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion
Vol. 6  No. 2  pp. 277-307

October 2025
ISSN 2639-4928

brandeis.edu/j-caste

The Arrogation of Being Tamil  
and Other Campaigns Against Caste  
Discrimination in Jaffna, 1927–1957

Mark E. Balmforth1

Abstract

For decades, scholars have interpreted twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history 
through the prism of sovereignty. From calls for communal representation in the 
early decades of the century, to the attempt to establish Tamil Eelam at its close, the 
Sri Lankan Tamil effort to chart a self-directed political destiny is often considered 
a defining feature of the community’s twentieth century story. Less discussed is 
another question that consumed Ceylon Tamil politicians, activists, and the island’s 
reading public between the 1920s and the 1950s: should the so-called “depressed 
classes,” or roughly a quarter of Tamil-speakers in the island’s north and east, enjoy 
the same rights and privileges of their neighbors? Focusing on four campaigns 
that shaped these debates—equality of Tamil identity, equality in schools, equality 
in death, and equality in political representation—I argue that a multi-faceted and, 
at times, internally divided movement against caste discrimination operated over 
the four decades preceding the well-known Marxist-led temple and cafe entry 
protests of the late 1960s. Based on the family archives of key activists, police and 
other colonial records, and both oral and published accounts in Tamil and English, 
this article considers the larger circumstances that made landmark civil rights 
accomplishments possible, including the appointment of the island’s first Minority 
Tamil legislator in 1947 and the passing of anti-caste discrimination legislation in 
1957. Drawing insights from new work in Critical Caste Studies, the article reveals 
how a diverse, multi-caste, and multi-national coalition of Hindus, Christians, and 
Buddhists united to disrupt widespread discrimination decades before the rise of 
Tamil militancy. In so doing, this article suggests the addition of a second century-
defining theme in twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history: caste struggle.

Keywords

Tamil, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Caste Discrimination, Civil Rights, 20th Century.
1Independent Scholar
E-mail: meb2212@columbia.edu 



278 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

Introduction1

For decades, twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history has been interpreted through 
the prism of sovereignty (Wilson, 1994; Manogaran and Pfaffenberger, 1995; 
Gunasingam, 2008; Cheran, 2009; Wickramasinghe, 2014). From calls for communal 
representation in the early decades of the century to the attempt to establish Tamil 
Eelam at its close, Sri Lankan Tamil efforts to chart a self-directed political destiny 
are often considered the defining feature of the community’s twentieth-century story. 
Less discussed in historical writing, especially in the English language, is another 
question that consumed Ceylon Tamil politicians, activists, and the island’s reading 
public between the 1920s and the 1950s: should the so-called “depressed classes,” 
roughly a quarter of Tamil-speakers in Ceylon’s north and east, enjoy the same rights 
and privileges of their neighbors?

In this work, I track a decades-long and little-known series of oppressed-caste 
campaigns that fought for and won long-denied rights, privileges, and public services, 
including something that today might seem obvious to an outside observer: public 
recognition as Tamil. Through their creative use of collective action, civil disobedience, 
political violence, the mobilization of print media, petitions to government, and public 
meetings, campaigners for oppressed-caste civil rights convinced people across the 
island that they deserved the same rights and privileges afforded to all citizens in 
British and, later, independent Ceylon. These rights included electoral representation, 
protections from education and workplace discrimination, the right to wear clothing 
of their choice, and equal access to public space, temples, restaurants, water facilities, 
transportation, and mortuary spaces. While examples of these forms of discrimination 
continue to this day and are currently the targets of social justice activists in Jaffna, 
twentieth-century campaigners should be credited with comprehensively challenging 
the ubiquitous and systematic deployment of these discriminatory activities that 
operated at the heart of Ceylonese Tamil public life up until the early 1970s. Over 
1Thanks are due to a host of institutions and individuals who made this work possible. Much of 
the research was conducted under the auspices of postdoctoral fellowships from the University 
of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Government of Canada’s Social Sciences 
and Humanities Research Council, kindly supervised by Srilata Raman and Bhavani Raman. 
The American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies supported the operation of the Lanka Critical 
Caste Studies Working Group that Ponni Arasu and I co-convened in Jaffna between 2022 
and 2023. Thanks are due to Ponni, R. Hibakaran, and V. Rupesh for the many lessons they 
taught me about allyship during this period and since. Ongoing conversations with D. Samuel, 
M. Thiruvarangan, and Father Sam Ponniah have all helped uncover the contemporary stakes 
of this story. Archivists at the National Archives in Colombo and Kandy were particularly 
helpful, and special thanks are due to Dr. Nadeera Rupesinghe and Mrs. Himali Weerakoon. 
Thank you also to the numerous readers who helped sharpen the work—some of whom must 
remain anonymous—including Rachel McDermott, Shamara Wettimuny, Dominic Esler, and 
Senthujan Senkaiahliyan. Family members connected to the story I discuss below have gone to 
extraordinary lengths to support this project. To the Paul and Jacob families—especially Daisy 
Paul and Vimala Amma—I offer my sincere thanks for the trust you have placed in me. Stephan 
Kanagalingam and Henria Aton have both provided critical support and encouragement for 
this project from its inception; few have done more to help bring this work into being.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 279

the course of the thirty years of work I describe below, oppressed-caste leaders built 
the institutional foundations necessary to secure legislation that overturned the two-
hundred-and-fifty-year legal basis for dominant-caste privilege.

This article focuses on four campaigns that helped shape the larger debate around 
caste inequality in twentieth-century Ceylon: equality of Tamil identity, equality in 
schools, equality in death, and equality in political representation. Here, I argue that a 
multi-faceted and, at times, internally divided movement against caste discrimination 
operated over the four decades preceding the well-known Marxist-led temple and cafe 
entry protests of the late 1960s. In so doing, this article suggests the addition of a 
second century-defining theme for twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history: caste 
struggle.

Though the war between 1983 and 2009 can partly explain why sovereignty has 
often been considered the defining feature of twentieth century Sri Lankan Tamil 
history, the clarity of this portrayal depends on the language in which one is working. 
In English, the search for Tamil self-determination on the island is ubiquitous, whereas 
references to oppressed-caste activism are few and far between. Up until the past few 
years, many have relied predominantly upon a single article published in 1990. In two 
more recent contributions, Selvy Thiruchandran’s and Bahirathy Räsänan’s interest in 
exploring Veḷḷāḷar supremacy is commendable (Thiruchandran, 2021; Räsänan, 2015). 
The article, written by Bryan Pfaffenberger, drew on the 1968 clash at Māviṭṭapuram2 
to partially explain the formation of Eelam Tamil nationalism, or what he describes 
as “Defensive Nationalism.” In his compelling portrayal, the Eelam Tamil national 
project grew out of a defensive reaction to Sinhala nationalism. While this may very 
well be the case, this description has also come to be the definitive interpretation 
of oppressed-caste activism on the island in English. Here, I offer an alternative 
that considers oppressed-caste anti-discrimination work as the result of oppressed-
caste interests, rather than as an adjunct to nationalism, something to which Tamil 
oppressed-caste communities have long had an ambivalent relationship.3

In Tamil, the situation is more complicated. First-hand accounts of Jaffna-based 
social justice and anti-caste discrimination work have been published frequently, 
if irregularly, throughout the twentieth century. For instance, Cū. E. Ciṉṉappu’s 
Cuvāmi Ñāṉappirakācariṉ Cuviṣēcat Toṇṭu 1901–1926 [Fr. Gnanapragasar and His 
2Tamil words have been transliterated using the conventions of the Madras Lexicon. All 
translations are my own, and have been produced in consultation with S. Kirubalini and 
Stephan Kanagalingam.

3Oppressed-caste communities in Jaffna have long harbored complex opinions about the Tamil 
nationalist cause. For decades, they fought to be considered as more than an afterthought by 
national Tamil leadership. Nearly all Tamil political leaders of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s came 
from elite backgrounds, and most were Veḷḷāḷar. S.K. Senthivel, who was a young Marxist 
activist in the 1960s, has argued for decades that the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress 
showed no serious interest in the needs of oppressed-caste communities. He writes: “While 
[the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress] spoke of the unity and rights of the Tamils, non-
violent struggle and their rivalry for parliamentary seats, they showed no interest [in] the plight 
of the downtrodden people living among the Tamils and [the denial] of their rights by the caste 
system and untouchability” (Senthivel, 2005).



280 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

Missionary Labours] and Rāja Śrīkāntaṉ’s Cūraṉ Cuyacaritai [The Autobiography of 
Cūraṉ] describe educational activism and community building work during the first 
decades of the twentieth century. The All Ceylon Minority Tamil Mahasabai’s Camūka 
Muṉṉōṭi Em. Ci. [Social Pioneer M.C.] hosts a group of essays by acolytes of one of 
the most important anti-caste activists of the period, M.C. Subramaniam (1917–1989). 
Kē. Ṭāṉiyal’s (1927–1986) excellent set of novels, short stories, and essays were the 
result of self-learned ethnographic methods and community-based descriptions of 
the past.4 Works like these offer critical vantage points into Sri Lankan Tamil history 
largely ignored by professional historians in any language and challenge the idea that 
sovereignty is the century’s key narrative.

Sitting somewhere between primary and secondary source, Ilaṅkaiyil Cāttiyamum 
Ataṟketirāṉa Pōrāṭṭaṅkaḷum [The Struggles Against Casteism in Sri Lanka], written in 
1989 by S.K. Senthivel and N. Raveendran, is the most in-depth description of Jaffna’s 
anti-caste discrimination movement. Its authors are both significant left activists, and 
their work provides unique access into the logic behind much of the anti-discrimination 
and civil rights work of the 1960s and ‘70s. Senthivel and Raveendran also display a 
tendency to privilege their own party’s contributions, for instance in their insistence 
that the Communist Party of Ceylon-Peking Wing brought a clarity of ideological 
purpose that united previously disparate causes.5 “It cannot be denied,” Senthivel has 
written, “that there have previously been from time to time attempts to combat the caste 
system and reject untouchability.”6 Given their enormous contributions, this focus is 
understandable, though there are consequences for the description of oppressed-caste 
anti-discrimination activism prior to the 1960s as piecemeal. The labor, bravery, and 
energies of many hundreds of oppressed-caste activists and allies over four decades of 
the twentieth century deserves to be identified and better understood.

