A Spark from The Editor, Thuppahi, 26 October 2024, by resurrecting a TPS Comment from 2017
Perchance I recently came across an old comment from Professor Chandre Dharmawardena [based in Canada] which raises explosive questions about the dry zone irrigation projects in Sri Lanka launched in the mid-20th century — questions which engage the political currents of that period and thereby invole such figures as DS Senanayake, LH Mettananda, GG Ponnambalam, SWRD Bandaranaike.
CHANDRE DHARMAWARDENA = Comment in https://thuppahis.com/2017/01/14/gal-oya-addressing-errors-in-ajit-kanagasundrams-recollections/ ………………………….. 3 responses to “Gal Oya: Addressing Errors in Ajit Kanagasundaram’s Recollections”
Chandre Dharmawardana …. January 15, 2017 at 5:04 pm
[I personally believe that large-scale irrigation to be the wrong policy. But in 1950, we did not any know better. Today we would propose to replace most estates, farmlands etc by forests, and grow food by modern biotech methods which take very little water, very little fertilizers and hence at lowered costs (e.g., Aerial farming in food-grow towers which cost less capital than owning an estate. We already have such towers running in New Jersey, Missouri, etc., providing vegetables to New York restaurants, and similar towers also in Japan and elsewhere). The forest cover in Sri lanka has dropped to something like 16%.. Critically low. ]
I heard from a number of top irrigation engineers about how areas in the Galoya were denied water for technical reasons, as the head water was not enough. But a decade or two later this was misconstrued as denying water to Tamil villages, by the ITAK propagandists. D.S.Senanayake may surely have had some caste prejudices (as was typical of that era) but he was not racist and did not try to discriminate against minorities. Even the Indian citizenship Act was said to be largely drawn up by Kandiah Vaithiyanathan and the government. They (arch conservatives) were driven by the fear of Marxist penetration into the estate sector (after the Bracegirdle affair), and of course the Kandyans did not want to lose their electorates to the estate trade union leaders. Ponnambalam was the Minister of Industries and he set up industries mainly in the North and this was used by southern politicians, while the Northen politicians would say that “all the opportunities are in the south and we are being discriminated.’’ This is still the same lament.
People like N.M., Colvin and particularly Philip had embraced the ideology that “the end justified the means”, and they were sure that the conservative governments and the “Menshevik–like” government of SWRD will be quickly replaced by their Bolshevik-Leninist revolutionary government. Philip was in the Cabinet but led strikes in the port almost everyday, undermining Banda to create a militant political atmosphere. So, Philip using his union man to undermine the CEO of the Galoya, and using the communal card against Mr. Kanagasundaram were nothing. The old civil service cannot survive under such assault.
It was unfortunate that Dudley, a “gentleman in politics”, never had the guts and the political cunning of D. S. Senanayake. The latter would have sidelined Philip, and indeed would never have accommodated him into a position of power. DS and Oliver would have found some legitimate-looking means to checkmate him! Banda’s coming to power would have been delayed by at least 5 more years if DS had not met his accident.
So, we have to blame the “end-justifies the means” morality of the golden minds of the left, the death of DS, and the weak belly of Dudley, if we are looking for historical explanations of the events in the style of explaining ancient history in terms of Cleopatra’s nose and machinations of Roman senators on their way to the Forum.
- chandre Dharmawardana
The following remarks may not be germane to the main article. However, I see a picture of L. H. Meththananda shown here addressing a crowd.
It is very easy to present Meththananda as a demagougue and extremist. But I think that is a wrong picture of a deeply moral and concerned man.
He was our principal at Ananda College (before I went to Royal College for the Upper school); and under Meththananda’s watch students in the lower classes had to learn Tamil (the primary Tamil reader “Baala Bodhini” was one of the books of the time). There was “Pansil” and “mindfullness” meditation at the school. The latter is now the vogue in American institutions!LJHM was, unmistakeably a champion of the Sinhalese and Buddhist rights, at a time when speaking out for such things was “just not kosher”. Bandaranaike’s revolution was going to come someday. But, unfortunately it was the “faux pas” of JL Kotelawela that precipitated everything, and the revolution came through the hands of Banda and not some other more disciplined leader.
ALSO NOTE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._H._Mettananda
https://archives1.dailynews.lk/2017/12/19/features/137714/lh-mettananda-forgotten-buddhist-hero
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Prof. Chandre Dharmawardenea’s Jan 15, 2017 comment,
“D.S.Senanayake may surely have had some caste prejudices (as was typical of that era) but he was not racist and did not try to discriminate against minorities. Even the Indian citizenship Act was said to be largely drawn up by Kandiah Vaithiyanathan and the government. ” deserves a rebuttal.
How dare, Prof. Chandre revises history to state that Sir Kanthiah Vaithiyanathan as the architect of the racist Acts passed in 1948-49? Here is what Prof. K.M. de Silva had recorded in his ‘A HIstory of Sri Lanka’ (1981). Prof Silva had indicated D.S. Senanayake as the chief culprit. “If D. S.Senanayake was sanguine about the prospects of ethnic harmony…..But more important were decisions in which the initiative was his. Of these the most notable were, first, the Citizenship Act of 1948, the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act of 1949, and the Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Act which deprived the great majority of the Indian Tamils resident in Sri Lanka of their citizenship rights and franchise.” (p. 493) Not even once, Kanthiah Vaithianathan’s name mentioned by Prof Silva.
Subsequently in p. 507, Prof Silva also had noted this fact about D.S. Senanayake: “A profound suspicion of India was the dominant strand in his external policy.”
As they say, ‘Proof of the pudding is in the eating.’ There is hardly any doubt that the pudding served by D.S. Senanayake during his tenure of office from 1947-52, smelled of racist tincture, though surface-coated with ‘ethnic harmony’, by incorporating Tamil politicians like C. Suntharalingam and G.G. Ponnambalam in his Cabinet.