Whether it be the law of the Dutch or the railway system built by the British that greatly enhanced connectivity and transportation across Sri Lanka, the imprint left by colonial powers has a more complex legacy, particularly on the issue of caste. The Dutch and the British navigated caste, customary law and State-society relations during their respective rule in colonial Ceylon.
Introduction
Caste is not the first topic of open discussion in Sri Lanka. It is not a common area of inquiry by activists, scholars, or policy makers. The relatively little attention given to caste as compared to ethnicity or religion is interesting, given that caste featured strongly in the colonial era and has a lasting impact in the present period. Both the Dutch and the British used the caste system as a method of classification and a tool of governance for their respective motives of profit maximisation and imperial rule. The colonial period is known for introducing new forms of demographic classification that led to the shaping of new identities with deepened racial and religious signifiers. Caste has been influenced by a range of factors, such as immigration and colonisation, the latter of which greatly influenced the culture, practices, and identities of native inhabitants.
The Dutch and their codification of the Thesawalamai
The Dutch policy and administrative practices in Ceylon (1658-1796) differed from those of the Portuguese (1505-1658). Contrary to the Portuguese, who were focused on religious conversion, the Dutch focused more on revenue extraction and administering social control. They used the social structures that were already customary in Sri Lanka to enforce their agenda. The most significant contribution was aligning the customary law of the ‘Malabar inhabitants of the Province of Jaffna’, the ’Thesawalamai’, with the Roman-Dutch law framework. This codification in 1707 officially recognised the superiority of some castes, such as the Vellalars, over other castes, including the Nalavars and Pallars. The Thesawalamai that embodied the Vellalar interpretation of the social order became the guiding text for the community, which evidently enabled the Vellalars to perpetuate the unjust practices of caste.
The rationale for this codification was twofold. The Dutch wanted to create an effective labour structure that would enable social control and resource maximisation for economic dividends. For instance, tobacco farms owned by the Vellalars brought high profits, giving the Dutch an incentive to safeguard local customs and laws by reframing them with the Roman-Dutch law. The Dutch were cognisant that working alongside the local elites (Vellalars), who had ownership of land and managed the agricultural economy, was crucial for their long-term success in Ceylon. An interesting addition to this was that 12 Tamil Mudaliyars, who were predominantly from the Vellalar community, were appointed for consultations and to oversee the implementation of these rules across the Northern parts of Sri Lanka after the codification in 1707. The decision to include only those who would disproportionately benefit from the legal framework to oversee and implement it was strategic to widen the caste division that already existed.
Regulation Number 18 from the Dutch Thombo (land and population register) sought to justify this practice. “The most valuable property in the District, partly of land and partly in a right of servitude possessed by persons of the higher caste over those of the inferior caste of the Covia, Nalluva, Palluva casts, approximating nearly to a state of lenient slavery” – Regulation No. 18 of 1806 mentions of slavery as a common practice in the Northern Sri Lankan region.
The Nalavars and Pallars under the Dutch were subjected to slavery since the colonial rulers resorted to the same playbook as the Vellalars in their treatment of these caste groups. Labour intensified during the Dutch period, including forced labour due to slavery. The codification of the Theswalamai was at the forefront as it provided legal grounds for this unfair treatment. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was interested in business endeavours and hence owned slaves and taxed the arrival of enslaved people by other trades. These practices eventually intertwined slavery and caste-related service work.
The codification of the Thesawalamai also meant that the slavery of the lower castes was both documented and institutionalised. Historical records show instructions given to the slave-owning castes to renew the registration of their slaves every five years, to pay a stamp tax of one rixdollar (A rix-dollar is a historical European silver coin and unit of account used from the late 16th to the mid-19th Centuries) per slave. The specific instructions for slaveowners extended even further through registration forms to be filled out by children born in the Covia caste who would be labelled as slaves. The form also mentioned Nallur, Chundicooly, and Navarcooly as places of slave registry in Regulation No. 09 of 1818, suggesting the depth to which the VOC entrenched this practice.
In this manner, the Dutch institutionalised caste from an informal mechanism to a codified legal framework. Enforcement capacities and resource extraction were strengthened through these practices. This represented a harsher and more absolute concept of bondage than existed under prior local customs, and the resulting designations extended far beyond labour obligations, governing where people could live, how they could dress, whom they could marry, and where they could worship. Codification, therefore, did not simply record existing caste hierarchy: it deepened Vellalar authority over subordinate castes by giving it the durable and enforceable architecture of colonial law.
The arrival of the British
The arrival of the British (1796-1948), who were the first colonial power to rule the island in its entirety, transformed the political economy of the country, mainly from a strategic perspective. Although the British also had strategic interests in resource extraction and profit maximisation, they were also eager to carry out detailed population censuses, classify the local population, and set up local governance to govern. Similar to the Dutch, the British were cognisant that working alongside the local elites, including co-opting them, was crucial for success. Thus, they permitted the continuation of slave practices and caste hierarchies during the initial period of their rule until the early 1820s. After this period, the British undertook a tactical approach to dismantle slavery. Over time, they gradually abolished slave-related practices with the intention of integrating Ceylon into the “British way of doing things”. Regulation No. 09 of 1818 contained a form to be filled by a parent to register their child as a slave.
The first step of this transformation was administering an island-wide census, which gathered surveys to collect in-depth and detailed data about inhabitants across Ceylon. New rules were introduced to register slaves when Ceylon became a Crown colony in 1802. For instance, Regulation 13 of 1806 required all slave owners to register their slaves within four months or face consequences. Two new regulations were introduced in 1818, one requiring the registration of all slaves in maritime areas and banning the joint tenure of slaves, and the second to appoint commissioners in the region, such as sitting magistrates, provincial judges, collectors, and assistant collectors, to manage this registration process.
The missionaries and caste integration
The arrival of American missionaries in Ceylon, in various areas in the North and the East, also impacted caste dynamics. The missionaries did not follow these caste practices, such as restricting the children of oppressed castes from studying in their schools. They wanted to create an environment where all children could study together by enrolling students from different castes in the institutes. This was heavily contested by the Vellalars, who boycotted these schools by not sending their children.
Although missionary education was open to everyone, the Vellalar caste was the biggest beneficiary of this system. They did this through both avoidance and manipulation. Wealthier Vellalar families often bypassed the missionary schools altogether by setting up or funding separate institutions reserved for ‘high-caste’ children. In instances where they remained in mission schools, Vellalar pupils and patrons pressured administrators to uphold caste privileges within the schools. One example included segregating the students by not allowing the low-caste students to share the benches, chairs, and dining arrangements used by the high-caste students.
As the economy sidelined subsistence agriculture, a system in which the lower castes were dependent on the higher castes to provide land and employment, the Vellalars also became the biggest recipients of education that granted them access to Government jobs in the civil service. These restrictions eventually prompted certain castes to engage in anti-caste agitation including the famous temple-entry crisis at the Maviddapuram Kandaswamy Temple where oppressed caste worshippers were physically assaulted by those seeking to protect the existing cultural order. While some other temples had lifted restrictions by this time, the administrators of Maviddapuram were reluctant to open the Temple’s doors. The incident epitomised the clash between “ancient tradition” and “pre-modern caste relations” amid socio-political change, reform, and colonial modernity. It also showcased that if colonial rule had genuinely dismantled caste hierarchy, it would have manifested in forms of social life in Jaffna. While colonial abolition had removed slavery from the statute books, the social machinery in many respects was left untouched, enabling exclusion to persist.
Kugan Ganan
This article was originally published on The Morning on 11 August 2026
Image copyright © Ushan Gunasekara
