The Ceylon Insurrection of April 1971: Some Causes and Consequences

Abstract

IN MANY RESPECTS the political development of Ceylon provides a model in the evolution of states from dependence to independence and in the stages through which their post-independence politics pass. As a colony the island passed from unrestricted Governor's rule, through representative government (I924) to semi-responsible government (i93i) to responsibility and independence (1948). After independence it went through a decade of bourgeois-liberal rule, laissez-faire economic policies and elitist control of politics and administration. This lasted until the electoral revolution of I956 brought in the second phase of cultural (or communal) nationalism. This was a turbulent period when religious and communal divisions rent the nation and economic factors were subservient to linguistic, religious and cultural aspirations. After almost a decade of such politics the country was called upon to pay the bill for such indulgence, as well as to re-examine its nationalism and its cultural ethos and build the nation on more permanent and less divisive foundations. After a baptism of fire in the communal riots of I958 and a few more years of futile communal bickering, economic factors became dominant and by their sheer weight attracted the attention of the country. Communal politics now gave way to politics based on economic and social philosophies and to something approaching the classical Western divisions between political left and right. Well known communalists and communal parties now scurried for cover in the new alignment under the umbrella of one or the other of these groups.' The basic economic problems were also familiar and here too the island was, though less desirably, a model2-a colonial economy unable and unwilling to make the transition into a world where colonial trading patterns (and the prices dictated by these patterns) had broken down. Furthermore, with an Asian birth-rate and a European death-rate, Ceylon's economic growth