rājākariya

rājākariya, traditional system of land tenure in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) until the early 19th century in which land was granted in exchange for services rendered. The services expected were of two kinds: (1) public works, such as road and bridge building or, in earlier days, the construction of irrigation works, and (2) special services elicited on the basis of a person’s caste-related occupation.

Rājākariya was first abolished in 1802 by Frederick North, then British governor of Ceylon. A new tax, consisting of a share of land produce, was substituted for rājākariya but proved unpopular with the Ceylonese people, and North’s successor reinstituted rājākariya. The practice then continued until 1832, when it was decisively abolished in a wave of administrative and economic reforms following recommendations of the Colebrook-Cameron Commission. While the Ceylonese people had been against abolition in 1802, the British colonial government had favoured it as a means both of encouraging the people to improve their landholdings—by granting them the land outright—and of encouraging population mobility by ending their obligatory bond to the land. By 1832 these positions had been reversed: the Ceylonese people favoured abolition, and the colonial government opposed it. The British colonial government was overruled, however, by the British home government, which for both economic and humanitarian reasons desired the abolition of rājākariya.