Theoretically, to paraphrase Gajendran Ayyathurai, I attempt to consider some of 
the diverse counter-caste practices that Sri Lankan Tamils have mobilized in response 
to caste-based subordination and exploitation.7 In doing so, I seek to contribute to 
Ayyathurai’s larger call for a transformation in the study of South Asia through an 
investment in Critical Caste Studies, a dedicated scholarly project that systematically 
rejects academic tendencies to render caste as something natural and documentable, 
rather than as a social problem and argument made by dominant-castes for political 
and economic gain.

As others have long noted, the writing of oppressed-caste centered histories 
presents unique challenges, as does writing about people and places still recovering 
from decades of war. I have complemented traditional archive-based work in Colombo, 
Kandy, and Kew with a multi-year search for sources in Jaffna. My interviews for the 

4For more on Kē. Ṭāṉiyal’s method, see Eṉ Katai, 1986.
5Having been a member of the same political party as Senthivel and Raveendran, it is not 
surprising that in 1962, Ṭāṉiyal repeated this same line of argumentation that previous sporadic 
efforts to overthrow caste oppression in Jaffna had failed due to an inconsistent ideological 
basis for the campaign. Kē. Ṭāṉiyal, 1962, pp. 6–7.

6Senthivel, “Thoughts and Experiences…,” n.p. Emphasis mine.
7“It Is Time for a New Subfield: ‘Critical Caste Studies,’ South Asia @ LSE Blog, 5 July 2021.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 281

larger project of which this article is part began with an unexpected meeting down 
an unpaved Jaffna road in 2014. They continued through the fourteen months I spent 
conducting dissertation research in Jaffna in 2016 and 2017, and during annual month-
long visits over the subsequent eight years. During this period, relationships with the 
families of several activists have revealed key sources and breath-taking personal 
insights. These families could be reasonably described as “activist families,” for the 
clarion call of their (grand)fathers, (grand)mothers, (great)uncles, and (great)aunts 
still ring clear as a bell and continue to inspire the dedicated pursuit of justice.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the terms used by oppressed-caste 
communities to describe themselves have been deliberate and of great political 
significance. As a result, I am reluctant to use one single foreign and potentially 
alienating term to describe them. To complicate matters, activists and scholars based 
outside the island use the term “Dalit” to be comprehensible to and act in solidarity 
with international audiences.8 Prashanth Kuganathan’s use of the term pañcamar—
meaning, “the fifth people”—is reasonable; however, I have yet to find evidence of 
the term’s self-referential use by oppressed-caste people on the island in the first half 
of the twentieth century (Kuganathan, 2014, p. 79). Considering the immense efforts 
that oppressed-caste Tamils made to claim titles of respect and humanity that I partly 
document here, I use language cognizant of and deferential to that effort: I alternate 
between “oppressed-caste communities,” “oppressed-caste Tamils,” and “Minority 
Tamils,” depending on the period under discussion. 

Finally, I must point out three limitations. As you will read, I have not focused 
attention on the role of the Jaffna Youth Congress because its larger story has already 
been ably discussed by both Jane Russell and Silan Kadiragamar, though it rightly 
could be described as an incubator for several of the oppressed-caste led organizations 
described below. Second, the struggle for civil rights discussed here coincides 
with widespread discrimination against the island’s Malaiyaka or Upcountry Tamil 
community, their disenfranchisement, and the stripping of their citizenship. For reasons 
that need to be better understood, Jaffna-based oppressed-caste activists did not seek 
to coordinate efforts with the island’s Malaiyaka Tamil community, despite a distinct 
interest to think island-wide from the early 1940s. Because of this, I do not attempt 
to incorporate contemporaneous movements among Malaiyaka Tamils. Finally, the 
roles of women in oppressed-caste activism in Jaffna remain glaringly under-reported. 
Though all the activist organizations I discuss below were formally led by men, 
interviews reveal the expansive role that women played as public speakers, educators, 
and leaders. Dedicated work on this subject is critical if we are to ever truly understand 
how these communities fought for and claimed a host of rights long denied.

8For instance, the Paris-based Front de Développement Pour La Societe Des Dalits Du Sri 
Lanka explicitly frames itself as a Dalit organization, Kē. Ṭāṉiyal’s first novel translated into 
English was subtitled “A Sri Lankan Dalit Novel,” and the important Malaiyaka writer based 
in Norway, Sarawanan Nadarasa, self-identifies as Dalit. In his work, Sarawanan highlights his 
own Indian heritage, which may have significance for his use of the word.



282 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

In what follows, I consider four distinct, decades-long campaigns for oppressed-
caste civil rights that challenged the dense network of discriminatory activities that 
characterized life in Jaffna in the first half of the twentieth century. I begin with the 
claim of a Tamil identity.

The Arrogation of Being   Tamil
Defining Tamil identity is notoriously complicated. Like a moving target, the idea 
has changed over time and place, and been subject to contestation, accumulation, 
and fracture. Today, Sri Lankan Tamils generally rely upon a set of intersecting 
elements when thinking about who qualifies as “Tamil.” This often includes language, 
geography, culture, and race. However, it would today be confusing to hear someone’s 
Tamilness questioned based on caste, regardless of where they were born or live, in 
Sri Lanka or the diaspora.9 Roughly a hundred years ago, however, this was possible. 
In the Jaffna of the late 1920s, a widespread definition of being Tamil limited 
membership to dominant-castes, especially the landowning Veḷḷāḷar, as well as various 
middle, artisan, or service castes. These land-owning, educated communities claimed 
to be the sole inheritors of literary, political, and sacred traditions, some of which 
date back two thousand years to the Sangam period, making them the rightful heirs 
of the title “Tamil.” Historically denied access to education and thus literacy, Jaffna’s 
oppressed-castes were often excluded from this definition of Tamil, and thus not heir 
to what was becoming an increasingly important regional identity and source of pride 
(Wickramasinghe, 2014, p. 275).

Though this absence of a caste requirement among Sri Lankan Tamils today can 
be explained as the result of the circulation of early twentieth-century political thought 
from South India (i.e., through the writings of E.V. Ramaswamy or Periyar) and the 
multiple waves of migration within the Indian Ocean and further afield, Jaffna-based 
activism also contributed to this shift. Between 1927 and the mid-1940s, a discrete 
campaign, led in part by oppressed-caste activists, used organization names, government 
petitions, and newspapers to publicly claim that oppressed-caste communities were 
Tamil, thereby seizing or arrogating the term, expanding its meaning, and convincing 
others of the legitimacy of their claim.

By the turn of the twentieth century, to be Jaffna Tamil was already deeply 
associated with certain elite and distinctly Veḷḷāḷar characteristics. Facility in the English 
language, a dedicated work ethic, frugality, and fiscal acumen were all associated with 
this identity. “The Jaffna Tamil,” wrote one observer in 1902, “could be seen in every 
part of Ceylon, India and the Straits and even in more remote parts of the earth where 
they have gone almost by necessity, and their pluck, perseverance, intelligence, and 
9This is more complicated for the Malaiyaka Tamils, whose Tamil and Ceylonese/Sri Lankan 
credentials have been repeatedly questioned and described as illegitimate. For instance, the 
most recently completed census on the island (2012) officially labels Malaiyaka Tamils as 
“Indian Tamils.” Considering the often presumed oppressed-caste status of Malaiyaka Tamils, 
their definition as Indian or otherwise foreign is impossible to separate from a question of 
caste. Øivind Fuglerud made a similar claim about the ubiquitousness of Tamil identities, 
regardless of caste, in Jaffna in the late 1990s. See Fuglerud, 1999, p. 20.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 283

elasticity of character have made them conspicuous wherever they have gone; and it 
is not impossible that a new civilization could flow from Jaffna into her own hoary 
mother–India” (Nathanael, 1902, p. 34). It is not hard to see how elite Tamil social 
and political life reinforced the idea that to be Jaffna Tamil was to be Veḷḷāḷar: Tamil 
political leadership on the island was Veḷḷāḷar, and membership of the leading Tamil 
political organizations, such as the Ceylon Tamil League, the Tamil Mahajana Sabhai, 
the All Ceylon Tamil Conference, and the Jaffna Association, were all predominantly 
Veḷḷāḷar. Elected village and town councils were also almost exclusively Veḷḷāḷar, as 
was the management of almost all newspapers, schools, temples, and churches.

In February 1927, a group of primarily progressive, dominant-caste Hindus 
operating under the name the Jaffna Depressed Classes League, Chunakam, began 
publishing a newspaper called Tirāviṭaṉ. Part of the goal of the newspaper was to 
reform Hindu perspectives on caste and untouchability to stem the tide of oppressed-
caste communities becoming Christian. In the preceding decades, Christian–
and particularly Catholic–outreach had made noticeable inroads among Jaffna’s 
marginalized communities. Perhaps the most famous example of this was the work of 
Cuvāmi Ñāṉappirakācar (1875–1947), who by 1927 had spent more than twenty-five 
years building Catholic communities, churches, and schools across the peninsula.10

The way oppressed-caste communities are described in Tirāviṭaṉ helps us see 
how language circulated in progressive Hindu spaces that explicitly sought to avoid 
the use of pejorative caste names. Though there was no single, predominant Tamil 
collective term in use at the time, a set of adjectives were nominalized to refer to 
oppressed-caste communities. These nominalizations generally relied upon the 
words tāḻttappaṭṭa and oṭukkappaṭṭa (both of which can be translated as “depressed,” 
“oppressed,” or “downtrodden”) and include tāḻttappaṭṭavarkaḷ (the downtrodden), 
tāḻttappaṭṭa vakuppiṉarkaḷ (the depressed classes), and oṭukkappaṭṭavarkaḷ (the 
oppressed)11. More infrequently, we also find the use of taṭṭukkeṭṭavarkaḷ (those in 
need), tīṇṭakkūṭātavarkaḷ/toṭakkūṭātavarkaḷ (both meaning “untouchables”), and kīḻ 
jāti, meaning low caste.12 Notably, none of these names are combined with or used to 
modify the word “Tamil.”

