From the 16th century, some coastal areas of the country were ruled by the
Portuguese,
Dutch and
British. Sri Lanka was ruled by 181 Kings and Queens from the Anuradhapura to Kandy periods.
[4] After 1815 the entire nation was under
British colonial rule and armed uprisings against the British took place in the 1818
Uva Rebellion and the 1848
Matale Rebellion. Independence was finally granted in 1948 but the country remained a Dominion of the British Empire.
Prehistoric era of Sri Lanka[edit]
The earliest archaeological evidence of human colonization in Sri Lanka appears at the site of Balangoda.
Balangoda Man arrived on the island about 34,000 years ago and have been identified as
Mesolithic hunter gatherers who lived in caves. Several of these caves, including the well known
Batadombalena and the
Fa-Hien Rock cave, have yielded many artifacts from these people who are currently the first known inhabitants of the island.
Balangoda Man probably created
Horton Plains, in the central hills, by burning the trees in order to catch game. However, the discovery of oats and barley on the plains at about 15,000 BC suggests that agriculture had already developed at this early date.
[5]
Several minute granite tools (about 4 centimetres in length), earthenware, remnants of charred timber, and clay burial pots date to the
Mesolithic stone age. Human remains dating to 6000 BC have been discovered during recent excavations around a cave at Varana Raja Maha vihara and in the Kalatuwawa area.
The protohistoric Early Iron Age appears to have established itself in South India by at least as early as 1200 BC, if not earlier (Possehl 1990; Deraniyagala 1992:734). The earliest manifestation of this in Sri Lanka is radiocarbon-dated to c. 1000-800 BC at Anuradhapura and Aligala shelter in Sigiriya (Deraniyagala 1992:709-29; Karunaratne and Adikari 1994:58; Mogren 1994:39; with the Anuradhapura dating corroborated by Coningham 1999). It is very likely that further investigations will push back the Sri Lankan lower boundary to match that of South India.
[7]
Archaeological evidence for the beginnings of the
Iron age in Sri Lanka is found at
Anuradhapura, where a large city–settlement was founded before 900 BC. The settlement was about 15 hectares in 900 BC, but by 700 BC it had expanded to 50 hectares.
[8] A similar site from the same period has also been discovered near Aligala in
Sigiriya.
[9]
who still live in the central, Uva and north-eastern parts of the island, are probably direct descendants of the first inhabitants, Balangoda man. They may have migrated to the island from the mainland around the time humans spread from Africa to the Indian subcontinent.
Around 500 BC, Sri Lankans developed a unique
hydraulic civilization. Achievements include the construction of the largest reservoirs and dams of the ancient world as well as enormous pyramid-like
Stupa (
Dagoba) architecture. This phase of Sri Lankan culture was profoundly influenced by early
Buddhism.
[citation needed]
Buddhist scriptures note three visits by the Buddha to the island to see the
Naga Kings, who are said to be snakes that can take the form of a human at will. Snake transformation of the kings are thought to be symbolic and not based on historical fact.
[10]
The earliest surviving chronicles from the island, the
Dipavamsa and the
Mahavamsa, say that tribes of
Yakkhas,
Nagas (cobra worshippers) and
Devas (god worshippers) inhabited the island prior to the migration of Vijaya.
Pottery has been found at
Anuradhapura bearing
Brahmi script and non-Brahmi writing and date back to 600 BC – one of the oldest examples of the script.
[11]
Ancient Sri Lanka[edit]
Landing of Vijaya[edit]
The Pali chronicles, the
Dipavamsa,
Mahavamsa,
Thupavamsa and the
Chulavamsa, as well as a large collection of stone inscriptions,
[12] the Indian Epigraphical records, the Burmese versions of the chronicles etc., provide information on the history of Sri Lanka from about the 6th century BC.
[3]
The Mahavamsa, written around 400 AD by the monk
Nagasena, using the Deepavamsa, the Attakatha and other written sources available to him, correlates well with Indian histories of the period. Indeed Emperor
Ashoka's reign is recorded in the Mahavamsa. The Mahavamsa account of the period prior to Asoka's coronation, 218 years after the Buddha's death, seems to be part legend. Proper historical records begin with the arrival of
Vijaya and his 700 followers.
