During the course of the Second World War, while defending her extensive empire in Asia, the British government sought to come to terms with nationalist forces in her dependencies of South Asia. Attempts were made in both India and Ceylon to negotiate a settlement of the constitutional problem with nationalist leaders and to give stability to the administration and strengthen the war effort. In India these protracted negotiations were a failure, because there was little common ground between the demands of the nationalists and the concessions proposed by the British. Disagreement between the two sections of the nationalist movement – the National Congress and the Muslim League – complicated matters further.

Similar efforts in Ceylon fared better, for the demands and attitudes of the nationalist leaders were more moderate, and the proposals of the British government were accepted without much ado. Both parties were agreed in principle as to the next step; the Ceylonese leaders, who were holding ministerial office, drafted a constitution along lines which were known to be agreeable to the colonial government. The process of reform was set in motion even while the war was on, and in July 1944 a commission was appointed, with Lord Soulbury as chairman, to examine the draft of the Ceylonese ministers, to receive other representations, and to recommend a constitution for Ceylon. The Soulbury Commission drafted a constitution that gave the island self-government in all matters of internal jurisdiction, retaining some safeguards to the British government in defense and the conduct of external affairs.

By the time the commission reported, the war had ended, and there was opportunity for a more concentrated attack on the problem. The Labour government, which was in power in Britain, decided to initiate a process of liberating those dependencies that were politically in a relatively advanced stage of development. India was to be given independence at whatever price. Political advance in Ceylon had been so closely connected with that of India that the decision to free India meant it was but a question of time before a similar decision would be applied to Ceylon.

At this moment the Ceylonese leaders urged politely but firmly that the last few restrictions to independence imposed by the Soulbury Constitution be done away with. The British government was receptive to these requests. It was convinced that the leaders with whom it negotiated and who were likely to hold power in Ceylon for some time to come would be friendly to British interests. A decision was taken to confer dominion status on Ceylon. The few powers reserved in the Soulbury Constitution for the imperial government were also transferred to the Ceylonese legislature. These changes were incorporated in the Ceylon Independence Act of 1947.

The constitution of independent Ceylon was modelled largely on the British constitution. It introduced the system of parliamentary government as evolved in Britain and extended to the other self-governing dominions. It was rather different from the experimental system of government by executive committees introduced by the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931. By that constitution executive and legislative functions had been vested in a single body. In the British system executive power rests in the hands of a body chosen from and responsible to the legislature, the two functions are kept separate.

The legislature of independent Ceylon was bicameral and comprised the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives was directly elected by popular vote, and the Senate was in part elected by members of the popular House and in part nominated by the governor-general. The only restrictions to the power of lawmaking were the safeguards written into the constitution against discriminatory laws against particular religious or communal groups. The governor-general occupied a position akin to that of the British monarch and exercised similar constitutional functions. He was appointed by the British sovereign on the advice of the prime minister of Ceylon. His chief constitutional function was the appointment of the prime minister, who was called upon to form a government on the basis of the electoral results as reflected in the House of Representatives.

The governor-general summoned, prorogued, and dissolved Parliament. All executive acts performed by the ministers were done in his name. In a country where the party system had not been defined with the clarity and precision it had in Britain, the governor-general had some measure of influence in the appointment of the prime minister and in the general conduct of affairs. After the prime minister was appointed from the largest political grouping in the lower house, he selected his ministers, who were then officially appointed to their positions by the governor-general. These ministers together formed the Cabinet, which was collectively responsible for the government of the country. Their power was sustained by a majority in Parliament; if they lost that majority, they would have to resign their offices.

The conventions observed in the conduct of affairs within the Cabinet and in the relation between Cabinet and Parliament were those of the United Kingdom. Proposals put forward by a minister were scrutinized and passed by the Cabinet and became the collective decision of the government. Legislation to give effect to these proposals was drafted by officials and presented to Parliament, where the government majority ensured its passage. On assent by the governor-general, it was enacted as law.

