The problems of Sri Lanka cannot be laid entirely at the feet of
the British. Alot has to do with the decisions made by their
leaders since independence. Here's an account by LKY, who witnessed
the transition from an Asian economic powerhourse to the troubled
spot it is today:
My first visit to Sri Lanka was in April 1956 on my way to
London. I stayed at the Galle Face Hotel, their premier British-era
hotel by the sea. I walked around the city of Colombo, impressed by
the public buildings
. undamaged by the war, because Mountbatten
had based his Southeast Asia Command in Kandy. Ceylon had more
resources and better infrastructure than Singapore.
That same year, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike won the
election as leader of the new Sri Lanka Freedom Party and became
prime minister. He had promised to make Sinhalese the national
language and Buddhism the national religion. He was a brown pukka
sahib, English-educated and born a Christian; he had decided on
nativism and converted to Buddhism, and had become a champion of
the Sinhalese language. It was the start of the unravelling of
Ceylon.
A dapper little man, well-dressed and articulate, Bandaranaiake was
elated at having obtained an election mandate from the Sinhalese
majority to make Ceylon a more nativist society. It was a reaction
against the Brown Sahib society the political elite who on
inheriting power had modelled themselves on the British, including
their lifestyle. Sir John Kotelawala, the prime minister whom
Bandaranaike succeeded, went horse riding every morning.
Bandarnaike did not seem troubled that the Jaffna Tamils and other
minorities would be at a disadvantage now that Sinhalese was the
national language, or by the unease of Hindu Tamils, the Muslim
Moors and the Christian Burghers at the elevated status of Buddhism
as the national religion. He had been president of the Oxford Union
and he spoke as if he was still in the Oxford Union debating
society. I was not surprised when, three years later, he was
assassinated by a Buddhist monk. I thought it ironic that a
Buddhist monk, dissatisfied with the countrys slow rate of
progress in making Buddhism the national religion, should have done
it.
In the election that followed, his widow, Srimavo Bandaranaike,
became prime minister on the sympathy vote
.. Her nephew, Felix
Bandaranaike, was her eminence grise on international affairs.
Bright, but not profound, he claimed good fortune of geography and
history had blessed Ceylon with peace and security so that only 2.5
per cent of its budget was spent on defence. I wonder what he have
said in the late 1980s when more than half its budget went into
arms and the defence forces to crush the Jaffna Tamil rebellion.
Ceylon was Britains model Commonwealth country. After the
war,
when Ceylon gained independence in 1948, it was the classic
model of gradual evolution to independence.
Alas, it did not work out. During my visits over the years, I
watched a promising country go to waste. One-man-one-vote did not
solve a basic problem. The majority of some eight million Sinhalese
could always outvote the two million Jaffna Tamils who had been
disadvantaged by the switch from English to Sinhalese as the
official language. From having no official religion, the Sinhalese
made Buddhism their national religion. As Hindus, the Tamils felt
dispossessed.
In October 1966, on my way back from a prime ministers conference
in London, I visited Colombo to meet Prime Minister Dudley
Senanayake. He was a gentle if resigned and fatalistic man
He
sent me by train to Nuwara Eliya, their once beautiful hill
station. It was a most instructive lesson on what happened after
independence
.. At dinner, a wise and sad looking elderly Sinhalese
explained that what had happened was inevitable with popular
elections. The Sinhalese wanted to be the dominant race; they
wanted to take over from the British as managers in the tea and
coconut plantations, and from the Tamils who were the senior civil
servants. They had to go through the tragedy of making Sinhalese
the official language for which they had paid dearly, translating
everything from English to Sinhalese and Tamil, a slow and unwieldy
process. The universities taught in the three languages: Sinhalese
to the majority, Tamil to the Jaffna Tamils, and English to the
Burghers. At the University in Kandy I had asked the
vice-chancellor how three different engineers educated in three
languages collaborated in building one bridge. He was a Burgher,
and wore a Cambridge university tie so that I would recognise he
had a proper PhD. He replied, That, sir, is a political question
for the ministers to answer. I asked about the books. He replied
that basic textbooks were translated from English into Sinhalese
and Tamil, always three to four editions late by the time they were
printed.
The tea plantations were in a deplorable condition
. Without
strict discipline the tea pluckers were picking not only young
shoots but also full-grown leaves which would not brew good
tea
... I did not visit Ceylon for many years, not until I had
met their newly elected prime minister, Junius Richard Jayewardene,
in 1978 at a CHOGRM conference in Sydney. In 1972 Prime Minister
Mrs Bandaranaike had already changed the countrys name, Ceylon, to
Sri Lanka, and made it a republic. The changes did not improve the
fortunes of the country. Its tea is sold as Ceylon tea.
Like Solomon Bandaranaike, Jayewardene was born a Christian,
converted to Buddhism and embraced nativism to identify himself
with the people. In his 70-odd years, he had been through the ups
and downs of politics, more downs than ups, and became
philosophical in his acceptance of lowered targets
. After meeting
me in Sydney, he came to Singapore, he said, to involve us in its
development. I was impressed
and was persuaded to visit Sri Lanka
in April 1978. He said that he would offer autonomy to the Tamils
of Jaffna. I did not realise that he could not give way on the supremacy of the
Sinhalese over the Tamils, which was to lead to civil war in 1983
and destroy any hope of a prosperous Sri Lanka for Many years, if
not generations.
The greatest mistake Jayewardene made was over the distribution
of reclaimed land in the dry zone. With foreign aid, he revived an
ancient irrigation scheme based on tanks (reservoirs) which could
store water brought from the wet side of the mountains.
Unfortunately, he gave the reclaimed land to the Sinhalese, not the
Tamils who had historically been the farmers of this dry zone.
Dispossessed and squeezed, they launched the Tamil Tigers
..The war
that followed caused 50,000 deaths and even more casualties
..After
more than 15 years, it shows no sign of abating.
The fighting goes on. It is sad that the country whose ancient
name Serendip has given the English language the word serendipity
is now the epitome of conflict, pain, sorrow and
hopelessness.
