Dudley Senanayake

The first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake died in March 1952, and his son Mr. Dudley Senanayake, then Minister of Agriculture and Lands, was appointed Prime Minister by the Governor General, Lord Soulbury,. Parliament was subsequently dissolved and a general election was held in May 1952. The election was won by the UNP led by Mr. Dudley Senanayake. Among other things, increased welfare benefits, in particular the rice subsidy, contributed to the resounding victory.

Within a year, after the Korean boom ended, the Government found that the burden of the subsidy on the Budget was excessive and decided to curtail the subsidy expenditures sharply. The price of rice was increased. Other subsidies including free meals for school children were cut.

The Political protest to this move was explosive. A general strike, known as "Hartal", launched by very strong trade unions affiliated to the left-wing parties was so effective that the Prime Minister was compelled to resign from office. The price of rice was immediately reduced and the ration enlarged. This event is a landmark in the political economy of the post-independence era, that underlined the importance of the subsidy issue in government. Mr. Dudley Senanayake's government also gave high priority to the development of irrigation systems and the food crop sector.

@ By Karunasena Kodituwakku - The Island 2001


Dudley Senanayake’s birth anniversary falls today, the 19th June. It was in 1967 that I first got to know Dudley Senanayake. He was then the Prime Minister and I was a university student and a member of the UNP’s student wing. In the year 1967, there was some student unrest and the progovernment student unions went in a delegation to meet the Prime Minister. That was my first encounter with Dudley. After the defeat of the UNP in 1970, we had occasion to work very closely together.

When Jinadasa Niyathapala, the then General Secretary of the All Ceylon UNP Youth League was arrested in the wake of the 1971 JVP insurgency, I became the Acting General Secretary of the UNP in which capacity I had to work closely with Dudley Senanayake and Gamini Jayasuriya who was then the General Secretary of the UNP. He was admitted to hospital in early April after visits to Hiriyala and Dedigama for UNP meetings, complaining of chest pains. The day he expired, the 13th of April I was among the last to see him.

A reluctant Premier

Dudley Senanayake’s role in history has not yet been assessed properly by scholars. There is a dearth of scholars and political scientists in this country to do this kind of thing now. But even at a cursory glance, it can be seen that Dudley’s contribution has been much more significant than would appear at first sight. Dudley was not a reluctant entrant into politics. But he was a reluctant Prime Minister. When D.S.Senanayake died unexpectedly in 1952, the UNP was confronted with the choice of a new leader. Most of the high rankers in the UNP including J. R. Jayewardene were apprehensive of Sir John Kotelawala who would have been the logical successor.

Sir John had the image of being an autocrat and many of his own colleagues were apprehensive of how he would behave in a position of supreme power. Dudley was persuaded to take over the top post and he did so more or less under duress. Once he became Prime Minister he took steps to dissolve Parliament and to seek a fresh mandate from the people. Dudley won the 1952 General Election handsomely getting an even bigger majority than what DS had enjoyed. But he was to resign in 1953 in the wake of the Hartal organised by the LSSP and CP to protest against certain budget proposals. Dudley resigned mainly due to the ill-health that dogged him around this time.

After Dudley resigned, Sir John took over as Prime Minister. Thereafter Dudley more or less retired from politics. The party was soundly defeated at the General Election of 1956 returning only eight members to Parliament. 1956 was by far the worst defeat ever faced by the UNP. The party was left virtually rudderless. Dudley was in retirement and Sir John had virtually given up politics. The principle figure in the party after the defeat was J. R. Jayewardene. In those gloomy days, the leader of the UNP’s minuscule Parliamentary group was M.D.Banda - now an almost forgotten figure, but a fine gentleman and an exemplary politician. Even though the UNP had eight members in Parliament there were only three really active members among them M.D.Banda, C.A.Dharmapala and E. L. B. Hurulle.

