Land Settlement Ordinance

The Land Settlement Ordinance No. 20 of 1931 also known as the Land Settlement Ordinance was a landmark legal instrument enacted in colonial Ceylon on 5 November 1931 to adjudicate land ownership, formalize titles, and facilitate the redistribution of land for agricultural development. Enacted by the State Council of Ceylon, the ordinance was a key component of early land reform efforts driven by D. S. Senanayake, then Minister of Agriculture and Lands. It aimed to address the displacement of rural communities by the colonial plantation economy and the growing landlessness among peasants. The ordinance received broad political support, including from socialist leaders and Tamil politicians, although its later implementation would become the subject of ethnic and political controversy. Its legacy is twofold: it represented a step toward agrarian reform and social justice for the landless, but also became a legal foundation for majoritarian settlement policies that contributed to ethnic polarization.

Background

The ordinance was drafted during the transition to limited self-rule under the Donoughmore Constitution. The establishment of the State Council of Ceylon in 1931 gave elected Ceylonese leaders legislative authority over domestic affairs, including agriculture and land. At this time, large numbers of peasants had been displaced by colonial land policies and the expansion of the plantation economy, which had alienated communal lands through laws like the Waste Lands Ordinance in 1897. This created a rural land crisis, particularly among Sinhalese peasants in the wet zone and Kandyan areas, and among minority communities in the Vanni and Eastern Province, where traditional tenure systems were poorly documented.[1]

Bipartisan support

The Land Settlement Ordinance received bipartisan support within the State Council, reflecting a rare consensus across ethnic and ideological lines on the need for land reform. Socialist politicians from the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), such as Dr. N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena, saw land reform as essential for breaking the feudal and capitalist structures introduced under colonialism. While they were critical of later implementation, early socialist leaders supported the idea of state-led land redistribution as a path toward rural equity and social justice.[2]

Tamil politicians, including moderates within the Jaffna Youth Congress, also initially supported the ordinance as part of a broader nationalist and developmental project. Tamil leaders like G. G. Ponnambalam acknowledged the importance of legal land reform, especially to protect Tamil agricultural communities in the north and east from dispossession or encroachment.[3] However, this support was conditional: Tamil politicians requested customary land rights, and recognition of communal claims in Tamil-majority areas. Over time, as colonization schemes disproportionately favored Sinhalese settlers, much of this initial support gave way to criticism and resistance, particularly in the context of post-independence land policy 4[4].

Provisions of the Ordinance

The ordinance empowered Settlement Officers to:

  • Conduct public inquiries into land claims,
  • Determine ownership and usage rights based on documents or testimony,
  • Classify land as private, communal, or crown,
  • Issue titles, grants, and permits,
  • Prepare village settlement registers and land maps.

Appeals could be made to the District Court or the Supreme Court, but the bureaucratic nature of the process often disadvantaged illiterate or marginalized rural populations.[5]

Implementation and Outcomes

The law served as a foundation for Dry Zone colonization schemes, including Padaviya, Minipe, and Gal Oya, which resettled landless peasants, primarily from the Sinhalese majority, into sparsely populated areas. While this alleviated poverty in some regions, it also led to:

  • The displacement of Tamil and Muslim communities,
  • The redefinition of ethnically mixed regions into Sinhalese-majority districts,
  • Increased politicization of land and ethnicity, especially by the 1950s and 1960s.[3]

Although partially repealed or superseded by later legislation, the Land Settlement Ordinance laid the groundwork for Sri Lanka's postcolonial land policy. It influenced:

  • Land Development Ordinance No. 19 of 1935
  • State Lands Ordinance No. 8 of 1947
  • Land Reform Laws of 1972 and 1975

See also

References

  1. ^ De Silva, K. M. (2005). A History of Sri Lanka. Penguin Books India.
  2. ^ Samaraweera, Vijaya (1974). "Land Reform in Sri Lanka: The Historical Perspective". Modern Asian Studies. 8 (1): 65–83.
  3. ^ a b Wilson, A. Jeyaratnam (1988). The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict. London: Orient Longman.
  4. ^ Thangarajah, Y. (2003). "Ethnicization of the State and the Transformation of Resistance in Sri Lanka". In Unmaking the Nation, SSA: 143–165.
  5. ^ Land Settlement Ordinance No. 20 of 1931, Part II. The Ceylon Government Gazette Extraordinary. 5 Nov 1931. pp. 1457–1468.
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