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by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs

Rural Lanka - the SLFP’ power base

Sri Lanka Freedom Party's major historical contribution was the leadership, which it provided for the far-reaching political changes of 1956, and it, therefore, would not be inappropriate to examine the significance of the political change of 1956 on the occasion of the 53rd anniversary of the SLFP, which still remains the major political dynamo of rural Sri Lanka.

The political change, which occurred in 1948, brought no major change in the colonial state. The colonial state began to undergo certain changes in the nineteen thirties through the introduction of the universal suffrage, the introduction of which was a landmark in the political history of the island as it laid the foundation for mass-oriented changes in the subsequent years.

Political and social changes took place in certain levels of activity of the State, and the grant of Dominion status in 1948 with the introduction of a Parliamentary system of government further accelerated the process of change in the country.

These changes, however, did not touch the vast majority of the people and the structure of the state, though came to democratized in stages, still remained in the imperialist mould. It was in this background that the political change of 1956 took place.

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Prof. Wiswa Warnapala

Number of events helped to bring about this epoch - making political change of 1956, which, in fact, took the form of a broad mass movement with avowed opposition to both imperialists and its local agents.

The political life of the country, which hitherto remained dominated by the English speaking elite and the gentry in both urban and rural society, underwent a transformation, the immediate result of which was the emergence of a new leadership based on the aspirations of the rural peasantry.

In addition to this stratum of the Sri Lankan society, there was the rural intelligentsia, consisting of the members of the Sangha, the village school master and the Ayurvedic physician, which gradually came to the forefront of the political scene, and their emergence as a political force in the rural areas took place during the second half of the State Council with its limited representative.

Government laid the foundation for a series of progressive economic and social changes in the country.

SWRD Bandaranaike, as the Minister in charge of Local Government and Health during the Donoughmore period, nurtured these important social groupings in the rural society with a view to creating the alternative leadership in the country, and it was to this layer in Sri Lankan society that he appealed through his political organization.

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SWRD Bandaranaike, who articulated the rural intelligentsia through the Sinhala Maha Sabha for more than a decade formed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951 largely in the form of a democratic alternative to both the UNP and the Marxist parties, and it, therefore, professed democratic socialism while claiming to stand for some measure of evolutionary socialism.

In addition to its commitment to both democracy and evolutionary socialism, it stood for both cultural renaissance and Buddhist revival; these issues emerged later as powerful forces of Sinhala nationalism which came to be spearheaded by the alternative political leadership based on the aspirations of the common man.

In 1952, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party entered the first electoral contest, and the pressure groups such as the All Ceylon Village Committees Conference and the All Ceylon Ayurvedic Physicians Conference were activated to support the party.

All Ceylon Village Committees Conference, which came to be formed as a non-political organization, underwent a change under SWRD Bandaranaike who was its president, and it subsequently became an effective pressure group.

Yet another fact, which needs to be highlighted, is the opposition, which the S.L.F.P. encountered at the very initial stages. SWRD openly declared that D.S. Senanayake was hostile to it from its very inception.

D.S. Senanayake, using his influence, organized the All Ceylon Village Headmen's Union in Colombo with a view to limiting the influence of SWRD Bandaranaike in the rural areas.

The 1952 general election, which the SLFP fought on three major issues - religion, swabasha and ayurveda - stimulated the emotions of the rural voter whose emergence as an arbiter in politics was a political development of fundamental importance.

It was only in 1952 that the voters demonstrated a visible interest in party conflicts and this was primarily because of the formation of the SLFP as a democratic alternative to the UNP which was in power, and the fact that the SLFP was able to obtain nine seats in Parliament showed that it has emerged as the largest single party in the opposition. This helped the leader of the SLFP SWRD Bandaranaike to become the Leader of the Opposition.

The office of the Leader of the opposition has been given due recognition by the Speaker due to the untiring efforts of Dr. N.M. Perera who carried 'the main' burden of opposition in the first Parliament.

The choice of SWRD Bandaranaike as the Leader of the Opposition, though split the opposition into a Maxist group and a democratic group, strengthened the opposition rank and it allowed SWRD Bandaranaike to emerge as the alternative Prime Minister.

The candidates, who contested the 1952 election, had strong influence in rural areas and this amply demonstrated the fact that the SLFP was getting itself organized on the basis of a support base associated with the traditional elements in the rural society.

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Social and political history of the last four decades can only be examined in terms of the political change of 1956. Though 1956 has been recognized as a vital political demarcation in the history of Sri Lanka, no attempt has been made so far to relate its significance to the subsequent developments in the area of politics.

The view has been expressed that the politics of modern Sri Lanka began with the popular electoral politics of 1931, and the extension of adult suffrage was a substantial political victory for a country, which underwent colonial domination.

The impact of this political development matures into an effective process of political change only in 1956, and its significance lies in the fact that it laid a strong foundation for the emergence of a process of politics based on the varied aspirations of the common man.

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party embraced most sections of this vast variegated stratum of our society and sought to reflect their aspirations and interests. The 1956 political change was brought about by an alliance of political forces, the major constituent of it was the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and its electoral platform was a common programme which provided a progressive and democratic lead on many burning issues of the day.

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It was a comprehensive programme with an element of radicalism, and it, however, represented not much of a deviation from the programme issued by the Executive Committee of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951.

