From Kalutara to London: The fate of a Bo Tree in 1896
“What more important matter can we ponder over and write minutes on than whether a tree shall or shall not be cut down, in Ceylon?”
Right Honorable Earl of Selbourne, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Colonies on 6 June 1897
The 1890s public agitation over the fate of the Bo trees at the Kalutara Fort was a forerunner to the Buddhist revivalist movement of the subsequent decades. British colonial officers were just beginning to grapple with the intensity of the movement that would come to define the fate of British Ceylon, and subsequently of Sri Lanka. John D. Rogers’ late 20th-century account of ‘The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair’ provides a succinct narrative framing of this lesser-known turn of events.
While Sri Lanka’s British colonial era agitations have generally been dominated by prolific and elite figures, the Kalutara Bo Tree Affair lacked such elite presence. Instead, the agitations appear to have been spearheaded by an emerging middle class in the Kalutara area. The agitators did not start off as rabble-rousers looking for a fight but repeatedly resorted to official petitions and lines of communication with the British colonial administration, attempting to utilize the Mahavamsa as evidence of the Buddhist claim to the fort area. However, the incompetence of colonial officials appears to have transformed these petitioners into public agitators.
Kalutara before the 1890s
The agitations at Kalutara were not merely motivated by the fate of the Bo trees, but the fate of a previous Buddhist temple that was believed to have stood on the site of a colonial fort at Kalutara. The Mahavamsa was cited to claim that a ‘Gangatilaka Vihara’ originally stood where the Portuguese built the first colonial fort at Kalutara. Therefore, the location itself held significance beyond the symbolism of the Bo trees.
Positioned at the mouth of the Kalu Ganga, which was considered navigable for inland trade, the site held strategic significance to the colonial powers. The Dutch captured the fort in 1655 and subsequently redesigned and strengthened it. The fort was peacefully handed over to the British in 1796 and was garrisoned till 1815, after which it fell into disuse as a military position but continued to house colonial offices and residences.
By the late 19th century, the Kalutara town hosted a resident British Assistant Government Agent (AGA) as the district headquarters — the ‘kachcheri’. The AGA chaired the Local Board of the town, which held limited administrative responsibilities and was appointed by an electorate limited by property qualifications.
Podi Singho’s shrine
In 1886, a group of local Buddhists applied to the Local Board to lease a plot of land around one of the three Bo trees on the public esplanade in the Fort to build a small shrine. The then AGA, H. Haly Cameron, had no objections and thus allowed the Board to rent the plot at a nominal sum. Subsequently, a layman named Podi Singho built a small shrine at the foot of the Bo tree and carried out some regular rituals.
By the 1890s a new AGA, H.W. Brodhurst, had arrived and he would gradually become irritated by the presence of the shrine —which by then included Podi Singho’s little bathing hut — and the increasing demands of local Buddhists for access to the Fort esplanade. In 1891 and 1892, Buddhists petitioned for the release of a quarter acre of land around the Bo tree to expand the shrine and rebuild the temple of the Mahavamsa. Brodhurst, supported by his superior, the Government Agent of the Western Province A.R. Dawson, rejected these petitions. But his attempts to end the lease for Podi Singho’s shrine was rebuffed by the Local Board.
With Buddhist claims to the land continuing into 1894, Brodhurst imagined he would be outsmarting and ending the movement when he ordered the two Bo trees not subject to Podi Singho’s lease be cut down. Despite protests by a few locals outside Brodhurst’s house, work on the trees began on 4th August. O.M. Obeyesekere, a medical doctor and President of the recently formed Kalutara Buddhist Union, sent a telegram that afternoon to Governor Arthur Havelock protesting Brodhurst’s action. Despite Havelock’s order for an immediate stop to the work, only part of one of the two trees was left standing.
The Petition without Elites
The acting Western Province Government Agent, Edward Elliot, was directed to inquire into a 6th August petition to protect the sacred Bo trees at the Fort. The petitioners were led by Don Cornelis Perera, a lawyer’s clerk and Secretary of the Kalutara Buddhist Union.
One meeting with the petitioners was attended by the Archeological Commissioner, H.C.P. Bell, who opined that the references to the Mahavamsa were misunderstood by the petitioners — the Ganagatilaka Vihara was at Bentota, not at Kalutara. Regardless, Elliot ended up conceding the temple stood on the river banks at Kalutara but saw no evidence as to why it should have stood at the site of the fort.
Having noted that all petitioners were “of humble position” — i.e. emerging middle class — and that no “leading Buddhists” of the district were involved, it was probably not surprising that the British officials dismissed the petitioners’ historical claims. Governor Havelock then wrote to the Colonial Office in London for permission to evict Podi Singho and cut down all the Bo trees on the esplanade.
Rebuffed in London
The Colonial Office saw the events as the needless stirring up of trouble with the locals. But it also wanted to avoid sanctioning claims to any and all Bo trees so it supported Havelock’s decision to cut down the two other trees and allow the one with the shrine to remain.