One of the first signs of a coordinated effort to claim a Tamil identity for oppressed-
caste people on the island occurred the same year Tirāviṭaṉ was founded, in 1927. In 
July, the eminent dominant-caste Methodist educator Nevins Selvathurai (1863–1938) 
and a successful building contractor, Joel Paul (1893–1969), partnered with a group 
of Christian and Hindu leaders to found The Depressed Tamils’ Service League. Their 
goal was “to investigate the hardships endured by the Tamils of the Depressed Classes 
10For a vivid Marxist critique of these activities, see Ṭāṉiyal, 1986.
11Yāḻppāṇam tāḻttappaṭṭavarkaḷiṉ caṅkam cuṉṉākam" [Jaffna Depressed People’s Association 
Chunnakam], Tirāviṭaṉ, 27 February 1927.

12References to oppressed-caste communities in more mainstream newspapers of the period 
are rare, and generally refer to these communities solely by caste name. The Intu Cātaṉam, 
however, did on rare occasions refer to these communities as tāḻnta cātiyiṉar [low castes] 
and tāḻnta vakuppār [low classes]. See Vaṭamākāṇap paripālaṉam, 1930; Tāḻnta vakuppār 
piratiniti, 1930.



284 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

in Jaffna and in other parts of Ceylon and to endeavor to improve their condition, by 
means of education, social service, and other civilizing influences.”13 The use of the 
term “Tamil” in the organization’s name served several distinct purposes. It located 
them in a clearly recognizable political order and defined them as the representatives 
of a certain constituency. We can see that interest revealed clearly in a letter written to 
the Colonial Secretary two months after the League’s founding to request permission 
to appear before the Donoughmore14.

Fig. 1: Joel Paul circa 1930. Family collection. Photo reproduced with permission.

At the time, the Donoughmore Commission was widely expected to recommend 
a new constitution for the island and to remake the system of representative politics, 
which it eventually did in dramatic fashion (Russell, 1982). Representatives from 
multiple organizations advocating for the rights of oppressed-caste Tamils were given 
the opportunity to speak before the commission, including the Catholic Diocesan 
Union of Jaffna, the North Ceylon Workman’s Union, and the United Tamils’ League 
of Colombo. The Depressed Tamils’ Service League delivered evidence before the 
commission at Jaffna on 14 December 1927. The group highlighted a host of civil 
rights issues from educational disparities and discrimination in obtaining marriage 
licenses, to receiving care at pharmacies, accessing public wells, and the difficulty of 
obtaining equal justice under the law from dominant-caste juries.15 Four members of 

13Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service League, “Memorial of the Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service 
League submitted to the Special Commission appointed to consider possible reforms in the Ceylon 
Constitution,” 7 December 1927. CO 1041/12, The National Archives, Kew, U.K.; hereafter TNA.

14Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service League, “Memorial of the Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service 
League submitted to the Special Commission appointed to consider possible reforms in the 
Ceylon Constitution,” 7 December 1927. CO 1041/12, TNA.

15Evidence of the Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service League (Witness No. 58). CO 1041/6, TNA.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 285

the League gave testimony that day: Nevins Selvadurai, the Franco-Anglo Principal 
of St. Patrick’s College, Father Charles S. Mathews (1879–1969), the American 
Principal of Jaffna College, Reverend John Bicknell (1877–1936), and Joel Paul. 
Paul’s presence is significant, because out of the roughly two hundred people who sat 
before the commission—including many of the most important political figures on the 
island–—Paul was the only known oppressed-caste person invited to speak.

By May 1930, Jaffna-based oppressed-caste claims to a Tamil identity began to 
be articulated directly to the reading public. We can see this argumentation in the 
Depressed Tamils’ Service League’s monthly newspaper Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi. The 
newspaper, which ran between May 1930 and January 1931, was both edited and 
funded by Paul. He had been educated in an American missionary school in Tellippaḻai 
and later trained to become a teacher, but this goal was thwarted by principals 
unwilling to hire someone from a Paṟaiyar, or drummer, background.16 Instead, Paul 
followed his father into work as a general contractor. With his keen mathematical mind 
and considerable work ethic, Paul built a successful construction firm responsible for 
some of Jaffna’s most important twentieth-century buildings, including the now razed 
Jaffna Town Hall.17 Paul was also an active member of the Jaffna Youth Congress and 
remained in contact with Handy Perinbanayagam (1899–1977) until the end of his 
days.18

Records from Paul’s early activist years are rare, though interviews with family 
and members of his organizations recall the fiery speeches he gave at public meetings. 
T. Arasaratnam, for instance, frail and more than 80 years of age when I met him, 
recalled travelling by train in the 1940s with Paul to attend one of the bigger public 
meetings in Jaffna town, made possible by the urban center. “For these type of 
meetings,” he shared, “depressed class people from all over the village, they gather 
there. If they go to a particular village here, people won’t come much. Now if you have 
a meeting in Tellippaḻai, only the people from Tellippaḻai will come. Not from outside. 
Jaffna means, without any fear they go. Because the town, no? That was the situation 
at that time.”19

Though the formal leaders of The Depressed Tamils’ Service League were men, 
we know this did not reflect the organization’s complex assemblage of leaders and 
membership, let alone the audiences attracted to its public meetings. Interviews and 
emails with families connected to the organization provide a stream of references 
to multiple generations of women leaders who were forceful public speakers and 
key administrative aids.20 At least three such women leaders are known, including 

16Interview with Daisy Paul, 4 March 2023.
17“Tīṇṭāmaiyai akaṟṟa ayarātu uḻaittavar” [The Tireless Worker Who Removed Untouchability], 
Tiṉakaraṉ, 17 June 1969; interview with Arasaratnam, 4 May 2022.

18Email correspondence with Robert Perinbanayagam, 5 October 2022.
19Interview with Arasaratnam, 4 May 2022.
20Interview with Arasaratnam, 4 May 2022; Interview with a Paul family member who wishes 
to remain anonymous, 6 September 2025.



286 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

a Sarah Isaac and her daughters Vidya and Thamilini Isaac.21 We also know women 
were showing community leadership outside of formal organizations by petitioning 
government to intervene in cases of discrimination.22 Newspapers of the period 
highlighted the presence of women at the Service League’s meetings, which was not 
ubiquitous in the period.23

Fig. 2: The cover of the inaugural issue of Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi, May 1930.

In Joel Paul’s introductory editorial in Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi, he framed his vision for 
the newspaper, the challenges it sought to overcome, and the solution it offered. 

He wrote, in part:

Our opinion is that the way to support the oppressed is to empathize with both 
oppressor and oppressed through preaching the divine law of the brotherhood 
of man. We call for the recitation of the honorable and grace-filled Jaṉatarma 
Pōtiṉi, which will unite and advance the Tamil people with equality beyond 
caste and religious difference, protect self-respect, and identify all as great and 
ancient Tamils.24

There is no space here to adequately delve into the influences that fed Paul’s arguments, 
but what is important for our purposes here is his stated goal: to “unite and advance the 
Tamil people with equality beyond caste and religious difference, protect self-respect, 
and identify all as great and ancient Tamils.” To be Tamil, for Paul, was to share 
equally in a multi-millennial inheritance of beauty, moral character, and intellectual 
achievement at the heart of the Dravidian movement. Tamilness bound Jaffna’s social 

21All three are pseudonyms.
22“Hooligan Scare in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 April 1930.
23“The Depressed Classes,” The Times of Ceylon, 22 July 1927.
24“Eṅkaḷ pattirikai,” Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi, May 1930.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 287

world together in a way nothing else could; both religion and caste undermined an 
essential, linguistic unity. Despite having been raised in a world that considered him 
an outsider as a result of his birth, Paul rejected the discriminatory foundations of the 
idea, and claimed for himself and his community participation in a unified, expansive 
sense of Tamilness. 

By July 1930, the campaign to be considered Tamil was showing results. One 
of the first editorials carried by N. Ponniah in his new monthly newspaper Īl̲akēcari 
made the argument that “oppressed Tamils are Tamils.” Unfortunately, copies of this 
first issue are not known to exist in libraries on or off the island, and so the details of 
his argument will remain unknown for the time being.25 

It is difficult to track the speed at which Ceylonese oppressed-caste Tamil-
speaking people started to be broadly considered Tamil over the course of the twentieth 
century; however, there is evidence that the shift was already well underway by the 
mid 1940s. From at least 1944, widely-read newspaper editorials started referring to 
so-called “high caste” Tamils. For instance, in an opinion editorial discussing caste 
and social disability in Jaffna, A. Arulampalam of Nīrāviyaṭi noted that, “True, high 
caste Tamils and Hindus may feel wounded at the breach of time-honoured custom...” 
(Arulampalam, 1944). We also see a shift in this period among politicians seeking to 
speak on behalf of all Ceylon Tamils and thus claiming Minority Tamils as part of 
their constituency. Immediately following the Soulbury Commission’s Report, G.G. 
Ponnambalam outlined the platform of the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress that made clear 
their intent to represent all Ceylon Tamils, regardless of caste, and that the pursuit of 
separate electoral representation that would “divide the Tamil people” was a “short-
sighted policy and suicidal for the race, though perhaps advantageous to certain 
individuals.”26 Though Ponnambalam’s argumentation ran contrary to the interests 
of oppressed-caste activists, the highly publicized moment attracted the attention of 
a reading public well beyond the progressive circles that read Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi or 
Īl̲akēcari. The moment signals a powerful embrace and legitimization of the argument 
that Joel Paul had fought hard to put before the Jaffna public.27 

Next, I turn from the arrogation of a Tamil identity to the demand for education 
equality.
25We know that this argument was made thanks to a brief note of appreciation Paul published in 
Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi in July 1930. “Īḻakēcari,” Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi, July 1930.

26“Tamil Congress and Reforms,” The Times of Ceylon, 5 February 1946.
27Despite these efforts, the Tamil identity of oppressed-caste people in Jaffna was still not 
universal in the 1970s and early 1980s. Pfaffenberger notes that some Veḷḷāḷars denied that 
oppressed-caste groups were Tamil during his doctoral fieldwork between 1973 and 1975. 
Pfaffenberger, 1990, p. 83. Evidence also suggests that some oppressed-caste communities in 
the period did not themselves identify as Tamil. The militant activist-turned public intellectual 
Sivaram recalled visiting a Jaffna oppressed-caste village in 1983 that shared none of the 
nationalist fervor of the urban middle class. Even news of the Sinhalese-led, anti-Tamil pogrom 
of July 1983 failed to generate a strong reaction among the villagers. Civarām, 2005.



