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BRITAIN AND THE POLITICS OF CEYLON, 1948–1961*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2015

L. M. RATNAPALAN
L. M. RATNAPALAN*
Affiliation:
Yonsei University
*
Underwood International College, Yonsei University, 162–1, Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 406–840, Korealmratna@yonsei.ac.kr
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Abstract

This article traces the British relationship with Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the decade and a half after independence. The first part of this article shows how, within the context of the arrangements made at independence, the events of the years 1956–9 under the premiership of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike marked an important turning point in Britain's political and strategic relationship with the island. Then in the second part, British diplomatic records relating to Ceylonese politics are used to analyse the British response to Ceylon's ethno-political crisis during the early 1960s. Britain's reluctance to respond to this crisis was an outcome of the changed relations with Ceylon brought on during the Bandaranaike era.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 541 - 565
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the Journal's editor, the three reviewers, Frederick Cooper, and Bradford Bow for their helpful comments.

References

1 D. Chakrabarty, R. Majumdar, and A. Sartori, eds., From the colonial to the postcolonial: India and Pakistan in transition (Oxford, 2007); P. Duara, Decolonization: perspectives from now and then (London, 2004).

2 See for example J. Chatterji, Spoils of partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge, 2007).

3 S. Sivasundaram, Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the bounds of an Indian Ocean colony (Chicago, IL, 2013).

4 The name ‘Ceylon’ will be used to refer to the state unless the context is after 1972, when it was renamed ‘Sri Lanka’.

5 The best modern account of Britain's post-war relationship with Ceylon is the article by S. R. Ashton, ‘Ceylon’, in J. M. Brown and W. R. Louis, eds., Oxford history of the British empire, iv: The twentieth century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 447–64.

6 See P. M. McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian subcontinent, 1945–1965 (Cambridge, 2013); and A. I. Singh, The limits of British influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American relationship, 1947–1956 (London, 1993). McGarr's excellent study makes no mention of Ceylon in the index. Singh describes South Asia as ‘India and Pakistan from 15 August 1947, when the British transferred power to two successor states on the subcontinent’ (p. xi).

7 Chiefs of Staff, ‘Ceylon constitution’, 5 May 1947, CAB 129/18/47, UK National Archives (NA); Ashton, ‘Ceylon’, p. 448.

8 There are interesting political and chronological parallels with developments in the ‘old’ dominions. See Hopkins, A. G., ‘Rethinking decolonization’, Past and Present, 200 (2008), pp. 211–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 K. M. De Silva, History of Sri Lanka (New Delhi, 2005), pp. 623, 635, 638. See also Barrow, Ian, ‘Finding the nation in assassination: the death of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaiake and the assertion of a Sinhalese Sri Lankan identity’, The Historian 76 (2014), pp. 784–802CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nira Wickramasinghe's analysis emphasizes Bandaranaike's predecessor Sir John Kotelawala's pro-British sentiments, which will be challenged here. Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the modern age: a history (Oxford, 2014), pp. 233–4.

10 There is an older literature that attends to this in part. See for example De Silva, K. M., ‘Sri Lanka: the security problems of a small state’, Defence and Peace Economics, 10 (1999), pp. 361–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Harshan Kumarasingham, A political legacy of the British empire: power and the parliamentary system in post-colonial India and Sri Lanka (London, 2012); Kumarasingham, Harshan, ‘The jewel of the east yet has its flaws: the deceptive tranquillity surrounding Sri Lankan independence’, Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics, 72 (2013)Google Scholar; Kumarasingham, Harshan, ‘The “tropical dominions”: the appeal of dominion status in the decolonization of India, Pakistan and Ceylon’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 23 (2013), pp. 223–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 British engagement with Ceylon's ethno-politics is examined through a Commonwealth lens in L. M. Ratnapalan, ‘“Why disgrace the Commonwealth?” Ceylonese communalism, the search for global influence and the politics of a transnational organisation, 1948–1965’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (forthcoming).