As in the United Kingdom, both by convention and by law, the attempt was made to separate the political section of the government from the administrative. The appointment, promotion, and dismissal of government officers of a higher grade was under a Public Service Commission which was directly responsible to the governor general. It was thus theoretically impossible for the ministers to interfere with appointments to the public service. A similar Judicial Services Commission functioned in relation to officers in the country’s judiciary.

The constitutional structure set up was thus a ready-made and comprehensive one and provided the machinery for a smooth transition from colonial rule to independence, It was a structure with which the Ceylonese leadership was familiar, if only through the pages of textbooks on the British constitution. Though the previous constitution operating in Ceylon had not been quite so closely modelled on these principles, some of the elements of the parliamentary system were already there. Most of the politicians who were preening themselves to take power in the new dispensation had already acquired considerable experience in political affairs.

The political institutions being Western, and the conduct of affairs mainly through the medium of English, it was the English-educated intelligentsia that produced the political leaders from the time that these representative institutions were introduced. Electoral results show that even the most remote rural districts chose members of this class to represent them in the legislature. The largely illiterate or semi-literate peasantry that formed the bulk of the population were not in a position to put up leaders of their own class and therefore had necessarily to choose members of the urban middle class who came forward and offered themselves as leaders.

Some of these men had the added advantage of having previously functioned as ministers under the old constitution and thus had already grappled with problems of government. A few of the leaders at the top had handled the delicate negotiations with the imperial government and had so impressed the latter by their qualities of statesmanship that even without popular clamour for independence the British government was persuaded that the Ceylonese could now manage their own destiny. All this experience was to be a great asset in the process of working out the new constitution and the fully self-governing status it conferred.

These new leaders had a common background of English education, though they came from widely different walks of life. Some of them belonged to the old landowning aristocracy and still held considerable land in their constituencies. They thus enjoyed the influence that went with their traditional family connections and had equipped themselves for leadership in the new age by imbibing the new ideas that the Westerner had brought. A totally different group was the “new rich,” those who had benefited from the economic opportunities opened by the British and had emerged as a native entrepreneur class with varying degrees of success. The rest belonged to the different professions, all of which had involved study of the English language. Predominant among these were the lawyers, who, as in contemporary India, provided more than their share of recruits for political leadership.

The common educational background and the values and ideals they shared gave homogeneity to this new leadership. Fundamentally, Ceylonese society was divided into a plurality of communal and religious units. These units were certainly not, at this stage, hostile to each other, nor did they have very much in common with each other. One could talk fruitfully of a Ceylonese nation only in terms of the English-educated intelligentsia. At this level, both socially and intellectually, took place the mixing of communal groups and the merging of communal differences. This westernized elite rose above the divisive factors in society and indeed gradually presented themselves as yet another of its many component groups. The one advantage was that its members were drawn from all parts of the island, all language groups, and all religions. They ran the administrative services of the country, taught in its schools, and strongly supported the political leadership of their English-speaking compatriots. Together they would ensure the smooth working of the new political institutions and the pursuit of certain ideals which they would seek to impart to the mass of the people.

In the process of making the constitution, a separate organization was formed to represent the interests of the Tamils. This demanded a formula of balanced representation to safeguard minority communities against domination by the Sinhalese majority. This organization, the Tamil Congress, was popular in North Ceylon, where the Tamils were concentrated. But many members of the English-educated section of the Tamils dissociated themselves from the Tamil Congress and grasped the hand of friendship offered by the Sinhalese. Furthermore, leaders of other minority communities willingly offered their cooperation to the Sinhalese. In the first Cabinet of in dependent Ceylon, all the major communities were represented.

Compared to the other countries that secured release from British tutelage at about the same time – India, Pakistan, and Burma – Ceylon’s economic situation may be described as sound. The average income of about 300 rupees per person per annum at this period compared favourably with that of most other Asian countries except Japan. The plantation sector of the country’s agriculture was doing well ell and fetching good prices in world markets. Tea, rubber, and coconut – all in good demand in world markets at that time – were the major exports and provided about 90 per cent of the country’s earnings of foreign exchange. No doubt, during the war much of the rubber had been slaughter-tapped to meet immediate needs, but there were great possibilities for future development. Tea estates were being managed excellently by British firms and by those few Ceylonese capitalists who had of late been investing in tea. During the war Ceylon had earned a lot of sterling – over a thousand million rupees – which, if managed carefully, could be utilized for the country’s economic development. There would be no lack of foreign exchange to undertake and finance long-term developmental projects.

