Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Bluville: the constituency and the patronage network of Doctor Ay (1947–1959)
- 3 Bluville: the patronage network of Korale-Mudaliyar Kit Foo and his son, Dee (1947–1959)
- 4 Bluville: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 5 Greenville: the patronage networks of the Mou/Nous and the Pou/Kous (1947–1959)
- 6 Greenville: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 7 Red Town: the urban setting (1947–1959)
- 8 Red Town: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 9 Communal minorities, political dissidents and the JVP
- 10 Conclusion
- Glossary of Sinhalese Terms
- References
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
3 - Bluville: the patronage network of Korale-Mudaliyar Kit Foo and his son, Dee (1947–1959)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Bluville: the constituency and the patronage network of Doctor Ay (1947–1959)
- 3 Bluville: the patronage network of Korale-Mudaliyar Kit Foo and his son, Dee (1947–1959)
- 4 Bluville: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 5 Greenville: the patronage networks of the Mou/Nous and the Pou/Kous (1947–1959)
- 6 Greenville: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 7 Red Town: the urban setting (1947–1959)
- 8 Red Town: the growth of the State (1956–1982)
- 9 Communal minorities, political dissidents and the JVP
- 10 Conclusion
- Glossary of Sinhalese Terms
- References
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
Summary
Introduction
The patronage network of the Doctor's chief political rival, Dee Foo, will now be described. Dee comes from the Goigama caste, which is numerically dominant but economically weak in terms of land owned at the district and provincial levels in much of the area and Bluville in particular. He is closely related to the leading Goigama families of the Greenville region, to be described in Chapter 5. These families, although large landlords in these areas, often owned virtually nothing elsewhere. However, members of these families, by using the influence of relations close to the Governor, had sometimes been able to acquire Korale-Mudaliyarships in areas where they owned relatively little land and were economically and socially not dominant. Dee's father, Kit Foo, for instance, owned only fifty-three acres of rubber in the entire province, certainly not a large holding. However, his wife's relation being the Maha-Mudaliyar, was the native headman closest to the Governor, and had been able to secure Kit Foo the post he had coveted. Like the other Korale-Mudaliyars, who did not own large tracts of land in the areas they had administered, Foo wielded political influence largely through the office he held and the influence this gave him over lesser officials.
In the 1947 election he campaigned actively on behalf of Joo, a former teacher at one of the schools founded by the Bees. Joo came third. The Korale-Mudaliyar had sponsored Joo as an Independent to assess the sort of following his son could muster at a future date. In the event, he believed this following to be sufficiently large to encourage his son to stand in 1952, and subsequently.
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- Information
- Electoral Allegiance in Sri Lanka , pp. 34 - 51Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992