Even though J.R.Jayewardene had emerged as the principal figure in the party after 1956, he knew that he did not have enough popular appeal to be able to get the UNP back on its feet. In 1957, he managed to persuade Dudley Senanayake to come back into politics as the leader of the UNP. JR’s strategy paid off almost immediately as the party that had been so soundly defeated in 1956, won the 1960 March General Election. The comeback of the UNP in 1960 was a genuine recovery. The UNP’s popular vote had exceeded that of the SLFP but they were unable to obtain enough of a majority to govern. The UNP was then negotiating with the Federal Party to form a coalition government but the demands put forward by the FP at the time were deemed to be excessive and Dudley decided to go in for a fresh election.

At the July 1960 General Election, the UNP increased its vote and once more had more votes than the SLFP but due to the first past the post electoral system that prevailed then the UNP ended up with much less seats than the SLFP. The SLFP’s comeback was due to the electoral system. But it was also due to the sympathy vote resulting from Mr. S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike’s assassination. If Mr. Bandaranaike had not been assassinated, the SLFP would have had no chance in 1960 as their popularity had declined drastically by 1959. Author Gunadasa Liyanage in his inimitable style, has expressed this situation in his novel ‘Gamana Nonimei’ as a case where the fatal gunshots of 1959 fired had killed a living Mr. Bandaranike but had at the same time, ironically, given life to a dead SLFP!

Be that as it may, the SLFP formed a government in July 1960 and Dudley was relegated to the opposition for a few more years. Towards 1964, a very dangerous situation arose in the country with the LSSP joining the SLFP government as a coalition partner for the first time. There was talk of acquiring Lake House by the government and a ‘leftist’ dictatorship under the leadership of the SLFP was in the making. It was in this atmosphere that the UNP under the leadership of Dudley Senanayake and J.R.Jayewardene carried out the first successful attempt to defeat a government in Parliament.

One of the main figures behind this attempt to defeat the SLFP-LSSP combine in Parliament was Esmond Wickremasinghe and in fact, most of the discussions held in this regard were at Esmond Wickremasinghe’s house at 5th Lane Colpetty. This plan succeeded with the crossing over of fourteen SLFP MPs under the leadership of the Leader of the House C.P.de Silva to the opposition thus brining down the SLFP-LSSP government.

The 1965-70 national government

Dudley Senanayake won the General Election of 1965 and formed a government with six other partners. Dudley Senanayake was a man who could reconcile contradictions. Included in his government were Sinhala Nationalists like K.M.P.Rajaratne along with the Federal Party of S.J.V.Chelvanayagam. Phillip Gunawardene the ‘Father of Socialism in Sri Lanka’ was sitting together with ‘Yankee Dickey’ J.R.Jayewardene. But the government held together and was in fact the first government in post-independence Sri Lanka to complete its full term in office. In the case of all previous governments, elections had been held early and in the case of Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike’s government, had been defeated in Parliament.

Politically, one might say that Dudley was a combination of a Liberal Democrat and a Social Democrat - with him politically, leaning more towards the ‘Liberal’ side. On the one hand, his economic policies were those of a social democrat. He was a firm believer in democratic practices, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, respect for human rights and the independence of the Judiciary etc. In terms of economic policy, he believed in growth but not at the expense of social justice. He believed that if the poor are to participate in development, they have to be strengthened first - the landless had to be given land and government assistance to become independent.

Dudley Senanayake had to bear the full brunt of the economic decline that had taken place since he had last been the Prime Minister in the 1950’s. On the earlier occasion, he had been presiding over one of the more promising and prosperous countries in Asia whereas, the second time around, he found himself presiding over a country in ruins - a country that had entered the definition of a ‘third world’ country. For the first few years, Dydley was almost helpless as the main lifeline of the country the plantations were in serious decline. Then he struck upon the idea of reviving the economy by an upsurge in domestic agriculture. Agricultural colonisation schemes were D.S. Senanayeke’s pet project.

