Leonard Woolf’s “Village in the Jungle” in Hambantota is hard to find today.

Leonard Sidney Woolf (Barrister and Queen's Counsel) moved to then Ceylon; Sri Lanka today in October 1904 to join the Ceylon Civil Service [CCS] as a cadet. After a brief period in Colombo, he is posted to Jaffna in January 1905. Two years and seven months in Jaffna, Woolf is transferred to Kandy as an apprentice to the Ceylon Civil Service, on a salary of £ 200 a year. A year in Kandy with three and a half years of cadetship in the CCS, he is promoted to assume duties as Assistant Government Agent in the Hambantota District in August 1908. From then until May 1911, he worked in Hambantota for 2 years and 9 months.

Woolf returns to England on vacation in May 1911, after serving in the civil service in Sri Lanka for nearly six and a half years. While in England he meets Virginia Stephen and they fall in love. The intended marriage took time and his leave coming to an end Woolf applies for an additional three months quoting it to be a private matter. On his refusal to divulge the nature of his private business he is not granted an extension and he in turn sends in his resignation and marries Miss Adeline Virginia Stephen in 1912. She became one of the brightest stars in English literature, entitled Virginia Woolf. After marriage, Woolf turned to write and published his first novel, The Village in the Jungle (1913), which is based on his years in Ceylon [Hambantota]. The source of Sinhalese life in the early 19th century is chronicled in the book as noted and recorded by the author. By now he became a bitter enemy of the Colonial Service turning out to be a Fabian and a Socialist in his own country.

Woolf is remembered in Sri Lanka for the excellent record keeping during his time in the CCS. “Diaries in Ceylon, 1908-1911” the official diaries maintained by Leonard Woolf; Assistant Government Agent of the Hambantota District, Ceylon, during the period August 1908 to May 1911 are now compiled and published, and is today a proven reference for scholars 

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However, in Sri Lanka it is the translation of Village in the Jungle by A P Gunaratne into Sinhala as Beddegama (1949) [should not be mispresented as Baddegama a town in the Gale district] that became popular which made Leonard Woolf a household name in Sri Lanka. The harshness of the jungle life became closer to the Sinhala reader with the naturalism of the novel through the smooth and friendly vocabulary practiced by Mr. Gunaratne. The simple, direct, and elegant style of writing used by him is an excellent means of stimulating the real taste of the original story. Accordingly 'Beddegama' is thought to be independent of Leonard Woolf's book The Village in the Jungle by the literary luminary in this country. Thus Beddegama by A P Gunaratne was recommended a middle school reader in Sri Lanka schools.

It is also interesting to note that Woolf in his autobiography notes that over a period of fifteen years the first edition of the book brought him only 38 pounds and that it was a total failure as a novel in England. This was not the case with A P Gunaratne’s Beddegama and the reason for its failure in England is shown as there are no Western characters in it to be attractive to the English society. For this reason nobody talks of Village in the Jungle as a great English classic unlike A J Foster’s ‘A Passage to India’ both being set in the Colonial East.

Beddegama a cinema

Lester James Peiris [LJP] the father of Sri Lankan outdoor cinema personally picked the Village in the Jungle to be turned into a cinema and it was only after Woolf’s demise that he was able to get the film rights from the agency that took up Woolfe’s publishing. The story of Beddegama being very popular in Sri Lanka and a commercial film on it was thought to be an investment.

Beddegama consisted of just ten houses. The houses which are made of clay are more like poor shanties. Only the village headman had a proper roofed house in the whole village. Almost all the other houses were coconut thatched. The lake was situated on the east side of the houses. They sowed paddy fields below the village tank, and when asked about their occupation, they were told, "Paddy farming is the norm." They were all members of the Govi-gama clan and lived through chena [slash and burn] cultivation. Grains such as kurakkan, millet, and vegetables such as chili, cucumber, and pumpkin was grown in them. This grain from these chenas was thought not to be good for them. Some people suffered from Lassa fever [parangi] with the heat around affected their blood; it was thought to make them sick. It was difficult to find a villager who was not with infected wounds attracting flies and deep in the flesh exposing bone.

Little children who were born were also malnourished. Those who were lazy to cultivate chenas used to hunt the animals in the forest. It was the forest itself that encroached the village turning them into animals in the forest. The author symbolizes the tragedy that befell the village and its people through the character Selindu who also perishes with a double murder committed by him. The village Headman or Archchirala is Babehamy. One of his sisters, Dingyhamy, is Selindu's wife, who is beaten by Selindu for having delivered twins and she dies two days after the twin childbirth.

