Hector Abhayavardhana:
The Internationalist
by Jayantha Somasundaram
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music that he hears,
However measured or far away.
- Henry Thoreau (1854)
Hector Abhayavardhana
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Last month the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), the country's oldest
political movement, celebrated its 70th anniversary. The founding
generation of Sama Samajists encountered a world that was vastly
different from our's. It was a world rigidly stratified by social class
and caste hierarchy. It was a world in which it was seditious to
question the legitimacy of European colonial rule. It was a world that
was so steeped in tradition and conservatism that it was revolutionary
to even contemplate change.
Paradoxically it was also an age of excitement. It was a time of war,
a time of economic upheaval, a time of anti-imperialist struggle and a
time of revolution. It was an age when it was easy to be filled with a
sense of expectation, a sense of romance and a sense of heroism.
Birth
Hector Abhayavardhana who turns 87 on January 5, is the last
remaining Sama Samajist of its early years.
He was born in an Anglican vicarage in Kandy where his maternal
grandfather, Rev. Amarasekera was Minister. His father Hector Wilfred
Abeywardena was Chief Clerk in Governor Regional Stubs office. His
middle class Govigama Protestant heritage meant that Hector belonged to
a privileged strata in society.
Hector received an exclusive education, in English, at the premier
Anglican Public School, St. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia. He then
proceeded to the Ceylon University College where he continued his
liberal arts studies and to the Colombo Law College, where the Ceylonese
elite were groomed for their places within British Ceylon.
Hector turned his back on this path, rejecting the very foundations
of the system that offered position and privilege to aspiring young
Ceylonese.
He opposed British rule as well as capitalism, the economic system
that propelled colonialism.
Best years
Through the most radical political movement of his day, the Lanka
Sama Samaja Party, he threw in his lot with the under-privileged the
exploited and the marginalised. He committed himself to champion the
cause of the voiceless ,regardless of race, religion or caste. He
identified not only with resistance movement in his own country, but
gave his best years in the service of the struggle in India. Such non
sectarian internationalism is the highest expression of radicalism.
Anti-Colonialism
In 1935 while the LSSP was taking shape, Hector Abhayavardhana was
still a student at St. Thomas'. In his English class, he along with his
fellow matriculation student, were posed the following question by their
teacher W. T. Keeble: Would you have been better off under your own
king? In responding to this question Hector began to address the issue
of nationalism and his own status under British colonial rule.
His views were also influences by a relative, George Amerasinghe who
was an admirer of Gandhi and the Indian Congress. Through him Hector
began to follow events in the Madras Hindu a newspaper he still
subscribes to.
At about this time Hector also began to purchase publication of
Harold Laski's Left Book Club through which he was introduced to
critical views prevailing in Europe. These influences together fashioned
a sense of nationalism which was strongly internalises and secular,
looking to the Indian resistance movement and the Russian Revolution as
models.
Hector Abhayayvardhana attended his first LSSP rally at Galle Face
Green on May 5, 1937, when the party dramatically surfaced Bracegirdle
whom the colonial Police had been desperately searching for.
His political consciousness continued to grow as he entered
University College and came under the influence of Lyn Ludowyke and Dric
d' Souza, teachers who had Marxist sympathies. While seeking out the
company of dissenters like E. R. S. R. Coomaraswamy at the Varsity,
Hector also launched a discussion group, the Mount Lavinia Literary
Society, which had among its guest speakers Dr. Colvin R. de Silva and
J. R. Jayewardene.
Hector Abhayavardhana was recruited to the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in
1940 by Esmond Wickremesinghe, an activist among university students.
Hector became part of the clandestine section of the LSSP that was
established to work underground in the event the party was proscribed.
His task was to maintain a safe house for Leslie Goonewardene who headed
the clandestine wing.
The Indian Years
In June 1940 the colonial authorities proscribed the LSSP and
arrested its leaders: Dr. N. M. Perera, Philip Gunawardene, Dr. Colvin
R. de Silva and Edmund Samarakkody.
In the wake of the Easter Sunday Japanese air raid in 1942, the
imprisoned Sama Samajists escaped from Bogambara Prison Kandy, and along
with Leslie and Vivienne Goonewardene who had been operating
underground, made their way to India. Hector Abhayavardhana joined them
in India and worked with his fellow Sama Samaja exiles until July 1943
when he along with Dr. N. M. Perera and Philip Goonewardene were
arrested in Bombay and deported to Colombo.
Released on bail Hector disguised himself as an Anglican clergyman
and took a ride on an RAF plane to Bangalore. He made his way to Baroda
where he worked with a group of anti-British agitators who kept him
under cover in a slum. Here, he contracted smallpox which nearly killed
him. After he recovered, Hector went north to Calcutta from where most
of the Sama Samajists operate until the end of the war.
Hector Abhayavardhana was among four Sama Samajists who remained in
India after the war. He engaged in both party work and political
journalism all over India. After some time in Bombay working on the
fortnightly New Spark, Hector moved first to Madras where he became
General Secretary of the Socialist Party which came out of the 1948
merger of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI)
and the Congress Socialist Party.