The cultivator’s Premier

Dudley revived that interest in domestic agriculture with the inauguration of the food production drive and the ‘green revolution’. He met with unexpected success in this regard and it can safely be said that Dudley Senanayake’s food production drive in the late sixties was the most successful medium term economic plan ever to be implemented in this country. Rice production alone doubled in just four years. The economic growth rates in the last three years of Dudly’s 1965-70 government were comparable to the growth rates during J. R. Jayewardene’s first few years in office after 1977.

It was at the height of this economic resurgence that Dudley Senanayake went to the polls in 1970. Once again, due to the vagaries of the first past the post electoral system, he was defeated. It was probably after watching the career of Dudley Senanayake that J. R. Jayewardene fixated on the proportional representation system. Dudley was a very popular leader. This was why JRJ persuaded Dudley to come back into politics in 1959. On every occasion that he went to the polls Dudley always got more votes than the SLFP. In 1952, 1960 March, 1960 July and even in 1970 Dudley got more votes than the SLFP. In 1970 the SLFP got less votes than the UNP but had many more seats. They managed to exceed the UNP’s number of votes only with the votes received by the other two coalition partners the LSSP and the CP. Even though Dudley was very popular among the electorate, he was not able to overcome socialist propaganda.

Dudley was a gentleman in politics. He was a true democrat. His popularity among the people was revealed in ample measure by the unprecedented crowds (estimated at well over one million) that thronged to Colombo for his funeral in 1973. An aerial snapshot taken by Daily News of Independence Square at the time of Dudley’s cremation shows a sea of heads as far as the eye can see - a fitting motif for the final departure of an unassuming man who led his people and ruled the country not for his personal benefit but out of a sense of duty.

D. S. Senanayake

Don Stephen Senanayake was born on 20th October 1884, at Botale, a village in the Hapitigame Korale of the Negombo district in the Western Province. The name of the village has nothing to do with the colloquial Sinhalese word, with the same spelling and pronunciation, meaning ‘bottle’ derived from the Dutch ‘bottel’. The village was named after ‘Bodhi-tale’—the place of the Bodhi or Bo tree.

One of Senanayake’s ancestors may have been in the party of Buddhists who in ancient times brought a sapling of the old Bo tree at Mahaiyangana to be planted at the shrine of the good King Sri Sangabo at Attanagalla. On their last stop before reaching Attanagalla, they remained for the night at Botale. In the morning they found that the sapling had taken root in the soil where they had left it. There is of course no evidence to prove that the venerable Bo tree one now sees at Botale was the direct descendant of the tree at Mahaiyangana—traditionally one of the places in Sri Lanka visited by the Buddha. There are many, however, who believe that it was.

Only a few miles from the much larger village of Ambepussa, on the Colombo-Kandy road, Botale, stood on the frontier between the Sinhalese kingdom ruled from Kandy and the maritime districts held by the Portuguese. It was often an outpost of the Portuguese during their battles with the Sinhalese. The Portuguese historian, De Queyroz, in his ‘Conquest of Ceylon’, published in 1688, says that the Portuguese under Captain Francesco Pimental at Attanagalla made themselves dreaded in such a manner that, not having more to do, they went to encamp at Botale, a league further. The Sinhalese, for their part, erected a stronghold at Dedigama. In 1598 the quarters were shifted to "the pagoda at Botale, a place suited for assaults, with great loss to the enemy".

Peasants

The village of Botale seems to have been known for a sturdy breed of peasants. It was said that men from the area had constructed the tunnel through which the Sinhalese Prince Vidiya Bandara, who was a prisoner of the Portuguese, escaped with the help of the Franciscan friars who had their monastery at a spot near Queen’s House in Colombo where the President of the Republic of Sri Lanka now resides.

Stephen Senanayake’s father, Don Spater Senanayake, came of a land-owning family. The prefix ‘Don! had been used, since Portuguese times, by the low country gentry, as it had been in the Iberian Peninsula, where it originated Don Spater’s father, Don Bartholomew, was born in Botale in 1847 where the ancestral house still stands. It was for Don Stephen a hideaway to rest from the burdens of office or think out a solution to some knotty problem. It was here that he mixed freely with the country folk and shared his thoughts and aspirations with them. They brought their problems as well as their disputes to him and it is said that an aggrieved party in the village rarely resorted to a court of law, for Senanayake was judge and arbitrator in all causes which they referred to him.


