Sri Lankan independence movement
Once the Dutch had been evicted, their sovereignty ceded by the Treaty of Amiens and subsequent revolts in the low-country suppressed, the British began planning to capture the Kandyan Kingdom.
The leaders were yeomen-artisans, resembling the Levellers in England's Civil War period and mechanics such as Paul Revere and Tom Paine who were at the heart of the American Revolution.
However, the dispossessed peasantry was not employed on the plantations: The Kandyan Sinhalese villagers refused to abandon their traditional subsistence holdings and become wage-workers in the harsh conditions that prevailed on these new estates, despite the pressure exerted by the colonial government.
Through the Indian indenture system, hundreds of thousands of Tamil "coolies" from southern India were transported into Sri Lanka to work on European-owned cash crop plantations.
These entrepreneurs were from many castes and they strongly resented the historically unprecedented and unbuddhistic practice of 'caste discrimination' adopted by the Siam Nikaya in 1764, just 10 years after it had been established by a Thai monk.
It appealed in particular to small businessmen and yeomen, who now began to take centre stage against the Mudaliyars, an anglicised class of new elites created by the British rulers.
In a panic, the colonial authorities jailed a Boer wildlife official, H. H. Engelbrecht, after accusing him falsely of having supplied meat to the cruiser.
[7][8][9] Sir James Peiris initiated and drafted a secret memorandum with the support of Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan and E. W. Perera braved mine and submarine-infested seas (as well as the Police) to carry it in the soles of his shoes to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pleading for the repeal of martial law and describing the actions committed by the Police led by Dowbiggin during the riots.
The young people who stepped into the shoes of Dharmapala organised themselves into Youth Leagues, seeking independence and justice for Sri Lanka.
Influenced by the Indian Independence movement, it was secular and committed to Poorana Swaraj (Complete Self-Rule), national unity, and the eradication of inequalities imposed by caste.
Yearly until the Second World War, young men and women sold Suriya flowers on the streets on Armistice Day in competition with the Poppy sellers.
As Sybil described in Forward: The Progressive Weekly many years later: 'Work in connection with malaria relief was an eye-opener to many of these people who were just getting to know the peasant masses.
[5] The first manifesto of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party declared that its aims were the achievement of complete national independence, the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the abolition of inequalities arising from differences of race, caste, creed or gender.
Its deputies in the State Council after the 1936 general election, N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena and the other leaders Leslie Goonewardene and Colvin R. de Silva were aided in this struggle by not quite so radical members like Don Alwin Rajapaksa of Ruhuna and K. Natesa Iyer of the Indian Tamils.
In April 1937 Kamaladevi Chattopadyaya, a leader of the CSP addressed a large number of meetings in various parts of the country on a national tour organised by the LSSP.
He took an active part in organising a public meeting called by the LSSP on Galle Face Green in Colombo on 10 January 1937 to celebrate Sir Herbert Dowbiggin's departure from the island and to protest against the actions of the police during his tenure as Inspector General.
On 5 May, in the State Council, NM Perera and Philip Gunawardena moved a vote of censure on the Governor for having ordered the deportation of Bracegirdle without the advice of the acting Home Minister.
A writ of habeas corpus was served and the case was called before a bench of three Supreme Court judges presided over by Chief Justice Sir Sidney Abrahams.
The Ministers brought motions gifting the Sri Lankan taxpayers' money to the British war machine, which were opposed by the pro-independence members of the state council.
Two members of the Governing Party, Junius Richard Jayawardene and Dudley Senanayake, held discussions with the Japanese with a view to collaboration to oust the British.
Colvin R. de Silva appeared for the widow of Govindan and exposed the combined role of the police and employers in the white plantation raj.
The fall of Singapore and the subsequent defeat and sinking of the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse, punctured the propaganda of British invincibility.
Such was the panic amongst the British in Sri Lanka that a large turtle which came ashore was reported by an Australian unit as a number of Japanese amphibious vehicles.
Sinhalese and Tamils in Singapore and Malaysia formed the 'Lanka Regiment' of the Indian National Army, directly under Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
The leader of the house and Minister of Agriculture and Lands Don Stephen Senanayake left the CNC on the issue of independence, disagreeing with the revised aim of 'the achieving of freedom'.
At annual session of the Ceylon National Congress was held on 27–28 January 1945 its president, George E. de Silva, said, "Today we stand pledged to strive for freedom.
In November the LSSP-led All Ceylon United Motor Workers' Union launched an island-wide bus strike, which was successful in spite of the arrest of N. M. Perera, Philip Gunawardena and other leaders.
The authorities at first refused to negotiate, but finally the Acting Governor agreed to meet a deputation of the Government Workers' Trade Union Federation.
V. Kandasamy of the Government Clerical Service Union was shot dead at Dematagoda, on the way to Kolonnawa after a strike meeting at Hyde Park, Colombo, when the police repeatedly fired on the crowd.
At the elections of 1947, the UNP won a minority of the seats in Parliament, but cobbled together a coalition with the Sinhala Maha Sabha of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and the Tamil Congress of G. G. Ponnambalam.
