The British colonial response to the 1915 anti-Muslim pogrom

On 29 May 1915, a violent dispute over a Buddhist procession erupted at the Castle Hill Street mosque in Kandy. Scores of Muslim Moors were attacked during the pogrom that ensued. 

Rather than remaining an isolated incident, this initial attack was followed by island-wide riots that grew in intensity, and lasted nine days. The violence spread to five out of nine provinces. Over 4,000 Muslim shops were looted, and 350 houses and 17 mosques were burnt; 25 persons were murdered, and four women were raped. 

The 1915 pogrom was the largest outbreak of communal violence for almost 100 years, and remains the most widespread attack on Muslims in Sri Lanka to date.

The British colonial response to this pogrom remains a contested subject today. The most popular narrative is that the response was excessive. But is that narrative complete, or is the story more complicated? 

In this article, I explore the British colonial State’s response to the 1915 anti-Muslim pogrom in Sri Lanka. I proceed by explaining the two stages of the British State’s response: inaction and excess. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of proactive and measured law enforcement in preventing large-scale communal violence, and the risks of reductive historical narratives. 

The British colonial State initially failed to contain the spread of violence in 1915, which resulted in the destruction of numerous Muslim-owned homes and businesses, mosques, and multiple deaths. However, the orthodox narrative of the British colonial State’s response to the pogrom is a largely one-dimensional narrative on the excess of British force. 

This narrative focuses on the brutal suppression of the pogrom, and the ill-treatment of the Sinhalese who were wrongly perceived by the state as acting seditiously. 

While this narrative is accurate to a great extent, it tends to omit the fact that initially, the Police and the State did not react decisively to suppress the outbreak of violence. Thus, the British colonial State failed on two counts: first, in terms of its weak initial response to anti-Muslim violence, and second, by illegally shooting and imprisoning innocent Sinhalese civilians.

State inaction

There were arguably two broad reasons as to why the Police (and other State actors) failed to contain the violence that broke out in May 1915: weaknesses in the security apparatus, and complicity with rioters. 

Weaknesses in the security apparatus

Despite a build-up of tensions between Sinhala-Buddhists and Muslims in 1915, the Police and the State appeared to be taken by surprise at the scale and intensity of the violence. 

The last large-scale episode of violence in Sri Lanka (prior to 1915) had been the 1848 Matale Rebellion. The British declared martial law and ruthlessly suppressed the violence. Since then, the colony had been largely peaceful with only smaller inter-communal clashes taking place. 

Both the Matale Rebellion and other subsequent sporadic clashes were geographically concentrated within a particular province or two. By contrast, the 1915 pogrom, which originated in Kandy in the Central Province on 29 May, spread to four other provinces by 5 June, and extended from Galgamuwa in the North-Western Province to Galle in the Southern Province – towns that were approximately 164 miles apart. 

In part due to the lack of preparation, the Police approach to tackling the spreading violence was reactive as opposed to proactive, in spite of a degree of forewarning of trouble. The Superintendent of Police for the Central Province received prior information of the likelihood of conflict between the Sinhala-Buddhists and the Muslim Moors during the Vesak perahera. 

However, despite such forewarning, the Superintendent only ordered the posting of one inspector and four constables to patrol the four roads leading to the mosque; these officers were unable to control the crowd of over 2,000 people.

Once the pogrom began, there was no efficient plan to stop the spread of violence. As a result, attacks on Muslim persons, Muslim-owned homes and businesses, and mosques continued for over a week without an effective response from the Police. 

Another reason for the slow response of the police was that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had failed to keep adequately abreast of rising inter-communal tensions, and widespread anti-Muslim sentiment. 

For instance, between January and May 1915, the Coast Moors antagonised both the Buddhist and Hindu communities by repeatedly obstructing their religious processions. Moreover, during this period, there was substantial anti-Muslim propaganda in popular vernacular publications such as the Sinhala Jatiya.1 

However, the State had failed to monitor sentiments in the vernacular press, despite heightened tensions since the unpopular Supreme Court verdict in favour of the Muslims in the Gampola perahera case in February 1915. 

Complicity with rioters

The complicity of certain Police officers in the rioting also contributed towards the Police’s failure to control the violence – a point raised by historians Charles Blackton and Michael Roberts. Certain Police or State officials were guilty of standing by passively as looting and rioting occurred, while others were found to be directly involved in the extortion and intimidation of the Moors. 

