The first Hantana Hatana – looking back to the violent Peradeniya Student uprising of 1965, and beyond …….
by Chandre Dharmawardana, based on an account of the events by Prof. T. Sivaparakasapillai…..
A far-reaching achievement of the very last State Council of Ceylon (1942-47) of D. S. Senanayake prior to independence was its visionary education policy. Free education from kindergarten to university was legislated in 1945, while the Ceylon University Ordinance was passed in 1942, under C. W. W. Kannangara’s watch as the minister of Education. Twenty-two central schools teaching English were established. Many, including Ivor Jennings and DSS had expressed some reservations, questioning if the nation could afford all this. The Trotskyite leader Dr. N. M. Perera even authored a book calling to delay these policies until the arrival of the “worker’s revolution”. He argued that “reactionary forces entrenched in power” will use free education to brainwash children against the progressive and anticolonial message of their movement. In fact, it was the leaders of the left movement who were most successful in recruiting the youth of the country into their fold. The militant oratory and intellectual-prestige of the left leaders, the antiimperialist spirit of the age, and the egalitarian thrust of socialism appealed to the naturally rebellious idealism of the young undergraduates of the Peradeniya University – a fragile garden of Eden set by the Hantana Hills and the Mahaweli river, ideal for scholarly contemplation. While the University of Ceylon officially “spawned” in Colombo in 1942 from its embryo – ‘The University College’ — it was Peradeniya in 1952 – that marked its coming of age. Its first decade lived up to the dream of its founders, with famous scholars such as Paranavitana, Malalalsekera, Hettiarachchi, and Kanapathypillai on board, while Ludowyk, Sarathchandra and others blazed national cultural memes that have taken firm root in the country. Meanwhile, leftist ideology moved from being a mere intellectual pursuit to power the militancy of Student Unions. Student leaders were not just concerned with mere student rights, but with the loftier stuff of “the international struggle of the oppressed”. While early student strikes were of a modest nature, a significant political disturbance was in roughing up Dudley Senanayake’s visit to the campus in 1962. The student strike of December 1965 was an altogether different, violent watershed event involving the police as well. The 1965 student strike was viewed the student leaders as the first moments of a revolution, claiming that the harbour workers and the CTB were allegedly joining in! This strike gave the then government the “justification” for appointing two civil servants as “vice-chancellors” and increasing its control over universities. A valuable personal account of the 1965 student strike, written by Mr. Ananada Wanasinghe, an undergraduate student of that era appeared in the Island Newspaper recently [1]. It added to the campus reminiscences of Mr. Warakaulle, published earlier. Mr. Wanasinghe characterized the 1965 event as “The beginning of the end” of the dream of Peradeniya. He recounts how a minority led by the student leader Shanmugaratnam of the “Maoist wing” had ignored the opposition of the majority of students and launched the strike. He describes how the police were taunted and attacked by students, and how shots were fired, students tear-gassed, attacked and arrested, while various dons intervened with the police and the students. The writer states: In the melee I saw a tall man steadily walking towards the police truck. Pointing at me, he told the officer standing there – ‘You must release this man, otherwise it’s going to be difficult to control the students.’ I came to know later that he was Prof. Sivapragasapillai of the Faculty of Engineering. After some time, I was taken to the Kandy police station. Prof. Siva had followed us to the police station. He bailed me out and took me to the hospital. Many students visited me at the hospital. Some of them wept. Interestingly, there is an account of this watershed event written by Professor T. Sivaparakasapillai himself (a signed statement given to the authorities). Prof. Siva, a product of University College, Colombo was a Government Scholar at Imperial College, London University in the 1930s. He joined the University of Ceylon, Colombo in 1950, then moved to Peradeniya and back to the University of Colombo, to retire in 1975. His contributions to Sri Lanka’s academic life are too many for us to recount here. As Prof. Siva’s account of the first “Battle of Hantana” is hardly known to the public, we present most of it, extracted here.
