British occupation altruistic?

By George Rupesinghe
Sydney, Australia 

L. Wijeratne appears to be starstruck and nostalgic in his lavish praise for the British occupation of Sri Lanka (‘Conquering the paradise isle’ on March 31 Daily News).

An unsuspecting reader, with little knowledge of the country’s history, will be forgiven for thinking that the aim of the British occupation was altruistic. The truth is very ugly. The discord they sowed with their divide and rule policy is still evident in the social and political legacy they left behind, not only in Sri Lanka but in all their other colonies in Asia and Africa.

Yes, the construction of railways, roads and an administrative system were put in place. But all these were primarily to serve their own purposes. Growing tea, for example, filled their coffers, while rice, the staple food of the people, was imported from Burma and India.

Let us also not forget the problems caused by importing hundreds of thousands of indentured labour from South India to work in the tea plantations.

With the exception of the Colombo Academy, later Royal College, how many schools did the British build?

None. This task was left to the Catholic and Protestant Christian missionaries to the utter neglect of the majority Sinhala Buddhists.

If not for the efforts of patriots and visionaries like C. W. W. Kannangara, Sri Lanka would have been in a similar position to India when Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister of India in 1947: 99 per cent illiteracy and crushing poverty. A situation that India is still grappling with despite great strides in education and economic development.

A system of occupation that alienated some 80 per cent of the population who could not gain access to education, the administration and the legal system because nothing was conducted in the local language is not a system to admire but a recognition of the jackboot of British oppression.

The social and political revolution of 1956 was a manifest expression of the democratic will of these people to rectify this injustice. Their aspirations were thwarted by those Anglophobes, the militant leftist political groups and of course, the Tamils, who refused to accept the democratic will of the majority peoples. This in itself is ample testament to the cancerous British divide and rule policy.

I also take grave exception to Mr. Wijeratne referring to his countrymen as natives – a perjorative term that conveys such people are of a lower social state. And it brings to mind how such people were also referred to as “sarong johnnies” by those who were schooled in the Christian and British puiblic school tradition and thought they were a cut above the rest.

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