Crown and Commonwealth in Asia

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IN I947 four Asian countries, parts of the Commonwealth, became independent. Burma became a republic outside the Commonwealth; India became a republic inside the Commonwealth; Pakistan will follow India's example as soon as she has settled her constitutional structure; Ceylon alone has retained the monarchy. My knowledge of Burma is too limited to enable me to draw useful conclusions. Pakistan shares the attitudes of India, but would probably have retained the monarchy if India had done so. The effective comparison, therefore, is between India and Ceylon. There seem to be at least four relevant differences. In the first place, Ceylon's agitation for independence had been wholly constitutional; nationalist historians had to go back to the Kandyan rebellion of i8i8 to find martyrs, and since then not a drop of blood has been shed in the cause of independence. There had been nothing equivalent to the non-cooperation movement in India; on the contrary, Ceylonese Ministers had been continuously in power since I93I and had, as members of the War Council, collaborated with the commanders of the armed forces of the United Kingdom during the war with Japan. Though Indian nationalist propaganda had produced an echo in Ceylon, the methods of peaceful persuasion had been substituted for the method of satyagraia which Mahatma Gandhi had inspired in India. This does not mean that British rule was regarded with favour or the Governor considered to be much better than the instrument of 'imperialist exploitation', but it does mean that tempers were much cooler and that leaders like the late Mr D. S. Senanayake could regard the problem of future relations with the Commonwealth quite dispassionately. In the second place, Ceylon has a long monarchical tradition derived through the Kandyan kingdom from the ancient Sinhalese kingdoms. A good deal of ingenuity is required to prove the apostolic succession from Prince Vijaya to Queen Elizabeth II, but nationalist history is not less influential through being as romantic as the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It was important that the first Prime Minister could claim to be the representative of the oldest monarchy in the Commonwealth and that, when she visited Ceylon, the Queen could sit on the Kandyan throne in the Assembly Hall of the Kandyan kings. In the third place, though few seem to have rationalized the sentiment, there was a fairly general feeling that when one has such a very powerful friend on the other side of the Palk Strait it was good to have another powerful friend far enough away not to be a danger.