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Tamil separatism and its propaganda Continued from yesterday Secondly we turn to another group of writers who present the Tamil separatist ideology in fairly direct terms, so as to educate the reader. A very clear description of the modus operandi of the Tamil separatist movement is given by G. Uswatte-Arachchi in The Island of 7.12.97 p 11: "The Tamil people want to be ruled by themselves. (sic) The Tamil people of Sri Lanka are a nation state in all but name. They possess an army and a navy though they yet lack an airforce. They have representation abroad in all the principal capitals and conduct diplomatic business abroad with much less ceremony and cost but more effectively than the Sri Lanka government. "They have an excellent propaganda machine which is also supported by academics in high places. It is the right of the Tamil people to establish their own state if they so desire. One ought to expect that within a year or two of declaring independence Eelam would be admitted to the United Nations. The LTTE is (not) a fringe group. It is simply impossible for an enterprise of that magnitude to go on without the support of the vast majority of the Tamil people". (I have combined sentences from several paragraphs.) Then there is the contribution of Adrian Wijemanne. Wijemanne is aformer Sri Lankan Civil Servant, who thereafter worked in various organisations in the Netherlands and Switzerland, including the World Council of Churches. Wijemanne is anxious to show us that the Tamil separatist movement is going to win in the end, and therefore that itis useless to oppose it. The Germans had a similar sort of propaganda going during the Second World War. Wijemanne uses a shrill, exaggerated style of writing. He says: "Tamil people are in possession of their homeland, they live there already, having done so for centuries, and all they want is to establish for themselves a state of their own in that homeland. In order to do so, they are waging war to expel the Sinhala army from their state". He takes the position that the Sinhala people have no say in the matter. The Tamils are already in their homeland and they will not budge. (Wijemanne. "War and peace in post-colonial Ceylon 1949-1991" P 73) He develops this further in "Pravada' Vol 5(3) 1997. There he points out that wars like the one presently going on in Sri Lanka, always end in victory to the guerillas and never with victory to the state. Further that they end with the emergence of a new state. The LTTE war, he declares, is a war of attrition. These wars, "always end with the challenger intact, in possession of his arms and territory". The Eelam war, he states, is 'now only in its earliest stage and is set to last for many more decades into the next century" (p 19-21) This announcement that the LTTE can go on forever immediately makes one wonder whether they are, in fact, on their last legs. No separatist movement which is starting on a long campaign is likely to shout out the fact. Subtle In his article title "The Thimpu Principles' he declares: "Since the Sri Lankan Tamils resolved to create a separate state and therefore a separate constituency, the commitment for the creation of a single unified political community covering the entirety of Sri Lanka does not exist" (Island, 1.2.98 p 15). In another article titled "Sri Lanka, one country, one nation", he states that "Sri Lanka is identified as Sinhala and Buddhist. Other communities have cause to consider themselves excluded from the national identity". Further down he suggests "The importance of a common language in bringing about political integration cannot be over-emphasized. But this is a luxury that is not possible in Sri Lanka" (Island 14.12.97 p 16.) Ladduwahetty's writing calls for a more detailed critique in view of the fact that his work has now been brought together in a collection. Some of the social science literature dealing with Tamil separatist issues, also lean towards propaganda. Robert N. Kearney wrote a substantial monograph titled "The politics of Ceylon" (Cornell University Press, 1973). Kearney, in his preface acknowledges the assistance of the following Sri Lankans: E. F. Dias Abeysinghe, Hector Abhayavardhana, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, J. A. L. Cooray, Doric de Souza, Leslie Gunawardene, Godfrey Gunatilleke, Kumari Jayawardene, J. R. Jayewardene, Pieter Keuneman, S. Rajaratnam, T. B. Subasinghe, Bala Tampoe, M. J. Tissanayagam, H. S. Wanasinghe, Sydney Wanasinghe and D. G. William. (Preface p xi) This is a fairly useful work, in that it contains data which is not readily available in other more analytical works. However, it supports the notion of a deeply divided nation. He stresses over and over again, that the island is divided into 'separate ethnic groups differentiated by a distinctive language, religion, social organisation, territorial concentration, and sense of shared history and ancestry". (p 136) Kearney sees the political parties as reflecting ethnic cleavages. He says 'A profound sense of separate identity dividing ethnic communities is reflected