Vijaya was a Vangan (now
Bengal, India) prince, the eldest son of King Sinhabahu ("Man with Lion arms") and his sister Queen Sinhasivali who had their capital at Sihapura
[13] (now
Singur[14] in
West Bengal, India). Both these Sinhala leaders were supposedly born of a mythical union between a lion and a human princess. The Mahavamsa claims that Vijaya landed on the same day as the death of the Buddha. The story of Vijaya and Kuveni (the local reigning queen) is reminiscent of Greek legend and may have a common source in ancient Proto-Indo-European folk tales.
[15]
According to the Mahavamsa, Vijaya landed on Sri Lanka near Mahathitha (Manthota or
Mannar[16]), and named
[17] on the island of
Thambaparni ("copper-colored sand"). This name is attested to in
Ptolemy's map of the ancient world. The Mahavamsa also describes the Buddha visiting Sri Lanka three times. Firstly, to stop a war between a Naga king and his son in law who were fighting over a ruby chair. It is said that on his last visit he left his foot mark on
Siripada ("Adam's Peak").
Tamirabharani is the old name for the second longest river in Sri Lanka (known as
Malwatu Oya in Sinhala and
Aruvi Aru in Tamil). This river was a main supply route connecting the capital,
Anuradhapura, to Mahathitha (now
Mannar). The waterway was used by Greek and Chinese ships travelling the southern Silk Route.
Mahathitha was an ancient port linking Sri Lanka to India and the Persian gulf.
[18]
The present day Sinhalese are a mixture of the indigenous people and of other peoples who came to the island from various parts of India. The Sinhalese recognize the Vijayan Indo-Aryan culture and Buddhism, as distinct from other groups in neighboring south India.
Anuradhapura Kingdom[edit]
In the early ages of the
Anuradhapura Kingdom the Sinhalese economy was based on farming and they made their early settlements mainly near the rivers of the east, north central, and north east areas which had the water necessary for farming the whole year round. The king was the ruler of country and responsible for the law, the army, and being the protector of faith.
Devanampiya Tissa (250-210 BC) was
Sinhalese was friends with the King of the
Maurya clan. His links with Emperor
Asoka led to the introduction of
Buddhism by
Mahinda (son of Asoka) around 247 BC.
Sangamitta (sister of Mahinda) brought a
Bodhi sapling via
Jambukola (
Sambiliturei). This king's reign was crucial to
Theravada Buddhism and for Sri Lanka.
Bronze imitation of a Roman coin,
Sri Lanka, 4-8th century CE.
Pulahatta (or Pulahatha), the first of
The Five Dravidians, was deposed by
Bahiya. He in turn was deposed by
Panaya Mara who was deposed by
Pilaya Mara, murdered by
Dathika in 88 BC. Mara was deposed by
Valagambahu I (89-77 BC) which ended Tamil rule. The Mahavihara
Theravada Abhayagiri ("pro-
Mahayana") doctrinal disputes arose at this time. The
Tripitaka was written in
Pali at
Aluvihara,
Matale.
Chora Naga (63-51 BC), a Mahanagan, was poisoned by his consort Anula who became queen.
Queen Anula (48-44 BC), the widow of Chora Naga and of
Kuda Tissa, was the first Queen of Lanka. She had many lovers who were poisoned by her and was killed by Kuttakanna Tissa.
Vasabha (67-111 AD), named on the
Vallipuram gold plate, fortified
Anuradhapura and built eleven tanks as well as pronouncing many edicts.
Gajabahu I (114-136) invaded the
Chola kingdom and brought back captives as well as recovering the
relic of the tooth of the Buddha.
Sri Lankan imitations of 4th-century Roman coins, 4-8th century.
During the reign of
Mahasena (274-301) the
Theravada (Maha Vihara) was persecuted and the
Mahayanan branch of Buddhism surfaced. Later the King returned to the Maha Vihara. Pandu (429) was the first of seven Pandiyan rulers, ending with Pithya in 455.
Dhatusena (459-477) "Kalaweva" and his son
Kashyapa (477-495), built the famous
sigiriya rock palace where some 700 rock graffiti give a glimpse of ancient Sinhala.
