Caste and Sri Lankan Politics by Izeth Hussain

I must mention some of the salient features of the Sinhalese caste system so as to bring out the essential contrasts with the Indian one. The top caste in the former is the Goyigama, the single biggest caste to which almost fifty percent of the Sinhalese belong. In his book on the Rise of the Karawa Elite, Michael Roberts writes that the numerical weight of the Goyigama caste, its control of the land and its resources, the positions of authority of its notables which continued under the early colonial regimes, and the backing given to the Goyigama by the coercive power of the monarchy, amounted to a very powerful system which prevented anything like social revolution. The Navandanna, Wahumpura, Berava, and other service castes were enmeshed in that system as inferiors with no prospect of change (p 238).

The challenge to the traditional caste system came from the three so-called low-country castes, namely the Karawa, the Salagama, and the Durawe, most of whose members are said to have come to Sri Lanka after 1505. They could not be absorbed as service castes in the traditional ritual order, and the upward economic mobility made possible under Western colonialism meant that they could improve their status and come to question the pre-eminent position of the Goyigama. However - according to Roberts again - the Portuguese and the Sinhalese kings channeled the KSD migrants into new areas of economic activity, establishing a tradition of exploitative labour services which was continued under the Dutch and the British. The areas were in weaving cloth, cinnamon peeling, toddy tapping, coir and rope production, fishing and the transport of goods. Some of these tasks were rigorous and dangerous, many were demeaning, and all were distasteful in the eyes of the established residents (Roberts - 232). So it would be correct to say that despite the challenges posed by the KSD the Goyigama managed to retain their pre-eminent position during the entirety of the colonial period. read it all