Recognition Of Universal Rights Is The Path To Prosperity In Sri Lanka


Sri Lanka has been under occupation at different periods for about two thousand years, initially it was under the Tamil kings of Pandya and Chola dynasty of South India at various periods throughout the history. Also, occupied by European colonial powers for about half a century, from the beginning of 16th century. At that time, there were three Kingdoms in different parts of Sri Lanka. One in the South and the other in Central Sri Lanka both were Sinhala Kingdoms, the third one was a Tamil Kingdom in the North. The Central Sri Lanka Kingdom finally had Tamil Kings because of marital links between South Indian Royals. Southern part of the Island came under the occupation of Portugal and later expanded to include Northern Sri Lanka after the conquest of Tamil Kingdom that had contact with Tamils of India via common heritage. Holland took over from Portugal and finally ended up with Great Britain. British unified the Island when the Kandyan Kingdom in the Central part of the Island came under their control and the surrender document was signed in Tamil by the last King. Island of Sri Lanka that has been a divided land most of the time, became united country and part of British empire that ruled the Island for about 140 years. On the 4th of February 1948, Sri Lanka became an independent country, at the time of Independence there were different nationalities, Sinhalese, Tamils (Ceylon and Indian), Muslims (mostly Tamil speaking) and Eurasians (Burghers) etc. The proclaimed constitution did not fully protect the rights of different groups made up of multilingual (Sinhala, Tamil, English), multiethnic (Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burghers etc.) and multireligious (Buddhism, Hindus, Christians, Islam) people. Sri Lanka was a success story at the beginning of post-colonial era in the field of education, economic activities etc. First Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew of the small Island of Singapore that was too a multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious country like Sri Lanka; Mr Lee wanted to emulate Sri Lanka’s success story. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka’s communal and short sighted policy of domination of minorities by subsequent governments took Sri Lanka, backward to the bottom of the heap of countries that became independent after colonial occupation. Today Sri Lanka is standing with a begging bowl. In contrast, Singapore recognizing everyone’s rights became a success story and a fully developed country in the world. Sri Lanka can learn a lesson from Singapore to put the country in the right path to regain the past glory.
Faltered History of Post Independent Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s adversarial politics between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Tamil Hindus dominated the post independent era. Both the majority and the minority communities who were only used to monarchist rule could not make the necessary adjustment to a democratic rule, where majority power is exercised with the consent and/or accommodating the minorities rights and wishes. The political parties of the Sinhala majority community to capture power against their opponents in the Parliament, promised more to the Sinhala population at the expense of rights of minority communities that led to peaceful protests followed by repeated communal violence and pogroms. This is contrary to the understanding between different communities prior to granting of Independence to Sri Lanka under a unitary constitution by the British colonial power. To prevent the discriminatory laws being enacted against the minorities, Soulbury commission provided a safeguard which became Section 29(2) of the Soulbury Constitution. At the time of first Parliamentary election, Sinhala community had 63.3% of the parliamentary representation, thus denying them two third majority to make amendments that would be adversarial to minority communities. Following adversarial acts passed by the Parliament and actions taken by majority Sinhala Buddhist governments, it gained almost 80 percent of parliamentary representation. The domination of parliamentary representation resulted in proclamation of a new constitution and further denial of rights to minorities. Major acts of unilateral declaration by the Sinhala majority led to the following: