The Post-Colonial Period

1948 A.D. onwards

A semblance of stability (1948 - 1956)

On 4 February 1948 Sir Henry Monck-Mason-Moore, the last Colonial Governor of Sri Lanka was sworn in as the first Governor-General of the newly independent country. In contrast to other countries in the Indian subcontinent the transfer of power in Sri Lanka at independence was peaceful and the acrimony within the various factions of the population was submerged. It was a freedom, which seemed to have been obtained without much effort or rancour. To the vast majority of the, mainly rural, population of the country, who had not really taken any active part in considering the effects of freedom, there was no apparent change in the previous colonial structure. It was the westernized elite who had been instrumental in obtaining independence. Within the new government peace and stability were maintained mainly because of the personality of D.S. Senanayake (see 'The road to Independence'). Under his leadership the United National Party (UNP) was successful in bridging the gap between the various communities and religions in this time of euphoria. The provisions in the constitution preventing discriminatory laws being passed against minorities and Senanayake's determination to maintain Sri Lanka as a secular state also placated the minorities at this stage. The policy, at this new and innocent phase of Sri Lanka's independence, was to subjugate communal and religious differences to a common goal - that of working towards a united nation through democratic institutions.

The General Election of 1947, in which only 49% of the total electorate voted, had not given the UNP an absolute majority in Parliament but D.S. Senanayake was able to obtain the support of the twenty-one Independents and the six nominated members (four Europeans and two Burghers) to form a coalition government. The three left-wing groups were in opposition with eighteen seats. It was only in 1950 that they agreed to make Dr. N.M. Perera, who headed the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), Leader of the Opposition. The UNP had made use of the communist bogey in the election campaign to obtain the support of Buddhist and Roman Catholic priesthood against the Marxist LSSP, which campaigned on the merits of its doctrine, which was opposed to the nationalist bourgeoisie obtaining power. It was advantageous for the UNP to exaggerate the threat posed by the leftist parties not only to obtain the support of the mainly conservative rural electorate but also to maintain the goodwill of western governments (concerned at this time about the spread of communism in Asia), which were prospective sources of economic aid. However, the LSSP was also committed to a multiracial, secular state and their concept of citizenship also included the immigrant Indian Tamil workers.

The Indian Tamils, who made up a considerable proportion of the population in the central highland areas, were anti-UNP and D.S. Senanayake was concerned that they would be enticed from the Ceylon Indian Congress by the leftist parties. There was also the concern that they would lend additional political weight to the demands of the indigenous Tamils and Sinhalese opinion was very suspicious of the Indian Tamils. The British, who had caused the problem by importing cheap Indian labour, not only to Sri Lanka but also to other parts of the empire, washed their hands of the matter, leaving the Sri Lankan and Indian governments to sort out this intractable problem. Citizenship Acts passed in 1948 and 1949 restricted Sri Lankan nationality to those who could claim it on grounds of descent or by registration on conditions, which were almost impossible to substantiate. These Acts effectively deprived about ten per cent of the total population of their citizenship rights. Also, in 1949 an Act of Parliament denied these workers of Indian origin the right to vote. The latter Act was beneficial to the UNP at the next election when the Ceylon Indian Congress, which had six seats in the first Parliament, lost a vast majority of its voters in the central electorates and the UNP won five additional seats. Not only were the Citizenship Bills the first Parliamentary enactments that made racial feeling politically acceptable but they also distorted the electoral balance in favour of the Sinhalese rural voter.

One of the two Tamil Cabinet Ministers, C. Suntharalingam, resigned in protest at the Citizenship Bills but the Tamil Congress, representing the Sri Lankan Tamils, joined the government and its leader, G. G. Ponnambalam, became a Cabinet Minister. A dissident Tamil group, unhappy with Ponnambalam's policy of collaboration with the Sinhalese-dominated UNP, broke away from the Tamil Congress and formed the Federal Party or FP (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi in Tamil - ITAK) with Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam, popularly known as S.J.V., as its leader. Unlike the Tamil Congress, which favoured a single united nation, the Federal Party wished to preserve Tamil identity by establishing an autonomous Tamil linguistic state within a federal union of Sri Lanka.

In the years following the end of the Second World War the country's economic assets were remarkably good and in 1948 the amount owed to it because of British forces spending in the island was the equivalent of 1,260,000,000 rupees in sterling balances. However, the agreement between the two governments was vague and the foreign income derived from this quarter, which was the main source of national income began to fall. At the same time the cost of imports rose making a heavy deficit in the balance of payments. The economy was also dependent on the export of tea, rubber and coconut, which were at the mercy of price fluctuations in the world markets. The Korean War in 1950 had the welcome effect of raising the price of rubber and boosting the flagging economy. The government also had the advantage of being the largest landholder, controlling about three million acres of mainly jungle land, which required development to become economically viable. The country's standard of living was much higher than that of India, Pakistan or Burma. This higher standard came with the social welfare schemes commenced in the 1930s following the Donoughmore Commission and these schemes consumed about sixty per cent of the government's resources in 1948. The population was increasing at about 3% per annum by 1949 mainly because of a drop in the death rate that, in turn, was due to the eradication of malaria. In retrospect it is clear that this increasing expense on social welfare was going to be impossible to maintain.

