President revokes colonial-era order and declares 19 leaders of 1818 uprising ‘patriotic war heroes’ who fought for freedom
A group of Sri Lankans who rebelled against British colonial rule have been celebrated as war heroes, almost 200 years after they were condemned as traitors and executed.
The group of 19 included one of the leaders of the 1818 rebellion, Keppetipola Disawe, who was beheaded. His unusually shaped skull was then brought back to the UK and placed in a medical museum in Edinburgh, and only returned after official requests in 1954.
The order issued by the British governor, Robert Brownrigg, in January 1818, listed 19 men as traitors, many of them former officials or related to the royal family of the former kingdom. The British had already put a price on the heads of the leaders during the Uva rebellion, named after the region where it started.
Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, was ruled by Britain from 1815 to 1948, when it regained independence. Although the rebellion – which broke out in 1817 and continued through guerrilla warfare into 1818 – was quashed after the British brought in extra troops from India, at various points the men succeeded in taking temporary control of important strategic sites, including Kandy, the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings.
Keppetipola Disawe, who had initially been working with the British before joining the rebels, was captured in October 1818, when the house where he was staying was surrounded by British troops: he came out to meet them, identified himself, and surrendered. He and other leaders of the rebellion were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death.
A contemporary account says he was taken to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy, where he prayed to be reincarnated in the Himalayas, and that when he was taken to the execution ground he prayed again and checked the sharpness of the executioner’s sword in the moments before he was beheaded.
Keppetipola Disawe is now regarded as a national hero, and when his skull was finally returned it was enshrined in an urn and buried marked by a memorial pillar in Kandy.
The order naming him and the other rebel leaders as traitors has now been formally revoked by Sri Lanka’s president, Maithripala Sirisena. A statement from his office this week said they were declared “patriotic war heroes who fought for the freedom of the motherland”.
The ethnic majority Sinhalese community has lobbied successive Sri Lankan governments to formally rescind British colonial decrees against Keppetipola Disawe and other Sinhalese rebels.
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