Towards a Multispecies Approach to Caste in Sinhala Society: Interspecies Dynamics between Cinnamon and the Salagama People

This article deploys a multispecies perspective to understand the role of human and non-human actors shaping the Sinhala caste system in Sri Lanka. Apart from human interlocutors, certain animal species (e.g. elephants, cattle and fish) and certain plant species (e.g. cinnamon, coconut and a local palm tree called kitul) are implicated in the natural resource base aligned with the Sinhala caste system. These animal and plant species are part of the natural resource base exploited to produce goods and services for the benefit of each other and some overlords inside or outside the system. The caste system is understood here as a human-made extractive mechanism where humans and other species aligned with them are subjected to hereditary extractions imposed from above. Thus, the Sinhala caste system intersects with both culture and nature, interrogating the culture-nature dichotomy altogether. Using historical analysis and the author’s own experience in growing up in a cinnamon smallholder household in southern Sri Lanka, this article explores the multispecies foundation of the Sinhala caste system as it evolved through the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial dynamics. The Salagama caste was initially engaged for foraging of cinnamon that grew in the wild and the Dutch colonial regime shifted from foraging to domestication of cinnamon around 1770 providing Salagama caste a vested interest in this process. The multispecies approach, where interactions among humans and also between humans and non-human species are explored in relation to specific forms of inequality, may open new pathways for overcoming human centrism and Eurocentrism in social analysis and the resulting failures in fostering social and environmental justice. While caste may appear as a naturalized and, at the same time, a culturally prescribed social order for some, it is not so for its victims, humans and non-humans alike. This article begins with a multispecies take on Sinhala caste, using Salagama caste to illustrate the potential of this approach for expanding the understanding of caste by exploring its human diversification and natural resource base as well. The interpenetration between culture and nature is one of the systemic features of Sinhala caste that accounts for its stability and vulnerability in given contexts.