The late Senator Murugeysen Tiruchelvam was born on November 19, 1907. Mr. Tiruchelvam entered politics in the early 1960s after a significant career as a government legal officer. During that long career, he served as the Magistrate in Negombo, Panadura and Galle. He was subsequently appointed the Assistant to the then Legal Secretary, Sir Alan Rose. Later he became the Deputy Solicitor-General and in 1957 rose to the position of Solicitor-General. His colleagues during his stint as Solicitor-General were Victor Tennekoon, Rajah Wanasundera, H.L. de Silva and V.S.A. Pullenayagam . According to Neelan Tiruchelvam, his father worked very closely with these colleagues of his forming ‘a formidable team in taking on the best in the Unofficial Bar’. It is acknowledged in legal circles that in many a complex case on Constitutional Law and Administrative Law, they outclassed the Unofficial Bar.
Tiruchelvam died on November 22, 1976, aged 69. His was a productive life well lived and with his passing Sri Lanka lost a strong and passionate voice devoted to peace, moderation and national unity. Attorney-at-Law Ramalingam Balasubramaniyam, who was Private Secretary to the late Senator when he served as Minister of Local Government, has edited the Selected Speeches of and Tributes to the late Senator. Of the several contained in the publication I should like to dwell on three key speeches delivered on the floor of the Senate of Ceylon by the late Mr. Tiruchelvam. They deal with bilingualism (Towards Bilingualism in Ceylon), federalism (Federalism, the Key to a Multi-Ethnic Ceylon) and dangers of partisan Constitution-making ( Constituent Assembly will Pave the way for Dictatorship).
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Towards Bilingualism in Ceylon, significantly was Senator Tiruchelvam’s maiden speech in the Upper House when ours was a bi-cameral legislature. It was an impassioned re-assertion of the crucial need of bilingualism in our country for the preservation of inter-ethnic harmony within it. Senator Tiruchelvam’s re-visiting of this issue in 1965 that has been debated and discussed ad infinitum in our political circles since 1944 was on account of the unfinished Parliamentary business that began in 1956 when the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956 was introduced. It was planned that the implementation of the Act would be stretched over a period of five years, till December 31, 1960, a period which, as K. M. de Silva has pointed out (see his Ethnicity, Language and Politics: The Making of Sri Lanka’s Official language Act No.33 of 1956, Ethnic Studies Report, Vol. XI, No. 1, January 1993) , ‘Bandaranaike expected to use to devise or negotiate modifications and adjustments to make the change in language policy palatable to Tamils.’ It was Mr. Bandaranaike’s deviation from his earlier principled position with regard to the issue of Swabasha, the blatant and disgraceful political expediency of the United National Party and as has been pointed out by Senator Nadesan, the belligerent reaction in place of what ought to have been a measured response of the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress, that paved the way for the emergence of the disastrous linguistic nationalism that has since tragically bedevilled Sri Lanka and all but destroyed our social fabric today.
Senator Tiruchelvam in the course of his speech refers firstly to Mr. Bandaranaike’s contribution to the debate in the State Council of May, 25 1944, and then proceeds to quote from a statement made by Mr. Bandaranaike in the House of Representatives on April 25, 1957.
These two speeches reveal clearly that Mr. Bandaranaike was not a fanatical linguistic nationalist and like most sensible Sri Lankans he was of the view that it would be fair and reasonable that the people of the northern and eastern provinces should have the option of doing the official part of their work also in Tamil, if they so wished, without prejudice to the “Sinhala Only” Act. Bandaranaike was the prisoner and eventually the victim of the political and language extremists both within and without Parliament. The triumph of the language extremists led by K.M.P. Rajaratne, L.H. Metthananda and F. R. Jayasuriya and supported vigourously by certain bhikkhu activists prominent among whom were the infamous Mapitigama Buddharakkhita and Beddegama Wimalawamsa, resulted in the government of the day back-pedaling on this very sensitive piece of legislation.
At a press conference held at his private residence in Colombo on May 30, 1956, Mr. Bandaranaike sought to exercise a degree of damage control. He admitted during the conference that it was difficult to cover all that may be considered legitimate in the envisaged Language Bill and to spell out in it his Party’s commitment to ‘the reasonable use of Tamil’. He attempted to assure the country and the Federal Party that once the Bill is passed ‘we will have time to address our minds to the practical working of the Act and the difficulties that may arise from time to time’. Bandaranaike also held out the promise of the Regional Councils Bill which he planned to present soon in which provision would be made for ‘the decentralization of administration’ (see The Ceylon Daily News, May 31, 1956).
It must be noted for the record that unlike from 1970 onwards when they let themselves down dreadfully, the leading Marxists in 1956 stood on the right side of the barricades. During the debate on the Official Language Act which began on June 4 and went on until the wee hours of June 15 when the vote on the third reading was taken, Dr. N. M. Perera, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and Dr. S. A. Wickremasinghe and Pieter Keuneman of the Communist Party made outstanding contributions. It was during his memorable speech that Colvin R. de Silva argued that a two-language policy would help integrate the country, while a single language would eventually divide it. In a slogan that has ringing relevance to us even today, De Silva famously observed: two languages, one people; one language, two peoples. Handy Perinbanayagam (1899 – 1977) was the only other I know of who subscribed to the same philosophy. He never abandoned his faith that Ceylon should be a single political unit with two official languages. He used to say, ‘What Sinhala is to the Sinhalese, Tamil ought to be to the Tamils. A minority need not be subordinate to the majority in a free country’. At a time when English was the language of government and of prestige, Handy Perinbanayagam and K. Nesiah were the two lone voices that dared to fight for the children’s right to learn in the mother tongue and a people’s right to be governed in their own language long before this kind of thinking became the orthodoxy.
