(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike who was Maha Mudaliyar or Chief Interpreter to the Governor was born on May 22, 1862. Sir Solomon acted as extra A.D.C. to His Majesty King George V of England during the latter’s visit to Ceylon as Duke of York in 1901. He was well known in sporting circles and a proprietary planter.

Professor S A Pakeman of the Ceylon university wrote of the son: “Bandaranaike was a clever young man, the only son of Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, the Maha Mudaliyar, head of the leading upper-class family in the low-country. The Maha Mudaliyar was, technically, the ‘chief native interpreter’, a ceremonial position of great dignity. In this capacity he was closely connected for formal and ceremonial purposes with the Governors, and named his son `West Ridgeway’ after one of them.

“He was in fact a land owner on a large scale. His autobiography, Remembered Yesterdays, throws much light on the life and ways of thinking of his class. He was a man highly respected by people of all races.

“He sent his son to Christ Church College, Oxford, where he read Western classics and became Junior Treasurer of the Oxford Union, having a natural gift for speaking.

“On his return to Ceylon he entered municipal politics and then national politics. The way he was brought up meant that he had little acquaintance with the Sinhalese language but he made himself fluent in that tongue, though he admitted later that he could neither read nor write the script with any ease.

“His point of view differed completely from that of his father, and he became an enthusiastic nationalist, with emphasis on Sinhalese primacy.”

Dr. Howard Wriggins, a Professor from Princeton in the United States in his book Ceylon: Dilemma of a Nation, with less first-hand knowledge and depth of understanding wrote: “One fundamental rift within the UNP sprang from the problem of succession. When the Sinhala Maha Sabha was brought into the UNP, it was generally understood that Mr. Bandaranaike as second of the largest component of the UNP would succeed Mr. D. S. Senanayake who was expected to step down from the party leadership in the near future.

“But Mr. Senanayake did not step down. It became clear as time went on that Mr. Senanayake was not sure that the post should be reserved for Mr. Bandaranaike. On the contrary, it became clear that he was grooming his nephew, Major John Kotalawala, for the post instead. These manoeuvres were explicable as part of a long-standing competition between the Senanayake and Bandaranaike family clans.”

Dr. Wriggins continues that “there was little trust and confidence between them. Hence when the United National Party was formed, with Mr. D. S. Senanayake as the dominant figure, it was not surprising to those who knew the family background of these men that Mr. Bandaranaike should have been unwilling to subordinate himself to the elder Senanayake.

“On the other hand, Mr. Bandaranaike and others came to feel that the elder Senanayake did not trust Mr. Bandaranaike. It appeared that Mr. D. S. Senanayake kept foreign policy matters to himself, a circumstance already formalized in the Constitution in which the portfolio of External Affairs was merged with the office of the Prime Minister. With this interpretation in mind, it was not surprising that the Sinhala Maha Sabha, the creation of Bandaranaike, was not dissolved; nor was his resignation from the Cabinet in 1951 unexpected.”

Bandaranaike himself did not wish to separate the Ministry of External Affairs from that of the Prime Minister in 1956. Wriggins says in successive pages that “it became evident that he (Senanayake) was grooming his nephew” and that he “began to build up his son.” In fact his son was not interested in the post and, as Wriggins himself says, “finally accepted with reluctance and after much indecision.”

It would do less than justice to the memory of Senanayake and Bandaranaike to say that the break between the two leaders in 1951 was solely or largely due to family rivalries. They were both men of stature, devoted to the interests of the country but their background, make-up, intellectual processes and philosophy were different.

Bandaranaike was a remarkable speaker, apt to be carried away by the exuberance of his oratory, but he was skillful in drawing fine distinctions as when, after his resignation, it came to defining his position between the United National Party and the Marxists, both Trotskyites and Leninists, with whom he was ready to make electoral pacts to dethrone the UNP. As for Senanayake, although social reform and economic development were his aims, he was not known to have used the word ‘socialism’ and could not quite make out what Ceylonese speakers meant when they advocated ‘socialism.’

Hulugalle with Mr and Mrs Bandaranaike

The respective contributions of Senanayake and Bandaranaike to the modern history of Ceylon were, in a sense, complementary. The older man won independence for Ceylon, gave the country stable government and a viable administrative machine and identified agriculture, especially food production, as the principal target of Ceylon’s economic development.

If anybody seeks a monument to Senanayake’s work in the sphere of agriculture he has only to look round and see the irrigation works he constructed and the hundreds and thousands of acres of new land he helped to bring under cultivation in the sparsely populated areas of Ceylon. He appreciated British political traditions and sought the friendship of the people of Great Britain and of the Dominions. He was a practical man, patient, clear-sighted, friendly and prone to estimate any project solely by its practical bearing on the interests of the common people in Ceylon.