Don Spater finished his schooling at St Thomas’ College, Matale. He married a Miss Senanayake (no relation) from Kehelella which was in the same district as Botale. They had three sons, of whom Stephen was the youngest, and a daughter. After the father’s death the four children remained close to their mother who was a deeply religious woman.

The Senanayakes of Botale were rooted to the land but Don Spater saw possibilities in mining plumbago (graphite) for which there was a growing demand in Europe, the United States and Japan. Ceylon plumbago was regarded by experts as "so much superior to any other turned out". It was mined in many parts of the island but chiefly in the Kurunegala district, where the Dodangaslande, Ragedera and Maduragoda mines were situated, and in the Kelani Valley where the Bogala mine was the largest. Don Spater’s contemporaries and rivals in the plumbago business included such well known merchants as Jacob de Mel. Mudaliyar D. C. Attygalle, N. D. P. Silva, D. D. Pedris, H. J. Peiris, M. A. Fernando, John Clovin de Silva, U. D. S. Gunasekera and H. Bastian Fernando, all of whom left considerable fortunes. Stephen grew to manhood when the plumbago trade was booming and even as a school boy he knew a great deal about the ‘black gold’ and the men who dug it from his father’s mines.

The massive volume entitled Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, published in 1907 by Arnold Wright for Lloyds’ Greater Publishing Company of London, has the following reference to Don Spater Senanayake: "After being educated at various schools in Ceylon, he started business on his own account in the plumbago-mining line at the early age of eighteen years. He now carries on business as a plumbagominer, merchant, estate proprietor and general planter. His offices are situated at Siri Medura, Castle Street, Cinnamon Gardens, and his stores are located at Kitulwatte, Kanatte, Colombo."

The article refers to the modern machinery installed in Don Spater’s mines and estates and states that the graphite extracted the refrom is collected at Ambepussa and forwarded to Colombo. It also lists the names of his mines and coconut estates. Two pages of pictures go with the article, including the family group with the striking figure of Don Spater, in Mudaliyar’s dress, with the three sons standing behind their seated parents and sister, Mrs. F. H. Dias Bandaranaike. Don Spater Senanayake was given the rank of Mudaliyar, not as a Government official but as "a worthy citizen", by Governor Sir Joseph West Ridgeway.

At the end of the nineteenth century, many Sinhalese families interested themselves in the public life of the country. Seats in the Legislative Council were filled by nomination by the Governor. In 1839, the only Sinhalese member was G. Phillipse Panditaratna. He was succeeded by his kinsman J. G. Dias, the eldest brother of Sir Harry Dias who succeeded him in his turn. On Sir Harry’s retirement, James Dehigama, a Kandyan lawyer, was nominated. The seat went back to the family circle with the nomination of James D’Alwis, whose daughters married Christoffel Obeyesekere and Felix R. Dias. He was followed by J. P. Obeyesekere and Albert de Alwis, in turn. The succession was broken by the nomination of A. de A. Seneviratne, but restored by the entry of Christoffel Obeyesekere in 1889. In that year an additional seat was provided to represent the Kandyan Sinhalese and T. B. Panabokke, who had been Obeyesekere’s classmate in the Colombo Academy (later the Royal College), was nominated. It was not uncommon for a Kandyan in Government service or one who had retired as a Ratemahatmaya (chief headman) to be selected, as was the case with Hulugalle Adigar, who was succeeded by his kinsman, T. B. L. Moonemalle. When the pattern was about to be broken, Mr. (later Sir) Christoffel Obeyesekere, no doubt irked by the new spirit of nationalism, said on a well known occasion that much of the trouble in the country was due to "nobodies" trying to become "somebodies".

