{"id":90885,"date":"2019-06-29T16:16:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T23:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90885"},"modified":"2019-06-29T16:16:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T23:16:02","slug":"did-japan-contribute-to-sri-lankas-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/29\/did-japan-contribute-to-sri-lankas-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Japan contribute to Sri Lanka’s independence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

An\ninteresting debate over who brought independence to Sri Lanka, India and the\nrest of European colonies in Asia took place at the Gamini Dissanayake\nAuditorium, Mahaweli Centre, Colombo, last Monday (June 24, 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An\nentirely different perspective to the historical narrative sparked off the\ndebate at the Royal Asiatic Society sponsored public lecture.  The\nspeaker was Attorney at Law Senaka Weeraratna, who addressed the gathering\non <\/strong>Did Japan Contribute to Sri Lanka and India gaining\nIndependence from British colonial rule?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr.\nWeeraratna is the first Sri Lankan and first Asian to thank Japan on the\npremises of the Japanese Parliament (Conference Room No. 101 of the Diet) for\nmaking huge blood sacrifices of Japanese soldiers and thereby paving the way\nfor the liberation of Europe’s Asian colonies including Sri Lanka, at a\nsymposium organized by Japan\u2019s Society for the Dissemination of Historical\nFact, in November, last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crux\nof his argument was as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time has come to challenge\nthe hype that Sri Lanka won independence from Britain in 1948 exclusively by\nour own local efforts through an exchange of correspondence and political\nnegotiations without any supportive foreign factor. This British centric –\nfriendly narrative is increasingly unsustainable in the light of new evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, it is political\ncorrectness and tendency to please our former colonial rulers that has\nprevented an objective appraisal being undertaken taking into account the\nexternal factors that contributed substantially towards the gaining of freedom\nfrom colonial rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is indisputable that Japan\nstruck the greatest decisive blow ever by any non \u2013 white country or non \u2013\nwhite people to European power in Asia with the attack on Pearl Harbour. \nIn about 90 days beginning on December 8, 1941, Japan overran the possessions\nof Britain, France, the US and the Netherlands in east and south-east Asia,\ntaking the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies;\nmuch of Siam and French Indochina and Burma with bewildering swiftness to stand\npoised at the borders of India by early 1942.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While members in the audience\nexpressed different views on this subject, especially on Japan\u2019s motives, none\ncould deny the following fact:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the British in the late\n1940s were compelled to depart the shores of India and Sri Lanka neither\nbecause of Gandhi\u2019s non-violent civil disobedience movement nor because of the\npeaceful agitation for Dominion Status by D.S. Senanayake and other leaders but\nbecause World War II drained the British economy and sapped her energy making\nit difficult to further maintain the empire. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If not for Japan the war would\nhave been confined to Europe and the Middle-East.  Regardless of\nTokyo\u2019s motives it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that ignited the\nanti-European liberation movements in South and Southeast Asia. Asian Leaders\nlike Subhas Chandra Bose, Myanmar\u2019s Aung San and Indonesia\u2019s Soekarno were\nquick to grasp the opportunity and secure Japanese assistance for the freedom\nmovements, though Japan was eventually defeated in the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However for the British, the\nFrench and the Dutch it was a Pyrrhic victory.  In the following\ndecade they lost their Asian empire.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nevents made J.R. Jayewardene (then Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister) to oppose the\nisolation of Japan and call for Japan’s re- integration into the international\ncommunity, without imposing harsh punishment by way of reparations, at the San\nFrancisco Peace Treaty Conference in 1951, when many Western nations demanded\npayment for reparations for damages caused during the war. The two other men\nwho were closely associated with J.R. Jayewardene’s historic speech, were the\nthen Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake (who gave instructions to J.R. Jayewardene\nto toe the line as preached by the Buddha ‘ “Hatred does not\ncease by hatred<\/strong>, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”) and Sir Susantha Fonseka , then\nSri Lanka’s first Ambassador to Japan (who was an ardent supporter of the Japanese cause, and even the\ninfluence behind the government\u2019s decision not to ask for war\ncompensation). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janaka Perera<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Janaka Perera An interesting debate over who brought independence to Sri Lanka, India and the rest of European colonies in Asia took place at the Gamini Dissanayake Auditorium, Mahaweli Centre, Colombo, last Monday (June 24, 2019). An entirely different perspective to the historical narrative sparked off the debate at the Royal Asiatic Society sponsored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90885","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=90885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}