Medieval Sri Lanka[edit]
Kingdom of Rohana[edit]
Kingdom of Ruhuna(210 - 161 BC). The first king of the Rohana Kingdom was King Mahanaga.He was the brother of King Dewanampiyathissa in Anuradhapura main Kingdom. After king Mahanaga, his son Yatalathissa came as the new king in Ruhuna.he built The Yatala vehera (near Thissamaharama) & Kalaniya vehera. The third king of Ruhuna was King Gothabhaya. after him, King Kawanthissa built the Rohana Kingdom strongly. King Dutugemunu was the son of King Kawanthissa. He defeated the chola king Elara and united Sri Lanka under one government.
Kings In Rohana Kingdom
1.King Mahanaga
2.King Yatalathissa
3.King Gothabhaya
4.King Kawanthissa
Kingdom of Polonnaruwa[edit]
Kingdom of Dambadeniya[edit]
Kingdom of Jaffna[edit]
Kingdom of Gampola[edit]
Kingdom of Kotte[edit]
Kingdom of Sitawaka[edit]
Kingdom of Kandy[edit]
Colonial Sri Lanka[edit]
Portuguese Era[edit]
A Portuguese(later Dutch) fort in
Batticaloa, Eastern Province built in the 16th century.
The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern times were the
Portuguese:
Lourenço de Almeida arrived in 1505 and found that the island, divided into seven warring kingdoms, was unable to fend off intruders. The Portuguese founded a fort at the port city of
Colombo in 1517 and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of
Kandy, a location more secure against attack from invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
Many lowland Sinhalese were forced to convert to Christianity while the coastal
Moors were religiously persecuted and forced to retreat to the
Central highlands. The Buddhist majority disliked the Portuguese occupation and its influences, welcoming any power who might rescue them. When the Dutch captain
Joris van Spilbergen landed in 1602 the king of Kandy appealed to him for help.
Dutch era[edit]
Main article:
Dutch Ceylon
Rajasinghe II, the king of Kandy, made a treaty with the Dutch in 1638 to get rid of the Portuguese who ruled most of the coastal area of the island. The main conditions of the treaty were that the Dutch should handover the coastal areas they capture to the Kandyan king and the king should grant the Dutch a monopoly over trade on the entire island. The agreement was breached by both parties. By 1660 the Dutch controlled the whole island except the kingdom of Kandy and it was not until 1656 that Colombo fell. The Dutch (Protestants) persecuted the Catholics and the remaining Portuguese settlers left the Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims alone. The Dutch taxed the people far more heavily than the Portuguese had done.
In 1659 the British sea captain
Robert Knox landed by chance on Sri Lanka and was captured by the king of Kandy, along with sixteen sailors. He and another sailor escaped 19 years later and he wrote an account of his stay. This helped to bring the island to the attention of the British.
A legacy of the Dutch period in Ceylon are the Dutch Burghers, a people of mixed Dutch and local origin. A later definition of the Burgher people of Ceylon was handed down in 1883 by the Chief Justice of Ceylon, Sir Richard Ottley.
British era[edit]
Main article:
British Ceylon
Late 19th-century German map of Ceylon.
During the
Napoleonic Wars Great Britain, fearing that French control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802 the
Treaty of Amiens formally ceded the Dutch part of the island to Britain and it became a crown colony. In 1803 the
British invaded the
Kingdom of Kandy in the first
Kandyan War, but were repulsed. In 1815 Kandy was occupied in the second Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence.
Following the suppression of the
Uva Rebellion the Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the
Wastelands Ordinance, a modern
enclosure movement, and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suitable for coffee, tea and rubber cultivation. By the mid-19th century, Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market bringing great wealth to a small number of white tea planters. The planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as
indentured labourers from south India to work the estates, who soon made up 10% of the island's population.
[citation needed] These workers had to work in slave-like conditions living in line rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-
caste Sinhalese and the Tamils who were mainly concentrated to the north of the country. Nevertheless, the British also introduced democratic elements to Sri Lanka for the first time in its history and the Burghers were given degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional development began, with a partly elected assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official appointees.
Universal suffrage was introduced in 1931 over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote.
Independence movement[edit]
Ceylon National Congress (CNC) was founded to agitate for greater autonomy, although the party was soon split along ethnic and caste lines. Historian K. M. de Silva has stated that the refusal of the Ceylon Tamils to accept minority status is one of the main causes of the break up of the Ceylon National congress.
