- A look at Sri Lanka’s mudaliyars with Mevan Pieris
The mudaliyar in Sri Lankan parlance evokes images of days gone by, of a different system and style of living. Though today, the mudaliyar does not exist, they are not forgotten. They are, however, often misremembered.
Sri Lankans understand the mudaliyar as we came to understand it in a colonial context – a colonial title during Portuguese, Dutch, and British rule of the island, typically assigned to wealthy influential families loyal to the colonial administration of the time.
However, there is a lot more to the mudaliyar, both as a title and as a group of people, and this is what former cricketer Mevan Pieris addresses in ‘The Community: A Historical Account of the Mudaliyar Class Goyigama Family Combine,’ which several previous writers have written to say were a powerful community that wielded much power and influence during Dutch and British times. Pieris is himself a member of the mudaliyar community, coming from a long line of mudaliyars dating back (on paper) to the 1790s when they were already mudaliyars.
The Sunday Morning Brunch recently sat down with Pieris to learn about the mudaliyars and what inspired ‘The Community’.
Defining the mudaliyar
Though often seen as a colonial invention, mudaliyars in fact hail from long before the arrival of the Portuguese. The title mudaliyar was first used by Sinhalese kings and reigning princes from the Polonnaruwa period onward to ennoble subjects. These mudaliyars were most often the chieftains of their areas – retainers who advised their kings, Pieris shared, noting that in many ways, being a mudaliyar was like being a lord.
The arrival of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka actually saw the authority of the mudaliyars diminish. Where they previously held great power within their territories, mudaliyars saw their power being limited mainly to military functions – gathering the people of the country for war on command – with the Portuguese themselves taking on much of the civil and administrative duties of the mudaliyars.
Dutch rule saw a reversal of sorts and came closer to how we understand mudaliyars today: “The mudaliyar system was structured under the Dutch and their image, authority, and power increased – the main mudaliyar was known as the ‘maha mudaliyar’ and then there were various other categories attached to the Dutch Governor’s establishment. Territories were divided into areas known as korales and pattus and initially, the differences were between mudaliyars and native chiefs known as korales. The korales did the civil functions and the mudaliyars did the military functions. Later on, both functions were consolidated into the mudaliyar’s role and the korale office was discontinued,” Pieris shared.
Mudaliyars and British rule
The British took over Sri Lanka’s maritime regions in 1796 and initially, British governors tried to dilute the power of the mudaliyars. They brought in Indian administrators called amildars. “The mudaliyars revolted and got back their status quo,” Pieris recounted, noting that the British continued to attempt to dilute the power of the mudaliyars, bringing in various reforms to do so and eventually abolishing the rajakariya system in 1832 and starting a legislative council in 1833.
Simplified, the rajakariya system was where people of the country were recruited for service to their king without payment but in exchange for land which they could cultivate and enjoy.
These were moves that limited the power of the mudaliyars, but at the same time, the mudaliyar system was also going through transformations of its own.
The combination of these changes brought the mudaliyar system closer to how it is seen today – a wealthy and influential class of Sri Lankan people in service to the British crown. “The Sinhalese representatives were always chosen from the mudaliyar class of families. The other castes didn’t like it much and agitated against it, but that practice continued until the end of the 19th century. The Sinhalese nominee in the Legislative Council was always from a mudaliyar class goyigama family,” Pieris explained.
Misconceptions surrounding the mudaliyars
The mudaliyar class, over time, has received a bad rap from historians and commentators. They are often ridiculed as those seeking privilege and courting the colonial powers that be in order to advance themselves, their power, and their wealth. Sometimes, mudaliyars have even been labelled traitors by nationalists because of their close relations with the Ceylon-British government.
Brunch posed this position to Pieris, who agreed that derogatory remarks had often been made when it came to the mudaliyars as a community. He mused: “The thing is this – if you are the native chiefs under colonial masters and if you didn’t get on with them and were not obedient to them, then you [with your family] were banished out of the country and your property confiscated. Somebody has to do the native function. It’s easy to sling mud at people, but realistically, the mudaliyars did a service to their own people as leaders of their own people.”
As leaders, mudaliyars made massive contributions to society and Pieris recapped some of the key ways the mudaliyar community had contributed to the development of Sri Lanka over the centuries. As mudaliyars, they received land grants, both from the British and before, and they developed this land, taking it from virgin forests and jungles to coconut plantations and other agriculture to contribute to the economy of the country and also create livelihoods for the people on those lands. Mudaliyars also built schools, churches, and halls of learning all around the country.
In later years, the mudaliyars and their children, all of whom were given the strongest of educations, led the charge in terms of knowledge, innovation, and art, and documenting Lankan history. From excelling in and often pioneering our legal disciplines (many of our early Supreme Court judges were from mudaliyar families), to leading innovation in medicine, in the arts, in the sciences, the contributions of the Sri Lankans who hail from the mudaliyar community cannot be underestimated.
