A National Election in ‘Time of Troubles’

by G. H. Peiris-June 8, 2020, 9:49 pm


The phrase ‘Time of Troubles’ is borrowed from the title of a classic sociological study of 19th century ‘Ceylon’ by Professor Ralph Pieris (1952). Here it is intended to highlight the fact that, although the imperial sunset over our island has often been described as a "peaceful transfer of power", it occurred at an extraordinarily stormy time – politically, economically and environmentally. The calamities that had plagued the country in the ‘Donoughmore era’ ̶ pauperising impact of the ‘Great Depression’, Malaria Epidemic of the mid-1930s with about a million people (one-fifth of the population in 1931) infected and 60,000 deaths from November 1934 to April 1935 (Briercliffe & Dalrymple-Champneys, 1937), the acute food-scarcity during the Second World War ̶ seemed to climax in the months leading up to the elections of 1947.

The General Election of 1947 in ‘Ceylon’ examined in this study was conducted a few months ahead of the withdrawal of British rule, and was based on the ‘Soulbury Constitution’ promulgated in May that year. When contextualised in the problems and constraints of that time, the orderly conduct of that election with an overall turnout of 61% of the total of registered voters must surely be considered a significant achievement for a low-income country on the eve of independence from four centuries of European colonial dominance. The experiences of that election have some relevance to the currently disputed issues concerning when and how the long delayed parliamentary elections of 2020 should be held.

Pre-Election Power Struggles

While tangible advances were being made since the early 1940s in Ceylon towards independent nationhood, there was simmering unrest at the grassroots especially in the densely populated parts of the colony. Foremost among its general causes was the precipitous price-decline of the entire range of agricultural exports in the aftermath of the World War. While the brunt of the consequent hardships had to be borne by the poverty-stricken ‘Indian Tamil’ workforce of the plantation sector (attributable to ‘estate’ owners laying-off parts of the workforce in order to curtail production costs), in the ‘mid-country’ areas of the highlands where villages are juxtaposed with ‘estates’, peasant producers of commodities for export also shared in the losses caused by the market recession.

Perhaps more significant as an issue of electoral politics, there were the expectations of the ‘Kandyan peasantry’ based on the belief that the emergence of a plantation-led economy under British rule had involved the extensive expropriation of land belonging to the indigenous people. There was no doubt regarding the authenticity of this belief in the mid-country ‘Kandyan’ areas. Hence those aspiring to inherit political power at the termination of British rule had to cater to the dire needs of landless village-dwellers and pacify their impatience about the tardy pace with which their grievances were being rectified under the agrarian policy reforms of the mid-1930s. The much publicised ‘Village Expansion Programme’ initiated under the provisions of the Land Development Ordinance of 1935 had made little headway in the highlands probably due to D. S. Senanayake’s belief that the plantation sector must be left intact as the bulwark of the country’s economy, and its corollary that land belonging to tea and rubber estates should be purchased by the government for ‘village expansion’ only if they were either abandoned or being uneconomically operated by their owners. The focus of the ‘Ministry of Agriculture and Land’ under Senanayake at this time was to solve the problem of landlessness in the peasantry by harnessing the idle resources of the Dry Zone which would involve restoration of the ancient transbasin hydraulic systems of the northern plains, and adding to it a mammoth multipurpose project in the Gal Oya valley. These two agrarian efforts, he believed, will, in addition to yielding the urgently needed economic benefits, also epitomise Sri Lanka’s national resurgence

In the ‘Indian Tamil’ community of the plantation sector there were misgivings regarding its future status in an independent ‘Ceylon’. Its anxiety was generated mainly by the displacements of expatriate Indian workers elsewhere in the sub-continent of that time. As made evident in Nirad Chaudhuri’s famous ‘Autobiography’ (1951), by 1946, there was a spatial polarisation of people on ethnic lines impelled by the Hindu-Muslim conflagrations in many parts of the Raj. Burma had already begun expelling Indian residents in several areas of that country (Verghese, 1996). Moreover, the ‘Indian Tamils’ in ‘Ceylon’ (9% of the population here as enumerated in 1946) had hardly ever concealed their allegiance to India. A corollary of this problem from political perspectives was that, since arable land in the ‘Wet Zone’ for distribution among landless peasants had to be bought by the government from plantation owners, such acquisitions were looked upon with disfavour by the leaders of the "Indian Tamil" community. There were reports in the Sinhala press of underemployed plantation workers in the ‘mid-county’ occupying as squatters uncultivated land lying adjacent to estates of tea and rubber, and of their eviction by the police.