Despite the new facade the policies for development were a continuation of those that had already been put in place by the Board of Ministers in the previous administration. The early UNP governments were lulled into a feeling of spurious economic security by the boom that occurred in the early 1950s because of favourable world prices for the cash crops. Insufficient investment was made into industrial projects, which would have been the obvious route to improving and substantiating the economy. The hydro-electric scheme, a possible source of cheap electricity to power industrial development, took twenty-six years to start functioning and when it finally did so in 1950 the electricity was only sufficient for domestic use. On the whole the Six Year Plan put forward by the UNP ministers was not a success except with regard to agriculture. D.S. Senanayake had commenced this work when he was Minister of Agriculture and Lands in the State Council. Its highlight was the Gal Oya Project, which was meant to provide 150,000 acres of irrigable land and also provide hydro-electric power for industrial purposes. This and other projects designed to help peasant agriculture did improve the production of paddy by 1955. Associated with these agricultural projects were colonization schemes, which the Tamils saw as a threat to the communal composition of areas that were traditionally Tamil.

In 1951 at a time when the prestige of the UNP was at its zenith S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who had joined the UNP (see 'Road to Independence') and was a Cabinet Minister and Leader of the House, crossed over to the opposition. His politics perhaps evolved from a distinctly anti-British sentiment that he developed whilst at Oxford and was obvious enough to be mentioned in the autobiography of his contemporary, the writer Evelyn Waugh. Waugh hints, in his characteristically spiteful manner, that this may have been due to the fact that he was referred to as a 'black man'. From this came a strong nationalist, pro-Sinhalese, pro-Buddhist stance. As the most adroit Sri Lankan politician of his time he must also have realised that these policies were the most opportune ways of obtaining power. He understood that there was social and economic discontent amongst a large group of Buddhist activists, which felt that the party in power was neglecting it. In September 1951 he formed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which was meant to attract all those who were dissatisfied with the UNP and did not agree with the Marxist opposition. The policies of the SLFP were to eventually put an end to the concept of a multi-racial, secular, single nation.

In March 1952, D.S. Senanayake died after being thrown whilst exercising his horse on Galle Face Green. There was rivalry for the succession and Lord Soulbury (Governor-General from 1949) appointed D.S. Senananyake's son, Dudley Senanayake, much to the chagrin of Sir John Kotelawala, the most senior minister and UNP Treasurer. The new prime minister had strong liberal-minded and pacifist views. He was a good administrator and had been Minister of Agriculture in his father's cabinet but lacked his father's charisma and certainly did not have the driving ambition of some of his contemporary politicians. Unusually, for a politician, he had a conscience. At the General Elections of 1952 the UNP, probably aided by the'sympathy vote' because of the tragic death of a popular leader, won a decisive majority. Significantly the SLFP won enough seats to make Bandaranaike the Leader of the Opposition. In 1952 the price of rubber had fallen again but the disastrous effect on the economy was averted, albeit temporarily, by a new trade agreement with communist China that guaranteed a satisfactory price for sheet rubber. This pact, signed in Peking by the new Minister of Commerce, R.G. Senanayake (Dudley's cousin), though unpopular in the West, had no political overtones.

By 1953 the country had grown used to the food subsidies that were instituted during the Second World War and had been continued into the post-colonial period. These were meant to prevent famine and hardship during the war years but became an expected handout that the government did not dare to withdraw. A World Bank Mission supported the Ceylon Central Bank in its advice to the government that this subsidy, which had a crippling effect on the economy, should be reduced. Acting on this advice, the government reduced the rice subsidy despite having promised, during the election campaign of 1952, to maintain it at the same level. The price of rice trebled and the LSSP took the opportunity of provoking an island-wide strike on 12 August 1953. This hart&amacronl (a term first used in India to signify nation-wide strikes) ended in a state of emergency after the police over-reacted and shot several people. The prime minister was conscience stricken by this violence and resigned. He was replaced by the ebullient Sir John Kotelawala who, despite several years of political experience, did not have much political foresight and was out of touch with the rural masses.

It was a time during which the economy seemed buoyant. Tea prices rose and the price of rubber was stable. It was possible to partially restore the food subsidies. It was also possible for the new prime minister to play at being an international statesman. He did this with great verve. A conference of South East Asian powers was convened at Colombo in 1954 on his initiative. These meetings of Asian nations did serve a useful purpose in conveying to the world powers that interfering in Asian politics would provoke a reaction from a consortium of nations. It was at a time that France was being forced to withdraw from Indo-China. At Bandung in Indonesia twenty-nine Afro-Asian countries, including communist China, met in 1955 and Sir John Kotelawala attempted to make his mark on the international stage by accusing the communist powers of practising a new form of colonialism. This earned him the sarcastic title of 'hero of Bandung' in the Sri Lankan press but did nothing to improve his popularity with the electoral masses.
