That statement of Dr Colvin

‘Two languages one nation and one language two nations’ is a famous statement attributed to Dr Colvin R De Silva, the LSSP stalwart and this was quoted in a recent article commemorating 75 years of the LSSP.

The fact however is that Dr Colvin and even the LSSP eventually grew out of this stand, with political maturity, as evidenced by the former’s address to the Constitutional Council in 1972 and the latter’s action in joining the SLFP in 1965.

However despite those revisions in policy, this particular statement made as early as 1958 continue to be identified with Dr Colvin, often out of context, by those who wish to be partisan against the people friendly policies of the SLFP lead government of 1956.

This statement in fact was very effectively countered by Mettananda, Ananda College Principal in 1956 itself when he posed the question to Dr De Silva, why he could not see the reality of two nations already existing in colonial and post colonial Ceylon i.e. English speaking and non English speaking? Mettananda pointed out that such a division in the society relates to cultural, social and economic differences that would always prove to be inimical to national integration and hence the Language Bill was introduced to minimize that position and to facilitate assimilation and integration.

Tamil language

The Bill granted, reasonable use of Tamil language in the North and East and the rights of Tamils to pursue education in their mother tongue. These incidentally were rights that the Tamils did not enjoy under colonialism and the Tamil leaders, entrenched in their own elitism, never considered those necessary for the average Tamil.

What the Bill did not grant was the ‘parity of status to Tamil with Sinhala’. This demand for parity was a hubristic demand from a 12 percent minority and Bandaranaike in his wisdom, sensing the fact that Tamil leadership in Madras Presidency (India) was planning to enlist the North and East of Sri Lanka into their proposed ‘Pan Tamil State’, resisted this demand.

Further, this same Dr Colvin R De Silva authored Sri Lanka’s first Republican Constitution in 1972 (much after that ‘prophetic’ remark) and that Constitution was called the ‘watershed in majoritisation’ by the Tamil United Liberation Front.

At the Constitutional Assembly in 1972 when Tamils demanded either ‘parity of status’ or ‘devolution of power’ Dr De Silva told them quite bluntly that “From the time we can remember this country always had a unitary government ..... This is a small country....... The damage that could result to this small nation living in this small country by dividing it into several units is demonstrated in our history.

Whenever the state of Lanka was divided into parts and sub kings were appointed to them under the control of one emperor, enemies here and abroad exploited such divisions to put one against the other. The final result of such hostile strategies was the loss of our very freedom to foreigners. The people of this country know this and I do not believe that they would be prepared, even for a moment to do away with this unitary character of this country”. (Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly March 15th 1971)

Non-racial political party

It was a fact however that the LSSP campaigned vigorously against the Language Bill and that was mainly because at that time the estate Tamil vote was concentrated around the LSSP and they even had a strong LSSP wing in Jaffna. This LSSP wing of Jaffna in fact was the only non-racial political party that was formed in Jaffna but it eventually succumbed to Chelvanayagam’s racialist onslaught at its full throttle at the time. Thus, by the 60’s the LSSP realized their folly of pandering to racial politics of Chelvanayagam and joined the SLFP accepting its progressive policies. Then in 1966, when the SLFP led coalition staged their opposition to the Dudley-Chelvanayagam Pact, the LSSP was in the forefront and its party activist Ven Dambarave Ratnasara Thera was killed during the protests.

Hence it now appears, even though Dr Colvin and the LSSP matured with time and distanced their party from the narrow separatism of TULF and anti Sinhala elite politics of the colonially privileged, there are elements within the LSSP that still can not come to terms with this reality. The following example should make these LSSP elements realize the damage they cause to the party and the country by incongruously continuing to attribute this statement to Dr Colvin.

World politics

World Council of Churches is a respected body in world politics and its recommendations are listed as reference documents in reports produced by UN agencies such as the ILO and the UNHCR. The WCC visited Sri Lanka in 1985 to collect first hand observations to compile a factual report on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and for this purpose they interviewed Tamil and Sinhala (mainly leftists) politicians. The report the WCC published after their independent research quotes this statement of Dr Colvin, again out of context, with no reference to his subsequent statements, implying that the educated Sinhalese too subscribe to the theory of ‘Tamil grievances resulting from the Language Bill’ (Sri Lanka - The War fuelled by ‘Peace’ authored by Palitha Senanayake).

Marxism in Germany

The problem LSSP had from its inception was that the party, in its strong ideological orientation, disregarded the need to be indigenous in Ceylon. Marx who theorized Marxism in Germany and Lenin who practised it in Russia did not have to emphasize on indigenousness because neither Germany nor Russia were colonies and their problem at the time was the monarchy.

The LSSP, without recognizing this subtlety, tried to introduce an ‘anti monarchial’ political doctrine to Ceylon when its people were struggling to free itself from world colonialism. Therefore, even when the party is 75, it would do a lot of good for the LSSP to face this reality and steer clear of pro colonial Chelvanayagam/TULF racial politics.