These incidents of localised unrest became a volatile issue in 1946 when the government decided to acquire a 400-acre block of land in Bulathkohupitiya in Kegalle District. In anticipation of that acquisition, Saumyamoorthy Thondaman, the ‘Ceylon Indian Congress’ (CIC) leader, persuaded a group of about 150 persons from the workforce of an adjacent plantation to occupy the land with a claim that they had cultivated that venue over several generations. This resulted in a ‘Kandyan’-‘Indian Tamil’ clash involving police intervention, and the arrest of several persons identified as leaders among the squatters. A retaliatory Hartal of protest sponsored by the CIC spread to the higher areas of the Central Highlands disrupting tea industry over several weeks.

The post-war demobilisation of Ceylonese troops and the retrenchment of civilian workers employed by military contractors caused a sudden upsurge of employment in the formal sector by an estimated 100,000, generating a desperate clamour for lower- and middle-level salaried jobs. It was believed to have contributed to a wave of crime and vice especially in the larger urban areas. The derailment in May 1947 of a Jaffna-bound train near Anuradhapura at which four died and many were injured was believed to be an act of sabotage.

Meanwhile, trade union unrest in and around Colombo became more ominous than all else in its destabilising impact. It was based on a long-standing grievance regarding restriction by the colonial government of political rights (including trade union activity) of white-collar employees of the state sector. Since their main union (GCSU/ Government Clerical Service Union), with a membership of 21,000, was being controlled by the Marxist parties, D. S. Senanayake who had sided with the colonial regime in this dispute, qualified his stand as the elections approached, with an announcement that he would intervene in settling the dispute only if and when the British government makes a formal promise of granting independence to Ceylon.

With several of the larger trade unions of government workers joining the GCSU agitation, ignoring a threat issued by the Governor of the dismissal of government employees who join the General Strike being planned, the LSSP decided to convert the worker agitation to a struggle against "imperialism". Thus, in a massive and boisterous demonstration of protest the LSSP led the "downtrodden working class" in a march towards the inner city of Colombo to the beat of its anthem, "sādükin pelena ün dän ithin nägitiyau" (supposedly the Sinhala version of the Trotskyite ‘Fourth International’ lyric). In the course of this quixotic ‘revolt’ Velupillai Kandasamy, one of its leaders from Jaffna, was shot dead by the police. Many were injured; and, according to press reports, N. M. Perera, the party leader, was brutally assaulted and arrested. The main inheritors of power from the departing British –viz. stalwarts of the State Council– displayed an overt non-involvement in the stormy confrontation, leaving the task of suppression in the hands of the last British Governor. He, with reluctance, opted for a negotiated settlement, avoiding recourse to emergency military powers (Hulugalle, 1983). The ‘strike’ was in essence a demonstration of strength by the ‘left parties’. It provided a huge electoral boost to the LSSP.

The woes of British Ceylon were aggravated further by a prolonged monsoonal deluge that began in May 1947 surpassing in intensity the highest rains ever recorded in the Wet Zone. Enhanced by a cyclone in mid-August, the rainfall records on the 14th and 15th of the month in western flanks of the Central Highlands exceeded 400 mm/4". Ecological damage in the form of floods and earth-slips was enormous. About 450,000 people (7% of the total population) were rendered homeless. They had to be accommodated in temporary shelters and, thereafter, permanently re-settled in flood-free localities – especially in ‘Village Expansion Schemes’– which entailed, not merely the distribution of land in small allotments, but the provision of a package of welfare assistance including housing and community needs. In order to resettle the displaced peasantry from their temporary shelters it became essential for the government to accelerate the pace of land acquisition from plantations in the face of a threat by the CIC to call another strike in the main plantation industries. The flood-damage to public infrastructure such as public buildings, rail tracts, roads, bridges and power transmission lines also required a colossal re-construction effort.

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