The war had also been a disguised blessing in the matter of the production of food grains in the country. Earlier, the emphasis had been decidedly on cash crops; over 50 per cent of the rice consumed in the country had to be imported. Because of the interruption of the usual sources of supply and the difficulties of overseas trade, a great effort was made during the war to produce rice and other subsidiary crops. The increase in food prices gave added incentive to such activity, which was enthusiastically undertaken in the villages. The new government could make use of this enthusiasm and lend its strong support to this neglected aspect of the country’s economy.

There had also been a great improvement in the country’s health services during wartime. When Ceylon became the seat of the South East Asia Command, a large number of troops were stationed in all parts of the country. Thus, remote and inaccessible villages received attention they had not had before, and diverse modern amenities were made available to them. Among the most valuable of these was the concentrated fight against malaria, which had been the scourge of the Ceylonese peasant. The success of this campaign was seen in a significant drop in the incidence of this disease by 1947.

Nor was the educational level of the people at the time of independence discouraging. Roughly 60 per cent of the people were literate, if literacy in given its broadest definition. The school system was well organized, and, by an act of 1944, the state undertook the full cost of education in the country. Tuition fees were waived for all students from the kindergarten to the university. Though this was only a part of the costs incurred by a student for his education, it was no doubt a great blessing in a country of low incomes and large families. Teachers in all schools, government and private, were paid by the state.

It thus seemed that the outlook was bright when Ceylon was launched as an independent state in February 1948. There was every prospect that the democratic tradition would take root and that the country would progress toward material prosperity and contentment. Ceylon seemed to represent the ideal of advance from colonial status to a free nation. A closer look at the scene, however, showed some ominous portents.

It is an important feature of the political scene in Ceylon that its independence was achieved by negotiation and amicable discussions. The conference room and the council chamber were the scenes of activity, in contrast to the public demonstrations and civil disturbances of India. There was no occasion to associate and involve the masses in the struggle and to infuse in them the nationalistic emotion that would encourage them to make sacrifices in the cause of independence. The nationalist parties that were in existence toward the end of British rule spent more of their time fighting each other than fighting the colonial government and therefore did not see the need to enlist the active support of the masses on nationalist issues. Electoral battles of these years were mainly personal affairs fought on parochial lines. None of the parties had grass roots organizations on the village level. One has only to compare the two National Congresses, the Indian and the Ceylonese, to see the way in which the former towered over Indian politics from the date of its formation and the latter competed weakly with numerous other parties and died a natural death when independence was declared.

The manner in which the political negotiations for independence were carried out has given the impression that what happened in February 1948, was a private transfer of control from colonial rule into the hands of an oligarchy. The power elite at this time consisted of a few families from the dominant sectors of society. No doubt this oligarchy was confirmed in power by popular vote in 1947, but it was still an oligarchy in the sense that no outsiders could get into it. People who held the highest offices were connected by family ties, and the structure of politics resembled somewhat the politics of England under George III.

An even more important drawback arose from the fact that, by the very nature of politics and the political institutions, only the English-educated could aspire to power. Parliamentary government, freedom of the individual, and the whole structure of new ideas were comprehensible to them and them alone. With universal adult suffrage, every individual of the country had been emancipated and brought within the ambit of political power. Yet 95 per cent of the population could not aspire to positions of power because they were not equipped to acquire power and use it. They had been content since 1931, when adult franchise was introduced, to select their leaders from a class which was alien to them. How long they would remain so was another matter. When they comprehended the democratic process and saw to what use they might put it, they would no longer want to rely on the English-educated elite to represent them and manage their affairs.

