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By Sugeeswara Senadhira
Colombo, July 15: Sri Lankans fought for their freedom, rights and equal opportunities as citizens of a single nation since the time the country lost its independence in 1815.
After the ruthless crushing of 1818 rebellion by the British rulers, educated Sinhala and Tamil leaders commenced a movement to demand a share of power peacefully. In 1833, the Colonial Office agreed to set up a Legislative Council comprising ten official members and six unofficial members. However, the strategy was to give representation to the British planters as they demand a power share.
The protest against this injustice of appointing only British planters as unofficial representatives was headed by Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam. In 1911 Ponnambalam Ramanathan, whose leadership was unhesitatingly acknowledged by the Sinhala leaders of that time, contested the legislative council election as a candidate for the Educated Ceylonese seat and was elected to the Legislative Council, defeating eminent physician Marcus Fernando. Rananathan was supported by Sinhala leaders D S Senanayake, E W Jayewardene and many others who rightly believed Ramanathan was better suited than Fernando.
Former Northern Chief Minister C V Vigneswaran described it as, “It was the best of times as there was cordial relationship between the two communities”.
Last Friday when Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena visited Jaffna all the Tamil leaders hailing from the north held a cordial discussion on the ways and means of solving the problems in the province and to speedy development of school and university education to provide employment opportunities to youths. The district development coordination meeting was attended by Tamil Members of Parliament C.V Vigneswaran, M A Sumanthiran, Dharmalingam Siddharthan, Angajan Ramanathan and Minister Douglas Devananda. Their discussions with the Prime Minister brought home the hope of reviving the spirit of bonhomie existed in their fathers’ generation.
Premier Gunawardena, who donated a consignment of valuable books to the Jaffa Library, stressed the need to enhance educational facilities to northern schools. The visit was an occasion to recall the longstanding camaraderie existed between the two communities during the era in which leftists took the forefront in the struggle to win the rights for the people, including the workers’ rights.
It was Jaffna leftist leaders and their committed cadres who defied the Colonial rulers and helped the socialist leaders N M Perera, Philip Gunawardena, Colvin R de Silva and others who escaped from prison to take shelter in the north and crossed over to India where they worked for the Indian freedom struggle.
The leaders who fought for workers’ rights include A E Gunasinghe, N Shanmuganathan, Edmond Samarakkody, Robert and Philip Gunwardena, Bala Thampo. The Government Service Clerical Services Union was headed by Alva Pillai who was later succeeded by T B Illangarathne, who later became a minister in S W R D Bnadaranaike Government together with Philip Gunawardena and William Silva.
Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, recalled that Minister Devanandan’s father was also an activist to win rights of the workers, Similar sentiments were expressed by al the leaders who desire communal amity.
In this newly revived spirit of amity, the Prime Minister travelled from Jaffna to Kilinochchi by road. There were no protests and he was received at both venues with warmth and cordiality.
“We are totally committed to develop north. New allocation is made for development by the President, taking on the responsibility of allocating Provincial funds and special funds for development to every district, every Province and, every AG division is to be covered,” he said.
I thank all the officials and the members of parliament who contributed to that, taking on issues of development. We empower all of you specially the MPs, and the District Secretaries to work along with the Governor and the district leaders in order to achieve this, he said.
All the Tamil parliamentarians and the minister assured the Prime Minister unstinted support to speedily implement the development programme, thus opening a new hope to keep the spirit of commonality alive.
END
Caption for the picture above : Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena exchanging pleasantries with Jaffna Parliamentarians M A Sumanthiran, Angajan Ramanathan, C Vigneshwaran and Dharmalingam Siddharthan.
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