Vellalar of Sri Lanka - Rise To Dominance

Rise To Dominance

During the Jaffna kingdom period and the following colonial period since the 16th century, Vellala chiefs were in constant struggle for supremacy with another now-extinct caste called Madapalli. The kings belonging to the Arya Chakaravarthi dynasty would appoint leaders from both the factions to maintain peace in the kingdom.

According Bryan Pfaffenberger, an American anthropologist who has studied the community in detail, the rise to complete dominance by the Vellala elites began with the capture of Portuguese holdings in Sri Lanka by the Dutch. The Dutch interpreted the local laws, later codified as Thesavalamai, as allowing Vellala chiefs to own slaves. Thus empowered, many tobacco plantations were created by the Vellala chiefs with the help of imported Indian workers from the Pallar caste who were held as slaves. This new-found wealth enabled the Vellalas in general to morph into a dominant landowning elite with ritual and political control. Eventually their portion of the total Tamil population of the densely populated Jaffna peninsula rose from a mere 8% to over 50%. Upwardly mobile families of people belonging to other castes also eventually associated them with the Velllala identity according to the principles of Sanskritisation. This period also saw the dispersal of Vellala lineages across the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka.

During the British colonial period in Sri Lanka which began with the capture of the entire island nation and its unification by Great Britain in 1815, Vellalas began to look for education as the new opportunity to upgrade their livelihoods. Various Christian missionaries had made the Tamil-dominated Jaffna peninsula as the best location in all of Asia for English education in the 19th century. Many Vellala families used this opportunity to educate their children, and they provided the bulk of the British colonial civil servants in Sri Lanka and in British-held Malaysia and Singapore. Slavery was also abolished in 1855 by the British colonial authorities, thus making agriculture less profitable.

The domination of Sri Lankan Tamils in government services in post independent Sri Lanka eventually became one of the route causes of the Sri Lankan civil war.