Sri Lanka at the crossroads

Historian K. M. de Silva looks back at life in the 20th Century

Nobody prominent in Sri Lanka's public life at the beginning of the 20th Century believed that British rule would come to an end by the late 1940s. Sri Lankan aspirants to a share of political power were just as convinced as the British themselves that the latter's rule could not be shaken or successfully challenged.

When the riots of 1915 disturbed the placid political life of the country, the British brushed aside pressures from sections of the Sri Lankan elite for a public inquiry on the riots, despite deep dissatisfaction among the Sinhalese at the way the colonial administration had set about putting down the riots. The keynotes of the emerging Sri Lankan reform movement, before and in the aftermath of the First World War, and the riots of 1915, were an emphasis on restraint and moderation.

The 1920s did see bolder political initiatives, and also a significant heightening of working class activity and trade union agitation. Foreseeing the eventual transfer of a substantial portion of power to a Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan political leadership, minority groups, led by the Tamils, sought to secure protection of their interests as the price of their support for this process. Constitutional reforms introduced in 1931 amounted to the first really significant step towards self-government. Equally important was the introduction in 1931 of universal suffrage. Sri Lanka was the first of the United Kingdom's Asian colonies to secure this right, and few events in Sri Lanka's recent history have had so profound an impact on politics and society as this.

The great difference between the transfer of power in the British Raj and Myanmar, on the one hand, and Sri Lanka on the other, was that Sri Lanka's was essentially a negotiated passage to Independence with nothing of the mass agitation and communal violence one saw in the raj, or the riots, strikes and student agitation seen in Myanmar. Despite the successful role as the pioneer in anti-colonial agitation, the Indian nationalist movement led by Gandhi and Nehru failed to retain the British Raj as a single political entity as their inheritance from the British. Gandhi's resort to a Hindu political idiom through which he radicalised the nationalist movement generated a high level of mistrust among the minorities. The result was that the raj was divided into two countries at a huge cost in deaths and human suffering, while Myanmar erupted in civil war from the moment of its independence.

In Sri Lanka on the other hand, D. S. Senanayake, the island's first Prime Minister (1947-52) and the principal negotiator for the island's independence succeeded in ensuring that the transfer of power was peaceful. Indeed his successful balancing act, reconciling the legitimate interests of the Sinhalese-Buddhist majority and those of the minorities, provides lessons for those concerned with bringing peace to Sri Lanka's fractured polity.

Just as we have only to look at the 1940s and the early 1950s to see how to get the political management of a multi-ethnic polity right, Sri Lanka's record after 1956 provides a multiplicity of clues on how the political stability and ethnic harmony of a multi-ethnic polity could be destroyed by the adoption of the wrong policies. The dominant political influence in the period 1956 to 1977 was the populism of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (of the Bandaranaikes) which ruled for all but five years (1965-1970) generally with the support of, and sometimes in association with, Marxist parties. Their emphasis was on a redress of historic grievances suffered under colonial rule, and their insensitivity to minority concerns has left a legacy of strife to their successors.

A unilateral change in language policy in the mid-1950s heralded the first phase in Sri Lanka's current ethnic conflict. In association with Marxist parties the SLFP leadership kept expanding the state apparatus and increased its influence in public life and over the economy. Together they sought to politicise the bureaucracy and Mrs Bandaranaike, again with the enthusiastic support of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and Communist Party, brought the national press under state control, one of the most illiberal acts of this century.

Beginning with a Sri Lankan version of Nehruvian socialism they moved on to an imitation of the economic policies of the former Soviet bloc: encouraging import-substitution industries (generally state-owned and inefficiently run), nationalising all the important industrial and commercial ventures and financial institutions; and reducing the role of private capital in Sri Lanka's economy to a bare minimum. Sri Lanka's "closed economy" became the most state-dominated in the whole of non-Communist South and South East Asia except for Myanmar.

The country has always had a higher standard of living than the rest of South Asia. A comparison with East Asia and South East Asia will show that as late as 1960 it had more or less the same per capita GNP as South Korea and nearly double that of Thailand. Why it lags so far behind these two countries today is explained by the consequences of the economic policies of the period 1956 to 1977. Had economic growth been sustained throughout this period at twice the rate that prevailed it would still not have matched non-communist South East Asia's, but it would have created more jobs for the young people entering the labour market each year and the growing discontent among youth may not have turned to violence either among the Sinhalese, where the ultra-left and nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) became a deadly threat to state and society or among the Tamils where discontent among youth led eventually to one of the most violent separatist movements in the region.-

The liberalisation of the economy, which began in 1977-78, led almost immediately, to a spurt in economic growth, and to the expansion of employment opportunities in the private sector for the first time since the mid-1950s. The continuation of this process may have helped in healing the rift between the Sinhalese and Tamils except that by the early 1980s there was a full-fledged armed separatist movement in the Tamil dominated north of the island.

In any event, liberalisation of the economy, although electorally popular, was still viewed with suspicion by the SLFP and, of course, the Marxists. It took the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the world-wide acceptance of liberalisation of the economy as a remedy for the shortcomings of command economies, for the SLFP to accept it themselves as a viable policy option. Like most recent converts to a new creed they are now more enthusiastic than those who accepted it initially and introduced it.

The expansion of the private sector, and a reduction in the size and scope of the public sector in the national economy are now part of an emerging national consensus. This is a hopeful sign for the future, because the intensity with which national elections have been fought and the violence they generated stem from a recognition that one of the most important avenues for amassing wealth by individuals is through control of the government, just as the political process has been the principal means to state employment. Success at general elections was treated as nothing less than the capture of state power by electoral means. This explains why, despite Sri Lanka's long record of democratic elections under universal suffrage (since 1931) and regular changes of government through the ballot (since 1956), electoral contests are associated with a great deal of political violence. Expansion of the private sector may not put a stop to this immediately, but given time it will be a factor in changing the political system.