From then on, Selindu and Arachchirala are alienated. Babehamy cancels Sindhu's chena license in revenge. This indicates the existence of aristocracy in remote and underdeveloped Hambantota even then. Beddegama exemplifies how the aristocrats worked to crush the poor farmers and make their lives miserable. But they seem not to know it.

Arachchirala's brother Babbun, makes Punchi Menika, one of Selindu's daughters as his wife. Babehami and Nanchohamy opposes this marriage. Fernando Mudalali, who came to collect the loans given to the villagers, gets help from Arachchirala as he wants to have a casual association with the Punchi Menika. Babun opposes this approach and as a result, he is sent to jail for six months on false charges that he had stolen items from Arachchirala's house. Selindu is shocked by this outcome. Arachchirala and Fernando Mudalal are shot dead. Selindu is sentenced to 20 years in prison. Punchi Menika is now alone in Beddegama.

LJP on completion of this cinema Beddegema was at the receiving end of a host of local critics. Some even went to the extent of calling him to have castrated the novel Beddegama. LJP had a preference for selecting his cast from a selected group of local actors. Malini Fonseka and Vijaya Kumaratunga characterizing Babun and Punci Menika with their beautiful bodies did not match the inhabitants of Beddegama. Their hairstyles and picked eyebrows were too significant. The houses built were more new than described in the book. The front yard of the houses were picked and clean. The oil lamps were of modern-day type. But LJP defended the critics with his cinematography to those details in the novel.

However, as always LJP extends his cinema to the Western media and Beddegama was purchased by Janus, a big German Company and was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980.

Locating the Village in the Jungle

Ever since the screening of the film Beddegama there was a curiosity to visit this village by the increasing new rich of the middle class that took to traveling the countryside in the late 80’s and the 90’s.

Hambantota district extends from Nakulugamuwa to the West and Yala border in the East. The area either sides of the Malala Oya basing was not that harsh as described in the book with the promising irrigation schemes that Woolf himself managed which were rehabilitated by the Colonial British. Therefore the said arid and difficult lands that Woolf regularly visited as per his diaries should be the arid and dry Malala Oya basin that is just to the North of the Hambantota town which housed Woolf’s headquarters or the Kachcheri the district administration unit. As the name implies (Mala)-la is dead in native Sinhala while the adjoining basin to the west is named (Mau) Ara, meaning the maternal seemingly dependable water source. The Malala Oya basin was also considered for restoration by the British to a limited extent. The uppermost village Mahagal Wewa and the lowermost village the Badagiriya Wewa were restored. Mahagal Wewa has its catchment in the intermediate climate zone with a favorable rainfall did fill up during the monsoon and Badagiriya Wewa did catchup all the drainage from Mahagal Wewa and the not so promising monsoon rain. Woolf has numerous entries related to a location by the name Meegahajandura in the upper reaches of the Malala Oya, just below Mahagal Wewa.  Thereby many are of the opinion that the Village in the Jungle that Woolf described is Meegahajandura.

Christopher Ondaatje the elder sibling of Michael Ondaatje a world travel adventurist and researcher has researched Woolf and produced a detailed volume on him; ‘Woolf in Ceylon’. He traveled the path that Woolf took in the turn of the 20^thcentury and does an in-depth study on the novel and his diaries and finds a combination of an isolated incident that took place in Hambantota which is recorded in his diaries under the date 13^th December 1910…….

‘During my absence on circuit there has been a most cold-blooded murder at Malasnegalwewa which Mr. Willett came down especially to inquire into as police magistrate…. In this case the vel-vidane deliberately shot the acting vidane arachchi from behind and then walked a mile to shoot the ex-vidane arachchi, the acting V.A’s father. He found the old man digging in his garden and shot him dead. He then went to the mudaliyar and gave himself up’.

Christopher Ondaatje has followed this entry on the ground and visited Malasnagalwewa and located a family who has documentation related to Woolf compensating land to a Siriwardane family possibly for acting for the responsibilities of the Vidane Arachchci until the appointment of a new Vidane Arachchi was made.

Therefore it could be said that there is no such particular village that Woolf highlights in his novel but that of the miserable lifestyle that peasantry in the whole of Malala Oya Basin experienced and how their own aristocracy exploited them. He has adopted the character Selindu to the incident at Malasnagalwewa which is also located lower down in the Malala Oya basin to signify the plot in the novel.

