Bathgama

Also Bathgama and Padu, although the latter might sound somewhat derogatory as with the "N" word. A significant Sri Lankan caste predominantly in the Kandyan provinces, the traditional occupation of which was the cultivation of rice paddy. Hence the name Bath (rice) and Gama (village) in the Sinhala language. The word Govi (not to be confused with Govigama) is also used to identify this cast, particularly when advertising for marriage proposals.

As with most other occupational castes in Sri Lanka, the traditional occupation of this caste too was agriculture under Sri Lanka’s feudal land tenure system. This community has escaped the British period consolidation of cultivator communities as the Govigama caste and exists as an independent but rather disenfranchised caste. Some writers have attempted to call it the “Palanquin bearer” caste.

The late British period saw the proliferation of native headmen and a Mudaliyars class drawn from natives who were most likely to serve the British masters with utmost loyalty. (Mudaliyar is a South Indian and Tamil name for ‘first’ and a person endowed with wealth.) This class resembled English country squires, complete with large land grants by the British, residences of unprecedented scale (Referred to by the Tamil word Walauu or Walawoo) and British granted native titles.

The British Governor Arthur Hamilton Gordon (1883 – 1890) and his predecessors effectively used divide and rule policies and created caste animosity among the native elite and finally confined all Native Headmen appointments only to the Govigama caste. The British Government was advocating this as an effective policy for easy governance. Mahamudliar Louis De Saram’s family of Dutch and Malay ancestry had Sinhalised and Givigamised itself during the Dutch period and had a strong network of relatives as Mudaliyars by the late 19th century. This “Govigama” Anglican Christian network expanded further with the preponderance of native headmen as Mudaliyars, Korales and Vidanes from the Buddhist Govigama section of the community.

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