Thus the hopes for the future lie in a return to the forms and mechanisms of political management practised in the first decade after Independence, and through a process of de-politicising Sri Lankan society and public life. Both these constitute a calculated departure from the policies of the fateful two decades from 1956 in which the seeds of the current crisis in Sri Lanka were sown and nurtured.

The writer is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Peradeniya and Executive Director, International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

Trinitians go to war

Udena R. Attygalle, a Trinity Ryde gold medallist of 1997 writes

Up in the hills of Kandy, in Trinity's Cadet Room stands a German machine-gun of the World War I make. Captured during the victory march of the British, it was a gift of gratitude from King George to Trinity College — the first school to be thus honoured outside England — on the other side of the Empire. And it stands as proud testimony to the contribution that Trinity made towards World War I.

Trinity had sent forth 65 men (including Principal A.G. Frazer). Thirteen sacrificed their lives, 18 were wounded, two were taken prisoner and three were awarded commissions.

When in 1914 the first shots were fired to mark the beginning of World War I, Trinity College far away from the theatre of war, was not yet 50. Yet in August that year three old boys, Aelian Pereira, H.E. Garvin and John Andrew who were in England, promptly volunteered for active service.

Back at school, legendary Principal Frazer was keen that Trinity should share in the war effort. Every day the Union Jack was spread over the table in the hall and war prayers held. Trinity's efforts to send a cadet contingent to the war climaxed with the famous 72-mile march to Colombo in 38 hours. Yet the authorities were unmoved. They would not alter the existing rules and the 65 Trinitians who did battle for the Empire did so individually.

All the while, the war was changing fast; from one of movement to that of a static battle in the trenches. Garvin, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Frazer in May 1915 writes that he together with Aelian, both of the Queen Victoria Rifles, had marched through France right into Belgium which Germany had overrun. "For 24 hours my lot was in the supporting trenches and I can assure you that it wasn't half as good as a bed in Trinity College. The dugouts in each of which two of us had to sleep measured 4 feet by 2 feet by 3."

"When the Germans attack, they come along in solid formation singing their patriotic songs and making a very brave show. We wait till they are checked by our entanglements and then hell seems to be let loose — thousands of rifles get going, some men shout and curse some sing, some seem to go mad," Garvin writes of his first taste of war.

Of the 1,000 who had left with the Queen Victoria Rifles only 200 were left when Aelian was awarded a commission with the Durham Light Infantry.

The next we hear from Aelian is, while he is a prisoner-of-war at an officers' camp in Karlsruhe. "The bravery of a soldier shows perhaps more in hospital than in the field. Can you imagine a man laughing at the idea of having his leg cut off? I find our college motto 'Respice Finem' very heartening," he says writing to the College Magazine.

Four boys, Senior Prefect Richard Aluwihare, A. Halangoda, A. Rudra and Frank Drieberg, who went to England for university education enlisted in the British army. They were part of the disastrous Battle of Somme on July 1, 1916. In his biography, Rudra, a member of the 18th Royal Fusiliers remembers going to the place where the Germans had attacked with chemical gas, soon afterwards. "At the trenches we found the dead and dying strewn all over the place. If one stood in an affected area too long the gas ate through the soles of our boots and got our feet."

The battle itself saw many a Trinitian fall. H. Vancuylenburg, in a letter to the Ceylon Independent of August 26, 1916 says, "I remember quite distinctly seeing Halangoda, Drieberg, Staples, Aluwihare and Rudra fall and not too long afterwards I got my first bang which blew off my leg as far as the knee."

Bosom buddies Aluwihare and Rudra were in the thick of battle. In Rudra's biography, he recalls, "I was outside the crater and felt an acute pain in the middle of my back, under my pack. 'I've bought it,' I said to myself. I gingerly felt my back under my pack. What had happened was that a piece of shrapnel had smashed in the tin containing my iron rations. The goodies were ruined, but they had certainly saved my life. Glancing around I saw Richard lying in the open about five feet away, his uniform covered in blood. He had been wounded a second time."

A few months later came the news that Drieberg had been killed in the Somme battle. He was only 19. Halangoda too was seriously wounded.

W.H. Pate of the Ceylon contingent had sent Trinity this description of an air attack so far unknown in war. "A German airplane followed us all the way and when we were in a wood they let go. Their shells fell like the rain in about three acres of wood. I was knocked out several times by the concussion of the shells, but managed to scrape through. I lay in one newly-made shell hole for about two minutes and then up again. I had scarcely gone 15 yards when another shell dropped just where I had been. The ground kept heaving like some huge chest of a giant.

"Afterwards nearly every man had a cigarette in his mouth. It was not done for swank or anything of that sort, but we wanted something to soothe our nerves. I have myself smoked them one after another or I think I should have gone mad."

A.J. Wells who would otherwise have been a planter in Batticaloa had been in active service for only a year when he was killed. An officer of his company had written to his father, "He was hit by a shell whilst gallantly doing his duty at his post with a machine-gun.

"He was one of the most reliable and efficient machine gunners in the section and carried out his duty to the last, showing great courage and coolness under fire. You have the satisfaction of knowing your son died a hero's death."

These are a few of the incidents of heroism of Trinitians who fought in the war. Space constraints do not permit us to document all the events.

The great war ended at 11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

J.W.S. Bartholomeusz received the Croix de Guerre of the first class for his bravery.

Stories of the 1915 riots

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