Narrating Colonial Colombo in Three Takes

Prepared in 2014 for TripinSL 2015. This is a slightly lengthier version of the article which appears in the magazine. 

The Victoria Memorial Eye Hospital
© Deborah Philip 2014

Colombo – foreign implant or local creation? The apex of Colonialism or a hybrid mix of both local and colonial influences? R.L Brohier (himself a hybrid mix of the local and the foreign) pretty much sums it up when he says “Colombo is a city forced on the peoples of Ceylon in spite of themselves. It was never a creation of their own choice or making”[i]. If you’re wondering why on earth Brohier chose to describe Colombo in these terms he was referring to the fact that although Colombo had been an established trading port frequented by South Indian and Arab traders, as a constructed city space cum landscape it was essentially a European implant. The Portuguese chanced upon it, the Dutch developed it and the British consolidated its position as the capital of Sri Lanka! However the story of Colombo does not end there. As in most colonial outposts the city adapted to both local and colonial influences, and the more the locals became familiar with the Colonial order, the more they started to shape the city, its spaces and structures to become their own

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Narrating Colonial Colombo is no easy task as there are many narrators and narratives, some with the power to speak, while others are voiceless or simply forgotten with the passing of time. Luckily brick and mortar will always make its presence felt in any tale about any city – real or imagined – hence the reason this piece looks at three structures built during the Dutch and British Occupation, as a means by which we can convey at least a segment of the story of Colombo through the last couple of hundred years. From Cargills to the Victoria Memorial Eye Hospital and finally onto Regina Walawwa, we trace the evolution of the city space through the hands of foreigner and local alike.

The Cargill’s building in the heart of Colombo’s business district –a.ka. Colombo Fort – is difficult to ignore. This iconic red and white art nouveau building is located at the corner of York Street and is generally hawked out as Sri Lanka’s first ever department store. Construction of the current building was completed in 1906 but originally the site was occupied by a block of Old Dutch buildings which dated back to the 1680s. By the latter half of the 18^th century and end of Dutch Rule in Ceylon there existed a house at the corner of the block which belonged to a certain Captain Sluysken. It was at Sluysken’s house that the first British Governor of Ceylon, Frederick North (1798 – 1805), made his first home on Lankan soil. North was a bachelor in his early thirties who loved to party, but he found his rented house at Sluysken’s too hot and stuffy and so relocated to a more spacious villa in Hulftsdorp, which we are told gave him more opportunity for ‘splendid entertainments’.

Fortunately Captain Sluyskens was not cowed by the heat or the confined environs. Considered to be a genial soul, wealthy and fond of entertaining British officers, he had a Kaffir band[ii] play ‘sweet music’ on the front lawn of his house and everybody who gathered within the fort was delighted to hear it. (Perhaps an unwitting precursor to Border Movement’s desire to host parties in old buildings in historic Colombo). The British and the Dutch probably danced the Kaffiringha[iii] on Sluysken’s front lawn which is why the Captain was credited with promoting good feeling between the two nations during those early days of imperialism and imperial rivalries.

Taken from an illustration in C.Brooke Elliott's The Real Ceylon, 1924

By 1844 the Old Dutch buildings were once again back in demand this time in the form of a warehouse. Two British Businessmen – William Miller and David Sime Cargill – began to import general goods to Ceylon. “Dispensing drugs, toilet requisites, perfumery, optical goods” states a vintage signboard which hangs in the arcade outside the main entrance. When C. Brooke Elliot visited Ceylon in the 1880s he wrote that

Cargills’ business was still carried on in the old Dutch buildings with a curious wooden statue set high up in the gable. The statue, carved in some hard wood, probably represents Minerva, the Roman Goddess of war… This interesting relic can still be seen, carefully preserved, in Messrs Cargills’ ground floor”.

Over a century later Minerva continues to reign supreme on the ground floor of the Cargills’ building built by Walker, Sons and Co in 1906. Cargills was the colonial emporium par excellence and when it passed into Sri Lankan hands in 1946 the new owners decided to keep its old name. While plans seem to be afoot to set up Singapore’s renowned Raffles Hotel chain in the Cargills building, one fervently hopes that the original structure will be maintained as a reminder of Colombo’s colonial past complete with indigenous motifs.

Moving further south from the Fort, its rush hour time and pedestrians and vehicles alike are impatient for the lights to change so they can take off around the De Soysa Circus roundabout to their next destination. The roundabout is surrounded with new showrooms, a bakery and flashy department store, all of which are jostling to be more obvious and more alluring to the bewildered consumer. Amidst this mayhem - which is typically Colombo - is a quiet yet striking building coloured in yellow and terra-cotta surmounted with Sarasenic domes, more befitting of Mughal India rather than 21^st Century Sri Lanka. Shaded by a few trees, the engraving on the gable at the entrance is the only clue to what it once must have been as it reads ‘1903 - Victoria Memorial’, an eye hospital constructed in memory of Britain’s Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901).