288 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

Equality in Education
Education was a second critical venue for Jaffna’s oppressed-caste activists in the first 
half of the twentieth century. At the height of opposition to the movement, petitions 
were signed, public letters filled newspapers, thousands of dominant-caste parents 
were prosecuted and fined for keeping their children home from schools practicing 
equal seating, and more than ten schools were burned to the ground. This section 
considers efforts in Jaffna to claim and utilize rights to free elementary education and 
the various ways in which this cause was resisted.

From the mid-nineteenth century, Jaffna was one of the most literate and well-
educated parts of the island. By 1929, Christian and Hindu institutions managed 
almost all the 424 schools and colleges in the Northern Province, most of which 
relied upon funding assistance from the central government.28 This dense educational 
infrastructure helped make white-collar labor one of Jaffna’s best-known exports. Up 
until the mid-1920s, this educational system was largely a dominant-caste domain. 
In 1920, the Ceylon Legislative Council passed an educational ordinance making it 
illegal to consider caste in admissions to state-assisted schools.29 This law, which came 
into effect the first day of 1924, drew the attention of oppressed-caste parents, and in 
the years following, colonial administrators mentioned a new interest in education 
among Jaffna’s “depressed classes.”30

By February 1925, one of the island’s most prominent politicians, Sir P. 
Ramanathan, guided a set of resolutions through Jaffna’s Hindu Board of Education 
that moved the board toward alignment with the law. The resolutions proclaimed it 
“the duty of every Hindu” to help those who “had the misfortune of being born in what 
is called the lower caste family attain through education the principles enjoyable by 
what is called high caste persons.”31 Despite being framed as altruism, the resolutions 
did little more than encourage members to follow the law. Sir Ramanathan’s efforts 
attempted to reconcile the Department of Education’s apparent new willignness to 
enforce equality measures with concurrent dominant-caste opposition.

One way that managers of some Jaffna schools sought to subvert the legislation’s 
caste equality provisions was by arranging school life according to caste, with 
separate facilities for eating, drinking, and sitting. Oppressed-caste children were 
generally seated at the back of classrooms, on the floor, while dominant- or middle-
caste children sat at the front on benches or chairs, some with desks. In the 1920s, 
differential seating was hardly restricted to school rooms, and was ubiquitous in public 

28Ceylon, Administrative Reports for 1929, pt. I, p. D12.
29Ceylon, Educational Ordinance of 1920, pt. III, para 13, p. 633.
30Ceylon, Administrative Reports for 1927, p. A12.
31Educational discrepancies between communities were publicly justified based on cultural or 
natural attributes rather than unequal opportunity. For instance, according to an author who 
used the pen name “Common Sense:” “It is our common experience that the children of the 
people belonging to the castes which have been regarded for generations as high have in 
them the germs of certain noble qualities which the children of the low castes lack to a great 
extent, and have, on the other hand, positively harmful mental tendencies.” “Equal Seating in 
Schools,” The Hindu Organ, 5 March 1928.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 289

and private spaces.32 It is not rare to hear of it still in operation.33 It was this last form 
of discrimination inside schools that campaigners decided was rectifiable, as it most 
clearly broke the spirit of the equality provisions in the law. 

Multiple connected efforts were made to compel government action on unequal 
seating. From July 1927, the Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service League had signaled 
education to be one of three critical targets for social reform, along with poverty and 
“insanitation.”34 By that December, the League’s leadership emphasized unequal 
access and treatment in Jaffna’s schools in its written and oral evidence before the 
Donoughmore Commission.35 We also know an oppressed-caste mother from the 
Roman Catholic Tamil school in Mayiliṭṭi wrote a petition to L. Macrae, the island’s 
Director of Education, in which it was explained that oppressed-caste children were 
made to squat on the ground for hours.36

In late February 1928, a group of leaders from the Depressed Tamils’ Service 
League paid a visit to Macrae in Colombo and provided further details on the state of 
educational inequality in Jaffna.37 Macrae reportedly assured the deputation that “the 
Government had no intention whatever of going back on the resolution to treat all 
school children alike.” Macrae’s own evidence before the Donoughmore Commission 
a month earlier also showcased an unwillingness to abide by discriminatory local 
custom, so we cannot rule out the prospect that white British administrators were 
setting policy they interpreted as protecting local minority rights. Though multiple 
actors are likely responsible, wheels were set in motion and a new directive was issued 
in 1929 that explicitly prohibited distinctions of caste in assisted schools.38 Were the 
Department of Education to find that such practices were maintained, the school in 
question would lose its financial support and be required to transition into a private 
school supported by student fees. 

Despite there being a varied collection of published perspectives on the question 
of equal seating, public opinion as such is hard to gauge due to obvious questions of 
representation. Even though it was claimed that “the opinion of most of the thinking 

32As public examples of the general practice were challenged in Jaffna in the first half of the 
twentieth century, differential seating was explicitly deployed to reiterate caste caste position 
and subordination, and as a form of insult. In the early 1940s, Poṉṉar and Cellaiyā were 
respectively elected to the Chankanai and Paḷai village councils, making them some of the first 
oppressed-caste people to win elections in Jaffna. According to Kē. Ṭāṉiyal: “When village 
council member Poṉṉar went to the first village council meeting, he was invited to sit on the 
ground. When Cellaiyā went to the meeting, a coconut tree stump was placed as a seat. These 
moments should be engraved in brass in the history of the democratic system of Tamils.” Kē. 
Ṭāṉiyal, c. 1979, p. 4.

33For instance, evidence of the post-war practice of preferential seating is noted by Bremner, 
2013, p. 33.

34“The Depressed Classes,” The Times of Ceylon, 22 July 1927.
35Evidence of the Jaffna Depressed Tamils’ Service League (Witness No. 58). CO 1041/6, TNA.
36“Hooligan Scare in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 April 1930.
37“Caste in the Classroom,” The Times of Ceylon, 28 February 1928.
38“Report of the Commission to Inquire into and Report upon the Present System of Education 
in Ceylon” (Sessional Paper XXVII of 1929).



290 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

people in these days” is “that depressed classes should be elevated,” debate centered 
upon whether government enforcement would be effective.39 Challenging custom,  
it was argued, and imposing caste equality through state action, is most likely to 
provoke opposition, strengthen 
caste sentiment, and provoke 
violence.40 It may even “create 
enmity between the two sides 
and make Nalavas homeless,” as 
the jurist H.A.P. Sandarasegara 
once argued.41 In response, 
oppressed-caste activists pointed 
out that all citizens should have 
equal rights to public services.42

Meanwhile, others sought 
to link the demand for equal 
seating to growing calls for 
independence. The editor of The 
Times of Ceylon, for instance, 
registered his skepticism that 
independence would lead to 
adequate protections for the 
rights of minority castes, and 
questioned whether it would 
instead lead to the exchange of 
one form of domination (foreign) 
for another (casteist).43 In fact, 
this concern had been a running 
theme through the Donoughmore 
Commission’s hearings and 
the evidence it received. For 
instance, the renowned Sinhala 
muralist M. Sarlis produced a remarkable image making a similar point.44 Drawing 
on Lankan, British, and classical Western imagery, the painting centers Lanka Mava, 
or Mother Lanka as Lady Justice, light-skinned, bejeweled, and dressed in a Kandyan 
sari. Lanka Mava stands before a map of the island and the Union Jack, and holds the 
scales of justice. The scales, labeled Minor Castes and Powerful Castes, are tipped 
39“Equal Seating in Schools,” The Hindu Organ, 5 March 1928.
40This same argument was made repeatedly by opponents to state protections for the rights of 
oppressed-caste people, first against education equality, then  against rights to public cremation 
grounds, and eventually, access to temples.

41“Equal Seating Ferment in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 18 June 1930.
42“Caste in the Classroom,” The Times of Ceylon, 28 February 1928.
43“Swaraj for Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 April 1930.
44For more on M. Sarlis, see Sanathanan, 2017.

Fig. 3: M. Sarlis. “No Swaraj To Lanka Until the Scales are 
Equal.” Painting on paper. CO 1041/10, TNA



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 291

in favor of the latter group. She points to the painting’s argument spelled out: “No 
Swaraj To Lanka Until The Scales Are Equal.” The image was apparently given 
to the Donoughmore commissioners as it was bound into one of the commission’s 
correspondence files now held at the National Archives at Kew.

The 1929 directive to school managers to enforce equal seating or lose their 
funding created a sensation in parts of Jaffna, with some schools losing eighty percent 
of their students almost overnight.45 Though students at certain schools were heading 
for the gates, some of Jaffna’s educational institutions had accepted and integrated 
oppressed-caste children into their ranks for two decades. For instance, the American 
Ceylon Mission’s Tamil elementary school in Tellippaḷai accepted its first oppressed-
caste students in 1901 and then enforced equal seating from February 1905 (American 
Ceylon Mission, 1905, p. 41). Other schools, such as those started by Cuvāmi 
Ñāṉappirakācar from the 1910s, were opened specifically in oppressed-caste villages 
and designed for community upliftment. By 1930, St. Patrick’s College had long been 
operating without caste distinction, followed by Jaffna College, Hartley College, and 
Uduvil Girls’ College.46 S.R. Jacob’s  (1903–1974) experience as Jaffna College’s first 
oppressed-caste boarding student in 1917 was recorded in vivid detail by John W. 
Bicknell, the son of Principal John Bicknell.47

Members of the Hindu Board of Education in Jaffna were up in arms and passed 
resolutions attempting to delay enforcement and shift the financial burden to the Board 
of Education should school property be damaged as a result of the policy.48 Neither 
tactic worked.49 Major problems were initially reported from Elalai and Kopay. In 
Tuṉṉālai North’s Wesleyan Mission Tamil school, Veḷḷāḷar students abandoned en 
masse, leaving just two oppressed-caste children.50 Between 1929 and 1933, more 
than 30,000 fines were issued to parents for school absences, many of which were 
undoubtedly protests against equal seating.51

Fire was often used as a form of violent protest, by dominant- and oppressed-caste 
activists alike. Several schools had been burned in Jaffna’s villages before the first case 
of arson reached the courts and was detailed in the press. Most village schools at the 
time were wooden-framed shelters roughly ten by twenty feet, surrounded by meter-
high mud walls, all of which was covered in palm or palmyra leaf thatch. The schools 
were thus highly flammable and once set aflame, were engulfed in a matter of minutes. 
On 24 April 1930, the Vacāviḷāṉ Roman Catholic Tamil school was razed by a group 

45Ceylon Administrative Reports for 1929, pt. I, p. D7-8. 
46“Hooligan Scare in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 April 1930.
47Bicknell, 1981, pp. 21–22. Having been deeply inspired by M.K Gandhi’s writings, S.R. Jacob 
spent the majority of his life dressed in khadi, that is, simple home-spun cloth. Consequently, 
from the 1930s, he was known within his activist and union circles as “Jacob Gandhi.”