Then on to New Delhi where he was editor of the Socialist Appeal and
contributor to the Hindustan Standard. Later at Ranmanohar Lohi's
request, he spent two years in Hyderabad editing Mankind. And then back
to Delhi where he began the critical journal Maral, named after the
mythical Indian bird that was able to sift milk from an admixture of
water and milk. Each issue of Maral dealt with a different political
theme, national or international.
Hector Abhayavardhana spent 18 years as a practical internationalist
working with and for the people of India. In August 1992 on the 50th
anniversary of the Quit India move, Hector along with Vivienne
Goonewardene and Bernard Soysa were guests of honour in New Delhi.
In 1959 Hector Abhayavardhana married Kusala Fernando and returned to
his homeland to begin a new chapter in his personal and political life.
This was a period of political ferment. Both the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
and the United National Party seemed to be discredited and in decline.
The LSSP entered the March 1960 General Election confident of being
returned to power.
Hector realised however that the LSSP had come to a fork on the
political road. It could not operate as both a Parliamentary and
revolutionary outfit. Given the weakness of the working class the party
had to rethink its strategy.
Cynical disenfranchisement
Hector realised that despite the LSSP having taken principled stands
on all major issues, despite unequivocally championing every worthwhile
cause, its inability to secure power stemmed from a long history of
fragmentation and emasculation of the working class.
It started in 1938 when Jawaharlal Nehru came to Sri Lanka to report
on the status of the plantation workers of Indian origin. The LSSP
pleaded with Nehru against the formation of a communal organisation for
them, fearing it would open the door for these workers becoming pawns in
racial politics.
They were prophetic: with the formation in 1939 of the Ceylon Indian
Congress, the forerunner of the Ceylon Workers Congress, the stage was
set for not only the injection of communalism into working class
politics, but also the cynical disenfranchisement of the workers of
Indian origin in order to weaken the Left movement.
"It is alleged," says Hector, "that the presence of the Indian
plantation workers on the electoral lists enabled them to return
candidates of Indian decent to 7 parliamentary seats and influence the
verdict in another 20 parliamentary constituencies, such that
left-minded opponents of the UNP were returned at the 1947 election."
The subsequent fragmentation of Sri Lanka politics along communal
lines would proceed over the next half century. "By expelling the
Indians the UNP hoped to ensure its majority," explains Hector.
"Bandaranaike saw no reason why he should not collect his votes by
advancing the interests of the Sinhalese majority community of the
country. Chelvannayakam saw the necessity of constitutional reforms to
ensure that the interests of the Tamils were protected. All of them
would be benefited by spreading communal attitudes for the purpose of
collecting votes."
The plantation workers comprised half of all organised labour in the
country.
By limiting them to trade union activities and denying them a stake
in mainstream politics Sri Lanka's working class was mortally weakened
and divided. Unlike the plantation workers who were confined to their
work environment and solely dependent for their livelihood on the sale
of their labour, the urban worker was socially less homogenous.
Many of them do not live in the towns but commute from villages where
they still had interests in small plots of agricultural land. Not only
were they less dependent on the sale of their labour but within rural
society they could aspire to middle class ambitions and status as small
property owners.
Given the limited size of the urban working class, and given the
weaknesses arising out of their social ambiguity, the doctrinaire policy
of the Left of seeking to advance reforms through a party of politically
conscious urban workers was in effect doomed.
According to Hector the left failed because they "persisted with the
strategic line of mobilising the rural poor through a party based on the
working class.
Samagi Peramuna
As Sri Lanka went through the tumultuous sixties, Hector realised the
need to forge a united front with other progressive political forces in
order to bring about changes that would improve the economic and
political position of the weaker sections of society. Given the weak
state of the economy this required a major role on the part of the
Government, which needed to engage in the economy in order to deliver
benefits to the people.
He promoted an alliance with the SLFP and the Communist Party, which
finally emerged with the signing of the Common Programme in 1968. During
the years the United Front was in opposition Hector launched the
Socialist Study Circle where its future leaders were intellectually and
politically groomed.
It served as a forum for the development of the ideas behind the far
reaching political and economic reforms that would be introduced after
1970.
During those years he also brought out the political weekly. The
Nation, to encourage serious discussion on current events. When the
United Front was in office (1970-75) Hector served as Chairman of the
Peoples' Bank attempting to make available the finance that small
enterprise needed for commerce, agriculture and industry. During this
period the People's Bank launched its monthly journal The Economic
Review.
Hector retains his intellectual courage, willing to critically
evaluate and even discard those concepts that have out-lived their
validity. Nor have global events left Hector behind. He remains
cognisant of trends and currents and does not shrink from formulating
theories to explain them.
The passage of time and the impact of the years have changed little.
Though physically confined Hector remains intellectually active and
mobile. His passion for understanding the world around him, for
analysing the course of events, and for questioning and challenging
ideas remains unchanged. |