{"id":113985,"date":"2021-05-02T16:28:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T23:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=113985"},"modified":"2021-05-02T16:28:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T23:28:20","slug":"the-general-election-of-1956-part-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/05\/02\/the-general-election-of-1956-part-14\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1956 Part 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The MEP government of 1956\nlasted for just three years during which it faced much opposition, but the\ngovernment   still managed to get things\ndone. What the MEP    \nachieved in such a situation is truly impressive said Ananda Meegama.  The impact of the 1956 MEP\ngovernment was such that there was no turning back from its gains, he concluded\n   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SWRD gave legitimacy to the\naspirations of the Sinhala Buddhist public, said Sudath Gunasekera.  Buddhist and Sinhala values were emphasized,\nsaid Nayani Melegoda.1956 saw the rise of a viable religious and cultural\npolicy for the nation, said Ananda Guruge. The previous UNP government had failed to make\nthis change.  DS Senanayake had refused to make Sinhala the state\nlanguage and Buddhism the state religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MEP government gave\nBuddhism its rightful place\u201d. This was discussed in the preceding essay and\ndoes not need elaboration here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MEP supporters also wanted\na return to Sinhala.  The 1956 government\nmade Sinhala the sole official language. This was a\nhistoric decision, and a badly needed one. It was also self determination at\nthe highest level and must be recognized as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SWRD said in\nhis BBC interview   that he supported\n\u2018Sinhala only\u2019 because Sinhala was spoken by about 75% of the population.  That is not the correct answer. It was not the\npercentage of speakers that mattered, it was the usage. Sinhala had never been\nout of use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinhala had\nbeen the national language of Sri Lanka for over one thousand years. Sinhala\nlost this position during colonial rule. The Portuguese and Dutch rulers    administered their segment in the\nPortuguese and Dutch languages .After 1815, the whole island was administered\nin English. But Sinhala did not disappear. It continued in local use and it\nkept pace with modern developments.  When\nthe printing press arrived in Sri Lanka the Sinhala newspaper and other Sinhala\nimprints started to appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinhala was not the   \nprimitive backward language that the westernized elite thought it was.\nIn its heyday, Sinhala had been used for administration, business, manufacture,\nscience, technology as well as scholarly pursuits. Due to this, Sinhala had an\nuntapped base of root words, ready for use in the modern period. Sinhala\nmodernized quickly and effortlessly. The vocabulary expanded. Today, the\nintelligentsia have no difficulty in explaining technical matters in fluent\nSinhala on television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1956, Sinhala had to face the issue of relevance in the modern\nworld, both domestic and cosmopolitan. The westernized elite who were\nvehemently    opposed to Sinhala focused\non the cosmopolitan aspect, particularly education but also the cultural aspect\nof Dickens, daffodils and Shakespeare. Their arguments cannot be ignored, but\nin 1956, the \u2018Sinhala only\u2019 group was not thinking of daffodils or Shakespeare.  They were focusing solely on the domestic\ncomponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During British rule, the domestic administration was in\nEnglish. Public administration and law courts\nworked in English. Telegrams were sent in English.   The total\nnumber of persons in the Island who were able to read and write English in  1946, according  to the Census of Ceylon 1946  was 367,622, or 6.3% of the population (aged\nfive years and over).  I am unable to get\nthe   parallel statistic from the Census\nof 1953 due to Covid but it could be calculated to be not more than 10% because\nin the Census of 2012, only 24 % spoke English.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This changed in 1956.Thanks to Sinhala only administration\nand court proceedings were done in   Sinhala. There was now a direct link between\ncitizen and government. This is a basic right of a citizen. This was one of the\npermanent gains of the 1956 election. It must be applauded. In Parliament\ntoo, more debates were conducted in Sinhala.          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emphasis on Swabhasha brought a hitherto submerged class onto center stage\nand upward mobility. The 1956 government empowered the Swabasha educated\nintelligentsia, through its policy on education and language and its emphasis\non indigenous culture and science, said Meegama. The urban\nelite would no longer have a plentiful supply of servants in their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n1956 MEP government was the first government to see the need for a modern policy of\nIndustrialization for Sri Lanka. There were no local industries\nwhen MEP came to power in 1956, everything was\nimported. The country was importing everything, from a pin, comb, pencil, and\nbiscuit to mammoties, water pumps, agriculture and industrial machinery,\nreported economists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MEP had a long term plan for industrialization. The state would lead with a\nfew basic industries whilst the rest were left to the private sector. There\nwere three lists. The first list consisted of items\nreserved for the state. They included iron and steel, cement, chemicals,\nfertilizer, salt, mineral sands, sugar, power alcohol and rayon.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second list had industries which were open to both state and\nprivate sectors. They included textiles, tyres and  tubes, tiles, asbestos products, bicycles,\nindustrial alcohol, acetic acid,   sugar,\nvegetable oil, ceramic ware, glass ware, leather products, plywood, paper,\nelectric bubs, dry cell batteries, accumulators, barbed wire, lumber,\nagricultural implements, wood working, furniture and cabinetry,  and concrete products.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a third list of 82 industries ranging from motor car\nassembly to activated charcoal, reserved exclusively for the private\nsector.  Persons embarking on these\nindustries would receive tax concessions and tariff protection. Meegama observed that this period therefore\nsaw the beginning of a private sector in industry with government\nencouragement. Industrialists promptly asked the government to stop imports in\nthe goods they are producing. The first industrial estate was established at\nEkala in 1960.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those opposed to MEP had raised objections. There had been a\ndebate on large versus small industry. Daily News had said it was a waste of\nmoney to invest on big schemes. What was needed for unemployment relief was\nsmall industry.  William Silva minister\nfor Industries replied that we cannot treat industry as unemployment\nrelief.  Large industry, especially basic\nindustries are needed to develop a country. Small industry would also be\nencouraged. The public will be invited to invest in small scale industries with\ninducements such as tax concessions, and tariff protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 This aspect of the 1956\ngovernment is important and I have emphasized this repeatedly in this series,\nbecause this is the first and only time that Sri Lanka embarked on a modern\npolicy of industrialization. It was immediately scuttled by the right. No\nindustrialization policy was ever attempted thereafter in Sri Lanka, as far as\nI can see. The industrialization policy of the 1956 MEP government remains an\nisolated event. (Continued) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS The MEP government of 1956 lasted for just three years during which it faced much opposition, but the government   still managed to get things done. What the MEP     achieved in such a situation is truly impressive said Ananda Meegama.  The impact of the 1956 MEP government was such that there was no turning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}