[21] The CNC did not seek independence (or "Swaraj"). What may be called the independence movement broke into two streams: the "constitutionalists", who sought independence by gradual modification of the status of Ceylon; and the more radical groups associated with the Colombo Youth League, Labour movement of Goonasinghe, and the Jaffna Youth Congress. These organizations were the first to raise the cry of "Swaraj" ("outright independence") following the Indian example when
Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and other Indian leaders visited Ceylon in 1926.
[22]The efforts of the constitutionalists led to the arrival of the
Donoughmore Commission reforms in 1931 and the
Soulbury Commission recommendations, which essentially upheld the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of ministers headed by
D. S. Senanayake.
[21][22] The Marxist
Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which grew out of the Youth Leagues in 1935, made the demand for outright independence a cornerstone of their policy.
[23] Its deputies in the State Council,
N.M. Perera and
Philip Gunawardena, were aided in this struggle by other less radical members like
Colvin R. De Silva,
Leslie Goonewardena,
Vivienne Goonewardena,
Edmund Samarkody,
Natesa Iyer and Don Alwin Rajapaksa. They also demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. The Marxist groups were a tiny minority and yet their movement was viewed with great interest by the British administration. The ineffective attempts to rouse the public against the British Raj in revolt would have led to certain bloodshed and a delay in independence. British state papers released in the 1950s show that the Marxist movement had a very negative impact on the policy makers at the Colonial office.
The
Soulbury Commission was the most important result of the agitation for constitutional reform in the 1930s. The Tamil organization was by then led by
G. G. Ponnambalam, who had rejected the "Ceylonese identity".
[24] Ponnamblam had declared himself a "proud Dravidian" and proclaimed an independent identity for the Tamils. He attacked the Sinhalese and criticized their historical chronicle known as the
Mahavamsa. One such conflict
[specify] in Navalapitiya led to the first Sinhala-Tamil riot in 1939.
[22][25] Ponnambalam opposed
universal franchise, supported the
caste system, and claimed that the protection of minority rights requires that minorities (35% of the population in 1931) having an equal number of seats in parliament to that of the Sinhalese (65% of the population). This "50-50" or "balanced representation" policy became the hall mark of Tamil politics of the time. Ponnambalam also accused the British of having established colonization in "traditional Tamil areas", and having favoured the Buddhists by the buddhist temporalities act. The
Soulbury Commission rejected the submissions by Ponnambalam and even criticized what they described as their unacceptable communal character
[clarification needed]. Sinhalese writers pointed to the large immigration of Tamils to the southern urban centers, especially after the opening of the Jaffna-Colombo railway. Meanwhile Senanayake, Baron Jayatilleke, Oliver Gunatilleke and others lobbied the
Soulbury Commission without confronting them officially. The unofficial submissions contained what was to later become the draft constitution of 1944.
[22]
The close collaboration of the D. S. Senanayake government with the war-time British administration led to the support of
Lord Louis Mountbatten. His dispatches and a telegram to the Colonial office supporting Independence for Ceylon have been cited by historians as having helped the Senanayake government to secure the independence of Sri Lanka. The shrewd cooperation with the British as well as diverting the needs of the war market to Ceylonese markets as a supply point, managed by Oliver Goonatilleke, also led to a very favourable fiscal situation for the newly independent government.
World War II[edit]
Sri Lanka was a front-line British base against the Japanese during
World War II. Sri Lankan opposition to the war led by the Marxist organizations and the leaders of the LSSP pro-independence group were arrested by the Colonial authorities. On 5 April 1942 the
Indian Ocean raid saw the
Japanese Navy bomb Colombo. The Japanese attack led to the flight of Indian merchants, dominant in the Colombo commercial sector, which removed a major political problem facing the Senanayake government.
[22] Marxist leaders also escaped to India where they participated in the independence struggle there. The movement in Ceylon was minuscule, limited to the English-educated intelligentsia and trade unions, mainly in the urban centers. These groups were led by Robert Gunawardena, Philip's brother. In stark contrast to this "heroic" but ineffective approach to the war the Senanayake government took advantage to further its rapport with the commanding elite. Ceylon became crucial to the British Empire in the war, with
Lord Louis Mountbatten using Colombo as his headquarters for the Eastern Theater. Oliver Goonatilleka successfully exploited the markets for the country's rubber and other agricultural products to replenish the treasury. Nonetheless the Sinhalese continued to push for independence and the Sinhalese sovereignty, using the opportunities offered by the war, pushed to establish a special relationship with Britain.
