The Second Freedom Struggle (Part II)
Victor Ivan returns to 1947-48 to show how the Soulbury Constitution was made and how quickly it was disfigured — the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act, and the habit of amending away inconvenient safeguards.
ව්යවස්ථාවක් හදාගැනීමේ ප්රශ්නය 3
The third part of Ivan’s series on constitution-making examines the Soulbury constitution, drafted around D.S. Senanayake’s wishes by Ivor Jennings, whose weak safeguards for minorities Lord Soulbury later regretted, and Colvin R. de Silva’s 1972 republican constitution, whose unitary state, primacy for Buddhism and Sinhala-only laws the Federal Party rejected. The Tamil representatives walked out, and the road led to the 1976 Vaddukoddai resolution for a separate state.
බොරුව හා රැවටිල්ල ජාතික ලක්ෂණයක්ද?
Ivan asks whether deceit is a national habit, and finds it at every turn of modern history: D.S. Senanayake’s staged ‘farmers’ and the governor-generalship promised to Lord Soulbury, the 1962 ‘gin-and-tonic’ coup plot, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s Sinhala Only opportunism, and John D’Oyly’s bloodless capture of Kandy in 1815, whose native helpers’ descendants became the independence elite. Drawing on Marshall Singer, Henpitagedara Gnanaseeha and Robert Knox, he argues that leaders and people have deceived each other on language and religion until the country fell into an abyss.
ලේ තැවරුණු නිදහසේ හැටපස් වසර
On the 65th anniversary of independence, Ivan argues that Sri Lanka never met the two conditions a nation-state needed: a united nation and a democratic political society. Contrasting India’s mass freedom struggle and three-year constituent assembly with Ceylon’s bloodless, deferential transfer of power, he recalls caste and religion used against A.E. Goonesinha, E.W. Perera and Arunachalam, and Oliver Goonetilleke’s manipulation of the Soulbury Commission. Each constitution since, culminating in the executive presidency, has deepened the distortion.