in a tendency for majority and minority communities to gravitate towards separate organisations' The major parties have attempted to be multi-communal in membership but havefound themselves essentially dependent on the Sinhalese community'. The fact that the UNP at least has always been a jumble of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, in short anyone with a capitalist orientation, is not mentioned. (p 157) His view of the ethnic distribution of the country is somewhat unique. He recognises the Sinhalese as the majority community. Thereafter he refers to two sizeable minority communities, 'confronting' the Sinhalese. these are the Ceylon Tamils and the Indian Tamils. The 'Muslims' asa category are not mentioned. They are broken into Ceylon Moors, Indian Moors, Malays. (p 156-157) from a propaganda point of view, this is excellent for the Tamil separatists. The only minorities worth talking about apparently are the Tamils, Sri Lankan and Indian. In 1990, G. R. Tressie Leithan's monograph" political integration through decentralization and devolution of power: the Sri Lankan experience" appeared. (published by the Department of History and Political Science, University of Colombo). In this work she says that "Sri Lanka's party system also tended to reflect, in large degree, the ethnic demarcations in society". The Tamils had the Tamil Congress, Federal Party and later the TULF. The UNP and the SLFP and the Marxists parties derived their support 'almost exclusively' from the Sinhalese community. The rest of this paragraph is about the Tamil minority and the Sinhala-Buddhist dominated polity. (p 15) The critical ommission here is the Muslim factor. There is no mention of the Muslims. Giving rise to the impression that the only two political contenders in Sri Lanka are the Tamils and Sinhalese. A similar omission could be found in the work of another political scientist, Robert Oberst. In 1994 came "The Sri Lankan Tamils: ethnicity and identity" edited by C. Manogaran and B. Praffenberger. (Westview Press). This monograph contains a useful collection of essays for researchers wishing to examine Sri Lankan Tamil identity, provided that the researcher knows how to use the information. The work is however, clearly intended for the Western reader, and as such could also be classed as propaganda. In one chapter C. Manogaran "documents the process by which the Sinhalese appropriated peasant colonisation as part of a broader, covert ploy to make the Tamils a minority in their own homelands". (p 23) Also that in the 18th Century the Tamils and Sinhalese were so utterly separated in space that early British observers spoke readily of the 'two races of Ceylon'. (p 23) It further says that unknown tothe western donor nations, the government was using the Mahaweli accelerated programme to plant Sinhalese in Tamil territory. (p 23) A. J. Wilson has written on the Jaffna Man, the Colombo Man, and the Batticaloa Man and announces that the Sri Lankan Tamils have "mobilised as a single entity to confront the manifestations of contemporary Sinhalese hegemony" (p 23) This is news to the local readers, who know for a fact that the Batticaloa Tamils heartily dislike the Jaffna Tamils for their uppishness, and wish to have as little to do with them as possible. Arasaratnam The trilogy by S. J. Tambiah ranks as propaganda. Tambiah's first book on the ethnic issue is ''Sri Lanka: ethic fratricide and the dismantling of democracy'' (OUP, 1986) This is described by the author as an 'engaged political tract' rather than a 'distanced academic treatise'. Tambiah takes pains to present himself as an impartial commentator on Buddhist societies. He describes himself as a 'scholar who has contributed as much as any indigenous South east Asian scholar to the positive understanding of the interrelationship between Buddhism and politics." He gives the titles of his monographs on Buddhism in Thailand, though this is quite irrelevant to the subject of his book. (Pix, 138, 139) The blurb on the cover describes this work as an 'incisive examination' of the subject of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. It is not incisive or analytical. It provides a well rounded presentation of the 'ethnic issue' as seen by the Tamil separatist perspective. It refers to ''the Buddhist time barrier'' and says that the 'heartland' of the Sri Lankan Tamils is in the North and Eastern provinces. (p 88, 102) It refers to the enclaves or 'ghettos'' of Sri Lanka Tamils in Wellawatte, Ratmalana and parts of Dehiwela. (p 106) There is no mention of the Tamil separatist activities from 1920 onwards. There is just one index reference to the Federal Party, a print reference to S. J. V. Chelvanayagam, and no reference at all to the Tamil Congress. It presents the familiar Tamil case for supremacy, including the fact that Sinhala literature was influenced by Tamil, and that the Kandyan Kingdom was ruled by the Nayakkar kings from Tamil Nadu. Appendix 3 titled 'Sri Lanka's ethnic problem, myths and realities'' report of the Committee for Rational Development, November 1983 is given in full. It dismisses the arguments