BATTLE OF HANTANA
Saturday, 11th December 1965. I was at the Faculty of Engineering at 11 a.m., when Dr. Ariyapala, Wilson and others came looking for Prof. Chinnappa, President, University Teacher’s Association (UTA). They said there was a big clash between the police and the students, and wanted to take officials of the UTA to settle the trouble. We could not find Prof. Chinnappa, nor could we contact Prof. Wickremanayake, Proctor. So, we set out in three cars – mine with Mr. Karunaratne, Dr. Bartlette with Professor Bartholomeusz and Dr. Arumugam, and Dr. Ariyapala’s with some others. When we reached Galaha Rd, we were informed that the road was blocked and we could not proceed further. We saw other cars turning back and going towards the roundabout. I managed to park my car in the Faculty of Medicine and I saw a policeman bleeding from head to foot, and being carried into the ambulance. Then I walked towards Wijewardena Hall and saw a number of policemen retreating with wicker-shields, followed by an angry mob of students. Both parties were hurling stones at each other, and stones were being pelted also from the balcony of Wijewardena Hall at the police. I told the police to withdraw further, and tried to stop the students chasing the police. … I was able to stop more students proceeding further than the railway bridge. Then they agreed to go back with me to the campus, provided I got the other batches of police out of the campus. These policemen, with an A. S. P. were at the Shirley de Alwis roundabout. The police wanted me to make the students clear the roadblock and withdraw to their halls. The students wanted their president released before they withdrew. The police would not release an arrested person without taking him to the police station and allow him to be bailed out. I assured the students that I would go with the police and bring their president back. I got a message (from the student President) read out by two students asking the others to get back to their halls and restore order. The A. S. P. was very cooperative but a young sub-inspector or sergeant was very rude and upsetting every arrangement that I made with the A. S. P. He even told me that the senior officer was from the University and not from the police. I told this to the A. S. P. who confirmed that he was from the police, and I checked up that his badges were definitely police. These two students, after reading the president’s message were clearing the road blocks when the first lot of policemen, who had withdrawn earlier returned, firing shots and throwing tear gas into the halls. They assaulted the two students who were clearing the blockade at the request of the A. S. P. Somehow we prevented serious injuries and started discussions again. The students were saying, “you want us to go into the Halls while the police are filling the halls with tear gas”. The police were saying that they would not stop attacking the students unless I could produce sergeant Seneviratne. I told them that I had seen a policeman being put in an ambulance and said that this might have been the missing Sergeant, but the police insisted that I checked up from every hall and assure them that the students were not keeping a policeman inside. At this stage another lecturer (Mr. Peter Silva ?) in national dress joined me and we went towards halls. I saw Professor Bartholomeusz and Dr. Arumugam near Wijewardena Hall, and we all checked up with the students and reported to the police that there was no policeman (held) in any of the halls. Then the police agreed to take me and two other students with the President in a police jeep. We cleared the roadblock at the level crossing gate and picked up a policeman hiding in the post office and reached Kandy police station at about 1:15 p.m. The Inspector recorded the President’s statement and I went with another Inspector and the President to the J. M. O. The J. M. O. advised us to go to the O. P. D and get the wound, an open cut about 1.5 ins long on the head dressed. He had also a swelling at the back of the right shoulder. At the police station I bailed out the President and went in Dr. Thambiahpillai’s car. From there we went in my car to all the men’s halls and advised the students to remain calm and restore order as one policeman was very seriously injured and about 72 students including about 25 girls were injured and in hospital. After that I took the President to Kandy and handed him over to the M. S. at about 5 p.m. This account poignantly brings out the mayhem, turmoil and life-threatening injuries that happen in a campus when student leaders “launch a strike” – a rite of passage required of every such leader to “establish their credentials”. In the early 1970s, when Mahinda Rajapaksa visited the Vidyodaya