Dudley Senanayake - the reluctant politician
M. B. DASSANAYAKE
Premier Dudley Senanayake’s 36th death
anniversary falls today. Reproduced below is an appreciation that we
published seven years ago in view of its topicality.
‘Dudley’ the second Prime Minister of Sri Lanka died on April 13,
1975, after a brief illness and was laid to rest on April 21, 1973.
Dudley Senanayake was a man for all seasons, even homage to him like
reminds us sadly that we ourselves are a Nation only seasonally; always
in the winter of some personal tragedy.
On April 13, 1973, we lost a great leader, guide and philosopher.
During the long years I knew him, I found him a fully integrated
personality. There was no conflict in his spiritual and political
values.
Dudley - a dedicated man -File photo |
History stands between man and oblivion. And history is no cold
marble slab carved with fine, decorative lettering. It lives and moves.
History is composed as much by what a leader had given to his people as
what the generation make of what is given. In the end, all our greatest
leaders have stood for few essential things, although each one of them
may have emphasised one at the expense of the other, although each left
the struggle unfinished.
Dudley Senanayake, by the light of his own political vision, stood
for the unity of this country, for an open society and for the economic
emancipation. No monument to him can possibly be finer or more enduring
than our own renewed dedication to these ideals.
Those who knew him to be a deeply religious man. Certainly, not in
the conventional manner. He died without achieving one purpose in his
life. His desire was to retire from politics and enter the Sangha.
As a child he had his religious training under the great scholar
Palane Sir Vajiragnana Nayake Thera. In latter life he had read widely
books on Buddhism and Buddhist Philosophy. On one occasion he had
shocked Kalukondayawe Pannasekera Maha Nayake Thera.
The two of them were returning from a ceremony at a Buddhist Temple
and on the way they had entered into a discourse of Buddhism. On a later
date, the Nayake Thera had told a friend of Dudley, “If Dudley Hamu goes
on like this, we of the Buddhist clergy may have to stop giving sermons,
I am amazed at his knowledge of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy”.
He was a reluctant politician; therefore a most forceful one. He did
not seek office, fame or popularity. These things pursued him.
After the death of his father, D. S. Senanayake, the first Prime
Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, at the age
of 41, when he became Prime Minister, in fact, it was thrust on him. He
named others for the office but it was the Government Parliamentary
Group that demanded his choice.
When he retired from politics in 1953 and absorbed himself in the
Temperance Movement, again it was the Party that sought his leadership.
He had no false airs. There was a simplicity and modesty which endeared
him to us.
Late in the evening wearing a sarong and a banian when he lounged in
the small office-room upstairs at ‘Woodlands’ that was the greatest
moment in his life. Thence he was at ease, whether he was discussing a
complex, political problem or just gossiping.
He liked golf, he liked his food, he liked the company of his
friends, all these things he enjoyed with zest.
Perhaps the years he enjoyed most were the years out of office. His
camera and his car were his fondest worldly goods, but in office his
leisure loving man worked like a precision machine. There was no day he
worked less than 12 hours. Often his schedule extended to 16-18 hours.
Whatever he did, he was a dedicated man. There was one thing that he
would not forgive - not keeping appointments. He timed everything, his
day as well as the nation’s economic endeavour.
That is how within three years he succeeded in raising Sri Lanka’s
self-sufficiency in rice from 40 to 75 percent. In 1961, after the
land-slide victory by the ‘Mahajana Eksath Peramuna the Kandy Municipal
Council Elections were held and I was nominated by him to contest the
‘Deiyannewela Ward’ against an MEP, stalwart in late T. B. Tennekoon,
who was the Social Services Minister, and the sitting Member for well
He was an intimate friend of mine and a person who was respected by
the rural masses as he moved freely with them. There were five
candidates but Tennekoon won comfortably.
Soon after Elections, I wrote to Senanayake and pointed out the
difficulties I faced due to the misdeeds of some of the candidates and
he replied by letter dated March 3, 1961, stating - “I am sorry to hear
about some of the misdeeds of some of the candidates and about the
difficulties you suffered, but I am however, encouraged by the fact that
you have not lost your faith in the Party.
Please remember that we deal with human beings, and as such, they
have their weaknesses. In all Parties we find individuals with these
human weaknesses.
Whilst trying our utmost to correct these we have in certain
circumstances in the greater interests to try to put up with some of
these weaknesses. I thank you for bringing these matters to my notice.
He possessed these human and straightforward qualities which the present
day politician do not possess.
The lasting monument to him would be the Gal Oya Scheme. I have heard
from Senanayake that when the blue-prints were presented to him the
American Engineers had told him that there was a thousand and one risk
regarding the height of the dam.”Do not take the risk, raise the dam”,
he said.
It did not take thousand years. But for his foresight, in the
unprecedented floods of 1958, the dam would have been washed away
bringing disaster to a greater part of the Eastern Province.
If Gal Oya valley today produces a quarter of Sri Lanka’s rice his
dream was to, in the great tradition of Mahasen, Parakramabahu and other
great Sinhala Kings, to make Sri Lanka self-sufficient in food.
He was denied this opportunity by his defeat in 1970. But he lived to
see his polices vindicated. His very opponents were forced to accept his
policies. The Mahaweli Project, World Bank Aid - these things, decried a
few years ago, are acclaimed today.
If I was a devoted follower of him, it was not blind faith that made
me tread his trail. In politics he was a pragmatist. While he abhorred
the concentration of wealth in a few individuals he equally refused to
contribute to theories of regimentation. With his associates and friends
he discussed matters.
He listened to them, he debated, and therefore, at the end the
convictions were our own.
He was shy, sensitive but a proud man. The whole nation knows how he
carried himself with dignity and majesty. Most of us are still benumbed
by the shock of his death.
The way he died - the design was certainly not a human creation. He
passed away bothering none. The nation was on holiday. The greater part
of the nation had with his free measure of rice, the Sinhalese New
Year’s first meal - on April 13, 1973, the day this patriot passed away.
Senanayake’s death, coinciding as it did with the Sinhala and Tamil
New Year and with Easter, saw a vast mass of our people dressed in a
common colour, in the simple, immaculate and neutral white.
This immense concourse and its countenance have provoked various
portentous speculations ranging from, it seems to us, the weird, the
fancifully far fetched and the downright silly.
Not all the tears which were shed when he died nor all the hymns and
hosannas that were recited are of much used to him and to us unless we
pluck from his own life, from the nettle of things said, done and
half-done, of achievements and failures, some flower, some meaning,
something which can endure. |