against the Tamils , such as favouritism by Tamil examiners, Jaffna as a favoured district for government funds, and the predominance of Tamil entrepreneurs in the business sector. (p 156, 160). Fear Much of the text is devoted to emphasising the violence shown to the Tamils. There is a detailed description of the Sinhala-Tamil riots of 1958, culled from Wriggins book or Ceylon. (p. 145-146). Another heading is ''tears of mob law'' (p 143) The purpose of these appendixes probably is to indicate that these anti-Sinhala, pro-Tamil observations are not the author's but of persons of non-Tamils origin, and therefore unbiased. Howard Wriggins was at one time US Ambassador in Sri Lanka. The second book by S. J. Tambiah is ''Buddhism Betrayed: Religion, politics and violence in Sri Lanka.'' (University of Chicago Press, 1992), This monograph is intended for the general reader, not the specialist. For those who have a standard conception of Buddhism. (p 3). He poses the tendentious question, ''If Buddhism preaches non-violence why is there so much political violence in Sri Lanka today'' (p 1). There is no mention of the role of the Tamil Christians in precipitating the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka. Tambiahs' objective in this book is to ''to probe the manner and extent to which Buddhism as a religion expressed by the Sri Lankans has contributed to the current ethnic conflict and collective violence'' (p 2). He covers a period of about 100 years, for which he locates the primary Buddhist actors their causes and their activities. His reviews the scope and limits of 'current Buddhist political thought'' and the issue of 'Sinhala historical consciousness'' (p 4). Actually this book is a sort of subtle polemic. It is mainly about Buddhist monks. One chapter is titled ''Monks and violence face to face'' (Chapter 11). There is a detailed account of the 'Mavubeema Surakeeme Vyaparaya'' and the politicisation of Buddhist monks. The photographs are mainly of gesticulating monks, specially Ven. Sobitha. The book has an introduction by Dr. Lal.Jayawardene. This introduction contains sentences such as ''the capacity of the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism to grant equal democratic rights to those outside its fold'' (p xii). ''Sinhala Buddhist nationalism is a gospel for excluding Tamils from competition. (p xiii) ''Whether there exists a political solution that falls short of the creation of two separate states'' (p xv). The third book by S. J. Tambiah, titled ''Levelling crowds: ethnonationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia'' is the emptiest of all. (University of California Press, 1996). The author makes it clear in the Preface that this book develops from the other two. This book does not contain a clear cut argument. He says ''I did not begin this book because I already knew what I wanted to say,I only knew what I wanted to find out.'' (p x) This book is totally devoid of any original observations on the subject of collective violence relating to ethnic conflict. It adds nothing to the knowledge already available in the fields of social psychology and sociology on aggression in general and collective aggression in particular. For his chapter on the political psychology of crowds talks about riots, assailants, victims, rumour example but says nothing new. The main impact of this book is in its detailed description of the ethic riots in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A content analysis of the work, taken page by page, shows that the number of pages given to the ethnic riots in Sinhala ranks next to that for India. Roughly 104 pages on India, 86 on Sri Lanka and 51 on Pakistan, omitting the pages where all three countries are mentioned. The references for Sri Lanka include the riots of 1956, 1958, and 1983. He refers in passing to the ethnic riots of 1971 and 1977. He gives a first hand account of the 1956 Gal Oya riots, in a continuous detailed description of 13 pages. (82-94) Every chapter which contains academic discussions on violence has examples from Sri Lanka. The illustration for a rioting mob is the bout of rioting in Colombo on the eve of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. The rioting in Colombo, we are informed was 'done by the Sinhalese majority'. (p 271) It is described in minute detail (p 271-275) The psychology of crowd aggression is discussed using a detailed account of 1983. ''The mob assembled at Fort Railway Station, met the train arriving from Kandy, beat a number of Tamil passengers, and burnt them to death,'' (p 283) An analysis of crowd psychology and their justification for violence is presented through two essays by Elizabeth Nissan and Jonathan Spencer. The two essays are: Nissan's essay titled ''Some thoughts on Sinhalese justifications for the violence'' (1984) and Spencer's ''Collective violence and everyday practice in Sri Lanka'' 1990) (p 369). There is also a section on the Sinhala-Muslim riots of 1915. This comes under the section supposedly devoted to the study of rumour. There are references to the riots in