The westernized elite was not different from the masses only in that they read, wrote, and spoke English. What was more disturbing was the cultural cleavage that separated them from the majority of the people. They had become a separate caste with some of the characteristics that separated traditional castes from each other. Their way of life, their dress, their speech, their cultural interests were different from those of the rest of the country. Most members of this clan had uprooted themselves from their traditional milieu and suffered the little that remained to tie them to traditional society like millstones stound their necks. Some of them had adopted Western culture and found satisfaction and happiness in it. Others were cultural “mongrels” or, at best, cosmopolitans indecisively trying to fuse aspects of diverse and often conflicting cultures.

Society was thus deeply divided in two: the English-educated and the others. Those not educated in English were condemned to subordinate roles in society. This was satisfactory so long as the mass of the people selected as their leaders members of the westernized oligarchy who were, after all, better equipped to administer the country’s affairs. This is what happened for a decade after independence, and it was found to work well. But it is useful here to recognize the malaise of Ceylon’s democracy at the time it was launched and to understand this source of discontent in the subsequent developments of the island’s history.

The westernized power elite that took over the leadership of the country was naturally oriented toward the West and looked to Britain for its lead in many matters. Its leaders could describe the island as a “little bit of England” and take pride in this description. British interests continued to dominate the country’s economy. A large part of the plantation sector was owned and managed by British companies, as was also a major share of the country’s trade and industry. The presence of British armed forces was insured by a defense agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Ceylon permitting the British to maintain their forces in Ceylon for its defense. This meant, among other things, that the large airfield at Katunayake and the beautiful natural harbour of Trincomalee continued to be under British control.

If the new leadership felt that it could ignore these factors, it was making a serious miscalculation. It was true that anti-British nationalism had never been born as a mass phenomenon in Ceylon. The absence of mass involvement in nationalist policies was both a cause and a symptom of this factor. Yet the continued physical presence of the British could become a source of irritation to nationalist sentiment. Unless the new government concentrated pressure for the gradual removal of the British, the latter’s presence was likely to be used by nationalist politicians as a weapon of attack against the whole new structure.

Indeed, there was already a point of view being voiced that the independence granted in 1948 was “fake”, that “real” independence could only be won with the removal of the Commonwealth links, as Burma had chosen to do. All British troops should quit the country, and no bases and other facilities should be granted to them. No doubt this was as yet a minority viewpoint and was limited in its circulation. The masses were neither overenthusiastic nor terribly disappointed at the tum of events.

For the successful working of the new constitution, a healthy party system had to develop. This was just beginning, all too shakily. The splinter groups that gathered around influential personalities in the Donoughmore era would not do now. Strong, vigorous political parties with firm and identifiable policies and leadership were required. No doubt the elite, as seen earlier, was familiar with the functioning of the parliamentary system in Britain. But in the actual task of making this system work there were found other difficulties inherent in Ceylonese society. In this respect, the effect of the whole Donoughmore structure had been against the growth of strong parties. Under the executive committee system, it had been unnecessary to attach oneself to a political party – in fact it might have been a handicap to do so. The spirit of compromise so essential to the formation of a party had not developed. It was impossible to produce this overnight.

A significant step was taken when the legatees of political power organised themselves into the United National Party (UNP) under the leadership of Mr. D. S. Senanayake. Into this party came members of many groups, communal and otherwise, of the Donoughmore era. Its major constituent units were the Ceylon National Congress, the Sinhala Maha Sabha, and the Muslim League. Most of the other non-party politicians from all sectors of society decided to join this party also. Being assured of a tenure of political power, it assumed the aspect of a bandwagon; drawing to it people of diverse political origin, some of whom had no idea that politics had anything to do with principles, this coalition still had to be shaped into a meaningful political grouping. Being the governing party, it had to acquire a political philosophy, a policy, and a sense of disciplined behaviour.

