A Haunted Nation: India And The Legacy Of The Citizenship Act
Rajan Hoole
Sri Lanka: A Haunted Nation - The Social Underpinnings Of Communal Violence- Part 6
India And Plantation Labour
How Vittachi deals with the rights of Planta- tion Tamil labour of recent Indian origin who toiled many generations in semi-serfdom for the prosperity of others, too, has no doubt much ac- ceptance (p.5 of his book):
“D.S. Senanayake was extremely concerned about ethnic and religious harmony [having the example of the terrible happenings that were going on in India before him].
“Senanayake distrusted India and it was he who took the initiative in having a defence agreement with Britain, a decision which the Left was going to go on sniping at alleging that it showed Ceylon was not totally independent of Britain. He successfully took the Indian plantation workers who kept mi- grating between South India and Ceylon off the voters’ register and was able to get G.G. Ponnambalam [and several other Ceylon Tamils] to vote for this measure…”
He then goes on to add that the plantation labour voted Left and distorted the electoral bal- ance, and that after their disenfranchisement, “The Kandyan Sinhalese rural voter for the first time had a voice in the country’s affairs.”
There is again a simple assumption in the writer’s mind that the rural Kandyan Sinhalese voter was better served by representatives ap- pealing to the nationalist doctrine of the low country Sinhalese elite, rather than to class in- terest. One could also see the place of the Indian bogey in the nationalist doctrine of the ruling interests. If India was the cause for the defence pact with Britain, it points to a flight from real- ity on the part of the local leadership (see Sect. 5.4). Even long after the pact had lost all signifi- cance, Prime Minister Premadasa thought of in- voking it in the 1980s rather than mend fences with India.
It may however come as a surprise to many that, it was D.S. Senanayake himself who had on earlier occasions floated favourably the idea of federation with India. This was recalled by Darem, the Times of India political correspondent (6th May 1952 – Saturday Review 9.8.86). Darem had been told this by D.S. Senanayake in 1942, when, at the height of the Second World War, Ceylon would have been totally isolated but for the Royal (British) Navy and India. Ceylon’s economy was in the doldrums and India’s role was crucial in keeping Ceylon supplied with several essential food items. Senanayake also perceived that it was on India that Ceylon’s long term security interests would depend. What Senanayake sought were certain guarantees of autonomy. The problem was evidently, accord- ing to Darem, that the Indian leaders already had enough on their hands regarding India’s future. After the war, there was a boom in tea and rub- ber prices and it became a different story with a prosperous Ceylon.