Kandy, Gampola, Kotte, Kotahena, Mutwal, Nawagamuwa, Wattegama, Hanguranketa, Panadura, Malabe. Quotations include ''Some crowds travelled several miles to meet the advancing Moors" ''the trustee of Gadaladeniya devale, collected a crowd on the premises and went out at their head, sword in hand.'' (p 289, 290) The social psychology of crowd behaviour, violence and aggression is not analyse adequately in this work. It says nothing at all about the political run up to the ethnic riots of Sri Lanka, and is quite silent as to the separatist cry of the Tamils and their activities from 1920. The overall impression given in the book is that the Sinhalese are a senselessly and frightfully violent people. ''Ever since the late 1970s when Tamil youth in desperation became militant insurgents, thereafter successfully withstood and even got the better of the Sinhala army of occupation on, Sinhalese chauvinists had been frustrated and flustered over the puncturing of their virile right of domination established by Dutugemunu'' (Tambiah cites Spencer. p 286) The theme of violence is continued in E. Valentine Daniel's work titled ''Charred Lullabies: chapter in an anthropography of violence''. Continued tomorrow Child abuse and neglect within
the family guardianship Continued from yesterday It is apparent therefore, that these children have been victims of poverty-induced stress and attendant social consequences. They represent a core group among children of a wider segment of the child population who live in exceptionally difficult circumstances and who consequently are the most vulnerable to neglect and abuse, in the first instance within the family /guardianship itself. A few sketchy case profiles would serve to bring out this point. A girl of 15 years of age is the third child of a mason. Her mother works in a metal quarry. At the trade 3 level she had been withdrawn from school by her mother, who placed her in domestic employment. Her two elder sisters too were domestic workers. The reason which drives the mother to place her daughter in employment is partly due to poverty and partly to prevent her pre-adolescent daughters from being subjected to carnal intercourse by their alcoholic father. The parents of these girls themselves are biological brother and sister, themselves living together within an incestual relationship as husband and wife ever since the brother raped the sister. The sister had been brought to the house by her brother with the idea of helping out in the house, while his wife was away for her first confinement. This 15 year old girl had kept on running and returning home from every placement in domestic service owing to all forms of harassment by employer, only to be taken away and placed elsewhere by her mother to keep her away from being raped by her father. Eventually, as a last resort, the mother had refused to take charge of the girl on the last occasion. She was taken in by the police on being found stranded while attempting to run away home from her place of work. Hence her detention at the Certified School. Deviations A girl of 12 years had been referred to the Certified School for having attempted to commit suicide by jumping into a well. Her father had abandoned her mother after he found out about her adulterous relationship with another man. Both her parents had been living with different partners since then. The girl had been ill-treated by her stepmother and was placed in domestic service to prevent the stepfather from seducing her. She had run away and returned to her mother's house only to find that she had migrated for employment. Her drunken stepfather who had been living with another woman, had attempted to rape her, but was saved by the second step-mother. The girl, finding herself abandoned and all alone in the world, with no one to turn to, had attempted suicide. Rejected A boy of 14 years, in a family of seven children, had been apprehended by Police while in the possession of heroin. He had been found loitering in town after a late night film in the company of older men engaged in similar activities. The boy's mother, who is in the Middle East trafficks in drugs, which the father sells, using the older children to help in this trade. He had no schooling, while the older brothers were drop-outs from school. These are a few among 31 case profiles which reflect the pervasive impact of the poverty syndrome on the stability of the family unit, as reflected in personal, family and social disorganization. The impact of seriously deficient child care and parenting, indeed deviant parenting styles, have been observed in adverse psycho-social developmental outcomes in children, arising from neglect abuse they undergo within the discordant dysfunctional family/guardianship. It is suspected that neglect and abuse have intergenerational effects. Deficient, deviant parenting sets a vicious cycle in motion. Inadequacy Therefore, given such a context on the one hand, and the impact of the open economy at the micro level on the other, there is an urgent need to rebuild and re-vitalize the social context that families need to foster child development and welfare. This calls for a