Hartal 1953

Hartal 1953 was a country-wide demonstration, hartal, held in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on 12 August 1953 in protest of the policies and actions of the United National Party government, which resulted in the resignation of the Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake.

Causes

In 1952 the new prime minister, Dudley Senanayake, called for general elections which the United National Party (UNP) won handily. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), and others, complained about election irregularities.

After the elections, J. R. Jayewardene, as the Finance Minister had introduced a budget which abolished the subsidy on rice, increased the price of sugar, did away with the free mid-day meal for school children and increased postal fees and rail fares. The more than doubling of the cost of rice was the main "battle cry" of the organizers of the hartal..

The Sri Lanka leftist parties led the call for the hartal, especially the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) who had lost the most in the 1952 elections. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC) supported protests against the elimination of the rice subsidy, but did not support a hartal. The Communist Party of Ceylon (CPC), who gained a seat in the 1952 elections, together with their allied party the Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party (VLSSP), also gave verbal supported to the idea of hartal, but there is disagreement about how much they participated.

Events

The events of 12 August constitute, not an outbreak of `hooliganism' on a wide scale as the government and capitalist press would have it, but a veritable people's uprising. The government broke its election promises, ignored the protests of the people, and refused to let the people decide the issue by a fresh general election. The angered people rose in active protest. As such, the entire August movement wits, a wholly democratic movement; and the August uprising was a deeply democratic act.

The almost insurrectionary high-points of the 12 August movement were reached in certain localities along the western and south-western seaboard, eg, Maharagama, Boralesgamuwa, Gangodawila, Kirillapone, Egoda Uyana, Katukurunda, Koralawella, Waskaduwa, Karandeniya, Dompe, Akurala, Totagamuwa, Hikkaduwa, and Rajgama.

The movement also reached the proportions and level of a veritable mass uprising in the 24 divisions of the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa Provinces in which the Emergency Regulations were longest maintained. These areas consist of the Alutkuru Korale South, Meda Pattuwa, Adikari Pattuwa, Siyane Korale, Alutgam and Panawal Korales, Colombo Mudaliyars' Division, Salpiti Korale, Panadura Totamune, Kalutara Totamune, Bentota Walalawiti Korale, Wellaboda Pattu, Colombo Municipal area, and the Urban Council areas of Avissawella, Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia, Gampaha, Jaela, Kolonnawa, Kotte, Wattala-Mabola-Peliyagoda, Beruwala, Kalutara, Panadura and Ambalangoda. Further, every Province of the island saw whole sections of the people participate in the protest-hartal in one form or another; saw strikes and demonstrations, saw transport paralysed and shops closed; saw meetings of protest and black flags up. The Jaffna Peninsular in particular saw all this on the widest possible scale on 12 August although there was no noteworthy violence reported.

It was thus a vast mass movement involving lakhs of people for certain and certainly also enjoying the sympathy of millions of the population. It drew in every class except the capitalist class: even here, however, many elements of the smaller variety were drawn in - so powerful was the movement's sweep. Every race was in it except, of course, the white foreigners. Every religion was in it, including even the Roman Catholics - in the Negombo, Wennappuwa and Ragama areas for instance. Every caste was in it, and not merely the submerged castes or the minority castes. Besides, every one of these sections was involved not only in the movement generally, but also in the `fighting' itself. 'Sabotage' for instance, was not confined to any particular racial, religious or caste areas. It was a general feature wherever the people went beyond the mere demonstration of protest and actually `joined battle' on the challenge of the capitalist UNP Government and its ruling class supporters.

In at least the 24 divisions named above, this mass movement reached the level of a mass uprising. That is to say, the people in these areas did not merely protest against the capitalist UNP Government's measures; they came out to express their opposition to the capitalist UNP Government itself in forms which the government had either expressly prohibited or had used all its resources to prevent. In doing so, the people in these areas did not stop short at the point where they would have come into conflict with authority and the law. On the contrary, they carried through the expression of their opposition in defiance of authority and the law. That is to say, they stopped trains, buses and all other forms of transport; they struck work and made others strike work; they caused shops and offices to close; and so on, by every means at their command.