On July 20, 1966, in a speech he made following the Throne Speech, Tiruchelvam argued for the establishment of a federal Ceylon which, he claimed, would strengthen democracy and address the problems of Ceylon Tamils and other minorities of the country. Apart from the Council for Liberal Democracy and the small but consequential Liberal Party that came into being in the 1980s, no other post-independence Sri Lankan political entity has supported the call for a federal Sri Lanka as a likely solution for our continuing national political tragedy. It is significant to note, however, that long before Tamil political leaders of the calibre of a Chelvanayakam or a Tiruchelvam advocated federalism, the young S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in the mid-1920s and the Kandyan Sinhalese representatives during their submissions to the Donoughmore Commission in the late 1920s, were early advocates of a federal Sri Lanka. The Kandyan Sinhalese proposed a federal Ceylon with three Provinces including a Province for the Northeast. The Kandyans were concerned about the influx of low-country Sinhalese to the Kandyan region.
Tiruchelvam the ardent believer in federalism ended his speech in the following manner:
If we, the Federal Party, are going to get federalism—our object is federalism: we believe in federalism; the only solution for a multi-racial society like ours is federalism—it can only be got from the Sinhalese people with their free will and good will alone; in no other way. I want to make that clear.
Here is proof, if proof is needed, of the unwavering moderation that the late Senator Tiruchelvam epitomized throughout his brief political career. Some of his younger colleagues in the Federal Party would have fared far better and achieved greater results had they emulated the late Senator’s or a Handy Perinbanayagam’s pragmatism. It needs also to be noted that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution has enabled Sri Lanka to make slow but substantial progress both in regard to bilingualism and devolution of power in the country. The LTTE, however, by its seemingly endless campaign of violence continued to the end to act as a major impediment to the implementation of provisions in place for the furtherance of bilingualism and the devolution of power.
On June 30, 1970, Senator Tiruchelvam during his Address of Thanks to the Throne Speech presciently warned the country of the destructive potential of the United Front (UF)Government’s disastrous economic policies. A few weeks later, on August 7, he was on his feet again during the Second Reading of the Ceylon Constitution Amendment Bill to protest against the creation by the Government of a Constituent Assembly, consisting solely of the members of the House of Representatives, to draft a new Constitution. Whilst lamenting the exclusion of the Second Chamber from the Constituent Assembly, Senator Tiruchelvam warned that this move was unconstitutional and would lead to a Parliamentary dictatorship. Turning its back on the concept of the separation of powers, the UF government arrogated to itself executive, legislative and judicial powers and treated with schoolboyish disdain the legitimate concerns of its Parliamentary Opposition. In a recent conversation with me a former senior public servant told me that he had asked the then Minister of Constitutional Affairs, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, why the government to which he belonged was embarking on such an ill-advised course of action. This official had specifically pointed out the strong undesirability of the abolition of Section 29 (2) of the Soulbury Constitution in effect at the time and that of the Public Service Commission. Dr. De Silva, normally an open and amiably candid man, had not responded to these observations at the time the were made.
Subsequently, after the LSSP had departed from the UF government, he had done so and admitted that both he and his coalition partners were helpless as the Prime Minister and the all powerful Minister of Justice( who later took on the portfolio of Finance as well ) had insisted that the new Constitution should be in keeping with their priorities and in accord with the overwhelming mandate they had received from the people! I wish I could give the late Dr. Colvin R. de Silva the politician the benefit of the doubt! I am confident that as an educated human being his conscience would have pricked him but the seasoned politician in him would have looked upon this authoritarian act of the government, for which as a Cabinet member he was collectively responsible, as another instance of the ends justifying the means. As for the supposed ‘mandate’ given by the people with which the UF government sought to justify their majoritarianism, I should like here to give the last word to that fine liberal democrat, the late Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake who has observed:
There are some things in every true democracy which no mandate can ever destroy. Even if a majority agrees, the freedom of speech, the freedom to organize political parties, the freedom of the press, the right to vote to elect your representatives at periodic and regular elections; these are features which cannot ever be abolished.
Even if a majority agrees, a country which deprives any man of these fundamental rights and liberties, is not a true democracy, is not even a really human society. A free people should not be condemned to state slavery under cover of an alleged mandate (emphasis mine).
The Soulbury Constitution had included Section 29 and an independent Public Service Commission as minority safeguards. Not only did the First Republican Constitution abolish many of the minority safeguards, but worse, it also entrenched majoritarianism in the supreme law of the land. It undermined the secular character of the state by giving Buddhism the foremost place and the language of the Sinhalese was made the sole official language.
While the Soulbury Constitution deliberately doubtless had not explicitly specified the nature of the State, the new constitution proclaimed that Sri Lanka was a unitary state. Thus the First Republican Constitution of 1972, as the late Senator Tiruchelvam characterized it, was not only an exceedingly autocratic document but as Rohan Edrisinha(2000) has argued it was also ‘a major landmark in the process of national disintegration’( see his Sri Lanka: Constitutions Without Constitutionalism A Tale of Three and a half Constitutions). |
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