child-centred, family-targeted, community-based family support system incorporating adequate alternative child care arrangements, with participatory community action, which are financially and geographically accessible to families in need. Two such institutions are Day Care Centres and pre-schools. These services however should be buttressed by a meaningful and viable programme for poverty alleviation within a frame work for achieving reasonable social development targets, aimed at bringing about specific improvements in the human condition. It must ensure that families can have useful and remunerative work to enable them to meet their own needs, by their own efforts, thereby contributing to the welfare of their own futures as well as to the stability of their societies. This would make it possible for parents to care for, educate and enjoy their children, when the root cause of neglect and abuse within the family, that of the powerlessness of the poor, is eliminated. For this, there has to be a firm political commitment to convert available resources into peoples well-being. Economic and socio progress must proceed side by side. Otherwise one will hold the other back perpetuating a vicious cycle with adverse intergenerational outcome. Risk factors in family dynamics One such trend is reflected in the change in the structure of the family unit. With more and more young mothers going out of home to work, mothers are spending unacceptably less time interacting with their children during their develop-mentally critical formative years. With more and more families moving away from their familiar neighbourhood of kith and kin, and extended family, the number of caring adults in the households who traditionally provided child care has decreased. In a context of inadequate satisfactory care-giving arrangements the working mother and the nuclear family situation, have implications for the quality of child care when gauged from a holistic approach to child development. Children are likely to be at risk of neglect and abuse. The single parent The quality of child care would depend on how well the single-parent mother is able to cope with her triple role of breadwinner, house-wife and child care giver, and how well the single parent father is able to play the role of care giver. Such families are potentially stressful and are likely to make children vulnerable to neglect and abuse. Yet another trend is reflected in the number of re-structured families arising from free and loose associations formed by parents which are easily made and easily broken. The situation suggests an abrogation of parental responsibility by their (off-spring), who thereby are most likely to suffer neglect and abuse, ending up as cast-aways, runaways, child-worker, child-beggar, delinquent etc. and who eventually become wards of the State. The human rights of women and child rights are jettisoned in such non-binding unions. The significance of these social trends is seen in the progressive fragmentation and isolation of the family in its child-rearing role. The nature of the process highlights changes in child-rearing practices which are isolating the child from its family and community. The community itself is rapidly losing its traditional cohesiveness, suggesting that there is an erosion of the social fabric taking place insidiously. The family lacks support in the discharge of its responsibilities, while children are without a safety net to retrieve them from becoming exposed to neglect and abuse both from within and outside the family. The root of alienation and the source of the problem of child abuse and neglect within the family/guardianship has been thus seen primarily as the cumulative destructive effect of a combination of psycho-social stresses arising from poverty. Convention Further, Article 27 of the Convention recognizes the right of children to benefit from an adequate standard of living. Although the primary responsible to provide this rests with the parents, it acknowledges "the State's duty to ensure that this responsibility is first fulfil/able and then fulfilled..." Article 26 recognizes the right of children to benefit from social security, including social insurance....: Above all, it is "the State's obligation to protect children from all forms of maltreatment perpetrated by parents or others responsible for this care, and to undertake preventive and treatment programmes in this regard." (Article 19). Accordingly, "state's parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental evidence, injury or abuse, while in the care of parent (s), legal guardian (s) or any other person who has the care of the child." Such protective measures should as appropriate, include effective procedures for the establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support for the child and for those who have the care of the child...." Therefore, poverty alleviation and family support for child care assume particular significance and demand urgent attention in countries such as Sri Lanka where there are children living in exceptionally difficult conditions, in respect of measures arrived not only at preventing