T B Jayah and the role of minorities
T B Jayah Memorial lecture by Finance and
Planning Deputy Minister Dr Sarath Amunugama on June 23
I like to refer today to three aspects of Jayah’s contribution. The
first is Jayah’s personal career. The second aspect is his contribution
to education, particularly Muslim education and the third aspect is his
contribution to amicable political and communal relationships in this
country at that time.
If you look at his personal emergence into prominence, there is one
lesson of great importance, not only to the Muslims but to all young
people of this country, particularly those who come from rural areas and
less affluent homes. The lesson is that education is the path to success
and fulfilment. If you look at Jayah’s life, he rose step by step to the
highest point of eminence because of his education and his love of
knowledge.
He changed many schools. He may have started in the Kindergarten at
Galagedera but he went from school to school as his father was
transferred from Police station to station. Finally he came to St.
Thomas’s. He was a great classics scholar and he won all the English
prizes in school.
Dedication to education
What distinguished him was his dedication to education. And you will
find all those Muslim leaders that we remember today, T B Jayah, Dr
Kaleeel, A M A Aziz and Dr Baduideen Mahamud - all of them dedicated
their lives to education, particularly, to further the educational
prospects of the Muslim community. I think very few now know of the
abysmal level of education among the Muslim community prior to
Independence. In fact it would not be wrong to say that at that time
Muslim leaders were more interested in training children for commercial
activities; education for women was actively discouraged. There were so
many barriers to be crossed. So, what Dr Jayah undertook was a
superhuman task.
Education - a path to success. File photo |
He had to change the mindset of a whole generation of Muslims who did
not put so much of emphasis on education. So we can see him as one of
the first to receive higher education, to derive a benefit from
education and to go to the highest levels of society through education.
Having got there he saw the value of that education not only for his
community but for all the other communities in this country. That is how
he became a teacher at Ananda College. In that book we have some very
interesting anecdotes about Jayah and future left leaders.
He taught N M Perera, Philip Gunawardena, Robert Gunawardena and many
other Anandians who later joined the LSSP. According to Jayah’s
biographer Philip Gunawardena was a bright but difficult student. He
challenged his teachers, P De S Kularatne who was the Principal at that
time decided to sack him. He told Dr Jayah, who was then Philip’s
teacher, ‘I’ll have to get rid of this boy’, but Jayah had told the
Principal, “Sir give him one more chance. If he causes trouble one more
time not only will he be expelled, I give you my word, I will give up
teaching in this school and find another job”.
So on that compassionate plea the Principal gave another chance and
of course we later know what a wonderful and brilliant contribution
Philip Gunawardena made. This is in addition to the contribution he made
by producing our outstanding and decent colleague Dinesh Gunawardene. So
that was the calibre of person Jayah was and I think all of us will
remember great teachers like that. They were outstanding teachers who
would always stand up for the pupil. Taking a special interest in the
child with potential, is a sign of a very good teacher and I think Dr
Jayah was such an outstanding teacher.
Difficult journey
I will now turn to his contribution to Muslim education. It was a
very difficult journey. The elders in the community were not very
convinced that education was necessary. Secondly, even basic facilities
were not there. When Dr Jayah started Zahira, facilities were primitive.
So it was for all the other schools. If you take Ananda and Nalanda or
Christian Schools, Muslim or Hindu schools, at the beginning material
facilities were very limited. Sometime ago I was the Education Minister.
I always said that while material facilities like three and four
storeyed buildings are necessary, what is most important is a dedicated
Principal and staff.
There must be a teaching staff and an environment and culture
dedicated to the efficient transference of knowledge. That is more
important than five storeyed buildings.
Unfortunately today everybody is thinking of education as providing
more and more buildings. Nobody talks of high quality dedicated
teachers. Very few talk about the calibre of the teachers we are
producing. Those days before the State took over everything including
education, there was a lack of material benefits. It’s true that private
schools could not have got those benefits without State assistance. But
I am doubtful whether after taking over we are producing better teachers
or more committed teachers.
