[14] This was partly due to the availability of Western style education built by American missionaries in the Tamil dominant Jaffna peninsula during the colonial era.

[15] In the first week of May 1956, Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike met with the Attorney General and the Legal Draftsman giving guidelines for the Language Bill.

On hearing this, Prof. J. E. Jayasuriya started a fast unto death at the parliament demanding Sinhala to be the only official language with no concessions granted to Tamil.

A contingent of volunteers were brought from Jaffna, Batticaloa and Trincomalee to Colombo by train and housed on the Bambalapitiya Vinayagar Temple.

With communal passions running high, Bandaranaike aware of the looming danger tried to get Chelvanayakam to cancel the satyagraha demonstration.

This group was briefed by V. Navaratnam, and it formed double file and walked towards Parliament singing devotional songs and holding placards led by Chelvanayakam and C. Vanniasingam.

The satyagraha protest congregated outside the parliament after the government decided to close the parliamentary debate to the public and barricade the building.

[19][20] The mob also stoned peaceful Tamil protesters as they marched to board a train heading back to Batticaloa at the Fort railway station.

[21] The same mob, after listening to a speech by populist Sinhalese politicians urging them to boycott Tamil businesses, then went on a spree of arson and looting in the city.

[25] Tamil senator S. Nadesan gave his account about the event: “Hooligans, in the very precincts of Parliament House, under the very nose of the Prime Minister of this country, set upon those innocent men seated there, bit their ears and beat them up mercilessly.

[27] Several Sinhalese families took refuge in the Buddhist temple and hospital and complained that government authorities had not given them adequate support.

[32] The chief amongst the rumours was that a Sinhalese girl had been raped and made to walk naked down the street in Batticaloa by a Tamil mob.

On 11 June, agitated Sinhalese mobs began roaming the streets of Gal Oya valley looking for Tamils to physically assault.

In return, Tamil mobs went burning irrigation and construction camps on the border of the Gal Oya area and shot a number of Sinhalese.

By noon of that day, there were further rumors that an army of 6,000 Tamils armed with guns were in the process of approaching the Sinhalese settlements in the Gal Oya valley.

[36] Deputy Inspector-General of Police Sydney de Zoysa personally went to Gal Oya valley and threatened local politicians with arrest if they incited the mob to violence, even if they were Cabinet Ministers.

Journalist Tarzie Vittachi states that over 150 civilians were killed in the entire Gal Oya valley during the entirety of the riots.

Pieter Keuneman, third member for Colombo Central noted that, while the Eastern Province had a history of communal rioting, the events of June 1956 dwarfed them.

He contended that explanations completely attributing the violence to factors peculiar to the Gal Oya valley, such as labor strikes, food shortages, or resentment against the administration, were not sufficient, and instead argued that the riots took place in the context of earlier incidents against Sinhalese in the Batticaloa-Kalmunai area.

He also argued that there were too few police in the Gal Oya valley, and that the government should be more careful when forming mixed colonies, where he noted most of the violence took place.