“Many of these contributions have been masked by ridicule of the mudaliyars,” Pieris said, a phenomenon that he attributed mainly to jealousy, particularly caste-oriented jealousy: “There will always be those who benefit from a situation one way or another and those who don’t – the haves and the have-nots – and when nothing has been written about accurately with references, there is enormous room for people to say what they want. Anyone can say anything and when a lie is said three times it becomes a truth.”
It was this lack of a verifiable written resource that spurred Pieris to write ‘The Community’.
‘The Community’
Pieris’s ‘The Community’ traces the evolution of the mudaliyars from Portuguese times and covers a period of 500 years. It comprises 580 pages and carries 159 photographs in colour and black and white. The thrust of the book is to bring to light who the master spirits of the community were and the enormous contribution to the good of society done by the community.
The book has three introductory chapters, written on the general theme of king, captain/general, nobleman, to provide an appreciation of the historical background in which the mudaliyars had to perform their duties during Portuguese, Dutch, and British periods in a changing environment. There are also separate chapters on 19 different mudaliyar class families, which had inter-married to weave the fabric of the community, only to be known by who they were and what they had done.
But why is it called the ‘community’? With the mudaliyars coming typically from one caste (goyigama) and serving a select range of functions in their territories and within the British-Sri Lankan government, there was a great deal of inter-marrying within the mudaliyar families, which created a small network of mudaliyar families which became known as the ‘community’ in British times.
This community became institutionalised in various forms as well – around 1860, they built a church of their own – All Saints’ Church in Hulftsdorp, Colombo. All the trustees, as well as parishioners of the church, were from the community, which became institutionalised as a regular meeting place for the community. In 1923, giving greater identity to the community, the Nomads Tennis Club was formed, membership of which was exclusively restricted to members of the community and which still exists to this day.
The importance of telling the story of the community
The mudaliyar class, or rather, the role of mudaliyars was abolished in the 1930s when the Native Department of the British Government of Ceylon was closed down. Since then, the mudaliyars have gone back to being influential privileged families, albeit in a new social and political landscape that only kept evolving over the course of the 20th century.
Today, the community still exists but is more a point of heritage than anything. The Nomads Tennis Club still exists, though by its very nature, it doesn’t have a premises (when the club was formed, tennis matches were played in the tennis courts at the various mudaliyar families’ homes and estates, and now in 2023, it remains a membership club which rents out tennis clubs for tournaments and functions more as a social club).
All Saints’ Church, Hulftsdorp is no longer exclusively a place of worship for the mudaliyar community, though it has been patronised by mudaliyar families for over 150 years now and its congregation still boasts many members of the community.
But now more than ever, the intricacies of the work of the mudaliyars from days gone by is in danger of being lost. Both from the disparaging outlook of the mudaliyars that has been painted over the years as well as from the passing of time itself. This is part of why Pieris decided to document the mudaliyars through ‘The Community’.
Pieris’s journey to write ‘The Community’ began in 1986, when Prof. Yasmine Gooneratne published her book ‘Relative Merits: A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike Family of Sri Lanka,’ which referenced the term ‘the community’. “Yasmine was also part of the community and she introduced the term ‘the community’ in her book,” Pieris explained. “I decided to write a fuller account of the community as a record of the tremendous contributions made by the community to society.”
Though his journey of writing began in 1986, it was interrupted and sidelined for decades by the many distractions of life, from Pieris’s education and career to illnesses within the family, though his research never stopped. The pandemic saw Pieris, like many of us, confined to his home with more time to focus on things he was passionate about, and this is how ‘The Community’ finally came to be, drawing on charts and notes, family archives and national archives, church records, and of course family records and photographs.
In fact, the cover of ‘The Community’ features a portrait of Pieris’s ancestors – Siyane Korale West Mudaliyar John Louis Pieris and his wife – and also features many photographs from his own collection as well as the private collections from many of the other families of the community.
The mudaliyars and the future
The future is one of change, and the mudaliyars are testament to this. From chieftains of old to native leaders to an elite class of society driving forward innovation, to today, where descendants of the old mudaliyars still play important roles within our social, economical, and political spheres, this community is one that has lasted the course, adapting to the times as need be.
Through ‘The Community,’ Pieris hopes to provide a resource for both the community and those outside it to remember their heritage. “Heritage is like the roots of a tree – we can’t see the roots but without its roots, the tree will be useless,” Pieris mused. “People must know their heritage and understand how their ancestors adjusted themselves to changing situations. It is vital. Only then can they appreciate their current environment and adjust themselves more meaningfully.”