By Frank Higgins
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-08-04Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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century.
The situation is c omplicated by the fact that the Tamils are part of a people who number 60 million, and mostly live in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
There are other distinct groups in the island, notably the Ceylonese Moors, numbering nearly a million.
At independence in 1940, Ceylon was untypical of Third World countries, having a comparatively high standard of living, with a rudimentary welfare state, mass literacy, and universal suffrage since 1931. Nevertheless it was economically underdeveloped and heavily dependent on the three plantation crops - rubber, tea and coconuts.
Most of the land was ownercultivated. The ruling class was heavily anglicised - British in speech and education.
Independence was granted, not won. The newly formed United National Party, then a broad coalition, took control. It projected itself as bourgeois, liberal and secular. Its first government contained both representatives of the Tamil Ceylon Indian Congress and Solomon Bandaranaike, who brought the Sinhala Moho Sobha into the UNP.
English was the language that bridged the Sinhala/Tamil gap and was used by the ruling class. Ceylonese nationality was defined as embracing all the inhabitants of the island - except that the great majority of the 'Indian' Tamils - those whose ancestors had arrived in Advertisement OR WE
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