Understanding land issues and the post-tsunami situation in Sri Lanka
Perera, Kusal
In Sri Lanka, three customary practices based on three different cultures have been entrenched in law: the Dutch as maritime rulers who introduced the first systematic judiciary in the provinces controlled by them; the Northern practised Thesawalama law (Muslim law as practiced within the Muslim community); and then the Kandyan law that prevailed before the fall of the kingdom. In ancient Lanka, land was meant for agriculture and had no other value. The move towards privately owned land, with a conceptual change in owner rights, was effected during the Dutch period, first in the maritime provinces under their control and then later in the whole island after the collapse of the Kandyan kingdom in 1815. The Crown Lands Encroachments Ordinance (CLEO) of 1840 gave the following colonial government, the British Crown, the sole right to sell, mortgage, lease or rent all the land in the colony at will, and a new conceptual authority through which to do so. While previously, in Sri Lankaas feudal state, the king was more a custodian of land than conceptually the owner, with the British acquisitionn of all land, the peasantry could not prove land to be their own under the CLEO.1 Crown Landd was estimated to be about 90% of the total arable land available. The colonial administrationns efforts to freely sell this Crown Landd to colonial investors created large-scale plantations for the cultivation of export crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, rubber and then coconut), powered by the hired labour of Sri Lankans. This change had two major impacts. First, within the community, land was no more in abundance. In the former Kandyan kingdom and within the Western Province land began to become scarce. Second, land acquired a new value as property and was subject to different terms and conditions when transferring it.
Event: A vision for the future : International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development
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