Albert Wickremasinghe: The human rights activist
2015 marks the centenary of the Sinhala-Muslim riots of 1915, when, what started off as a dispute between the Buddhists of Gampola and the Moor traders culminated in an orgy of violence that spread throughout the country. These Moor traders were not the original Arab settlers who came centuries ago and married Sinhalese wives, but recent immigrants from India’s Coromandel coast who took back their trading profits from time to time to their wives and families back home.
The Moors had built a new mosque and insisted that the Buddhist perahera should when passing the mosque as a mark of respect remain silent without beating tom-toms and mouthing incantations. This resulted in the famous Gampola Perahera case when the District Court (Judge Paul E. Peiris) ruled in favour of the Buddhists. The immediate cause of the riots however, was not the outcome of the case which went in appeal to the Supreme Court when Justices Shaw and de Sampayo overturned the DJ’s order and finally ended in the Privy Council where E.W. Perera appearing for the Buddhists came to a settlement after the riots had ended.
The immediate cause of the riots was the killing of a Sinhalese youth in Kandy town when a Moor trader opened fire from the upstair of his shop. Most commentators on the riots confined themselves to events that unfolded thereafter in Kandy and its environs, whereas the Kegalle district in which significant events took place is largely ignored.
My source of information is a well documented publication titled ‘Reminiscences of the Riots of 1915’ by that legendary but much misunderstood philanthropist cum agriculturist cum planter and Proctor of the Supreme Court, the late Albert A. Wickremasinghe of Kegalle.
Proctor Wickremasinghe was cast in the same mould as the Mudaliyar of Kalutara who built Richmond Castle, for he too built a palatial residence known as “Wickrema” on top of a hill overlooking Kegalle town equipped with all manner of imported fittings down to the tassels that adorned the windows. But alas that palatial building which at one time entertained Royalty (the Duke of Gloucester) and where the Senanayake brothers (DS and FR and later Dudley) pitched camp when nominations for Kegalle district were due, stands in decay today.
To understand Wickremasinghe’s role in these riots a peep into his background becomes necessary. Unlike other families in the district who came into prominence by extending undue hospitality to British officials, he was a self-made man who did not inherit any wealth or social position from his parents. By dint of education and hard work he rose to the position of a leading lawyer and a country squire par excellence who incidentally was driven about in a steam-powered car, a rare possession at the time.
As a devout Catholic and a man of principle he was always on the side of the oppressed. In Kegalle at first, the Sinhalese villagers were harassing, looting and killing Muslims and he volunteered his services to the authorities to stop the rioting and restore law and order as he was in a position to influence large sections of villagers who were his clients or employees on his estates. But when he realised that the agenda of the British officials went far beyond containing the rioting and that they along with the Punjabi soldiers and mobilised planters were engaged in targeting Buddhist leaders and killing Sinhala villagers, he switched sides and worked relentlessly for the cause of the Sinhala Buddhists.
This effort took the form of drafting petitions for aggrieved villagers, appearing for them before official committees and courts to secure release of their loved ones or for payment of counpensation to the kith and kin of those arbitrarily killed, collecting evidence from inquest proceedings and elsewhere to be incorporated in the five memorials that were sent to the British Colonial Office (of which he was a signatory to the last two), working closely and liaising with DS and FR Senanayake, Sir D.B. Jayatilaka, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan and even E.W. Perera, and agitating along with them for a Commission of Inquiry (which was refused). Yet unable to withstand the irrefutable prima facie evidence provided by Albert Wickremasinghe of specific instances of death by shooting without inquiry or trial, the mild-mannered Sir John Anderson who replaced Sir Robert Chalmers as Governor appointed what came to be known as the Kegalle Shooting Commission. The deliberations of this commission provides interesting reading.
While Sir John Anderson appointed the commission with the best traditions of British Justice in mind, two other agents of the Empire (The Chief Justice and the Attorney General) did exactly the opposite). The killers were given every facility at the commission – to appoint counsel, cross examine witnesses and do as they please whereas counsel for the deceased relatives were to hold “watching briefs”. When one of the first witnesses called by the Attorney General from the list given by Wickremasinghe turned out to be in favour of the killers, and permission to cross-examine the witness was turned down, counsel decided to withdraw from proceedings, thus ending their foray to secure British justice.
The commission of course, wended its way and came out with the conclusion that was expected of it, giving reasons that were a mockery of all known canons of justice. This being an era when the Imperial government legislated for the colonies, an Order – In Council had already been enacted (the Ceylon Indemnity Order in Council 1915) setting up a novel presumption that official acts are presumed to be done in good faith (bona fide).
This was a jump in kind from the normal legal presumption that official acts are correctly done. Taking refuge under this the commission concluded that although the shootings had no justification in law, they were done bona fide and hence the perpetrators are protected. Their finding was that the evidence led by the Attorney-General on behalf of the deceased’s relatives did not displace the presumption. To get over the difficulty of the shooting taking place after rioting ceased, they argued it was done:
(a) To prevent a “re-crudescence” of rioting and
(b) As a deterrent to future rioters.
The publication of the Kegalle Shooting Commission report acted as a catalyst for constitutional reform, as the British government realised that the people of this country should be given more powers to look after their own affairs. Towards this end when the Reform League (the precursor of the National Congress) was formed under the leadership of Sri James Peiris and Sir Arunachalam Mahadeva, Wickremasinghe joined it from its very inception.
Albert Wickremasinghe was the foremost human rights activist at grass-roots level that the riots produced.