Talk:Radala

Regarding the caption for the last photo on the page titled 'Radala', the former Diyawadana Nilame, Neranjan Wijeyeratne had been falsely accused without any facts or references. Please note that an umbrella had never been used for the Tooth Relic. It is a Golden Canopy which is used for it, and that too for the Randoli Perahara only.

In the history, Nilames have always used umbrellas since the very first Diyawadana Nilame. The same applies today too.

In addition, the Diyawadana Nilame, or for that matter, any person, is not allowed to wear shoes within the Dalada Maligawa premises. However, in the Perahara, any Nilame (Diyawadana and Basnayake Nilames) can wear shoes.

Therefore, please consider these facts and be kind enough to correct the false, misleading and baseless statements on that caption.

Fitz Mackins

Backwards copy

This is among several pages from which content seems to have been taken without attribution by karava.org. See the blue box that says "Radala", which seems to be taken from Wikipedia. There's evidence of natural evolution of that content here and here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

This page don't have any reference to facts. Why only my post needs refs ? It is very much clear Radala come to exist when throne passed Nayakkara. No reference about any Radala before that. There were high officials like Alagakkonara in Kotte,... But they weren't Radala. Also there were lot of children to Kings before Kingdom of Kandy. But they belongs to Govi gama. Radala posts (Mahaadikaram,... etc )passed to sisters husband. It is a nayakkara tradition. It is clear that Radala come to exist when Nayakkara came to throne. Also most of the Adigars, Dissavas who signed Kandyan Convention are not in kings family. All of them are belongs to Sinhala community. So it is clear they are not children of Nayakkara kings who ruled more than 100 year.--Himesh84 (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Significant biased plagiarism from karava.org and need for re-write

A significant amount of text on this page has been lifted from karava.org, a website that seeks to bolster the image of the Karava people of Sri Lanka and repudiate the status of other communities in Sri Lanka such as the Radala and Govigama. As it follows, this page is 1) full of bias, and 2) significantly plagiarised. I have inserted some text from karava.org (http://karava.org/other/radala) that seems to have been copied and pasted directly into this page;

"Traditionally, Radala was not a common term used for all officials of the state. In the Sinhala version of the Kandyan Convention of 1815, only the Adigars, Dissavas and a few others are called Radalas. The 19th century British rulers who created an extensive class of ‘New Radalas’ in the Kandyan territory have been keen to call them an Aristocracy. This misnomer remains todate. However Sri Lankan history shows that the Kandyan Radalas were at best military officials, and during the last phase of the kingdom even civil officials of the court and were ritually never considered aristocratic or heirs to the Kandyan throne.

In addition to a chief queen and one or two secondary queens, Kandyan kings also had a Harem. Harem ladies from royal stock were called Randoli. (Hindu princesses were brought over from Madurai in South India as Randolis after the royal families of the maritime region in Sri Lanka converted to Christianity). Ladies of Radala and other non royal castes were taken into the harem as Yakadadoli and never as Randolis. The offspring from these commoner concubines (yakadadoli) were sometimes called Radalas

Favourite concubines frequently received land grants and their offspring were appointed as high officials of the royal court but could never inherit the kingdom. As a result of this taboo Mampitiya Bandara and Unamboowe Bandara, born to commoner yakadadolis, were never considered as heirs to the Kandyan throne.

The status disparity between royalty and the Radalas was so great that the Radalas called themselves ‘servile dogs’ (Balugettás) in the presence of the king and prostrated in full while maintaining the ritually allowed distance to demonstrate their lowly status vis a vis the king (This practice continued into the British period and the Kandyan Chiefs had to prostrate before the British Governor and remain kneeling in his presence until this custom was abhorred as a degrading form of ancient tyranny and abolished by the British in 1818 under the proclamation of November 21st, 1818 by Governor Robert Brownrig)."

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"Apart from having to continuously kneel or prostrate in full in the presence of the King, the Radalas too had to rise from their seats just like all other commoners even when the king’s dirty linen was taken past them (A Historical Relation of Ceylon, Robert Knox, Part II, Chapter2). They were not permitted to use royal insignia, swords, umbrellas, jewellery or even wear shoes. Most Kandyan chiefs were merely personal attendants of the King. The Diyawadana Nilame was the King's personal valet and he was responsible for bathing, dressing and clipping the nails of the king. Pilimatalauwa was an Adigar (the highest post a commoner could occupy) of king Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe, and as such a Radala of the Kandyan court. However when Pilimatalava arranged a marriage for his son with the daughter of a former kings harem women, the union was seen as a violation of the customs of the country and not viewed favorably by the king. (Pieris 1939 pg 83) The traditional Kandyan Radala of the past had considered themselves to be an exclusive caste and not part of the Govi caste. Bryce Ryan observed as recently as 1953 that Radalas repudiated Govi caste connections and that the status of the Govi caste remained low in villages where the Radala existed (Caste in Modern Ceylon, page 99).

The demand by the Kandyan Radala elite for a separate federal state in independent Ceylon, the representations made to the Donoughmore Commission and the formation of the Kandyan National Assembly (KNA) as recently as in 1924 demonstrates the reluctance of the Kandyan elite to be governed by arriviste low country Govigama families which was to be the inevitable outcome of the British departure."

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"After capturing the Kandyan provinces in 1815, the British soon created an extensive class of ‘New Radalas’ in the Kandyan territory to assist them with its administration. As much as the British created a class of Sri Lankan Mudaliyars in the low-country, this class too comprised of natives who were most likely to serve the British masters with utmost loyalty. They were from families that had either cooperated with the British to capture Kandy or from families that had joined the cause later. Many were from Sabaragamuwa, the province from where the British conspired to capture the Kandyan kingdom.

They were all from anglicized families and many were considered pillars of the Anglican church. They and their children had English names and additionally they had a string of high sounding Sinhala names taken on when receiving their appointment (mostly Ratemahattaya positions after a life of loyal service to the British as a court clerk). Some of these names were from Kandyan families that had ceased to exist or from purported ancestors with tenuous connections. Several of them had married into successful and influential low country Mudaliyar families such as Gate Mudaliyar, Samuel Jayatileke's family (see profile below). Ironically it was the connection with these low country Anglican families that gave many ordinary Kandyan families their so called 'Kandyan aristocratic" status."

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"Many of these ‘New Radala’ families were not Kandyan at all and were migrants from the western coastal region of the country. Others intermarried with the anglicized low country Mudaliyar class, and in many cases several times with one family in an apparent bid to create some exclusivity. Most of these New radala families were from the Sabaragamuwa province and not from interior parts of the Kandyan provinces that were less susceptible to British influence. These New Radalas resembled English country squires. Most of them had received large land grants from the British. Their residences were of unprecedented scale built in the 19th century in the British colonial style and were referred to by the Tamil word Walauu or Walvoo."

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"They generally held ‘Rate Mahattaya’ positions at the pinnacle of their career after a long loyal career as clearks translating native land records in provincial land or road departments. Almost all of them had studied under leading Anglican Priests at the Anglican missionary schools St. Thomas (Colombo) , Trinity College (Kandy) and High School Ratnapura. These were institutions set up by the British specifically for producing a class of loyal, local assistants for the British administrators.

With each successive batch of British Civil Servants and Governors arriving in Sri Lanka, this group created and presented a greater and higher appearance of aristocracy and pseudo Kandyan lineage."

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It does not take a genius to go through this website and notice the stark bias and repudiation of many of the Sri Lankan communities and thus, this page requires significant revision from verifiable sources. 2607:FEA8:3460:2700:45B:FE1C:EB55:AB88 (talk) 16:41, 25 October 2022 (UTC)