48“Hooligan Scare in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 April 1930; “Equal Seating in Jaffna,” 
The Times of Ceylon, 8 May 1930.

49“Equal Seating in the North,” The Times of Ceylon, 14 June 1930.
50“Equal Seating in the North,” The Times of Ceylon, 14 June 1930.
51Ceylon Administrative Reports for 1929, pt. I, p. D12, Ceylon Administrative Reports for 
1931, pt. I, p. D12, Ceylon Administrative Reports for 1933, pt. I, p. D9.



292 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

of seven Catholic Veḷḷāḷars, three days after the announcement about enforcement of 
equal seating was made.52 Two and a half weeks later, in Ēḻālai, it was oppressed-caste 
people who set a school ablaze.53 Hours before the fire was lit, Veḷḷāḷars in Ēḻālai met 
and resolved to ban those seeking equal seating from their land and palmyra trees, 
thus denying the local oppressed community their livelihood. Within weeks, schools 
in Tuṉṉālai North and Urumpirāy were in cinders.54 In all, more than ten schools were 
burned, and two villages were forced to pay for a local detachment of constables 
referred to as “punitive police” until the crisis abated.55

Governmental reporting declared that by the end of 1931, with the exception of 
the Jaffna village of Pūtūr:

“active opposition to equal seating has died out, although it cannot be doubted 
that there are many who silently disapprove. Nevertheless the depressed class 
people in certain villages are afraid that if they were to send their children 
to school, the high caste people would harass them in various ways. They 
feel that it is not possible for them to resist them or prosecute them in courts 
successfully…”56

In the years immediately following, Jaffna Government Agent E.T. Dyson 
recorded several visits to villages to investigate complaints against members of the 
government’s village-based administrative apparatus, including village committees, 
headmen, and police vidanes. “It is regrettable to note,” the same report mentioned, 
“that some of the Village Committees are encouraging opposition to equal seating by 
dealing with prosecutions for non-attendance according to their sympathies instead 
of in accordance with the law.” In March 1932, he drove out to Pūtūr to determine 
whether a headman and a teacher of an aided school there were working against equal 
seating. “The charges are not without foundation,” he wrote.57 In July of that year, a 
caste dispute revealed that while Veḷḷāḷars in Ilavalai had accepted equal seating in 
the Tamil language school, they “resented some Pallar boys being admitted into the 
English school.”58 Later that month, G.A. Dyson fined the headman of Sirupiddy, V. 
Kathirgamar, Rs. 10 for “encouraging by his attitude opposition to equal seating in 
schools.”59

There are indications that equal seating was not completely settled even by 1934, 
but colonial reporting from the period points out that “the desire of the depressed 
classes, particularly in the Northern Province, for education has been maintained…”.60 
52“Caste Revolt in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 1 May 1930.
53“School Burning in Jaffna,” The Times of Ceylon, 15 May 1930.
54“Equal Seating in the North,” The Times of Ceylon, 14 June 1930; “Opposition to Equal 
Seating,” The Times of Ceylon, 3 July 1930. 

55“Lawlessness in the Jaffna District,” The Times of Ceylon, 12 July 1930.
56Ceylon Administrative Reports for 1931, pt. I, p. D12.
57Jaffna GA Diary, 12 March 1932. 20/127, Kandy branch of the Sri Lanka National Archives, 
Kandy, Sri Lanka; hereafter SLNAK.

58Jaffna GA Diary, 7 July 1932. 20/127, SLNAK.
59Jaffna GA Diary, 29 July 1932. 20/127, SLNAK.
60Ceylon, Administrative Reports for 1934, pt. I, pp. D8, A40.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 293

As admission to and treatment in private schools was not considered to be within 
the government’s jurisdiction, it would not be until the early 1950s that Ramanathan 
College and Parameshvera College—two of Jaffna’s most elite Hindu institutions 
of higher education—accepted oppressed-caste children. In 1954, the leaders of the 
North Ceylon Toddy Tappers’ Union testified to a government committee on the 
interconnections between economics and educational access.61 As J.D. Aseervatham, 
S.R. Jacob, G. Nalliah, and M.C. Subramaniam explained, “we feel [our children’s 
recent acceptance into Ramanathan and Parameshvera Colleges] has become possible 
because our children are neatly dressed on account of better economic conditions. The 
management did not find difficulty as our children were dressed better.” 

By the early 1950s, Jaffna’s oppressed-caste activists, along with brave parents 
and children, had successfully leveraged ideas of equality under the law to mobilize the 
island’s Board of Education, managers and teachers, village councils and headmen, and 
even the Hindu Board of Education to enforce educational equality in state-supported 
schools. The record shows that in some places this project was fiercely resisted and in 
certain villages it took years for the question of equal seating to be resolved. Despite 
these challenges, the example of equal seating provides evidence that the Ceylonese 
colonial state was able to implement policies targeted at ending caste discrimination 
in public space using public funds, and that oppressed-caste activists played no small 
role in compelling the state’s action.

I now turn to ways in which ritual spaces surrounding death became a venue for 
the campaign against caste discrimination.

Equality in Death

After the shots rang out, two men lay dead. Both had died instantly within feet of the 
burning funeral pyres. Though twelve kilometers and more than a decade separated 
their demises, the deaths of Caravaṇamuttu Rāmaliṇkam and Mutali Ciṉṉatampi were 
connected by an oppressed-caste campaign to exercise rights to public cremation 
grounds. This section demonstrates how public space for death rituals became 
important venues for oppressed-caste rights work. Between 1930 and 1950, ten known 
cases of the explicit use of cremation to claim rights hitherto denied were documented 
in contemporary newspapers, colonial reports, and police records. At least four other 
examples that did not lead to serious injury or police involvement are also known. As 
they did to secure equal education, oppressed-caste activists mobilized the colonial 
state to protect their rights. As we will see, the state was an imperfect defender of those 
rights, especially as independence approached and Jaffna’s politics turned distinctly 
Tamil nationalist.

On 20 May 1931, in a Jaffna village outside Caṅkāṉai, seventeen Ceylonese 
police officers stood shoulder to shoulder, bayonets fixed, while stones rained down 
upon them. Their uniforms were already ripped and bloody from an earlier clash, while 

61Ceylon, Sessional Paper XVIII. Evidence before the Special Committee to Investigate the 
Working of the Tree Tax System in Jaffna, 1954, p. 28.



294 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

one of their number, Police Constable Ibrahim, lay unconscious and bleeding from a 
strike to the head.62 According to police testimony, a group of several hundred Cāṇṭārs 
and Kōviyars had used clubs, knives, and rocks in an effort to exclude a local Paḷḷar 
community from cremating the body of an elderly woman, Tampaṉ Ciṉṉi.63 Police 
Inspector R. Stewart recorded that, prior to the clash, he had tried to convince both the 
Cāṇṭār and the Paḷḷar community to resolve the conflict. “I told the Cahndas [sic] that 
we had to prevent a breach of the peace, and that I would use all necessary force to 
prevent such a breach.”64 Working in tandem with the Maniagar, they tried to convince 
the Paḷḷars to bury the body, as had been their local practice. Stewart reminded them 
that the Veḷḷāḷars own the land on which they lived and the palmyra palms they tapped 
for their livelihood.65 The community declined to bury the body, which by Stewart’s 
estimation had been dead for about two days.66 The community then requested police 
protection, to which Stewart responded by telling them to collect water for the rites 
from their own area and see to the cremation.67

By the time the clash had occurred in May 1931, oppressed-caste communities 
in various parts of Jaffna had already started to adjust their funeral practices. As part 
of the investigation surrounding Caravaṇamuttu Rāmaliṇkam’s death, T. Suppiah, a 
Police Vidhan of Caṅkāṉai East, explained that it is not normally the custom of Paḷḷars 
to cremate their dead. “But now it is being done in the adjoining village Manepay. I 
know instances of Pallas being cremated. It takes place in Chulipuram, Chunnakam.”68 
Cremations by communities previously excluded from the ritual were clearly on the 
rise, and the practice appears to have been occurring for some time without serious 
incident. Sinnadiyan Kanapathipillai, a 30-year old Paḷḷar who had been part of the 
funeral party at Caṅkāṉai, testified that the community had already cremated five or 
six bodies before the day in question.69 That year, the Administrative Report for the 
Northern Province of 1931 also sought to explain the noticeable growth in what were 
referred to as “riot cases” as part of larger changes in the social order: “During the 

6283/1559, 83/1560F, and 83/1560C, SLNAK.
63In his testimony before the inquiry resulting from the incident, Police Vidhan of Changanai 
East T. Suppiah explained that it was the Veḷḷāḷars, Kōviyars, and Cāṇṭārs who objected to the 
cremation. Paḷḷar members of the funeral procession Sinnadiyan Kanapthipillai and Nannian 
Kuddiyan both noted that Cāṇṭārs and Kōviyars were in the crowd attacking the police, though 
neither was willing to name those they saw. 83/1560, SLNAK.

6483/1560C, SLNAK.
6583/1560C, SLNAK.
66The decomposition of a body in May—often the hottest month of the year–is rapid, making the 
timing of mortuary practices all the more important. For several cases such as this, the timing 
of decomposition placed pressure on all parties involved, creating a deadline tied to intimate 
questions of respect and public health. In May of 1946, the body of the grandmother of S.N. 
Rajendram awaited cremation for more than four days as activists and city officials fought over 
where the cremation could be conducted. At the time, Rajendram was President of the United 
Youth League and an up-and-coming oppressed-caste leader. “Body Unburied for Four Days,” 
Ceylon Daily News, 4 May 1946.