13 ‘South Asia and the Commonwealth’, Round Table, 90 (2001), pp. 301–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The question of chronology assumes greater significance when the South Asian region is compared with other, perhaps better known, Cold War terrains. See T. Judt, ‘Whose story is it? The Cold War in retrospect’, in Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York, NY, 2008), pp. 368–83. See also O. A. Westad, ‘The Cold War and the international history of the twentieth century’, in M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad, eds., Cambridge history of the Cold War, i:Origins (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 1–19, at p. 2.

15 Holland, R. F., ‘The imperial factor in British strategies from Attlee to Macmillan, 1945–1963’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 12 (1984), pp. 165–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; W. R. Louis, ‘The dissolution of the British empire’, in Brown and Louis, eds., Oxford history of the British empire, iv, pp. 328–56.

16 Quoted in A. Deighton, ‘Britain and the Cold War, 1945–1955’, in Leffler and Westad, eds., Cambridge history of the Cold War, i, pp. 112–32.

17 For example, Moore describes the added British incentive in retaining India in the Commonwealth, of staving off communism in South-East Asia. R. J. Moore, Making the new Commonwealth (Oxford, 1987), p. 172.

18 Louis, W. R. and Robinson, R., ‘The imperialism of decolonization’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22 (1994), pp. 462–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Times, 10 Feb. 1948, p. 5, in which the writer observes that ‘British rule has done much for the island, both economically and politically.’

20 Louis, ‘Dissolution of the British empire’, p. 329; McGarr, Cold War in South Asia, p. 11.

21 John Darwin, Empire project: the rise and fall of the British world-system, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 553–8. More generally on the evolution of official British foreign policy, see A. N. Porter and A. J. Stockwell, British imperial policy and decolonization, 1938–1964, especially vol. ii:1951–1964 (Basingstoke, 1989).

22 P. Darby, British defence policy east of Suez, 1947–1968 (London, 1973), p. 3; Gupta, P. S., ‘British strategic and economic priorities during the negotiations for the transfer of power in South Asia, 1945–1947’, Bangladesh Historical Studies, 7 (1983), pp. 39–51Google Scholar.

23 Darby, British defence policy, p. 84.

24 Aldrich, R. and Coleman, M. discuss the important concept of ‘deniability to a potential enemy’ in ‘Britain and the strategic air offensive against the Soviet Union: the question of South Asian air bases, 1945–1949’, History, 74 (1989), pp. 400–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Chiefs of Staff, ‘Ceylon constitution’, 5 May 1947, CAB 129/18/47, NA.

26 Cabinet Conclusions, 13 May 1948, CAB 128/12/32, NA.

27 Cabinet Conclusions, 6 May 1947, CAB 128/9/44, NA.

28 Nicholas Mansergh, ed., Documents and speeches on British Commonwealth affairs (1931–1952), ii (London, 1953), pp. 749–50.

29 Times, 4 Dec. 1947, p. 3. The term ‘dominion’ was also held to better disguise the loss of British prestige. Kumarasingham, ‘Tropical dominions’, pp. 229–30, 244.

30 Louis and Robinson, ‘Imperialism of decolonization’, p. 463.

31 H. A. J. Hulugalle, Don Stephen Senanayake: Sri Lanka's first prime minister (Colombo, 2000; orig. publ. 1975), p. 204.

32 ‘Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake's speech in the House of Representatives on the motion on the independence of Ceylon’, in A. Jayawardane, Documents on Sri Lanka's foreign policy, 1947–1965 (Colombo, 2005), pp. 67–72; W. H. Wriggins, Ceylon: dilemmas of a new nation (New Delhi, 1980; orig. publ. 1960), p. 391; De Silva, ‘Sri Lanka’, p. 362.