Meanwhile the Marxists, identifying the war as an imperialist sideshow and desiring a
proletarian revolution, chose a path of agitation disproportionate to their negligible combat strength and diametrically opposed to the "constitutionalist" approach of Senanayake and other Ethnic Sinhalese leaders. A small garrison on the
Cocos Islands manned by Ceylonese
mutinied against British rule. It has been claimed that the LSSP had some hand in the action, though this is far from clear. Three of the participants were the only British colony subjects to be shot for mutiny during World War II.
[citation needed]
The constitutionalists led by D. S. Senanayake succeeded in winning independence. The Soulbury constitution was essentially what Senanayake's board of ministers had drafted in 1944. The promise of Dominion status, and independence itself, had been given by the Colonial office.
Post war[edit]
The Sinhalese leader Don Stephen Senanayake left the CNC on the issue of independence, disagreeing with the revised aim of 'the achieving of freedom', although his real reasons were more subtle.
[26] He subsequently formed the
United National Party (UNP) in 1946,
[27] when a new constitution was agreed on, based on the behind-the-curtain lobbying of the Soulbury commission. At the elections of 1947 the UNP won a minority of the seats in parliament, but cobbled together a coalition with the Sinhala Maha Sabha party of Solomon Bandaranaike and the Tamil Congress of G.G. Ponnambalam. The successful inclusions of the Tamil-communalist leader Ponnambalam, and his Sinhala counterpart Bandaranaike were a remarkable political balancing act by Senanayake. The vacuum in Tamil Nationalist politics, created by Ponnamblam's transition to a moderate, opened the field for the Tamil
Arasu Kachchi ("Federal party"), a Tamil sovereignty party led by S. J. V. Chelvanaykam who was the lawyer son of a Christian minister.
20th century Sri Lanka[edit]
Independence[edit]
Dominion status followed on 4 February 1948 with military treaties with Britain, as the upper ranks of the armed forces were initially British, and British air and sea bases remaining intact. This was later raised to independence itself and Senanayake became the first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. In 1949, with the concurrence of the leaders of the
Ceylon Tamils, the UNP government disenfranchised the
Indian Tamil plantation workers.
[22][28] This was the price that Senanayake had to pay to obtain the support of the Kandyan Sinhalese, who felt threatened by the demographics of the tea estates where the inclusion of the "Indian Tamils" would have meant electoral defeat for the Kandyan leaders. Senanayke died in 1952 after falling from a horse and was succeeded by his son Dudley Senanayake, the then minister of Agriculture. In 1953 he resigned following a massive
Hartal ("general strike") by the Left parties against the UNP. He was followed by
John Kotelawala, a senior politician and an uncle of Dudley Senanayke. Kotelawala did not have the enormous personal prestige or the adroit political acumen of D. S. Senanayake.
[29] He brought to the fore the issue of national languages that D. S. Senanayake had adroitly kept on the back burner, antagonising the Tamils and the Sinhalese by stating conflicting policies with regard to the status of
Sinhala and
Tamil as official languages. He also antagonized the Buddhist lobby by attacking politically active Buddhist Monks who were Bandaranaike's supporters.
1956–72[edit]
In 1956 the Senate was abolished and Sinhala was established as the official language, with Tamil as a second language. Appeals to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London were abolished and plantations were nationalised to fulfil the election pledges of the Marxist program and to "prevent the ongoing dis-investment by the owning companies".
In 1956 the Sinhala Only Act came into being. This established the Sinhalese language as the first and preferred language in commerce and education. The Act took effect immediately. As a consequence vast numbers of people mostly Burghers left the country to live abroad as they rightfully felt discriminated against.
In 1958 the first major riots between Sinhalese and Tamils flared up in Colombo which was a direct result of the government's language policy.