Designed by the Colombo based architect Edward Skinner, Skeen’s description of the structure ‘as novel and striking in design’ is definitely an apt one.  With its onion (bulbous) domes, scalloped arches and open pavilions the Victoria Memorial Eye Hospital pays homage to the Indo-Saracenic form of architecture which the British were so fond of during their tenure in India. The idea of building the hospital was hit upon by Lady Ridgeway – the wife of the then British Governor of Ceylon.  She laid the foundation stone on 6^th August, 1903 and the hospital was opened two years later in 1905, the costs for the building having been divided equally between the Government and an anglophile public.

Gaining entrance into what used to be the former eye hospital is a tad tedious these days, unless you plan on getting sick and entering as a patient about to be operated on. The Victoria Memorial, now part of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, currently houses two operating theatres and the Coroner’s Courts and in the 1960s it accommodated the first ever accident service in the island. For those desperate to catch a glimpse of the inside, you can venture in as a visitor during the General Hospital’s visiting hours. Once you sneak past the Burns Unit, you’re within easy reach of one of Colombo’s most unusual buildings. Aside from the air conditioning you feel like you’re walking through a time warp where the clock stopped at some point in the early 1900s.

As Ceylon entered the 20^th century, local elites in Colombo were building palatial residences which were a mix of both the east and west. One such family who pretty much carved up Colombo with some interesting houses (read mansions) were the de Soysa family. The de Soysas went from being arrack renters to rich Ceylonese capitalists within the space of a couple of decades in the 19^th century and by the 20^thcentury they were building houses which stood out as a shining example of their prosperity as well as budding nationalist feelings. Regina Walawwa is one such mansion built in 1912 by Arthur de Soysa, the son of C.H de Soysa, for his cherished wife Regina.

Regina unfortunately never lived to see it completed as she died a year before the house was finished. Her coffin was driven in a hearse up the driveway and right through the porch of the unfinished house. Regina must have been a feisty woman, as she committed a major fashion faux pas by wearing an Indian sari to the Governor’s ball instead of a Western gown, her way of supporting the shift from Western to Eastern ideals in Colonial Ceylon.

Regina Walawwa is still very much part of Colombo’s landscape, with its turrets, conical roofs and numerous verandahs, based on Victorian Eclecticism and Gothic architecture. Nevertheless Arthur de Soysa claimed that inspiration for the house came from India and the Nehrus’ family home in Allahabad. It shelved the name Regina Walawwa many years ago and now goes by the name College House, at 93 Cumaratunga Munidasa Mawatha, a familiar building to the many streams of students who pass through the University of Colombo.

Regina Walawwa/College House has had its fair share of intrigue. In 1989, a retired University Vice-Chancellor, was murdered in the building by the JVP during the second insurrection and University staff tell me that there are rumours of a secret tunnel (not so secret as the entrance has been boarded up) which was used to bring ‘notorious’ women into the house during I presume the more colourful de Soysa days. (The University staff were keen to distance the notorious women from their term of occupation!)

The story of Colombo cannot be limited to one single story. As European Colonists recreated spatial comfort zones not just in Colombo but throughout their Empires, resistance came in the form of mimicry and adaptation from vernacular voices.  This article itself is just one piece of a diverse and interesting tale on colonial city spaces. Today as the city is in the midst of a massive beautification project we need to keep in mind that while some one’s story is being told and re-told there will be those silent and silenced voices – without the power to tell their stories or relate their less illustrious histories.

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[i] R.L Brohier, Changing Face of Colombo 1505 – 1972, 3^rd Edition, Visidinu Prakashakayo, 2007, p.2

[ii] I was informed that the politically correct term is Ceylon African. However an academic researching the community told me that the community is divided on the use of the term Kaffirs with some for it and some against it.

[iii] Politically correct term is Ceylon African Manja. For identity I have chosen to use the older term.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Cave, H.W, The Book of Ceylon, 1908

Chandoke, Neera, “The Post-Colonial City”, Economic and Political Weekly, vol.26, no.50, 1991, pp. 2868 - 2873

Chattopadhyay, Swati, “Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol.59, no.02, 2000, pp. 154 - 179

Cordiner, Rev. James, A Description of Ceylon, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row, 1807

De Silva, R. Rajpal Kumar and W.J.M Beumer, Illustrations and Views of Dutch Ceylon 1602 – 1796, London, Serendib Publications, 1988

Elliot, C. Brooke, The Real Ceylon, Asian Educational Services, 2005,

Macmillan, Allister, Extract from Seaports of India and Ceylon, Asian Educational Services, 1928

Neild, Susan M, “Colonial Urbanism: The Development of Madras City in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, Modern Asia Studies, vol 13, no.02, 1979, pp.217 - 246

Perera, Nihal, “Exploring Colombo: The relevance of a knowledge of New York”, in Eds, Roger Keil and Neil Brenner’s The Global Cities Reader, Routledge, 2006

                                                     

Perera, Nihal, ‘Indigenising the Colonial City: Late 19^th Century Colombo and its Landscape’, Urban Studies, Vol 32, No.09, 2002, pp.1703 -1721

Pieris, Anoma, Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka, The Trouser under the Cloth, Routledge, 2012

Scriver, P. and V. Prakash, Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in  British India and Ceylon, Routledge, 2007