33 Hulugalle, Senanayake, p. 223.

34 ‘Do hon. Members think that there is anything in this Defence Agreement with England that is going to stand in the way of complete freedom? It has been said that we have had nothing in these Agreements that is in the interest of our country. I just do not think so, Mr. Speaker.’ See ‘Defence agreement with Britain (statement of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, minister of health and local government, in the House of Representatives)’, in Jayawardane, Documents on Sri Lanka's foreign policy, pp. 85–7.

35 Wickramasinghe notes the imperial flavour of the independence celebrations in 1948. Sri Lanka in the modern age, pp. 157–61.

36 Patrick Gordon Walker, ‘Ceylon’, 17 Mar. 1948, CAB 129/26/1, NA.

37 The Listener, 18 Jan. 1951.

38 Hulugalle, Senanayake, p. 204.

39 For the British, the Colombo plan was also a means of ‘fostering the commonwealth connection’. See ‘Colombo plan’, note by the secretary of state for foreign affairs and other ministers, 20 Dec. 1951, CAB 129/48/51, NA.

40 Cabinet secretary, ‘Notebook’, 18 Aug. 1953, CAB 195/11/56, NA.

41 Secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, ‘United Kingdom defence installations in Ceylon’, 25 July 1952, CAB/129/54/37, NA.

42 Darwin, Empire project, pp. 569–70.

43 Viscount Swinton, ‘Relations with Ceylon’, 8 Dec. 1953, CAB 129/64/44, NA.

44 Qureshi, K., ‘Ceylon in world affairs’, Pakistan Horizon, 14 (1964), pp. 355–67Google Scholar. See also Kumarasingham, Political legacy, pp. 156–7, on the British preference for Dudley Senanayake over Kotelawala after Don Stephen Senanayake's death.

45 Sir John Lionel Kotelawala, Between two worlds: the collected speeches of the right honourable Sir John Kotelawala (Colombo, 1954), pp. 47–8.

46 ‘South East Asia defence: message from Ceylonese prime minister to UK foreign secretary saying that Ceylon is against the collective defence proposals’, 1954, FO 371/111876/1074/317, NA; Sir John Lionel Kotelawala, Bandung 1955: addresses to the Asian-African conference and statements to the press by the Rt. Hon. Sir John Kotelawala (Colombo, 1955), pp. 18–19. In 1954, Kotelawala also inaugurated the important pre-Bandung association of ‘Colombo powers’: India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia.

47 Kotelawala, Between two worlds, pp. 23–6.

48 Avtar Singh Bhasin, India–Sri Lanka relations and Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict document – 1947–2000, i (New Delhi, 2001), p. 12.

49 James Manor, The expedient utopian: Bandaranaike and Ceylon (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 3, 95, 103. Farmer argues that his nationalism was against ‘residuary imperialism’: Farmer, B. H., ‘The social basis of nationalism in Ceylon’, Journal of Asian Studies, 24 (1965), pp. 431–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Manor, Expedient utopian, pp. 143–4, 174.

51 ‘Speech at the inauguration of the Sri Lanka freedom party on 2nd September, 1951’, retrieved from www.swrdbandaranaike.lk/speeches_writings_slfp.html on 16 Feb, 2015.

52 Bhasin, India–Sri Lanka relations, pp. 15–16, 19; S. Gopal, gen. ed., Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, xxxvi (New Delhi, 2005), p. 8.

53 Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: a biography, ii:1947–1956 (Delhi, 1979), pp. 272–90.

54 Jayawardane, Documents on Sri Lanka's foreign policy, p. 6. See also Times, 25 June 1956, p. 8, in which Bandaranaike tells British reporters on a visit to London that ‘Our desire not to have bases stems from our basic foreign policy, indeed accepted by the previous government, that we should keep clear of power blocks.’

55 Harold Macmillan, Riding the storm, 1956–1959 (New York, NY, 1971), p. 395. See also Alec Douglas Home, Walter Monckton, ‘Ceylon’, 1 May 1956, CAB 129/81/7, NA.