When they were short of funds educationists like Dr Malalasekera,
Jayah and P de S Kularatne went to their co-religionists or to their
friends and donors for support, not to the State. So here is a leader
who not only saw the value of education but was himself a teacher and
was able to create a school which was a credit to the Muslim community.
I read in that book, a long essay written by A M A Aziz about the
teaching methods of Dr Jayah. Among the politicians of that time, there
were many dedicated teachers. Some taught in top schools till they got
through Law College.
Distinguished civil servant
T B Jayah made an educational revolution. I think at first, he
persuaded his personal friends to send their children to this school.
The school improved soon after. Later A M A Azeez who was a very
distinguished civil servant gave up his job and became Principal of
Zahira. That shocked the rich Muslim community, because they never
expected a civil servant to give up everything and take up the cause of
Muslim education. That was a salutary shock, a good injection to the
system which awakened, particularly, the rich Muslim community, to the
value of education.
When you study the pre-independence period of Asian countries, we
find that the colonial regime challenged the national leaders to come up
with a joint demand for independence. They said “unless all communities
come together we cannot grant independence since we are the custodian of
the interests of all”. It was a very convenient mantra. If all the
communities do not come together, we cannot leave.
That was the strategy adopted. In Sri Lanka first there was an
attempt to split the Kandyan representatives from the Low country
representatives. When the representatives of the Low country were asking
for more power to the legislature, then Governor Mc Callum turned to a
delegation of Kandyan Councillors. Four Kandyan Councillors were sent to
London to say that Low country Councillers do not really represent the
whole Sinhala community. When the British were under pressure to give
more and more power to local leaders all over the Asia, they advised us,
quite hypocritically “you must all come together, otherwise we cannot
leave this country to the tyranny of the majority community and go
away”.
In Malaysia they said they cannot leave the country only to the
Malays. In India they asked ‘What about the Muslims’? In Sri Lanka they
asked D S Senanayake and his Ceylon National Congress ‘what about the
Tamils and the Muslims’? So, the main concern of leading politicians of
that period throughout Asia was to cultivate good relationships with all
the communities and to persuade minority leaders that they should
jointly ask for independence from the British.
Thus the role of Jayah and the Muslim community became crucial during
the negotiations for Independence. A similar ‘divide and rule’ strategy
was followed by the British Colonialists in Africa. Here they were
dealing with different tribes. In Kenya they said that the Kikuyu and
Luo tribes must come together before the handing over of power.
Kenyan leaders like Jomo Kenyatta tried hard to bring about
inter-tribal amity. But finally it was the Mau Mau which forced the
British to leave Kenya. In order to counter the British argument our
national leaders responded with a Pan-Sinhala Board of Ministers. In the
State Council all members were elected to Committees and the elected
Chairman of the Committee became a Minister. For example the Father of
Free Education C W W Kannangara was elected by his Committee and thereby
he became a Minister. He was not an appointee of D S Senanayake.
Minority communities
It is said that on the advice of Sundaralingam, who was a
mathematical genius, Senanayake manipulated the system so that within
each committee they could appoint a Sinhala Minister. This was to prove
to the British, that the Sinhalese could go it alone if necessary. But
it also meant that the minority communities would be upset with a Board
which had no Tamil or Muslim Ministers. So Senanayake abandoned the Pan-Sinhala
Board and opted for a conciliatory policy by forming the United National
Party.
The UNP was formed as a signal to the British that all the local
committees were now united behind D S Senanayake. It was a way of
getting away from earlier formations like the Sinhala Maha Sabha, Muslim
Congress, Tamil Congress etc.