abuse and neglect, but those for ensuring the full and harmonious development of the child's personality, for which it should grow up in a family environment, win an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding." (Premable to the Convention.) Sri Lanka's cup of prosperity "One may just unroll one leaf from the bottom of the teapot and spread it out, and think how it grew on a hillside in Ceylon, when the sun shone through air so crystal clear that distant mountains looked but a mile away, while song of the mountain streams, leaping from rock to rock and plunging down the ravines, filled the wide valley with music." — JOHN STILL There are many legends concerning the discovery of tea. The Chinese legend has it that tea was first discovered as long as 2737 B.C., when Emperor Shen-Nung of China was one day, according to his custom, boiling his drinking water, some leaves, from branches near the pot fell into the urn imparting a delicate aroma to the water. The leaves, they say, were from a wild tea plant. There is also the story of a fervent Buddhist who had resolved to devote seven years of his life to sleepless meditation. In the fifth year of his devotions he became sleepy. By chance he plucked and ate a few leaves from a nearby bush. These leaves which were from the tea plant, so the story goes, produced such a re-vitalising effect that he was able to remain awake and so continue his meditation for the remaining two years. It is, however, in China that the first historical reference to the beginning of tea drinking is found. This occurs in the scholarly work by a certain Kuo P's who wrote in the 4th century A.D., the custom spread so that by the 8th century tea drinking had become general in China. Not long afterwards tea drinking spread to Japan. It was not until three centuries ago that tea was introduced to Europe and later to the American Continent. Tea estate It is on these high estates of Sri Lanka that conditions most favour the development of the tea plant; warm sunshine, rich soil, seasonal rains carried by the monsoons, and cool, sometimes even frosty nights promote the growth of the world's finest teas. The tea bushes are carefully tended - as carefully is the harvest brought in. Up to their waists in greenery, the tea pluckers, usually women, dressed in their colourful sarees of red, blue, gold and white move slowly like butterflies among the bushes. Their dark, nimble fingers swiftly pluck the 'flush' from the tea bush, the two leaves and a bud which are ripe for the harvest, gently gathering small handfuls of leaf which they quickly throw into the wicker baskets on their backs. The 'two leaves and a bud' in the wicker basket are the key to Sri Lanka's prosperity. Today, it may seem only too natural that it should be so, for presently Sri Lanka provides one-third of the world's exports of tea, although a century ago, there was no tea industry in existence in Sri Lanka. Introduction of tea to Sri Lanka A quarter of a century before James Taylor, when man's faith in coffee as the plantation industry of the hill country was never in question, the Worms Brothers who owned large extents under coffee, planted a clearing with tea seeds especially imported from China. The tea plantation prospered, but the monumental incompetence of the Chinaman who was also specially imported from China to prepare the produce, caused the premature abandonment of the project as a pound of tea cost nearly £ 5. It is not surprising, therefore, that it took a little more than two decades before anyone again seriously thought of tea planting as a commercial proposition. Undaunted by these vicissitudes, men of steel stayed on to rebuild their personal fortunes from the glorious uncertainty of tea. There must have been lingering doubts among them as regards the future of tea, for the inter-planting of tea clearings with Cinchona was a practical demonstration of their anxiety to avoid another calamity. Their doubts, however, were soon dispelled and by 1887 tea was accepted as the commodity of the future. From sweat and tribulations of the early British planters living in a log-cabin outfit, and Indian labour who trekked through hundreds of miles of impenetrable jungle to open up the land, the verdent majesty of Sri Lanka tea was raised. They had not heard of the Twelfth Century Japanese proverb that where tea grows, the place is sacred, but their efforts have certainly helped give a sanctity to six hundred thousand acres of our soil from which is derived the wherewithal to run the country. James Taylor - the grand vizier