56 C. Sumanapala, ‘Foreign policy of SWRD Bandaranaike’, Nation, 5 Jan. 2014. The agreement with the Chinese came into force on 1 Jan. 1958. See also De Silva, ‘Sri Lanka’, p. 365.

57 Times, 14 June 1956, p. 9.

58 ‘Inconsistent with our neutral policy’, Times, 5 Dec. 1956, p. 8; S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, ‘A record of achievement (address to annual session of S. L. F. P. in 1958)’, retrieved from www.swrdbandaranaike.lk/speeches_writings_slfp.html on 16 Feb. 2015. ‘Use of military bases against Egypt: request by Ceylonese prime minister for written assurance that UK will not use bases in Ceylon’, 1956, FO 371/119153/14211/2082, NA.

59 Alec Douglas Home, Walter Monckton, ‘Ceylon’, 1 May 1956, CAB 129/81/7, NA.

60 Times, 12 July 1956.

61 ‘British bases in Ceylon’, 4 July 1956, CAB 129/82/18, NA. See also Darwin, Empire project, pp. 541–2.

62 Cabinet Conclusions, 5 July 1956, CAB 128/30/271, NA. Some of these ideas may also have been influenced by First Sea Lord Mountbatten's views on rationalizing British naval defence in the wake of the sequence of defence cuts during the late 1950s.

63 De Silva, History of Sri Lanka, p. 636.

64 Sumanapala, ‘Foreign policy’.

65 French, David, ‘Duncan Sandys and the projection of British power after Suez’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 24 (2013), pp. 47, 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Darby, British defence policy, p. 128. See also the editorial ‘Ceylon on the move’ in Times, 11 Apr. 1956.

67 Times, 10 Jan. 1950, p. 4.

68 Bandaranaike, ‘A record of achievement’.

69 See Henshaw, P. J., ‘The transfer of Simonstown: Afrikaner nationalism, South African strategic dependence, and British global power’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 20 (1992), pp. 419–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Hopkins, ‘Rethinking decolonization’, p. 227.

71 Times, 4 Jan. 1957.

72 Louis, ‘Dissolution of the British empire’, p. 330.

73 This is the argument of De Silva, ‘Sri Lanka’, pp. 364–5.

74 See for example D. Reynolds, Britannia overruled: British policy and world power in the twentieth century (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 29–30.

75 The new British thinking is outlined in Macmillan's ‘Future policy study, 1960–1970’, 29 Feb. 1960, CAB 129/100/35, NA. See also Singh, Limits of British influence, p. 196; Reynolds, Britannia overruled, p. 212; Darby, British defence policy, p. 218.

76 Lorna Lloyd, Diplomacy with a difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006 (Leiden, 2007), pp. 191–2, 202.

77 Cabinet Conclusion, 4 June 1958, CAB 128/32/46, NA, indicates, for example, the degree of British distance from the Ceylon ethnic political question.

78 Steiner, Z., ‘The Foreign and Commonwealth Office: resistance and adaptation to changing times’, Contemporary British History, 18 (2004), pp. 13–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyam, R., ‘The primacy of geopolitics: the dynamics of British imperial policy, 1763–1963’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27 (1999), pp. 27–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, Britannia overruled, pp. 37–47.

79 Note of a conversation between the minister of state, CRO, the Rt Hon. C. J. M. Alport, TD, MP, and the Ceylon finance minister, Mr Dias Bandaranaike, on Thursday, 22 Sept. 1960, PREM 11/2915, NA.

