Senaka Weeraratna

Sri Lanka gained Independence in February 1948 almost effortlessly (without blood letting) when compared to what other countries had to face.

There was no mass based independence struggle or armed rebellion in Sri Lanka after 1848 akin to that in India, Burma, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam. Except for Anagarika Dharmapala, Sri Lanka has not produced a single iconic global figure comparable to the stature of Ho Chi Minh, Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Sukarno, Aung San, Mandela, Jomo Kenyata or even Robert Mugabe.

Lackeys of the colonial west are unqualified to be given the exalted status of a national hero. Yet, in the absence of true heroes with a background of suffering, sacrifice and good fight, pen pushers parading colonial titles are occupying that venerated space with the support of an enslaved press.

This is very unfortunate. Though we in Sri Lanka live under a self – styled grand delusion that independence was won from Britain exclusively by our own local efforts through an exchange of correspondence and political negotiations without any supportive foreign factor, it is factually unsustainable and a big lie.

We were extremely lucky. Had the Axis powers particularly Japan not fought the major European powers beginning with Russia (1905), and then global colonial powers in Asia such as USA, Britain, Dutch, French, Portuguese in heroic battles in the the second world war the destiny of Sri Lanka together with several other South Asian and South East Asian nations would have been altogether very different.

It is time that we re-asses our contemporary history and attribute credit to those who have truly earned it.