Admirers have compared Senanayake and Bandaranaike with Patel and Nehru in India. Bandaranaike had Nehru’s educational background, the same western culture, the power of speech and egalitarian perspectives, a sheltered life before plunging into the political maelstrom and a vague vision of the future. Senanayake on the other hand, was like Patel, a man of action, with a deep knowledge of human nature and human weakness and a vision deeply grounded on the hard facts of life.

Though repeatedly he disclaimed Marxist doctrines, Bandaranaike’s politics were radical and had socialist overtones. He set out to build a new society which suited the genius of the Ceylonese people in the context of a changing world. To do this he had to take note of the new political status of the country.

In a speech shortly after his resignation, Bandaranaike said: “But how did freedom come? It came not after a fight upon definite principles. policies and programmes, but it really came in the normal course of events, that is, attempts to persuade Commissions sent from England to grant this little bit or that little bit extra; and finally, in the wake of freedom that was granted to countries like India, Pakistan and Burma. Our Soulbury Constitution was altered to extend to us the same type of Dominion Status. There was no fight for that freedom which involved a fight for principles, polices and programmes which could not be carried out unless that freedom was obtained. No. It just came overnight. We just woke up one day and we were told, ‘You are a Dominion now.

“What was the psychological effect that was created, particularly among those who in the previous 15 or 20 years had been working the other Constitution, who came into the free Parliament, many of whom became Ministers of this free Constitution? The psychological effect was to go along the same road. That was quite understandable. It did not involve any dishonesty or some deliberate wrong-doing on the part of any individual. That was the natural way one thought in those circumstances.

“It is quite easy, for instance if, after the Englishman has made a road, when he is driving his car along the road, he suddenly stops and says, ‘Well, look here my dear fellow, I am getting off this driving seat; you can sit there; I shall sit behind, for the driver to continue along the same road with the same thinking and acting in the same way.

“We are thinking on different planes, probably all of us bona fide. While one set of people were thinking on that line, another set were thinking quite differently. I, for instance, was thinking that freedom meant something much more than that, particularly that in the context of world affairs today this free country, with great difficulty and trouble, had to cut a new free road through the forest and to make its own vehicle travel along that final goal of prosperity and happiness which every free country has the right to expect. That was the psychology out of which this situation has arisen.”

Bandaranaike went on to say that the backbone of the Government from which he had resigned was “the reactionary capitalistic elements” and that “a tendency in the Cabinet system towards a form of dictatorship seems to have unquestionably developed.”

Bandaranaike was already mobilizing the various elements in the country dissatisfied with Senanayake’s domination of the Government and of Parliament. The argument that the UNP was supported mainly by reactionary capitalistic elements was a useful card to play when the poor were in a majority and had the power of the vote to overturn any Government. Bandaranaike foresaw that, in a developing country with a fast-growing population under a system of adult franchise, political power must necessarily pass to the masses.

“His own political future, as he saw it, depended on his ability to give leadership to the new generations of voters. In a speech made in the House of Representatives on July 30, 1952, he said: “The feudal system itself gave way and broadened out into what we understand as capitalist democracy. The small ruling feudal class broadened out into a plutocratic governing class, which was still large. The capitalist democracy is a thing that is dying hard. It has been dying since 1940. It is dying still – not quite dead yet.

“When you say that this is the age of the common man – a phrase I think was first used by Henry Wallace in the United States of America – that power is widening out into the hands of the people. I, who believe in democracy, would term it in this way: that capitalistic democracy is widening out into a people’s democracy. I am not using the word ‘democracy’ in a certain totalitarian sense that may be used by certain others. I am using the word ‘democracy’ in the true sense of the word and the entire emphasis today must be on the needs of the people. That is the position – the international position – of changes that are taking place, and in that context we obtained a large measure of political independence.

“The task, therefore, that faced us was two-fold: to convert socially, culturally, economically and administratively a colonial system into a free system and also to do it in a manner calculated to give effect to the second need of changing world conditions when the true needs of the people were attended to as a primary condition.”

Bandaranaike built his strength on a rural basis. Sinhala as the official language, a special position for Buddhism as the religion of the majority, the delegation of power to village councils and the magic word ‘socialism’ were the most effective weapons in his armoury. He was the most articulate politician of his time and found little difficulty in getting his message across. He drew into his fold the village school teacher, the ayurvedic (indigenous) medical practitioner and the ambitious and capable young politician who would otherwise have had to be content with a modest post as a Government clerk. The General Election of 1956 proved that his efforts had not been in vain and the successes of the political party he created after he had himself departed from the scene show that he had read the signs correctly and acted shrewdly and with prescience.

Bandaranaike was a master of retort. Once when a Communist leader in the State Council had attacked him and when the same member pretended to be asleep, when it was Bandaranaike’s turn to counter-attack, he turned to an interrupter and said “Let sleeping dogs lie!” On another occasion Dr. N. M. Peres the Trotskyite leader, during the Budget debate said that Bandaranaike could not help being merely the “famous son of a famous father.” The merciless retort by Bandaranaike alluded to his opponent as the “obscure son of a still more obscure father.”

Six bullets from an assassin’s weapon laid him low.