1971 Uprising[edit]
The leftist Sinhalese
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna drew worldwide attention when it launched an insurrection against the Bandaranaike government in April 1971. Although the insurgents were young, poorly armed, and inadequately trained, they succeeded in seizing and holding major areas in Southern and Central provinces before they were defeated by the security forces. Their attempt to seize power created a major crisis for the government and forced a fundamental reassessment of the nation's security needs.
The movement was started in the late 1960s by Rohana Wijeweera, the son of a businessman from the seaport of Tangalla, Hambantota District. An excellent student, Wijeweera had been forced to give up his studies for financial reasons. Through friends of his father, a member of the Ceylon Communist Party, Wijeweera successfully applied for a scholarship in the Soviet Union, and in 1960 at the age of seventeen, he went to Moscow to study medicine at Patrice Lumumba University.
While in Moscow, he studied Marxist ideology but, because of his openly expressed sympathies for Maoist revolutionary theory, he was denied a visa to return to the Soviet Union after a brief trip home in 1964. Over the next several years, he participated in the pro-Beijing branch of the Ceylon Communist Party, but he was increasingly at odds with party leaders and impatient with its lack of revolutionary purpose. His success in working with youth groups and his popularity as a public speaker led him to organize his own movement in 1967. Initially identified simply as the New Left, this group drew on students and unemployed youths from rural areas, most of them in the sixteen-to-twenty-five-age-group. Many of these new recruits were members of minority so called 'lower' castes (Karava and Durava) who felt that their economic interests had been neglected by the nation's leftist coalitions. The standard program of indoctrination, the so-called Five Lectures, included discussions of Indian imperialism, the growing economic crisis, the failure of the island's communist and socialist parties, and the need for a sudden, violent seizure of power.
Between 1967 and 1970, the group expanded rapidly, gaining control of the student socialist movement at a number of major university campuses and winning recruits and sympathizers within the armed forces. Some of these latter supporters actually provided sketches of police stations, airports, and military facilities that were important to the initial success of the revolt. In order to draw the newer members more tightly into the organization and to prepare them for a coming confrontation, Wijeweera opened "education camps" in several remote areas along the south and southwestern coasts. These camps provided training in Marxism-Leninism and in basic military skills.
While developing secret cells and regional commands, Wijeweera's group also began to take a more public role during the elections of 1970. His cadres campaigned openly for the United Front of Sirimavo R. D. Bandaranaike, but at the same time they distributed posters and pamphlets promising violent rebellion if Bandaranaike did not address the interests of the proletariat. In a manifesto issued during this period, the group used the name Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna for the first time. Because of the subversive tone of these publications, the United National Party government had Wijeweera detained during the elections, but the victorious Bandaranaike ordered his release in July 1970. In the politically tolerant atmosphere of the next few months, as the new government attempted to win over a wide variety of unorthodox leftist groups, the JVP intensified both the public campaign and the private preparations for a revolt. Although their group was relatively small, the members hoped to immobilize the government by selective kidnapping and sudden, simultaneous strikes against the security forces throughout the island. Some of the necessary weapons had been bought with funds supplied by the members. For the most part, however, they relied on raids against police stations and army camps to secure weapons, and they manufactured their own bombs.
The discovery of several JVP bomb factories gave the government its first evidence that the group's public threats were to be taken seriously. In March 1971, after an accidental explosion in one of these factories, the police found fifty-eight bombs in a hut in Nelundeniya, Kegalla District. Shortly afterward, Wijeweera was arrested and sent to Jaffna Prison, where he remained throughout the revolt. In response to his arrest and the growing pressure of police investigations, other JVP leaders decided to act immediately, and they agreed to begin the uprising at 11:00 P.M. on April 5.
The planning for the countrywide insurrection was hasty and poorly coordinated; some of the district leaders were not informed until the morning of the uprising. After one premature attack, security forces throughout the island were put on alert and a number of JVP leaders went into hiding without bothering to inform their subordinates of the changed circumstances. In spite of this confusion, rebel groups armed with shotguns, bombs, and Molotov cocktails launched simultaneous attacks against seventy- four police stations around the island and cut power to major urban areas. The attacks were most successful in the south. By April 10, the rebels had taken control of Matara District and the city of Ambalangoda in Galle District and came close to capturing the remaining areas of Southern Province.
