Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka

The subject of servitude in the Indian Ocean is still understudied and whatever has been produced is largely regionally exclusive to India. Slave in a Palanquin by Nira Wickramasinghe is a substantial attempt to fill that gap. It makes an effort to examine slavery and servitude outside Indian borders by using Sri Lanka as a case study. Wickramasinghe's work is substantially different from the earlier works on labor servitude in the Indian Ocean colonies, such as Gyan Prakash's Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labour Servitude in Colonial India, which demonstrates how, following the abolition of slavery in India in 1843, enslaved rural agricultural laborers known as "Kamia" became indebted labor and thus so-called free labor, although still tied to a master household. It also speaks to Matthias van Rossum et al.'s Testimonies of Enslavement: Sources on Slavery from Indian Ocean World, which shows how enslavement and enslavability was inherent in the interaction of local and global systems of bondage, and Robert Harms et al.'s Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition, which paints a complex and occasionally personal picture of slavery and the slave trade in the western Indian Ocean during the abolitionist era. These volumes demonstrate the complex interactions between abolitionists, the enslaved, and the enslavers.Wickramasinghe, on the other hand, investigates the "practices of becoming and being of enslaved people in a local context Sri Lanka that was braided with the global" (1). The sources, including slave records, ship captains' logbooks, and shipping lists, that Wickramasinghe uses to support this viewpoint are the most crucial aspect of her work.At the beginning of the book, Wickramasinghe makes it clear that slaves in Sri Lanka during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not merely passive victims of European colonialism and capitalism but, rather, were well aware of their servitude. Through the stories of specific slaves, she explains their agency, understanding of being enslaved, and resistance on the eve of the changes brought about by the British Empire's dismantling of slavery. Slave in a Palanquin is about servitude and labor not in collective terms but, rather, in the individual lives detailed in each chapter. More significantly, she interrogates the official narratives and documents associated with various incidents and individuals. For example, she discusses the murder of a Dutch fiscal and points out how popular and colonial documentation blurred the distinction between "slave" and "Black," defining all enslaved populations as "kaffir," the Black/African enslaved people. Popular and authoritative accounts have depicted slaves in Sri Lanka as having their origin in the African subcontinent, forgetting completely the presence of Tamil-speaking enslaved populations from the southern coast of India. This popular depiction led to naming the island "Slave Island" and the murder of a Dutch fiscal as a "Kaffir servants' " insurrection rather than a murder by a slave of Asian origin. In postcolonial times, Wickramasinghe writes, "in the popular realm . . . notions of slave and black . . . acquired their own garbs of meaning. Slaves were increasingly associated with Africans, as memories and records of slaves hailing from other parts of the colonial world faded away" (50).In subsequent chapters, Wickramasinghe shows how colonial rule or colonial masters documented the life of subalterns—not as subalterns pleased or wished, but as colonialism felt appropriate for itself. Hence, in many ways the documented history of slavery in Sri Lanka is not only the result of reading against the grain but also the result of omission of those incidents or aspects of history that were not suitable for colonizers. Wickramasinghe further argues that colonial oppression and people's dream of justice became caught up in the law (90). Hence, she finds that on the eve of the emancipation, those people who were not legally authorized to move in a palanquin dared to do so. For Wickramasinghe this was an act of resistance against the status quo by the oppressed subject. Colonial administrators therefore saw prohibited castes moving by palanquin as a serious breach of the peace. In chapter 4, Wickramasinghe again digs deep into official archives and discovers the ways people resisted through extraordinarily bold acts, reclaiming their rights to be treated as humans.The chapter titled "Eclipse of the Slave" reveals the book's true motivation. Here Wickramasinghe raises the subject of who historically belongs to Sri Lanka or the issue of the island's original heirs. This has a strong connection to Sri Lanka's current political climate. In the recent past, there have been tremendous clashes between the Sinhalese and Tamil population in Sri Lanka originating from a politics of belonging. While Sinhalese political activists such as Nalin de Silva claim that Tamils were brought from Tamil Nadu of India and are not original inhabitant of Sri Lanka, their Tamil opponents claim that they are the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese claim is based on the Mahavamsa, a chronicle set down by Buddhist monks in the late fifth or early sixth century CE. This text has been used centrally during postindependence ethnic political debates to claim that the Sinhalese are natural heirs to the island. As Alan Strathern notes, "This has obvious resonances at a time when a Tamil minority, who are largely Hindu and often characterized as 'Dravidian,' press their own claims to legitimate residence and governance."1 Through this study, Wickramasinghe suggests that Sinhalese claims cannot be disregarded because it is evident when one considers a hitherto unstudied topic like slavery in Sri Lanka that non-Sinhalese people, particularly the Tamil-speaking population, were brought to the island as enslaved people.Overall, the sources, methodologies, and analysis of this work are groundbreaking. Its primary goal is to contextualize the contemporary ethnic political issues, but it also draws our attention to a previously unexplored subject: the study of slavery in the Indian Ocean region.