The role of Dr. T B Jayah becomes paramount because had he, or the
Muslim community, sided with the British at that time, granting of
Independence to Ceylon would have been postponed. It is only because the
minorities agreed that there was a United Front called the UNP asking
for Independence. But one man was against it. That was G G Ponnambalam
who tried to extract his pound of flesh. He said I will sign on the
dotted line only if you agree to ‘Fifty Fifty’.
That is 50 percent of the seats for the Sinhalese and 50 percent for
the minorities. Only if you agree to that, he told D S Senanayake, will
I support the call for Independence. It was at this point that Jayah
rejected the ‘Fifty Fifty’ formula. He said he preferred to work in
trust, to work in faith and goodwill with the majority community.
Thereby he totally undercut G G Ponnambalam’s ‘Fifty Fifty’ cry. That
was the death knell of ‘Fifty Fifty’. If Jayah joined the ‘Fifty Fifty’
cry at that time, Independence would have been postponed. That is my
analysis of the situation as a student of the politics of that period.
You have to remember that even the word Sinhala was erased from the
political lexicon.
Political commentators
S W R D Bandaranaike ditched the idea of the Sinhala Maha Saba and he
first joined the UNP and later set up the Sri Lanka Freedom Party which
too did not have racial connotations. Everybody felt that communal
parties were counter-productive. In the dispatches to London, the
British Governor would say they are calling themselves Muslim Congress
or Sinhala Maha Sabha, or Tamil Congress.
They call themselves by all sorts of names, they never come together.
So quickly the United National Party was formed. The Sri Lanka Freedom
Party was formed. Of course, L S S P and C P didn’t have any communal
connotations. We see therefore that during that period Sinhala, Muslim
and Tamil parties came together under the UNP.
In England - if you say you are in the Labour Party nobody cares
about your ethnic identity. If you say you are a Conservative Party
member it is the same. So Jayah’s role in joining the UNP must be seen
as a crucial event. Unfortunately this aspect has been neglected by the
political commentators. In Sri Lanka D S Senanayake got the equation
right. But in India they failed. Because they could not get that
equation right in India Jinnah broke away.
There is a very good book called the ‘The Sole Spokesman’ by Ayesha
Jalal, which is a biography of Jinnah. Jinnah faced a terrible dilemma.
In British India you had several Muslim majority States - U.P., Bengal
and Punjab. In other States Muslims were in a minority.
Jinnah had to plan a strategy to face this reality. Do we ask for
more power to these States, in which case he gets more power in the
Muslim States but no power in the non Muslim States? So he had to always
take a risk in Indian politics.
He had to say one thing (give more power to the local authority in
Muslim States) and in the non Muslim State, being afraid of the Hindus,
he had to say don’t give so much of power to the periphery. He had to go
on changing his tactics.
It is long story but in Sri Lanka our leaders got it right, in India
they did not get it right and it led inevitably to partition. One could
argue that though we got it right in 1948, we couldn’t get it right
afterwards. That is why separation came to British India by way of the
birth of two States.
Political decision-making
We too had a separatist movement after Independence. Fortunately it
has been crushed. So you can see a structure, a pattern in communal
relations.
This is how you should analyse politics, not just recording that this
man said this and that man said that.
We must analyse the pattern of political decision-making in the
post-Independence period. We have to remember that at a crucial time the
Muslim community led by Jayah threw in their lot with the Sinhala and
the majority of Tamil leaders. G G Ponnambalam was not recognized as the
‘Sole Spokesman’ of the Tamils at that time or even afterwards.
Ponnambalam did not persist with his opposition. On the national flag
issue, he signed together with Jayah as a member of that Committee to
adopt the present flag. Only Natesan didn’t agree. Ponnambalam later
accepted Cabinet office under D S Senanayake.
Therefore that it is very right that all of us should get together
today and commemorate Dr Jayah, whose achievements may not have been
analysed in detail previously, but certainly deserves to be. When people
begin to write the history of that period in an analytical way, there is
no doubt that Dr T B Jayah’s contribution will be given due recognition. |