Outside the UNP were a number of smaller parties unrelated to each other. On the far left were three Marxist parties – the Lanka Sama Samajist Party (LSSP), the Bolshevik Leninist Party, and the Communist Party – divided among themselves on both ideological and personal grounds. Quite different from these parties of the left were two communal organizations representing two of the island’s minority communities. The Tamil Congress sought to represent those Tamils who had been domiciled in Ceylon for centuries. This party was dissatisfied with the weight given to minorities under the new constitution. Its aim was to unite the Tamils under one flag so that they could put pressure on the Sinhalese and resist any encroachment on their rights. The Ceylon Indian Congress represented the interests of the Tamils who had immigrated to Ceylon within the last hundred years. The bulk of them were plantation workers, from whom the main strength of this party was drawn.

Thus, on the eve of independence there was available a political party to take up the reins of office. But for the efficient working of parliamentary government it is not sufficient that there be a party in office; there should also be a strong party in opposition. The idea of an alternative government is crucial to the British type of representative rule that was being introduced into Ceylon. The distressing factor on the Ceylonese political scene was the absence of such an alternate party wedded to the idea of a democratic alternative to the government in power.

The communal parties were all too restricted in their scope and aims to have any effect on a national level. The leftist parties were committed to revolutionary action in diverse forms and would not take the parliamentary scene very seriously. There were a large number of independent politicians not attached to any party, but they were only waiting to make up their minds after they knew which party would form the government. The absence of a national democratic alternative in the first post-war elections of 1947 was a serious drawback in the democratic process. The resultant absence of constructive criticism of government policy was bound to produce an attitude of smugness among governing circles.

The Marxist left, both communist and non-communist, is an interesting phenomenon of this period. It was a by-product of the study and understanding of Western political thought and institutions that had been introduced under British rule. Its leadership was drawn from the very same English-educated class that produced the ruling oligarchy. Some of these intellectuals had come under the influence of Marxian socialist ideas while studying in British universities. When they returned home they collected a following of young men with left-wing political views. They formed the LSSP in 1935 as a socialist party professing the Marxist approach. When Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union after his differences with the Soviet Communists, the Ceylon socialists of the LSSP chose to follow his interpretation of Marxism and become Trotskyite in their orientation.

This divided the party into two factions, and with the Nazi Soviet Pact of 1939 this split was brought to a head. The faction which followed the official Soviet line faithfully through every change and turn broke away to become the Communist Party associated with the Comintern. The LSSP continued as an independent socialist party and developed connections with the Trotskyite Fourth International formed, with its headquarters in Paris, as a rival to the Comintern. In 1945 it divided again when a faction left to form the Bolshevik-Leninist Party. Thus, the brief history of the left movement has been dogged by disunity on both theoretical and personal issues. None of these parties was individually of such strength as to challenge the ruling party. Their influence was restricted to urban areas of the western coast and working-class concentrations. They lacked the organization and the appeal to expand their activities on a nation-wide basis.

The leftist parties, if they could not provide a constructive alternative to the ruling party, could always be of nuisance value. Their strength and energies were concentrated among the urban working classes. Though these were still a small minority of the total population, their role in the country’s economy was an important one. From its inception, the Marxist movement worked among these people and sought to win them over. Workers in industry, commerce, and transport were organised into labour unions under the aegis of one of the three leftist parties. Thus, trade unionism in Ceylon became politically oriented, and this remained an important factor in the development of independent Ceylon.

It also meant the introduction of rival unions in the same trade affiliated to different parties of the left. It paved the way for the use of trade union strength for political purposes. The strike of government clerks for full trade union rights in 1947 was an indication of an awareness of this strength. The support of the working classes, including the “white collar” workers, was alienated from the new government and distributed among parties that were wedded to a program of revolutionary action and denial of the constitutional structure. It was an ill omen for the young demoсrасу.

The elections of 1947 resulted in the formation of a government led by Senanayake. Though the party he headed won only 42 seats in a house of 101, with the support of some of the 21 “independent” members elected and the six nominated by the Governor, he was able to secure a working majority. On the 4th of February 4, 1948, the independent constitution was inaugurated by the Duke of Gloucester acting on behalf of the Queen of Great Britain, and Ceylon became a dominion. Thus began a 10-year period of rule by the United National Party. These years are a distinct phase of the island’s history and must be discussed separately.

by S. Arasaratnam

(to be continued next week)