For example, a Sub-inspector of Police in Colombo, F.P. Samarasinghe, was found guilty of extorting a necklace and a ring, cash, and a cheque, worth a total of Rs. 558.5 from a Muslim refugee from Kandy on 1 June.2 W.M. Abdul Rahiman, the Muslim Member in the Legislative Council compiled an assessment of the damages faced by the Moors during the pogrom and corresponded with the Governor of Ceylon on 1 July 1915.3 

In his report, Rahiman suggested that certain Police officers had profited in some regard from the 1915 pogrom. Although he does not speculate on the reasons behind this complicity, the incentives were likely to have been a mixture of greed, anti-Muslim sentiment,4 and sympathy with the grievances of the Sinhala-Buddhists involved in the perahera. 

State excess

The lethargic and inefficient State response enabled violence to spread to five out of the nine provinces. However, by around 2 June, it had become clear to the Governor, the Colonial Secretary, and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) that the rioting had spread beyond the control of the Police, and that it was necessary to deploy the military. 

The colonial administration also wrongly suspected that the riots were part of a broader campaign to target the State. Martial law was therefore declared in the affected provinces on 2 June, and maintained until the end of August 1915. 

It was the actions of the British colonial State during this period – particularly between 8 and 15 June, that are remembered for their brutality against the Sinhalese. It was these actions that tend to re-focus sympathy on the Sinhalese, as opposed to the original targets of the pogrom. 

The State actors in this second phase of repression included both the military and a regiment of Punjabi soldiers who had been present on the island at the outbreak of violence. ‘Special Commissioners’ or volunteers were also recruited and deployed due to a shortage of commissioned officers. These volunteers included members of the Colombo Town Guard Artillery or Ceylon Volunteer Force, often made up of European planters with no prior experience in military operations. 

Measures taken by these actors ranged from firing on rioters with live ammunition (which was technically legal under martial law) to a number of illegal acts. For example, the Punjabi soldiers were accused of maltreating ordinary civilians who were not involved in the rioting, and committing theft during house-to-house inspections.5 The Punjabi regiment was also accused of carrying out mass floggings on innocent civilians.

The worst excesses were the illegal shootings of ordinary Sinhalese civilians, and the mass arrests and imprisonment of hundreds of innocent civilians without charge. The shooting of 10 Sinhalese men who were suspected of involvement or complicity in the rioting was one of the most egregious atrocities perpetrated by the State for which there is clear evidence – as the colonial State set up a Shooting Inquiry Commission to hold its forces accountable for the excesses.

Similarly, the colonial State also set up a Police Inquiry Commission to investigate the state’s failure to effectively end the rioting when it erupted on 29 May 1915, and allowing it to morph into a widespread pogrom. From the written records of these inquiries, we gain an insight into colonial governance, and the decision-making process that drove a shift in the State’s response – from inaction to excess. 

Conclusion

The failures of the British colonial State to respond appropriately, and in a timely manner, has valuable lessons for law enforcement today. The State’s failure to act decisively at the inception of the pogrom eventually resulted in the State acting excessively as the situation grew significantly out of its control. Once the State shifted into a gear of belated damage control, it proved impossible to control loose elements within the military forces. 

Meanwhile, the historical narrative of the British response to the 1915 anti-Muslim pogrom is one-dimensional and therefore incomplete. Such a reductive narrative prioritises the victimhood of only the majority community while detracting from the violence perpetrated against the Muslim community. 

The historical reality was much more complex; the State not only committed excesses against the Sinhalese but also failed to protect Muslims from violence.

Footnotes

1 Sinhala Jatiya, 9 March 1915.

2 A.C. Dep, ‘Ceylon Police and Sinhala-Muslim Riots of 1915’ (2001: Ratmalana), p.33.

3 SLNA, Lot 65, W.M. Abdul Rahiman to Chalmers, 1 July 1915.

4 Michael Roberts, ‘Marakkala Kolahalaya: Mentalities Directing the Pogrom of 1915’ Chapter 8, in Exploring Confrontations, (1994: Reading), p.133.

5 E.W. Perera, Memorandum upon recent disturbances in Ceylon (1915: London), p.28.