The new government was ill prepared for the crisis that confronted it. Although there had been some warning that an attack was imminent, Bandaranaike was caught off guard by the scale of the uprising and was forced to call on India to provide basic security functions. Indian frigates patrolled the coast and Indian troops guarded Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayaka while Indian Air Force helicopters assisted the counteroffensive. Sri Lanka's all-volunteer army had no combat experience since World War II and no training in counterinsurgency warfare. Although the police were able to defend some areas unassisted, in many places the government deployed personnel from all three services in a ground force capacity. Royal Ceylon Air Force helicopters delivered relief supplies to beleaguered police stations while combined service patrols drove the insurgents out of urban areas and into the countryside.
After two weeks of fighting, the government regained control of all but a few remote areas. In both human and political terms, the cost of the victory was high: an estimated 10,000 insurgents- -many of them in their teens—died in the conflict, and the army was widely perceived to have used excessive force. In order to win over an alienated population and to prevent a prolonged conflict, Bandaranaike offered amnesties in May and June 1971, and only the top leaders were actually imprisoned. Wijeweera, who was already in detention at the time of the uprising, was given a twenty-year sentence and the JVP was proscribed.
Under the six years of emergency rule that followed the uprising, the JVP remained dormant. After the victory of the United National Party in the 1977 elections, however, the new government attempted to broaden its mandate with a period of political tolerance. Wijeweera was freed, the ban was lifted, and the JVP entered the arena of legal political competition. As a candidate in the 1982 presidential elections, Wijeweera finished fourth, with more than 250,000 votes (as compared with Jayewardene's 3.2 million). During this period, and especially as the Tamil conflict to the north became more intense, there was a marked shift in the ideology and goals of the JVP. Initially Marxist in orientation, and claiming to represent the oppressed of both the Tamil and Sinhalese communities, the group emerged increasingly as a Sinhalese nationalist organization opposing any compromise with the Tamil insurgency. This new orientation became explicit in the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983. Because of its role in inciting violence, the JVP was once again banned and its leadership went underground.
The group's activities intensified in the second half of 1987 in the wake of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. The prospect of Tamil autonomy in the north together with the presence of Indian troops stirred up a wave of Sinhalese nationalism and a sudden growth of antigovernment violence. During 1987 a new group emerged that was an offshoot of the JVP—the Patriotic Liberation Organization (Deshapremi Janatha Viyaparaya—DJV). The DJV claimed responsibility for the August 1987 assassination attempts against the president and prime minister. In addition, the group launched a campaign of intimidation against the ruling party, killing more than seventy members of Parliament between July and November.
Along with the group's renewed violence came a renewed fear of infiltration of the armed forces. Following the successful raid of the Pallekelle army camp in May 1987, the government conducted an investigation that resulted in the discharge of thirty-seven soldiers suspected of having links with the JVP. In order to prevent a repetition of the 1971 uprising, the government considered lifting the ban on the JVP in early 1988 and permitting the group to participate again in the political arena. With Wijeweera still underground, however, the JVP had no clear leadership at the time, and it was uncertain whether it had the cohesion to mount any coordinated offensive, either military or political, against the government.
Republic of Sri Lanka[edit]
Socialist republic of Sri Lanka is established on 22 May 1972.
New constitution of 1978[edit]
By 1977 the voters were tired of Bandaranaike's socialist policies and elections returned the UNP to power under
Junius Jayewardene, on a manifesto pledging a market economy and "a free ration of 8 seers (kilograms) of cereals". The SLFP and the left-wing parties were virtually wiped out in Parliament, although they garnered 40% of the popular vote, leaving the
Tamil United Liberation Front led by
Appapillai Amirthalingam as the official opposition. This created a dangerous ethnic division in Sri Lankan politics.
After coming to power, Jayewardene directed the rewriting of the constitution. The document that was produced, the new Constitution of 1978, drastically altered the nature of governance in Sri Lanka. It replaced the previous Westminster style, parliamentary government with a new presidential system modeled after France, with a powerful chief executive. The president was to be elected by direct suffrage for a six-year term and was empowered to appoint, with parliamentary approval, the prime minister and to preside over cabinet meetings. Jayewardene became the first president under the new Constitution and assumed direct control of the government machinery and party.