80 Note for the record, PREM 11/2915, NA.

81 See Hansard HC Deb, 24 June 1960, vol. 625 c76W, and HC Deb, 27 July 1961, vol. 645 cc78–81W.

82 See Times of Ceylon, 21 Mar. 1961.

83 Wriggins, Ceylon, pp. 380–2.

84 Hansard HC Deb, 4 Feb. 1960, vol. 616 cc1199–201.

85 Ashton, ‘Ceylon’, p. 454. Strikingly, at independence, British business continued to be represented in the Ceylon parliament. Kumarasingham, Political legacy, p. 128. See also the praise of the chairman of the Anglo-Ceylon and General Estates Company for D. S. Senanayake's administration in his annual meeting in 1949 in the Times, 7 Oct. 1949, p. 9. Macmillan had earlier ‘begged’ Solomon Bandaranaike to leave alone the British-owned rubber and tea estates in any nationalization schemes. Macmillan, Riding the storm, p. 395.

86 Note from Sir Hamilton Kerr, Bart., MP to Rt Hon. the earl of Home, CRO, 11 Apr. 1960, DO 35/8906, NA. See also the enclosure: letter from W. W. Wood, George Steuart & Co., Ltd, Ceylon PO Box 151, Colombo, 1 Apr. 1960, to Sir Hamilton Kerr, MP, and the follow-up letter from Secretary of State Home to Sir Hamilton Kerr, 14 Apr. 1960. That Wood should contact Kerr instead of the high commissioner in Colombo might also have had something to do with the perceived incapacity for business of the British diplomatic corps at the time. See Steiner, ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, p. 26.

87 Ian Gardner, ‘My experiences in tea and rubber plantation management in Ceylon’, retrieved from www.scribd.com on 12 July 2014.

88 Qureshi, ‘Ceylon in world affairs’, p. 358.

89 The reference is to the riots of 1956 and 1958, in which hundreds of people, mainly Tamils, were killed.

90 Confidential letter from K. F. X. Burns, Office of High Commissioner, Colombo, to A. I. M. Davie, London, 23 Dec. 1960, and front matter – 17 Jan 1961, DO 196/96, NA.

91 Louis, ‘Dissolution of the British empire’, p. 349.

92 See the Federal party's resolutions at their annual convention in 1956 in Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi Silver Jubilee volume (London, 2000), pp. 297–8.

93 See ‘Editorial’, Times, 10 Jan. 1961.

94 Ball, S. J., ‘Harold Macmillan and the politics of defence: the market for strategic ideas during the Sandys era revisited’, Twentieth Century British History, 6 (1995), p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Confidential letter from high commissioner to Duncan Sandys, MP, secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, 9 Mar. 1961, DO 196/96, NA.

96 T. L. Crosthwait, from UK High Commission in Colombo, to V. C. Martin, CRO, 17 Apr. 1961, and T. L. Crosthwait to N. Pritchard, CMG, CRO, London, 20 Apr. 1961, DO 196/96, NA.

97 C. L. Crosthwait, report to N. Pritchard, 1 May 1961, DO 196/96, NA.

98 Letter from Secretary of State Home to Sir Hamilton Kerr, 14 Apr. 1960, DO 35/8906, NA.

99 For example, see the confidential letter from the high commissioner to Duncan Sandys, MP, secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, 1 Mar. 1961, and C. L. Crosthwait, report to N. Pritchard, 1 May 1961, DO 196/96, NA.

100 ‘M.P.s among 45 arrested in Ceylon’, Times, 19 Apr. 1961, p. 9.

101 Interestingly, other British experts on Ceylon had quite a different view about the causes of the political impasse between the Tamils and Ceylon's government. See B. H. Farmer's letter protesting the Times's earlier editorial criticizing the Tamil stance: Times, 17 Jan. 1961, p. 11.

102 ‘Secret: record of a conversation at Admiralty House on Monday, March 6 1961 at 3.00 p.m.’, DO 196/96, NA.

103 Confidential despatch (no. 6) from UK high commissioner to Ceylon, to Rt Hon. the earl of Home, secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, 20 May 1960, DO 35/8906, NA.

104 Duncan Sandys to his Excellency Mr A. F. Morley (from Singapore), 31 Mar. 1959, Churchill Archives Centre, papers of Lord Duncan-Sandys, DSND 6/45.