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| Sunday, 6 March 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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At SLFP's National Convention on Friday Remembering the founding father by a Staff Correspondent
Today, on the eve of the SLFP's fifteenth National Convention we reproduce an article that appeared in this paper on this page on September 24, 1995 to commemorate the driving force that ushered in the bloodless revolution of 1956. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was a much maligned but benign man. The gutter press and yankee dickies, fathers of the revolution and revisionist renegades, double doctors and triple jumpers, bus magnates and turf club gamesters, jabberwockies and wise old owls without exception maligned him at the best of times and the worst of times. But with malice towards none, the more he was maligned the more benign he became leading up to the supreme courage and absolute serenity with which he - the Prime Minister - encountered death when a revolver was emptied into him at point blank range 36 years ago. Bandaranaike was an accommodating and understanding man. Son of the Maha Mudaliyar and godson of a Colonial governor he found himself in a position to liberate his people - the bhikkhu, ayurvedic physician and 'vernacular' teacher, farmer and worker - who felt a lack of contact between themselves and the upper class. Congressmen with their top hats and tail coats, their English education and western outlook were seen by the people as unnational appendages. So, he provided a platform for them and as he watched them finding themselves he let them decide on a name for themselves proferring Swadeshiya Maha Sabha which they opted to adopt as Sinhala Maha Sabha. He accommodated them in his courtly manner. That is how it all began. Then onwards he ventured to manage the Sabha vs Brown Sahib series for he understood the strengths and weaknesses of all the players. Bandaranaike knew the mood of his people. In 1949, Indian National Congress President Dr. Pattaabhi Sitaramayya advocated that 'Ceylon should be integrated with India' Minister Bandaranaike replied: 'Although Ceylon is a small country, its people have always been jealous of their sovereign rights for which, in the long history of this country, they have always fought and striven. Having once again regained our freedom and sovereignty, it is not at all likely that the people of this country will submit to the type of subordination which obviously Dr. Sitaramyya has in mind. His reflection of the mood of the people is valid for all time. Bandaranaike aspired for public work at a very young age. When about ten years old, his father took him to lunch with Governor Robert Chalmers. The Governor suggested making the child Bandaranaike a Gate Mudaliyar to which he immediately retorted that he 'wished to do public work'. He not only spurned the exalted office but went on to abolish the system that perpetuated 'muddy' liars. His long record of public work from the year he won a seat in the Colombo Municipal Council to the final moments when he was gunned down as Prime Minister was a life of service and sacrifice. It is vital to remember that the shots that were fired at him dammed and damned the program of public work he had to complete. He left his mission undone but his vision remains with us, a beautiful but difficult dream, to be made a reality. Bandaranaike projected his mind to future history. In 1926, he said. 'In Ceylon each province should have complete autonomy. A thousand and one objections could be raised against this system but when objections are dissipated it would be acknowledged as the only solution. Thirty one years later, referring to the Executive Committee System he said: That was a system where you do not consider Government as a mere job of something apart but something that affects the whole country where everybody can have his share'. In January 1959 just nine months before his death, thinking aloud as was his wont he said 'Our own previous Executive Committee System or some other like the Swiss system, particularly when it is combined with the referendum, in fact, not only provides a broader and more stable base for the principle of democracy, but implements more fully the very spirit of democracy'. In retrospect then, Bandaranaike the thinker was contemplating a further change in the system to usher in a new social order within three years of his watershed victory. Prime Minister Nehru conceded that his greatest failure was not to have changed the administration which remained colonial in India during his tenure. Prime Minister Bandaranaike was deprived of the chance to change it in Sri Lanka. The greatest tribute we could pay him is by demonstrating those noble impulses of 'heroism, chivalry, piety, sacrifice and service' that he claimed for us at the Assembly Hall at Torrington Square in 1948. In his own words, 'We shall need them all, if we are to triumph in the dark and difficult days that lie before us'. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) holds its 15th National Convention at
Maharagama Youth Services Centre Auditorium on Friday March 11. It would be
appropriate to recapture the monumental thinking and the circumstances
bordering on treachery that led to the breakaway of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike
from the then UNP Government and the formation of the Sri Lanka Freedom
Party in those heady days of the pukha sahibs. 