campus as a rookie MP, the JVP students physically attacked him. Mervyn de Silva, who was with him took up the brunt of the attack, allowing Mahinda R to be whisked out in Prof. Epasinghe’s jeep. The loci of the JVP uprising of 1971 were in University campuses, with the Vidyodaya campus subsequently closed and used as a detention camp. The evident nexus between violent student politics and violent national politics has been the object of various academic studies [2,3,4]. Ragging of freshers is part of the violence and unfortunately condoned by the student leaders. A decade later, an even more serious Hantane Satana [5] took place in September1976, when serious ragging evolved into student riots; a female student died, and the VC was taken hostage, leading to violent police action. Shortly after, a small number of us were at a dinner party far way, in the home of Sri Lanka’s then ambassador to France, viz., Ediriweera Sarathchandra, in Neuilly, Paris. Young Chandrika Bandaranaike, then a strong Marxist, was also at the dinner, and she held that the CIA was instigating all this! The fallout from the 1976 strike probably influenced the 1977 elections where Mrs. Bandaranaike lost power to the UNP led by J.R. Jayawardena. The inter-university federation (IUF) was launched in 1978. Its main organizational goals, upheld even today (e.g., by Wasantha Mudalige) insist on its foremost commitment to “unconditionally standing up for the rights of the people”, showing that the IUF is effectively an extra-parliamentary political organization bootstrapping on educational institutions.
END REFERENCES
[1] Ananda Wanasinghe (2024); https://island.lk/dream-that-was-peradeniya-the-beginning-ofthe-end/
[2] Dulanjana (2024) https://muragala.lk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Student-Politics-in-SriLanka_Sachinda-Dulanjana.pdf
[3] Weeramunda, A.J. (2008); Report of the research study on “The Socio Political Impact of Student Violence and Indiscipline in Universities and Tertiary Education Institutes.” National Education Commission Sri Lanka, Study Series No. 5 (2007/8).
[4] Kalugalgedara and Kaushalya (2017) …………………..……… https://www.cepa.lk/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/CEPA_2017_University-Education- Literature-Review_english20180403052417.pdf
[5] Rangan (1976) …………………………………………………….. https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/15/archives/leadership-in-sri-lanka-shaken-byoutbreak-of-student-protests.html
ALSO NOTE
- https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/some-memories-of-peradeniya-as-a-student/
- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Senate+Building/@7.2551151,80.597822,18z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x3ae368d2d6846619:0x7c90517cc9996024!8m2!3d7.2549422!4d80.5973902!16s%2Fg%2F11c5rp9jcd?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQxNi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
In 1962, Dudley Senanayake visited the campus to give a talk at the arts theatre. However, the students rioted and prevented him from speaking. The organizers asked him to leave through the back door, but Dudley insisted that he would exit the same way since he had entered through the front door. He did so, despite the violent demonstration by the students.
Interesting to note that Chandrika Bandaranaike was a Marxist. What happened? Or was she ever a Marxist? People say Keir Starmer is a Marxist, but those who do have never read Marx.
I was surprised to read Dr, Dharmawardene statement that the Trotskyite leader” Dr. N. M. Perera even “authored a book calling to delay free education policies until the arrival of the “worker’s revolution. ”
On the contrary, NM and the LSSP were staunch supporters of free education, at a time when the very idea of “free education” up to and including the University was only a debatable concept.
NM published ” The Case for Free Education ” while he was in detention at the Bogambara Prison in 1944. Although I have NOT read the publication by NM, I give below the opinion expressed by Prof Carlo Fonseka, former Dean and Professor of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya.
“As it happened, the principal advocate of the free education scheme was Dr. NM Perera, a leader of the LSSP who was a political prisoner in jail at Bogambara at that time. He wrote a book called “The Case for Free Education”.
I would also like to take this opportunity to convey my regards to Prof Prathab Sivaprakaspillai, who was our instructor in “Electrical Engineering when we were in the second year, and to fondly remember his late father Prof T. Sivapraksapillai, who taught us Hydraulics, and Strength of materials in the second year, as well as some “Aspects of Civil Engineering ” in the 4 th year.