Dissatisfied, the officials in Ceylon sent further evidence to London. A map from 1827, that showed no trees on the esplanade, was provided as evidence that the Bo trees were not there from antiquity. A contemporary map was also provided claiming that the lights in Podi Singho’s shrine endangered the railway. Both were rejected and officials at the Colonial Office saw the affair as Brodhurst’s “obsession”.
The Agitation
On being directed by the new Governor J. West Ridgeway in October 1896 to find an amicable solution to the problem, Dawson — who had returned as Government Agent — delivered an ultimatum to Podi Singho; the shrine would be removed by 26th November. The impact of such an ultimatum should have been obvious to Dawson.
With Dawson providing no response to an 11th November petition from the Kalutara Buddhist Union against the ultimatum, the Buddhists prepared for the only course of action remaining, staging the “first anti-government mass demonstration concerning religion in the south-western coastal area” (Rogers, 1997).
On the morning of 26 November about one thousand persions gathered near the bo tree, intent on its protection … The protestors were soon reinforced by villagers who arrived on the 11.45 train.
Brodhurst was taken by surprise. He had had no plans for action that day, for not only would such a course have been expressly against London’s instructions, but the government did not have the legal right to evict Podi Singho.
The police confronted the crowd and made a few arrests, but they soon had to retreat to the police station to prevent the protestors rescuing the prisoners. One constable was injured and one prisoner escaped.
In the early afternoon Brodhurst announced that the tree would not be cut down and this assurance helped defuse tensions. The failure of reinforcements to arrive from the notoriously riotous village of Vanavahala on the 1.25 train further sapped the crowd’s momentum. The crowd gradually dispersed in the late afternoon, having successfully defied authority for one day.
John D. Rogers, “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair — 1891 to 1897”, pg 328, Sri Lanka. Collective Identities Revisited, Volume 1. 1997. Marga Institute.
The subsequent court proceedings ran for over a year as some protestors evaded arrest. Of the 40 prosecuted most were fined substantial amounts, while two were sentenced to prison.
The ‘amicable’ solution
Governor Ridgeway concluded that the situation was “grossly mismanaged” and found that Brodhurst had concocted a lie about the shrine endangering the railway. The Governor turned to senior officials of his Executive Council for advice. From among them, F.R. Ellis pushed for an amicable solution.
He drew a distinction between two issues that he thought should have been kept separate: the right of Brodhurst to cut down the tree and the right of Podi Singho to retain the shrine at its base … His solution was to guarantee the tree’s safety, but to remove Podi Singho.
John D. Rogers, “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair — 1891 to 1897”, pg 330, Sri Lanka. Collective Identities Revisited, Volume 1. 1997. Marga Institute.
With London approving this course of action, Ellis took up the task of removing Podi Singho’s shrine. But he realized that resorting to a court process would be too lengthy and risk another conflagration with protestors. Instead, he bribed Podi Singho with Rs.100 to leave the shrine and had the sum accounted as “expenses of removing shrine at Kalutara”.
On 20 September 1897 Ellis returned to Kalutara with Christian workers from Colombo, took over the site from Podi Singho, consigned the various imaged and sacred objects to some Buddhist headmen, and quickly dismantled the shrine. The Colombo policemen who accompanied the workers were not needed; there was no sign of popular resentment against this turn of events.
Ellis’s solution worked in the short term. The tree was enclosed by a wire fence and there was no systematic agitation for a change in the status, But the oral tradition concerning the sacredness of the are in general, and the bo tree in particular, continued. In 1901 the fence was damaged and offering were made at the tree’s base.
And after Sri Lanka became independent, Buddhist symbols gained political ascendancy, the secular buildings in the Kalutara Fort were demolished and a dagoba, or relic chamber, was raised on the site. As the twentieth century comes to a close, the Gangatilaka Vihara stands unchallenged by colonial memories.
John D. Rogers, “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair — 1891 to 1897”, pg 330–331, Sri Lanka. Collective Identities Revisited, Volume 1. 1997. Marga Institute.
Epilogue
The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair of the 1890s has not received a lot of attention. But the fate of that site provides a clear reflection of how religious symbols and revival of historical narratives coincided with the anti-colonial movement. Adding fuel to the fire was the action of colonial officers, who failed to understand the strength of the Buddhist symbolism, turned petitions into public agitation. Brodhurst and Dawson in particular continued to take reckless decisions that escalated the problem. Their presence was probably an indication of the imperial overreach of the British Empire.
The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair is important in showcasing the economic and educational progress achieved by an emerging bourgeoisie, with access to translated copies of the Mahavamsa, who had the confidence to petition the colonial government. The lack of involvement by elite Buddhist figures in this process may have been because the historical narrative about Kalutara as a Buddhist site was not known. However, much later in 1951 the Kalutara Bodhi Trust embarked on fulfilling the collective imaginations of the petitioners and agitators by building the temple in its current form.
References
Primary Source:
John D. Rogers, “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair — 1891 to 1897”, pg 323–333, Sri Lanka. Collective Identities Revisited, Volume 1. 1997. Marga Institute
On Colonial Kalutara:
Richard Boyle, “Colonial Kalutara”, August 22, 2010. Sunday Times
Early Prints of Kalutara and its Fort, defonseka.com
