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Salagama (Halagama, Haali or Chaliya) is a Sri Lankan cinnamon peelers' caste found mostly in Southern coastal areas, especially in the villages around Hikkaduwa and Balapitiya in Galle district. Although this community was traditionally associated with the cultivation of cinnamon, the very small groups in the Kandyan areas were more involved with weaving. The caste shares similarities with the Saliya, the weavers' caste, in Kerala and Karnataka in India. Saliyar is also the name of a weaving caste of Tamil nadu.

Origin

From Kerala
The Salagama have a myth of origin ascribing to them 'higher' caste roots. According to this myth Saliyas were of Brahmin origin and were brought across the sea from Malabar (i.e. Kerala) by ship. However, since they would 'lose caste' if they touched the water, they had to be carried ashore by members of the Govigama caste.

According to this tradition, a certain Sinhalese King offered handsome rewards to any person bringing skilled weavers to Sri Lanka. A Muslim of Beruwela made the voyage to Saliapatanam in India and returned with eight weavers of the Salagama caste. One variation of the tale states that the eight were drugged and bound and only realised that were being transported to a foreign country when they were at sea; According to a different variation, the eight were tricked aboard the ship in order to gamble, the ship sailing without their knowledge whilst play was in progress. Two of the victims are said to have jumped overboard and never been heard of again.

The myth of Brahmin origin may have originated in Kerala, where the Saliya have a myth of similar origin . It is significant that in the Kandyan areas the Salagamas were identified as weavers (Wiyana Haali), which is the same as the Saliya in Kerala and Karnataka.

From Tamil nadu
According to Jan Schreuder, an 18th century Dutch Governor of Ceylon, the Salagamas were weavers who were brought over from the Coromandel coast on the Tamil Nadu side as opposed to Kerala by Muslim merchants about 1250, but were forced to become cinnamon peelers by the King of Kotte in 1406. They were consequently considered to be on inferior social status.

Colonial period

The Portuguese continues the tradition of using Salagamas as cinnamon peelers, who had to provide cinnamon as a tax, although they were paid daily wages in money or in kind. When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) took over the coastal areas, it re-organised cinnamon cultivation on modern capitalist lines, with plantations located within the boundaries of VOC rule, mainly in the Galle district. The Salagamas were converted from a feudal caste into a modern proletariat.

The importance of cinnamon as a commodity gave those associated with its production importance in the eyes of the colonial power, and the caste gained social status under the Dutch. Some of the more influential members, such as chiefs, gained economic power and were able to buy land, thus gaining greater status.

The census of 1824 identified the Salagamas as about 7.5 % of the coastal Sinhalese population. However, they were concentrated in the Galle district, where about half of them lived and where they made up almost 20% of the population.

Buddhist revival

The general practice of the major monastic Buddhist nikayas (sects) in Sri Lanka in the 18th Century was to ordain only members of the highest caste, the Govigama. The establishment in Kandy, which because of its origin in Thailand (Siam) was known as the Siam Nikaya (Siamese sect), was unwilling to grant higher (upasampada) ordination to those monks who had non-Goyigama social origins.

This practice was increasingly challenged in coastal areas, where there was an emergent lower-caste Sinhalese middle class. The Salagamas, without the patronage of the King or of the British, held the first non-Govigama upasampada ceremony at Totagamuwa Vihara in 1772. In 1799, Ambagahapitiye Gnanavimala Thera, a Salagama monk from Balapitiya departed for Burma with a group of novices to seek ordination. They received ordination in Burma in 1800 from the sangharaja of Burma in Amarapura.

The initial mission returned to Sri Lanka in 1803. Soon after their return to the island they established a udakhupkhepa sima (a flotilla of boats moved together to form a platform on the water) on the Maduganga river, Balapitiya and, under the most senior Burmese monk who accompanied them, held an upasampada ceremony on Vesak Full Moon Day. The new fraternity came to be known as the Amarapura Nikaya and was soon granted recognition by the colonial British government.

The Amarapura Nikaya was of pivotal importance in the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in the 19th Century. The Salagamas, who became overwhelmingly Buddhist, were in the vanguard of this movement.

Modern radicalism

The traditional Salagama areas around Balapitiya, Hikkaduwa and Ratgama were centres of the pan-Sinhalese populist movement of Anagarika Dharmapala. The key issues around which this movement emerged were anti-casteism and anti-colonialism.

The same areas were in the vanguard of the independence struggle and became hotbeds of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and of the Communist Party. These areas were at the forefront of the Hartal of 1953.

Sub-castes

Traditionally, the Salagama were divided into four sub-castes:
  • Panividakara ('messengers') - headmen
  • Hewapanne ('soldiers') - militia
  • Kurundukara ('cinnamon workers') - Cinnamon peelers
  • Uliyakkara ('servants') - Palanquin bearers and fan bearers

However, in modern times there is a simple two-fold division between the Hewapanne and the Kurundukara. The former are of higher status, including landowners in their ranks.

Occupations

In the present day, the Salagama predominance in cinnamon cultivation has declined, the higher status of the caste leading to its members abandoning their traditional occupation. Many Salagamas in the Hikkaduwa area became coral miners until the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 swept away their villages. The coral-lime kilns gave employment to many more.

The Railway made access to employment in Colombo and other urban centres very much easier, and the caste became a very important part of the working class. Its higher echelons became notable in the engineering profession, mainly due to the influence of Sir Cyril Soyza, who owned the South-eastern Omnibus Company (see Ceylon Transport Board) and the Associated Motorways Group, and other businessmen in the motor trade.

See also

Distinguished Salagamas

References

Caste | Sri Lankan society

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Salagama".

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