6783/1560C, SLNAK.
6883/1560C, SLNAK.
6983/1560C, SLNAK.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 295

year 26 riot cases were reported, as against 5 and 9 in 1929 and 1930, respectively. An 
assertive tendency in the depressed classes due to their growing emancipation and a 
corresponding reaction in higher castes has stimulated friction in certain quarters and 
led to this increase.”70

With his constables lined up on the cremation grounds, the armed Cāṇṭār and 
Kōviyar contingent before them and the Paḷḷars behind, and Police Constable Ibrahim 
bleeding from the head due to a stone strike, Inspector Stewart’s instructions were 
clear: there was no law preventing the Paḷḷars from cremating the body, and he was 
to prevent any breach of the peace.71 As soon as the funeral pyre behind the police 
line was lit, according to police testimony, the anger of the Cāṇṭārs and Kōviyars was 
renewed. Stones continued to fall as the Cāṇṭārs and Kōviyars approached the police 
line. In response, PI Stewart emptied his revolver into the air above the advancing 
crowd, and took a rifle from one of the police constables. According to Stewart, as 
soon as the crowd reached ten yards from the police, “a man jumped forward from the 
crowd, with a drawn knife. I fired from the hip and he fell.” Numerous inconsistencies 
in this description of events were highlighted during the resulting investigation and 
trial, though PI Stewart was exonerated of any wrongdoing.72 In the moment, PI 
Stewart interpreted his role as the protector of public rights to the cremation ground, a 
choice that was then supported by the resulting administrative review. 

Thirteen years later, in 1944, the political terrain had shifted and along with it, 
the significance of the movement to open cremation grounds. Adding to longstanding 
debates over custom and privilege were newly urgent concerns over the interference 
of outsiders. With the prospect of independence coming into clearer focus, fears of 
majoritarian rule and the threat of Sinhala politics “interfering” in “local” issues were 
increasingly voiced. This growing call, an early vocalization of a Tamil nationalist 
impulse, became an important element in the direction and development of oppressed-
caste politics. 

On the evening of 26 September 1944, Mutali Ciṉṉatampi was standing with 
about 25 family members in the Villūṉṟi cremation grounds, keeping watch over the 
body of Vaḷḷippiḷḷai, his elderly aunt, as it burned.73 As much of the evening’s ritual had 
finished, most of the hundred or so family members had left before the shots rang out. 
Ciṉṉatampi died on the spot, while two kinsmen, Murukar Poṉṉaiyā of Point Pedro 
and Anthony Valichaur of Kāraiyūr were also wounded.

The moment was preceded by years of effort by oppressed-caste leaders to 
convince the Jaffna Urban Council to provide space for oppressed-caste cremations 
in Jaffna Town. In 1941, a motion was put forth in the council to open Villūṉṟi to 
all castes, though the matter was tabled without a vote.74 Then, three months before 
Mutali Ciṉṉatampi was shot, Urban Council Member Sam Sabapathy put forward a 
70Ceylon, Administrative Reports for 1931, pt. I, p. D13. 
7183/1560C, SLNAK.
7283/1560C, SLNAK; “Revolver or Gun Shot?” The Times of Ceylon,  21 January 1932.
73Acting Inspector-General of Police W.T. Brindley to Minister for Home Affairs A. Mahadeva, 
19 May 1945. 83/1317, SLNAK.

74“Shots Fired at Funeral,” The Hindu Organ, 28 September 1944.



296 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

motion to create a crematorium for residents of the town who had no other facility.75 
No apparent action was taken.

The Government Agent of the Northern Province (GA NP), C. Coomaraswamy, 
spent much of the slowly unfolding crisis balancing between obligations to maintain 
order, public safety, and equality of access to public services, with the need to respect 
the concerns, actions, and inactions of local elected officials under whose jurisdiction 
the cremation grounds fell. Through the Villūṉṟi episode, Chairman of the Jaffna Urban 
Council C. Ponnambalam struck a conservative line. He frequently argued that custom 
had taken on the power of law, that existing facilities for oppressed-caste cremation 
were sufficient, and that the real danger of the moment was the threat to public order. 
That he took such a firm position belied his complicated relationship to the growing 
significance of oppressed-caste politics. Some months before the crisis, he had put 
forward a motion that sought to curb caste discrimination in restaurants and tea shops 
in the Urban Council.76 Though he quickly withdrew the motion, explaining that he 
was “guided by the views of the majority of citizens,” his actions reveal the growing 
appeal of catering to a new constituency.77

At multiple stages throughout the conflict, GA NP Coomaraswamy repeatedly 
appealed to members of the council to resolve the situation. He offered suggestions 
to designate part of Villūṉṟi a general public cremation ground and, when that idea 
was rejected, to open a new general crematorium within the town limits.78 During a 
conference with the leaders of the Urban Council in October 1944, he emphasized 
that he spoke to them as one of their own—a Veḷḷāḷar and Caiva Hindu—and that 
negotiating a conclusion would avoid a future breach of the peace.79 

Two days after Ciṉṉatampi was shot, his family requested permission to cremate 
his body at Villūṉṟi. Standing before the GA NP Coomaraswamy and the Superintendent 
of Police (SP) Osmund de Silva, the family’s Veḷḷāḷar representative V. Sittampalam 
asked for an immediate response in writing from Chairman C. Ponnambalam.80 The 
request was denied and Ciṉṉatampi’s body was cremated in Kolōmpōtuṟai, outside the 
Jaffna town limits.

Only a few days later, on 1 October 1944, violence was narrowly averted by police 
in Arāli North when a Nalavar funeral party cremated the body of a member of their 
community despite opposition by two nearby communities.81 In his correspondence 
with GA NP Coomaraswamy, SP de Silva also made clear that he wanted direction as 
to what attitude the police should adopt should the Nalavar community request police 
protection to cremate another body at Villūṉṟi. The question appears to have been 
settled nine months later, during a meeting between the GA NP and police leadership 
when it was revealed that the “police have no legal right to prohibit cremation or burial 

75“Jaffna Seeks Textile Quota,” The Times of Ceylon, 14 June 1944.
76“Stormy Meeting of Jaffna UC,” Ceylon Daily News, 14 September 1943.
77“A Challenge to the Tamil Congress,” The Times of Ceylon, 29 September 1944.
78“Villundi Tragedy Sequel,” The Times of Ceylon, 19 October 1944.
79“Not Willing to Share Villundi Crematorium,” The Observer, 18 October 1944.
80“Intolerance Over Crematorium,” Ceylon Daily News, 29 September 1944.
81Osmund de Silva to C. Coomaraswamy, 3 October 1944. 83/1317, SLNAK.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 297

of Nalavas at Villundi but, if a breach of the peace is anticipated, action could be taken 
under Section 114 Cr. P.C”82 Section 114 of the Criminal Penal Code is an insurrection 
clause.

By the first week of May 1945, no progress had been made on the proposed 
general cremation ground within the Jaffna Urban Council limits. In response, activists 
arranged for the body of another Nalavar community member to be cremated at Villūṉṟi. 
Soon after the cremation on 7 May, a telegram was sent to the Inspector-General of 
Police (IGP) Ranulph Bacon in Colombo by S.R. Jacob, the President of the North 
Ceylon Minority Tamils Mahasabha to inform him of the cremation and requesting 
police protection for the collection of ashes.83 This was followed up the following day 
by another telegram that added “WHY NO REPLY MATTER URGENT.”84 Jacob had 
also written directly to Ceylon’s Governor Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore appealing 
for protection.85

Fig. 4: President of the North Ceylon Minority Tamils Mahasabha S.R. Jacob circa 1930. Family 
collection. Photograph reproduced with permission. Fig. 5:  The telegraph Jacob sent to Inspector 
General of Police Ranulph Bacon to request police protection for the collection of ashes at 
Villūṉṟi. 83/1317, SLNAK. Photograph credit: Stephan Kanagalingam.

Within a month, A. Nagalingam of the Saiva Virithi Sangam of Koṭṭaṭi had sent 
the Minister of Home Affairs a petition signed by 27 members of the organization, 
calling on him to act.86 Nagalingam claimed that the police were “the aiders and 
82“Notes of Conference held at Kachcheri on 10.6.45.” 83/1317, SLNAK. After further inquiries 
by the SP NP, the IGP finally weighed in on this question three months later, in September 
1945, confirming “the Police have no legal right to prevent the Depressed Classes entering the 
Villundi crematorium to cremate their dead.” SP NP to IGP, manuscript note, 12 September 
1945, with answer of 15 September 1945. 83/1317, SLNAK.

83S.R. Jacob to Ranulph Bacon, Telegram, 13 May 1945. 83/1317, SLNAK.
84S.R. Jacob to Ranulph Bacon, Telegram, 14 May 1945. 83/1317, SLNAK.
85Acting Inspector-General of Police W.T. Brindley to Minister for Home Affairs A. Mahadeva, 
29 May 1945. 83/1317, SLNAK.

8683/1317, SLNAK.



298 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

abetters” of the Nalavars in their criminal activity and “doing everything possible…to 
upset religious custom.” 

In response to the petition, Jaffna Chief Inspector of Police T.B. Herath forcefully 
defended the police’s approach. “I submit that it is a libel on the part of the Petitioners 
to say that we have taken sides in this matter,” he argued. “It was in this connection 
that the leader of the depressed classes asked me for Police protection to remove the 
Ashes from the Crematorium. I told him that I would do nothing of the kind and also 
informed him that I would not hesitate to place him in custody if he was going to be 
the means of a serious breach of the peace. Our policy has been and is strictly impartial 
and within the law. As a result the intelligent and disinterested public here appear to 
have confidence in the Police at present.”87 According to reports, the ashes were never 
collected.

In 1931, the Jaffna police went to great lengths to enforce the law of equal access, 
even to the point of showing armed force and opening fire on a group of dominant-caste 
protesters and their enforcers after having been attacked. By 1944, when an oppressed-
caste community sought to exercise their legal rights, the government establishment 
considered and then declined that same protection. Government officials appear to 
have accepted the plausibility of the arguments put forth by leaders of the Jaffna Urban 
Council that custom had obtained the power of law, and the contravention of custom 
was a threat to public safety.

