Waste Lands Ordinance
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (June 2025) |
The Waste Lands Ordinance No.1 of 1897 also known as the Waste Lands Ordinance was an ordinance by the British Colonial Government of Ceylon to consolidate and reinforce earlier legal frameworks that declared uncultivated, unoccupied, forested, or common lands as property of the Crown. This legislation significantly transformed land tenure systems, dispossessing rural communities—particularly in Kandyan and upland regions—and facilitating the expansion of plantation agriculture.
In the preceding Crown Lands Ordinance of 1840, any land classified as “forest, waste, unoccupied, or uncultivated” was automatically deemed crown land unless proven otherwise by the claimant. This provision effectively expropriated communal resources such as village commons and chena fields, driving agrarian unrest exemplified by the Kandyan Uprising of 1848.[1][2]
Under the new law, Government Agent and after 1903, officials from the Land Settlement Department were granted authority to adjudicate claims to waste lands.[3] Section 1 of the ordinance mandated that lands without formal title or continuous cultivation were to be presumptively Crown property, and Section 4 empowered Special Officers to terminate claims and allocate titles permanently, through legally binding proceedings "in rem". In legal disputes, courts upheld that such administrative orders conferred unassailable title, even against non-claimants or customary rights holders. The ordinance underpinned extensive land alienation. Contemporary soil conservation experts estimate that as a result of these laws, roughly 80% of Sri Lanka's land fell under state ownership, leaving many rural peasants landless and impoverished. The vast transfer of land facilitated the rise of large-scale coffee, tea, and rubber plantations in upland areas, cementing an economic system built upon dispossession.[4]
Despite its repeal by the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1931, which absorbed and continued its core principles, the Waste Lands Ordinance left a lasting legacy. Its foundational assumption—state dominion over uncultivated land—persisted into subsequent legislation such as the State Lands Ordinance of 1947. Academic critics have likened this process to Britain's rural enclosures, noting how colonial law systematically eradicated customary systems of landholding and transformed rural economies.[1]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Meyer, Eric (May 1992). "From Landgrabbing to Landhunger: High Land Appropriation in the Plantation Areas of Sri Lanka during the British Period". Modern Asian Studies. 26 (2). Cambridge University Press: 321–361.
- ^ Gunasekara, Vagisha (2020). "Turning points in Sri Lanka's Land Policy: MCC and its predecessors". LST Working Paper.
- ^ "Land Settlement".
- ^ Fernando, Lalitha (February 2019). "Solid waste management of local governments in the Western Province of Sri Lanka: An implementation analysis". Waste Management. 84: 194–203.