of Sri Lankan tea "I hereby engage myself to Mr. George Pride of Kandy, for the space of three years to act in the capacity of Assistant Superintendent and to make myself generally useful at a salary of £100 per annum, to commence from time of my arrival on the estate and to have deducted from my salary the amount of money advanced for my passage and outfit." Families that have lived at Loolecondera Estate since the time of - James Taylor - talk of him as a very big, long bearded man who weighed nearly eighteen stone - an enormous bulk of a man with one blow could knock anyone down. The labourers held him in great awe and respect and only spoke to him through their Head Kangani. There are stories current even about his funeral, for legend has it that twenty-four men had to carry his coffin to Kandy. Loolcondera is unlike many other estates in Sri Lanka. If you visit the tea plantations that stretch from Hatton to Uva, they run side by side, and you pass from one to the other without so much as knowing along which estate you are at any given time. But Loolcondera is a rumbling mass. Its fields are divide by gaping rugged rocks, abandoned patna or sheltered forests. Loolcondera today is not the Loolcondera that - James Taylor - planted. It has grown with the years and has nearly 1,600 acres under tea. It is said to be the stoniest place imaginable. Stripped of its tea bushes, it might well look like the surface of a crater on the moon. Somebody once remarked that some estates make one feel that the early pioneers had as much courage and enthusiasm as madness. Why they should have selected such places to plant when there was no dearth of land is something for which no cogent explanation is possible. Taylor's first clearing in 1867 is now referred to as Field No. 7. It had been allowed to 'rest' for many years in view off its remoteness, and it was only the impending Tea Centenary that caused it to be brought back to bearing after pruning. The enthusiasm of a former Superintendent of Loolcondera, Roy Cameron, was responsible for this speedy transformation. James Taylor made his tea in the bungalow verandah. The leaf was hand-rolled on tables, the effective portion of the human limb that was used being between the wrist and the elbow. Clay stowes and charcoal fires were used for firing, while wire trays held the leaf. The ensuing product fetched Rs.1.50 a pound in the local market. However, later on Taylor was to equip his tea house, which was designed for an acreage of between fifty and one hundred acres, and the first roller ever made in Ceylon was used in it. The purpose of the roller was to cut production costs, because in 1872 Taylor lamented that the cost of rolling was as much as that of gathering the leaf. From all accounts the tea roller was worked by a water wheel. The Colombo auction An extract from the "Ceylon Observer" dated July 30, 1883, reads as follows:- "First Public Sale of Tea in Colombo - this came off the office of Messrs. Someville & Co., Ltd., this afternoon. The result shows that there are buyers, but there is a considerable difference between Sellers' and Buyers' idea of prices, which will rectify itself by and by." Thus began the Colombo Tea Auctions which, except for the period of the two World Wars, have continued almost without interruption ever since. We know little about Mr. William Somerville or what brought him to the shores of Ceylon. His name indicates that he was of Scottish descent. Presumably, like so many Scotsmen, he found his own country too small and decided to seek employment overseas. History does relate that, in later life, his younger partners decided to set out on their own and form rival broking firms. Scotsmen have been connected with the tea industry from its earliest days and many fine tea estates, as their names denote, were opened up and developed by lonely Scotsmen living in exile far from their native land. The monument to these pioneers is the rich heritage of green and fertile tea lands, of hills and valleys, cloaked in a thick mantle of growing tea, as far as the eye can see. The Brokers draw samples of each grade and divide these into smaller samples which are distributed to the Buyer. The Buyers examine and test the samples which they grade and price according to their suitability to meet the requirements of their overseas customers. They mark the Catalogues provided the Brokers and when the great day arrives, they all assemble at the Chamber of Commerce to bid in public auction. Some teas are shipped direct to the Mincing Lane Auctions in London where they are sold in exactly the same manner. However, there we do not find the same air of urgency that exists in Colombo Auctions and the sale is conducted in a more sedate manner at a slower tempo. There is also an air of secrecy about the buying which is carried out through Buying Brokers in order to conceal the identity of the actual Buyer. Because of this slower speed there is more time for ribaldry and the Auctioneer and his Assistants are frequently a target for wise-cracks and banter. This then is a short history of Tea from the time it leaves the factory to the time it is sold to the Buyer with particular emphasis on the part the Brokers play in this important industry. It will be seen that the cultivation of the simple 'Camellia Sinensis' commencing with a humble 19 acres in 1867 has grown to become Sri Lanka's chief export, with over half a million acres under cultivation. India started to develop her Tea industry at the beginning of the 19th Century whilst in China, as every one knows, tea drinking is a custom which goes back to the dawn of civilization. |
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