Woolf’s Return Visit to Ceylon - February 1960

Woolf did a second visit to Ceylon in 1960 at age 79. He traverses the same route to Jaffna, Kandy and Hambantota. In Hambantota he comments to that the courthouse which had not changed a bit. The environs to the immediate of Hambantota and the surround to his Jungle Village is still the same. This is almost 50 years ago and the poverty, the hardship, and the misery of life he saw then are still the same. He did have a bitter feeling when a person by the name of E R Wijesinghe then in his 80’s approached him at the Galle Face Hotel; Wijesinghe was then a mudaliar and later a Local Government Officer in Hambantota and questioned him of reprimanding him during his tenure as the Assistant Government Agent on an incident related to the shooting of a buffalo contacted with rinderpest. This issue did continue in the print media even after Woolf ended his three-week tour of Ceylon. Woolf had to respond in replying from England to which he said it was correct then for that was the law and he had to abide in it. Woolf was a very strict administrator.

Hambantota after 1977.

Much did change after 1977 with the new political administration that was established liberalizing the economy and the undertaking of foreign investment for large-scale development. Hambantota was earmarked to be a backward district needing much economic development.  NORAD, the Norwegian Agency for Development Corporation a state agency under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took up the uplifting related to economic development in the Hambantota district with a grant for development over a 10 year timeline. It was a multi-faceted approach for agriculture, education, irrigation, culture, cottage industry, roads, forestry, etc.

Much of this development took place in the dry parched Malala Oya basin. The significance being the total rehabilitation of the village irrigation tank system in the several cascading clusters in the Malala Oya basin. This was accomplished in a five-year program but the rehabilitated infrastructure now faced a greater problem of there being no water in the catchment to hold back in these restored tanks for irrigation.

The Malala Oya Basin and location of the trans-basin canal.

The Malala Oya Basin is a highly water-short basin where the mean annual rainfall is around 1000 mm while the mean annual evaporation is around 1550 mm. This figures itself are self-explanatory of the scorching heat in the area. Of a total of 371 small tanks within the basin, only 29 tanks are currently functioning. And that too only during a single wet monsoon season called the Maha crop of paddy. That too in a good rainy season. This gives the measure of the hydrological stress that is present within this basin.

It was this factor that we in the Irritation Department of the Hambantota Irrigation office had to solve in order to augment these renovated tanks. I was also a member of a team headed by the then Engineer Mr. Paranammne to investigate and suggest a solution for the scarcity of water in the Malala Oya basin.

The Mau Ara to the West of the Malala Oya basin was untapped even for the Uda-Walawe Scheme as it fed the Walawe River in the form of seasonal flash floods. It was therefore an unreliable water source in the Uda Walawe design. Our investigations showed that damming this and feeding the Malala Oya basin was a possibility. This new dam which will be located within the Udawalawe National Park was proposed as a water source for the wildlife in the Park and a trans-basin canal would take the water to the Malala Oya basin. 

The Irrigation Department initially was not in favor of the project given the many stakeholders to deal with. NORAD though in favor of the project was not willing to finance it both for its colossus amount already expended in the rehabilitation of tanks in the basin and its development plan being in the finishing stage. The unstable political situation in the country in the late ’80s did not have priorities for such projects. We then approached the Director ARTI to organize an awareness seminar to the numerous stakeholders that needed to be coordinated for such a project. Even after such an awareness programme, the project was to be shelved. 

Traverse pathway of the trans-basin feeder canal 

It was only after a new government which came to power in 1994 that the then Minister for Irrigation and Agriculture being an elected  member from the Hambantota district that the project became a reality and a trans-basin canal 34 kilometers in length from the Mau Ara Reservoir built across the Mau Ara augmented the Malala Oya basin. The Village in the Jungle that Woolf saw is no more. On the 2nd day in November 2002 with water from Mau Ara coming all the way to Palle Mattala Tank feeding many of the cascading clusters that were once parched of water is today a mat of green paddies.

A few years later came the Mattala Airport which is just below the Palle Mattala Tank, which is also the endpoint of the trans-basin canal and in close proximity to the Malasnagala Wewa where the double murder during Woolf’s time tool place. There is today an International Cricket Stadium just below the Meegahajandura Tank. Lately the Southern Expressway cut across the Malala Oya basin linking the Hambantota Airport with the Colombo Metropolis.

It’s almost 100 years since Woolf sentenced the accused for the double murder at Malasnagal Wewa and his Village in the Jungle is a totally different habitat today. But travel-hungry people still come looking for the Tamarind tree under which Woolf and Mr. Willett conducted the inquiry into the double murder on a day in December 1910.

References:

Ondaatje Christopher - Woolf in Ceylon

De Silva Kumar – Lester by Lester as told to Kumar de silva.

Gunaratne A P - Baddegama

Panabokke C R et.al -  Characterization and Monitoring of the Regolith Aquifer within Four Selected                                       Cascades (Sub-watersheds) of the Malala Oya Basin