1956 | LMD

Sinhala Solely Act Creates Divided Nation

Language proves to be an ethnic flashpoint

A single individual’s ambition usually spells peril for the individuals of a nation. But it surely will not be so simple as later interpreters of historical past make out the divisive occasions of 1956 to be. It was a yr by which the future of an island nation was maybe modified from ‘unity in variety’ to ‘adversity amidst disparity’ by the stroke of a pen.

One issue within the ratification of the chauvinistic Sinhala Solely Act – extra formally, the Official Language Act (No. 33 of 1956) – was that it was the brainchild of an excellent political thoughts; an formidable soul that had been born to privilege, and bred and educated among the many elite, English-speaking Western oriented higher courses of his day in postcolonial Ceylon.

A product of S. Thomas’, his expertise of racism at Oxford ostensibly soured his outlook.

However equally germane have been the aspirations of the political occasion that he – the redoubtable Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike (the Christian names converse volumes for his provenance) – based. That centrist organisation, the Sri Lanka Freedom Occasion (SLFP), was politically formidable and desired to mount a critical problem to the conservative United Nationwide Occasion (UNP), which had dominated on the nationwide polls since independence.

Thus it was that whereas the UNP had let issues relaxation and allowed English to face because the state language even after 1948, the SLFP broke ranks with the final consensus, which had been formed by the leftist events in opposition, that each Sinhala and Tamil be deemed nationwide languages, and campaigned to carve out their electoral destiny on a ‘Sinhala Solely’ platform.

This was one thing of an irony because it was one of many UNP’s latter-day stalwarts – J. R. Jayewardene – who had moved within the State Council of Ceylon way back to 1944 that Sinhala substitute English because the lingua franca of the then-to-be unbiased state.

In the long run, the chauvinists prevailed, setting Ceylon and Sri Lanka on a violent path that might see the post-independence Sinhalese majority’s dedication to make Sinhala the state language a casus belli for a strident – and later, violent – Tamil separatist motion, which interpreted the act as being tantamount to oppression and the justification for minority rights militancy.

The SLFP broke ranks with the final consensus, which had been formed by the leftist events in opposition, that each Sinhala and Tamil be deemed nationwide languages