The programme of the MEP included such important issues as the modernization of the constitution, the re-organization of democratic and economic rights of the people, the establishment of a democratic republic, the adoption of a realistic foreign policy with no involvement with power blocs, the establishment of friendly relations with all countries, re-organization of the economy with a view to achieving planned economic development, the introduction of a national system of education, the recognition of the Ayurvedic system of medicine and the recognition of the need to expand social services.

It stated that it would take steps to improve agriculture with schemes of diversification; measures would be taken to solve the problem of landlessness in the country.

In respect of industry, the policy was to run all key industries by the State, and steps would be taken to progressively nationalize all essential industries in such fields as transport, plantations, banking and insurance.

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The issues of language, religion and culture assumed importance in the course of the election campaign and these issues, including the place of Buddhism in the social and cultural life of the country, were used to articulate and mobilize the masses. Such issues were very appealing to the peasantry and the traditional village elite of the country.

In addition, the report of the Buddhist Commission became one of the leading campaign documents. The recognition accorded to these issues generated a great deal of popular enthusiasm among the electors, and the entire process of political change came to be manifested as a mass upsurge.

The rural voter, who hitherto remained apathetic to politics despite the introduction of the adult suffrage in 1931, came to the forefront, and it was his emergence as the sole arbiter in politics which inaugurated the period of politics of the common man! New phase in politics emerged along with the emergence of the era of the common man whose needs; interests and aspirations came to be reflected in the area of public policy in the post 1956 period.

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The historic electoral victory of SWRD Bandranaike at the 1956 general election, though, signalled a process of change, which was unprecedented in the history of Sri Lanka, derived inspiration from the forces nationalism, which were at work during the colonial period. As there was an integral relationship between the two, some reference to those historical antecedents is not at all irrelevant.

The nationalist revivalist movement of Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) and Piyadasa Srisena (1875-1946) laid the foundation for a nationalist awakening in the country, and it was this movement, associated with the Buddhist revivalist movement led by some Buddhist prelates of the period provided the ideology for the emergence of a Sinhala Nationalist Movement, from which leaders of the 1956 political change derived inspiration.

The religion, language and culture came to be used as symbols, and there were two others - John de Silva and Munidasa Cumaratunga, who played a significant role in different fields to lay the foundation for the emergence of Sri Lanka nationalism by bringing the traditional rural intelligentsia in to the forefront of the struggle in 1956.

John de Silva was the founder of a nationalist Sinhalese theatre through which he delivered yet another message to the Sinhalese elite who were waiting to enthrone their language, religion and culture.

Munidasa Cumaratunga was a Sinhalese Grammarian, who wanted to raise the Sri Lankan language to the status of a cause and a mission, made an attempt to establish an organization committed to this cause and Sinhala Samajaya was formed in 1935.

Cumaratunga became a member of the Sinhala Maha Sabha, which came to be formed in 1934 and he though came to be associated with it, did not remain inside it for a long time, as it was primarily a political organization with a different agenda.

But the fact remains that such nationalists were associated with the Sinhala Maha Sabha, which, in the thirties and forties, paved the way for the final popular upsurge of 1956.

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It was on the basis of this historical wave of Sinhala nationalism that the demand for the resurgence of the Sinhala language surfaced and it developed into a powerful movement which challenged and made a direct assault on the dominance of English and the English speaking elite in Sri Lankan society and politics.

The key element in the process of change was the restoration of the Sinhalese glory that the foreign rulers had destroyed and the whole process was seen as an attempt to resurrect a new wave of nationalism through which to realise the aspiration of a new independent state.

Yet another important phenomenon associated with this process of change was the emergence of an aggressive Buddhist movement, which brought the entire dispensation of the Maha Sanga in the country to the fore front as an active social and even political force.

The members of the Sangha utilizing their traditional leadership role in the villages played the significant role in mobilizing people for the historic electoral victory for 1956 and this again was seen as an attempt to restore the power of the Sinhalese.

The demand to make Sinhala the official language was borne out of the need to restore the glory of the Sinhalese as well as to eradicate the foreign influences on both language and culture.

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The 1956 political change, therefore, came to be treated as a major landmark in the political history of Sri Lanka, and its impact on the political, economic, social and cultural life of the people needs to be assessed from the point of view of the changes that took place in the last four decades.

Its major impact was in the area of the rural masses who, thereafter became major arbiters in the political conflict of Sri Lanka and it is with the political awakening of the rural Sri Lanka that the age of the common man came to the forefront of the political stage.

This became possible because the identities and symbols that were close to the hearts of the rural masses were regenerated and they for the first time in post-independent Sri Lanka, saw the emergence of the common man whose aspirations are to be treated and addressed seriously, by the new set of legislators who, in turn, could identify themselves with the ordinary man.

It was this enthusiasm of the common masses, which gave SWRD Bandaranaike and his associates such a massive fund of popular goodwill, which, in the end, came to be dubbed as the concept of "Ape Aanduwa" which means the government of the common man.

It is in this context that the emergence of the common man needs to be analyzed to see the extent to which it was associated with the opposition to both colonialism and imperialism. In addition to the economic impoverishment of the common man in the village, the western cultural influences isolated him from the mainstream of political and economic activities.

(To be continued)

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