The new regime ushered in an era that did not augur well for the SLFP. Jayewardene's UNP government accused former prime minister Bandaranaike of abusing her power while in office from 1970 to 1977. In October 1980, Bandaranaike's privilege to engage in politics was removed for a period of seven years, and the SLFP was forced to seek a new leader. After a long and divisive battle, the party chose her son, Anura. Anura Bandaranaike was soon thrust into the role of the keeper of his father's legacy, but he inherited a political party torn apart by factionalism and reduced to a minimal role in the Parliament.
The 1978 Constitution included substantial concessions to Tamil sensitivities. Although TULF did not participate in framing the Constitution, it continued to sit in Parliament in the hope of negotiating a settlement to the Tamil problem. TULF also agreed to Jayewardene's proposal of an all-party conference to resolve the island's ethnic problems. Jayewardene's UNP offered other concessions in a bid to secure peace. Sinhala remained the official language and the language of administration throughout Sri Lanka, but Tamil was given a new "national language" status. Tamil was to be used in a number of administrative and educational circumstances. Jayewardene also eliminated a major Tamil grievance by abrogating the "standardization" policy of the United Front government, which had made university admission criteria for Tamils more difficult. In addition, he offered many top-level positions, including that of minister of justice, to Tamil civil servants.
While TULF, in conjunction with the UNP, pressed for the allparty conference, the Tamil Tigers escalated their terrorist attacks, which provoked Sinhalese backlash against Tamils and generally precluded any successful accommodation. In reaction to the assassination of a Jaffna police inspector, the Jayewardene government declared an emergency and dispatched troops, who were given an unrealistic six months to eradicate the terrorist threat.
The government passed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act in 1979. The act was enacted as a temporary measure, but it later became permanent legislation. The International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations condemned the act as being incompatible with democratic traditions. Despite the act, the number of terrorist acts increased. Guerrillas began to hit targets of high symbolic value such as post offices and police outposts, provoking government counterattacks. As an increasing number of civilians were caught in the fighting, Tamil support widened for the "boys", as the guerrillas began to be called. Other large, well-armed groups began to compete with LTTE. The better-known included the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, Tamil Eelam Liberation Army, and the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization. Each of these groups had forces measured in the hundreds if not thousands. The government claimed that many of the terrorists were operating from training camps in India's Tamil Nadu State. The Indian government repeatedly denied this claim. With the level of violence mounting, the possibility of negotiation became increasingly distant.
Civil war (1983–2009)[edit]
In July 1983 communal riots took place due to the ambush and killing of 13 Sri Lankan Army soldiers by the Tamil Tigers using the voters list, which contained the exact addresses of Tamils. The Tamil community faced a backlash from Sinhalese rioters including the destruction of shops, homes and savage beatings. A few Sinhalese kept Tamil neighbours in their homes to protect them from the rioters. During these riots the government did nothing to control the mob. Conservative government estimates put the death toll at 400,
[30] while the real death toll is believed to be around 3000.
[31] Also around 18,000 Tamil homes and another 5,000 homes were destroyed, with 150,000 leaving the country resulting in a Tamil diaspora in Canada, the UK, Australia and other western countries.
In elections held on 17 November 2005
Mahinda Rajapakse, the son of Don Alwin Rajapaksa, was elected President after defeating
Ranil Wickremasinghe. He appointed Wickremanayake as Prime Minister and
Mangala Samaraweera as Foreign Minister. Negotiations with the LTTE stalled and a low-intensity conflict began. The violence dropped off after talks in February but escalated again in April and the conflict continued until the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.
Defeat of the LTTE[edit]
The Sri Lanka government declared total victory on 18 May 2009. On 19 May 2009 the Sri Lankan military led by
General Sarath Fonseka, effectively concluded its 26 year operation against the LTTE, its military forces recaptured all remaining LTTE controlled territories in the Northern Province including Killinochchi (2 January), the Elephant Pass (9 January) and ultimately the entire district of Mullaitivu.
On 22 May 2009 the Sri Lankan Defence Secretary
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa confirmed that 6,261 personnel of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces had lost their lives and 29,551 were wounded during the
Eelam War IV since July 2006. Brigadier
Udaya Nanayakkara added that approximately 22,000 LTTE fighters had died during this time.
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