Finally, we now turn to oppressed-caste efforts to ensure electoral representation.

Equality in Electoral Representation

Between 1927 and 1946, three commissions guided the establishment of Ceylon’s 
system of national representative government. Though adjustments have been 
numerous, many of the changes this period put into place remain constituents of Sri 
Lanka’s system of government. In hundreds of interviews across the island, senior 
British and Ceylonese administrators spoke with a vast array of individuals who 
insisted on making their claims to representation heard. In 1927, a commission led 
by Richard Hely-Huchinson, the 6th Earl of Donoughmore, recommended universal 
adult suffrage and paved the way for widespread adult participation in the democratic 
process. This was followed by a second British-led commission in 1945, in which 
Herwald Ramsbothom, the first Viscount Soulbury, investigated and then proposed a 
constitutional system in which electoral representation to the new Parliament would 
be balanced between both territory and what were called “communities of interest.” 
Finally, in 1946, the eminent Ceylonese jurist L.M.D. de Silva chaired the island’s first 
delimitation commission, which used the Soulbury report and its own hearings to draw 
electoral boundaries for the first parliamentary elections in 1947.

During the work of each of these three commissions, oppressed-caste activists 
gave testimony, held political meetings, and wrote publicly to protect their electoral 

87CIP Jaffna T.B. Herath to ASP Jaffna P.R. de S. Seneviratne, 17 August 1945. 83/1317, 
SLNAK.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 299

rights.88 In response, oppressed-caste leaders faced claims denying their community’s 
existence, threats of verbal and physical harm, and the regular denial of reasonable 
requests for the same rights their fellow citizens enjoyed. Throughout each step of 
the process, all three commissions listened to oppressed-caste claims of ubiquitous 
mistreatment and the need for independent representation. Each time, hereditary caste 
and political interests impressed upon commissioners reasons to limit efforts designed 
to ensure oppressed-caste representation. The combined effect of this advocacy, 
explored below, resulted in an electoral system that effectively barred oppressed-caste 
representation from Parliament for thirty years.89 

At the time of the Donoughmore Commission’s arrival on the island in November 
1927, the prospect of universal adult franchise represented a distinct threat to the 
conservative political order writ large, not just for the Veḷḷāḷar-controlled Tamil political 
landscape. At the time, the right to vote was restricted to literate adult men with a monthly 
income of at least Rs. 50 per month or those who owned property worth Rs. 1500. This 
resulted in an island-wide electorate totaling 204,997 men, or about 4 per cent of the 
island’s population, in 1924.90 Queried as to his perspective on expanding the franchise 
to all adult men, Ponnambalam Ramanathan responded that a wider franchise would 
place power in the hands of men who have no time for reading newspapers, engaging 
in political debates, or other activities that educate people for civic responsibility. 
“You want to give him political privileges?” Ramanathan implored, “For his own sake 
I say he will have no time for it.”91 His argument against the expansion of the franchise 
to women revealed a similarly conservative and patronizing perspective that was 
clearly at odds with the socialist tendencies of the commissioners. The Commission 
recommended a broad franchise for most men above the age of twenty-one and women 
above thirty. The Colonial Office in London responded by reducing the age threshold 
for women to twenty-one, making the island the first country in Asia with universal 
franchise.92 In its report, the Donoughmore Commissioners noted that, though they 
were unable to recommend special representation for oppressed-caste communities, 
they believed the extension of universal franchise, combined with recent efforts to 
ensure equal educational opportunities, were “the true remedies for their condition.” 
(Ceylon, 1928, p. 72).

Arriving on the island in 1945, the Soulbury Commission was tasked with 
thinking through constitutional reform that would more directly prepare the island 

88Oppressed-caste activists were also concurrently fighting for electoral representation at the 
municipal and village level, where successes were more forthcoming. In the 1948 Jaffna 
Municipal Council elections, D. James was elected for the Cathedral ward, which had been 
created specifically because of pressure by various activists. “He Creates Precedent,” The 
Times of Ceylon, 7 December 1948.

89In 1977, with the support of the Tamil United Liberation Front, T. Rasalingam (b. 1933) was 
elected from the Uṭuppiṭṭi constituency.

90Ceylon, Report of the Special Commission on the Constitution. Ceylon Government Press, 
1928: 12, 61.

91CO 1041/4, TNA.
92K.M. de Silva, A History of Ceylon, p. 522.



300 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

for independence. Part of that remit included making recommendations for new 
electoral boundaries. Though the actual drawing of boundaries was left t the Minority 
Tamils Progressive o a subsequent body, the Soulbury Commission did make a range 
of recommendations devised to navigate the political challenge of ensuring minority 
representation. While taking keen interest in the claims put forth by leaders of the All-
Ceylon Minority Tamil Mahasabha, the Soulbury Commissioners publicly recognized 
the distinct limitations associated with single-seat electoral divisions.93 Scattered or 
widely dispersed minority communities of interest were generally unable to concentrate 
enough votes to win any one single-seat election, leaving them without representation. 
In response to this issue, the Soulbury Commissioners recommended that the 
Delimitation Commission consider creating larger, multi-member constituencies. In 
theory, minority communities of interest would then be able to consolidate enough 
votes for a single candidate. Parts of Colombo and Jaffna were both recommended for 
such consideration (Ceylon, 1945, p. 73). 

Between the release of the Soulbury Commission report in 1945 and the 
Delimitation Commission report of 1946, an oppressed-caste elected Member of 
Parliament was a distinct possibility for Jaffna. The hearings before the Delimitation 
Commission reflect this possibility, both as optimism from the perspective of 
oppressed-caste activists and concern from the Tamil political establishment. The 
arguments of oppressed-caste organizations, particularly the All-Ceylon Minority 
Tamil Mahasabha and the Minority Tamils Progressive Union, centered on the call for 
multi-member constituencies.94

In his multiple testimonies before the Delimitation Commission, the leader of 
the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress and State Council member for Point Pedro G.G. 
Ponnambalam offered a master class in lawyerly skill and charismatic charm. 
While his Oxbridge English and patrician courtesy were common to his generation 
of Ceylonese politicians, Ponnambalam also had a wickedly sharp sense of humor 
and was known to use insults to devastating effect. Due to his experience, position, 
and skill, Ponnambalam’s testimony carried enormous weight. Ponnambalam argued 
that the commission should adopt an expansive interpretation of minority rights to 
representation. In his enumeration, this definition would field 34 minority seats, 13 

93During the Soulbury Commission’s visit to Jaffna in February 1945, member Frederick Rees 
and commission secretary Trafford Smith were invited by members of the All-Ceylon Minority 
Tamil Mahasabha to tour a recent site of caste violence. In Kaṉpollai, a village outside Point 
Pedro, the group visited the site of a home razed two days earlier and spoke with victims. 
Immediately following this visit, the three leaders of the All-Ceylon Minority Tamil Mahasabha 
that accompanied commission members were attacked. M.C. Subramaniam, D. James, and 
V.R. Ganapattipillai were tied together using Subramaniam’s shawl, and an attempt was made 
to light the three on fire. A doctor and three policemen happened to drive past and stopped the 
assault before anyone received a life-threatening injury. Kē. Ṭāṉiyal, 1979, pp. 5–6; Ceylon 
Daily News, 16 March 1945.

94Representatives to the first Delimitation Commission hearings in Jaffna for the All-Ceylon 
Minority Tamil Mahasabha were J.D. Aseervatham, M.A.C. Benjamin, D. James, P. Jonah, and 
G. Nalliah. Representatives for the Minority Tamils Progressive Union were A.B. Rajendra, 
Ariya Pathirana, and M.C. Subramaniam.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 301

of which would be held by Ceylonese Tamils. Then, to avoid potential threats to the 
unity of a Ceylonese Tamil voting bloc, Ponnambalam systematically deconstructed 
the arguments of oppressed-caste activists who sought representation as minorities 
among Ceylonese Tamils. In previous testimony before the Soulbury Commissioners, 
Ponnambalam had publicly questioned whether a Minority Tamil community of 
interest actually existed in the first place by pointing out that the term “depressed 
classes” was difficult to define.95 “In this country,” he went on, “it is a fairly wide term, 
and a rather nebulous class.” Before the Delimitation Commission, Ponnambalam 
leveraged ongoing disagreements within the oppressed-caste rights movement itself. 
This point was made abundantly clear in the testimonies of the two primary Minority 
Tamil organizations. When asked whom they represent, members of the All-Ceylon 
Minority Tamil Mahasabha argued that Vaṇṇars (launderers) and Ampaṭṭars (barbers) 
were not part of the “depressed classes” because they have public rights that Naḷavars, 
Paḷḷars, and Paṟaiyars do not.96 Speaking on behalf of the Minority Tamils Progressive 
Union, Ariya Pathirana–Jaffna’s leading Sinhala politician and a former member of 
the Jaffna Urban Council–argued that Vaṇṇars and Ampaṭṭars were certainly part of 
the “depressed classes,” as they faced the same exclusion from political life as all the 
other oppressed communities.97 

The question of the size of the Minority Tamil community was of critical 
importance, as the larger the community, the more important it was to ensure their 
representation. Unlike categories such as religion and race, caste has been excluded 
from modern census taking since its inception in 1871, and so when the question of the 
size of oppressed-caste communities was raised, authoritative data was unavailable.98 
Estimates varied from as little as 42,000 to over 200,000 people. When asked about 
this latter number, Ponnambalam quipped: “All I can say is, some of us might belong 
to that category.”99 Ponnambalam thus undermined and dismissed Minority Tamil 
claims using caste-inflected humor designed to appeal to a dominant-caste listener. 
The efforts of oppressed-caste activists and their allies were clearly hampered by the 
lack of independent data, and this ambiguity provided license to their opponents. 

Taking a slightly different tack, the Nationalist Tamils Committee argued that 
because the social advancement of oppressed-caste communities was proceeding so 

95“Argument for Balanced Representation,” The Times of Ceylon, 16 February 1945, p. 1.
96Delimitation Commission, Proceedings of the Public Sessions Held at Jaffna, 5 July 1946: 21. 
108.25/9, Sri Lanka National Archives, Colombo, Sri Lanka; hereafter SLNA.

97Delimitation Commission, Proceedings of the Public Sessions Held at Jaffna, 5 July 1946: 44. 
108.25/9, SLNA.

98There is a history of debates among those designing the Ceylonese and Sri Lankan censuses as 
to whether caste should be included. For instance, in early 1945, a conference of Government 
Agents discussed the proposal and there was general agreement that it should be an included 
category, though the recommendation was not accepted by the executive committee of the 
Ministry of Labour, Industry and Commerce which had the final say. See Census of Ceylon 
1946, 1, no. 1: 155, pp. 277–228.

99Delimitation Commission, Proceedings of the Public Sessions Held at Jaffna, 5 July 1946: 73. 
108.25/9, SLNA.



302 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

quickly, a permanent electoral response was unnecessary. Instead, A.E. Tamber and 
Handy Perinbanayagam argued for a transitional representation: “Their disabilities can 
be obliterated in a short time. Things are moving pretty fast and we would not stand in 
the way of nomination of a depressed class man to the Parliament.”100 Oppressed-caste 
activists also seemed to see the writing on the wall, and pivoted to a second option. 
J.D. Aseervatham, the representative of the All Ceylon Minority Tamil Maha Sabha at 
the delimitation hearings, closed his remarks by advocating for the nomination of an 
oppressed-caste leader to the Senate or House of Representatives.101 

Upon the Delimitation Commission report’s release, the possibility of electing 
an oppressed-caste member to Parliament faded, as the commission was unwilling 
to design an electoral space in Jaffna with the distinct aim of facilitating oppressed-
caste representation. This choice was principally justified based on a question of 
quantifiable evidence. “Figures supplied by various deputations were largely, if not 
entirely, the result of private effort,” the Commission wrote, “and we find it impossible 
to accept them for the purposes of accurate delimitation.”102 Despite this choice, the 
Delimitation Commission did explain that they sought, to the best of their ability, 
to leave oppressed-caste communities electorally undivided, “to give these groups a 
greater voice in the election of representatives than they have hitherto possessed.”103 

Though the Delimitation Commissioners made clear that they had no ability 
to comply with the multiple requests they received to recommend to Governor 
Henry Monck-Mason Moore that he nominate an oppressed-caste representative to 
Parliament, the inclusion of this note in their final report sent a message.104 Just more 
than a year later, on 16 October 1947, Governor Moore appointed A.B. Rajendra to 
the upper chamber of the Senate, making him the first oppressed-caste member of 
Parliament.105 Having graduated from St. Patrick’s College in Jaffna, he rose through 
the ranks of the Education Department to eventually become Interpreter Mudaliyar to 
the Governor. After retirement, he became President of the United Youth League and 
was a leader of the Progressive Minority Tamils Union. 

Aside from the symbolic value of his appointment, A.B. Rajendra was able to 
rapidly contribute to the oppressed-caste cause from his new position. On 27 January 
1948, Senator Rajendra made a motion calling on government to ensure access to 
public wells and cremation grounds, and to require all public authorities who issue 
licenses to restaurants and tea shops to include conditions that prohibit discrimination 
(Ceylon, 1948, pp. 941–942). The motion resulted in the Cabinet issuing a government 
circular that was discussed in the Jaffna Urban Council in October 1948. Chairman C. 
Ponnambalam did not attempt to hide his displeasure. After reading the circular out 
100Delimitation Commission, Proceedings of the Public Sessions Held at Jaffna, 6 July 1946: 
21. 108.25/9, SLNA.

101See, for instance, “North Wants Nine Seats,” The Times of Ceylon, 10 July 1946.
102Ceylon, Sessional Paper XIII, Report of the First Delimitation Commission, 12.
103Ceylon, Sessional Paper XIII, Report of the First Delimitation Commission, 12.
104Ceylon, Sessional Paper XIII, Report of the First Delimitation Commission, 12.
105A.B. Rajendra would be followed in Parliament by the nominations of G. Nalliah in 1957, and 
M.C. Subramaniam in 1970.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 303

loud, he stated that the central government should “not preach without practicing,” 
and that it was guilty of discrimination of its own, a comment with obvious nationalist 
implications.106 

Despite the 1948 government circular, caste discrimination and exclusion from 
public space continued into the 1950s. In 1956, the teacher and Communist activist 
P. Kandiah (1914–1960) was elected to Parliament for the Point Pedro constituency. 
Helping begin a long tradition of Communist support for oppressed-caste politics in the 
North, Kandiah was influential in helping advance the Prevention of Social Disabilities 
Act. Brought by the Federal Party’s MP for Trincomalee N.R. Rajavarothiam (1908–
1963), the act passed with the support of S.W.R.D. Bandaranike on 13 April 1957. 
The act read like a summary of oppressed-caste anti-discrimination activism of the 
period. It prohibited more than ten separate forms of discrimination, including the 
prevention or exclusion of a person on the basis of caste from schools, cremation 
grounds, public wells, public vehicles, shops, restaurants, or temples normally open 
to all followers of a religion. Though rarely referenced today, the Act was a watershed 
moment for the movement. It would take another decade before someone was charged 
under the law and for that case to wind its way through the courts, but once the dust 
settled the result was momentous.107 For the first time, a legislative act had overruled 
the legal protection of dominant-caste custom and privilege protected in Tēsavalamai, 
the Dutch-codified legal codes of Jaffna. That is to say, in about thirty years of work, 
oppressed-caste campaigners managed to secure legislation that ended at least two-
hundred and fifty years of legal sanction for dominant-caste supremacy.

Conclusion

We can also see from this story that the decades of activism leading up to the well-
known 1968 clash at Māviṭṭapuram was led by a diverse group of oppressed- and 
dominant-caste leaders, that included Hindus, Christians, Sinhalese, Buddhists, and 
foreigners. Activists were variously motivated by a Christian sense of human equality, 
an interest in renovating Hinduism, a sense of Tamil unity that transcended religion, 
and a socialist drive to overturn social inequality. Combined, all these motivations 
produced a multi-faceted anti-discrimination agenda. Like any other social body, the 
movement also navigated its own internal conflicts.

As we have seen, the role of the colonial and then post-colonial state varied 
throughout this period. Early on, the state was an active defender of public rights to 
education and cremation ground space, yet by the 1940s government representatives 
had become hesitant to contradict the protectors of tradition and were willing to accept 
delay tactics for the preservation of the status quo. As Tamil nationalism became a 
more direct motivation in both local and national politics, oppressed-caste claims of 
Tamilness were used against their calls for separate representation.

106“‘Set Example,’ State told: Circular on Caste ‘Discrimination,’” The Times of Ceylon, 14 
October 1948.

107Balmforth, 2023



304 CASTE:  A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 6, No. 2

That oppressed-caste advocates failed to ensure that the island’s new electoral 
system protected their equal access to political representation is beside the point. 
They achieved meaningful victories by winning seats in village councils, the Jaffna 
Municipal Council, and through appointment to Parliament. In so doing, Jaffna’s 
oppressed-caste advocates of the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s reshaped Tamil political life 
on the island, and helped make Jaffna at the dawn of independence arguably more 
politically equitable than ever before.

There are several potential routes forward for this history, far more than I am able 
to note here. First, I have just touched on internal divisions that challenged the unity 
of oppressed-caste activism in the period—including narrow and more expansive 
definitions of being part of the “oppressed classes”—but this just one of many points 
of fracture that need to be better understood, as ideologies, methods, religion, and 
personality clashes all threatened to break-up the movement. Better understanding 
these challenges helps us see just how remarkable the movement itself was, to have 
overcome so much. Second, this article has focused on Jaffna due to its centrality to the 
oppressed-caste rights work in the period, but Jaffna is just one of several important 
parts of Tamil Sri Lanka. We need to better understand how space has affected the 
story of caste discrimination, both across the island and across Jaffna. Third, Sinhala 
politicians, Buddhist monks, and Colombo-based political agendas have played 
important roles in this history beyond the simplistic “interloper” narrative that Tamil 
nationalist politicians used to dismiss criticism. For instance, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, 
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and Madihe Pannaseeha Mahathera all channeled resources 
and political support to oppressed-caste activists and communities in Jaffna, and 
these remain little understood parts of the story.108 Fourth, deep consideration of the 
intellectual origins of oppressed-caste activism is necessary, because it came from some 
surprising corners. Periyar and Gandhi both played roles, as did a host of Christian 
and Marxist writings and thinkers, but we also know that American Black intellectual 
history played a role: we know Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery (1901) was 
being publicly discussed in Jaffna as early as 1916. Finally, multiple Canada-based 
family members interviewed for this project explicitly requested anonymity due to 
ongoing experiences with caste discrimination, including social isolation and fear that 
public association with this history could harm the marriage prospects of the youngest 
generation. Further research on caste in the diaspora is clearly needed to expand on 
work being conducted by P. Thanges and most recently, Mark Whitaker in the first part 
of this Symposium.

A fuller account of the transformations that oppressed-caste activists of this 
period achieved will point to the ubiquity of caste struggle between the 1920s and 
1950s. Due to space limitations, I have focused only on the campaigns surrounding 
Tamil identity, education, mortuary space, and electoral representation. Future 
research will demonstrate coordinated oppressed-caste efforts to access clean water, 
land, and economic independence. Combined with what we know about the movement 
108Also, see Dominic Esler's article in this volume for a critique of the scholarly separation 
between Tamil and Sinhala caste systems on the island.



The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna 305

to challenge caste discrimination and open temples and tea shops in the 1960s, and 
new work on the horizon by Bahirathy Räsänan on the complicated role of caste in 
the LTTE, a new picture is developing. Caste struggle, in various forms, articulated 
by different actors, and for a range of ends, has been a constant and central narrative 
in twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history. Both its remarkable successes and the 
obstacles it has overcome can serve as powerful lessons for anti-caste activists today. 

Bibliography

Manuscript Sources
National Archives of Sri Lanka, Colombo and Kandy, Sri Lanka (SLNA/SLNAK)
The National Archives, Kew, London (TNA)

News Papers
Ceylon Daily News
The Hindu Organ
Intu Cātaṉam
Jaṉatarma Pōtiṉi
The Observer
The Times of Ceylon
Tiṉakaraṉ
Tirāviṭaṉ
Vīrakēsari

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