Same culture – Different life paths? Contrasts and similarities in socio-geographic development of two Sinhalese local communities 1972–2005

Abstract

The article is a review over 33 years of two villages in Sri Lanka, Bundala and Panapola Pelawatte. The two villages are located in two contrasting climatic regions, the Dry Zone of the lowland region in the south-east, and the Wet Zone of the southern hill country. The climatic differences have been considered to influence preconditions for development, especially for agriculture. The article reviews changes from 1972 to 2005 in the two villages and compares this with development in Sri Lanka as a whole. Development in the two villages, located in relatively backwash areas, was assumed to be lagging behind the rest of the country. Somewhat surprisingly, conditions in recent years were found to have improved considerably in Bundala and Panapola Pelawatte, even compared with the rest of the country, in spite of the relative isolation of these communities, and the article provides some explanations for this.

Keywords:

• agriculture
• HYV crops
• socio-geographic development
• Sri Lanka
• villages

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to all people in the two investigated villages for their hospitality, kindness and willingness to assist me in my work for nearly 35 years. I also wish to express my deepest gratitude to the Sarvodaya movement and its leader, Dr A.T. Ariyaratne, for a sincere willingness to help me in many ways with my work in Sri Lanka.

Notes

1. JVP was originally a militant Marxist movement that started a serious armed conflict in 1971 (Alles 1976). In the 1980s JVP became more sympathetic to the conservative Buddhist Sangha (community) and, to the surprise of many outside Sri Lanka, in 2004 this movement, now as a recognized political party, entered an alliance (PA, People's Alliance) with its former enemy, the SLFP and its leader, the country's President Chandrika Kumaratunga (www.dailynews.lk 2004a).

2. The concept ‘village’ for local communities in Sri Lanka is by some considered as confusing (Rigg 2001), while others have used it to describe traditional rural communities compared with modern rural settlements in Sri Lanka (Wijesekera 1965, Obeyesekere 1967, Bansil 1971, Yalman 1971, Hettiarachchy 1982, Öhrling 1983, Sandell 1988, Upawansa & Wagachchi 1999).

3. The Sarvodaya movement started on the 2500th anniversary of Buddha's entrance to Nirvana – Jayanthi – in 1958, and is developed around a set of coherent philosophical ideas from Buddhism and Gandhian thought. It is a voluntary non-violent, non-political, rural development organization extending to more than 10,000 out of 23,000 villages in Sri Lanka. The central figure from the beginning has been the locally and internationally highly respected Dr A.T. Ariyaratne (Liyanage 1988, Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka at a Glance 1996, www.sarvodaya.org./about/ 2005).

4. Even though pre-colonial systems for control of land were formally abolished with the British conquest of Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, in the early 19th century, the systems of ninda game and vihara game were maintained regularly in a larger village area of Ratnapura District as late as 1988 (S. Öhrling, unpublished data).

5. It was an absurd experience for me to visit the village 1998 as an outsider and be asked by a few villagers if they could be allowed to accompany me during walks into Sinharadja Forest adjacent to their community.

6. The people of Panapola Pelawatte belong to the high Goiyagama (cultivator) caste. Caste issues are not openly discussed in contemporary Sri Lanka, but belonging to a caste still has great importance, especially in relation to marriage. The specific task of handling the cinnamon harvest was traditionally performed by members of the Salagama (cinnamon peeler) caste (Obeyesekere 1967, Perera 1985). The Salagama people entered the village from the outside until recently. Cinnamon is considered to have its origin in Sri Lanka and this system can be dated back to long before the colonial period prior to the 16th century.

7. The information about the tsunami and its effects, including statistical information, is based on a large number of newspaper articles read in Sri Lanka, Internet sources, observations, and personal communications with local people.