D. S. Senanayake was the first member of the Senanayake family of Botale to enter the Legislative Council though his older brother, ‘F. R.’, could have at any time won a seat by election and was always a powerful influence behind the scenes until his premature death.

Family influence was also an important factor in the choice of Tamil members. The first Tamil to be nominated to the Legislative Council was A. Coomaraswamy Pulle. He was followed by Simon Casie Chitty. Governor Stuart Mackenzie spoke of "his extra-ordinary, perfect attainment by a foreigner of the English language so difficult to all foreigners". The nomination of Edirimanasinghe Mudaliyar in 1850 gave a long run to a single family with its roots in Manipay. His brother-in-law Ponnambalam Mudaliyar was the father of P. Coomaraswamy, P. Ramanathan and P. Arunachalam, all three of whom were nominated members of the Legislative Council at various times. Edirimanasinghe Mudaliyar had been succeeded by Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy, another uncle of the three Ponnambalam brothers, J. R. Weinman, the witty chronicler of this period said that "the major aim of every Councillor is to keep the thing going in the family".

With the introduction of the electoral system of representation, many descendants of the above-named found their way into the legislature through the front door. This is, of course, not surprising. As a recent writer has said, "a democratic political system cannot make elites superfluous, though it may ensure their rapid and regular circulation".

@ 1948 - Independence

The demand for country independence arose subsequent to the independence of India after WWI. Sri Lanka was only involved in the WWI as a part of the British Empire. However, Allies' wartime propaganda about the virtue of freedom and self-determination of nations, heard and noted by Sri Lanka nationalist, had sparked off the growth of nationalism in Sri Lanka. In 1915, the British misconstrued the communal riot and uprising that broke out in the west coast as antigovernment conspiracy and consequently put it down with brutal forces. This was considered the turning point in the nationalist movement in Sri Lanka.

Learning that, in 1917, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League in India had joined for more nationalist progression, two years later, in 1919, the major Sinhalese and Tamil political organization in Sri Lanka united to form the Ceylon National Congress which proposed for a new constitution which was then written in 1920. The constitution was amended in 1924 which resulted in increasing Sri Lankan representations. However, as the changed constitution failed to provide qualified representative persons for government, in 1931, further constitutional changes were implemented providing Sri Lankan a practice of self-government and allowing Sinhalese and Tamils to further extend their influence in government.

During WWII, Sri Lanka became a central base for British operations in Southeast Asia after felling of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942. In this time, Sri Lanka was not only the base for warfare operations but it was also the supplier for essential products for Allies especially rubber enabling the country to save a surplus in a hard currency. As its role of a seat of the Southeast Asia command, a broad infrastructure of health services and modern amenities was built to accommodate the large number of troops posted into all parts of the country. The inherited infrastructure improved the standard of living in the postwar.

Relationships between British and Sri Lanka that were maintained since WWII influenced British to eventually promise the full participatory government after the war. British negotiated the island's dominion status with the Vice Chairman of the Board of Ministers, Don Stephen Senanayake, who also the founder and the leader of the United Nation Party (UNP). The negotiation ended with the Ceylon Independence Act of 1947 which formalized the transfer of power which was later implemented as a new constitution (and making Sri Lanka a dominion) on 4th February 1948.

Constitutional development

In ancient times, Sri Lanka was known by a variety of names: ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobane and Arabs referred to it as Serendib (the origin of the word "serendipity"). Ceilao was the name given to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese when they arrived in 1505, which was transliterated into English as Ceylon. As a British colony, the island was known as Ceylon, and achieved independence under the name Dominion of Ceylon in 1948.

At independence in 1948, Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, was a Commonwealth realm, with the monarch represented by the Governor General. The Parliament was bicameral, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. In 1971, the Senate was abolished, and the following year, Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka, and became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with the last Governor General becoming the first President of Sri Lanka. Under the first republican Constitution, the unicameral legislature was known as the National State Assembly.

In 1978, a new Constitution was adopted, which provided for an executive President, and the legislature was renamed Parliament.