Included in the means used was not only 'peaceful persuasion'. A variety of other methods was used. For instance, on the railway, rails and fishplates were removed. In Waskaduwa, the rails, and sleepers with them, had literally been torn up and turned over for a whole mile, and the telegraph posts also had been toppled over along the whole stretch. In Totagamuwa, the wooden sleepers had been get on fire, destroying the track. In probably hundreds of places in various areas the signal wires had been cut. Above all, in Egoda Uyana, the masses had literally invaded the station, captured a train and uncoupled the engine so that the train could not leave.

In respect of the bus system, similar and even more drastic methods were used; probably because of the arrogant announcement of certain bus owners that they would run their buses, whatever the situation. The hatred of the masses, always directed against the bus monopolists as being the economic creatures and political pillars of the capitalist UNP Government, was now concentrated on these defiant owners; especially the Gamini Bus Co Ltd and the High Level Road Bus Co Ltd. Their buses were first stopped, stoned, and smashed by the angered people. Their principal routes were then blocked and cluttered at numerous points with felled trees and the like, so that even a military escort could not get their buses through. It is noteworthy that several days elapsed before these companies could again operate their buses at all, let alone resume their normal services. Companies like the South Western Bus Co Ltd, on the other hand, which did not go out of their way too much to defy the hartal, were able to resume most of their services promptly after 12 August. Their routes had not been unduly blocked; their vehicles had largely escaped damage.

In certain cases, it should be added, some plank bridges were said to have been removed, and other small bridges dynamited. Similar methods were employed in respect of the communications services like the telegraphs, telephones and postal services. Telegraph and telephone wires were cut in many places, so that the government had to depend on the radio. The postal services were paralysed primarily by the method of paralysing transport; although other mass methods of prevention were also used.

As far as the train services were concerned, a strike beginning at 12 midnight at the Colombo Running Shed was supplemented by the methods set out above. Between the two, the paralysis of all principal lines was complete by noon on 12 August. The resumption of services, especially on the coast line, took several days although the strikers resumed work on the 13th. This long delay was due to the damage on the line.

There is a discrepancy between Shaun Goonewardene and Samarakkody on whether the hartal continued onto 13 August 1953 as well, the former insisting that it was confined to a day and the latter insisting that it continued and that indeed the masses were ready to go on only if the leadership had given the signal..

Prins Rajasooriya:said, 'The Hartal occurred entirely in the areas controlled by the LSSP, that is the coastal belt, the western coastal belt, the city of Colombo and where the LSSP had youth leagues or groups or influence. That is in the whole concentrated on one third of the country or even less.'

Immediate results

The immediate result was that portions of the country were placed under 'Emergency Regulations', essentially martial law, and the prime minister, Dudley Senanayake, resigned. The United National Party (UNP) remained in control of the government and elected John Lionel Kotalawela as prime minister. Nevertheless, the UNP was defeated in the 1956 elections by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) under the slogan "Sinhala only".

Long term effects

The Hartal is, of course, the central event of its history to which Sri Lanka's Old Left looks back with heroic nostalgia. It was an application of the classic Marxist thesis of the General Strike but those who called the Hartal never intended to take it beyond that stage whereas according to the book the General Strike must lead to the overthrow of the Government in power. But caught in the trap of Parliament and still nursing gradualist illusions of ultimately seeking parliamentary power the LSSP leaders primarily did not envisage anything like such a scenario. It is now, of course, traditional wisdom to say that it was not the Left but the SLFP which kept away which benefitted by the Hartal in the form of the popular upsurge of 1956 which brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike to power.

It is a moot point still whether the LSSP which was the country's chief Left party then ever envisaged a revolutionary transformation of society. While this might have been on the cards for the party's more doctrinaire Trotskyist faction grouped round Dr. Colvin R de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene and Doric de Souza the Dr. N. M. Perera-Philip Gunawardena faction favoured a more gradualist approach. It has been said and not without justification or unkindly either that NM was more a Fabian socialist than a Marxist while Philip for all his brilliant theoretical skills and flaming oratory was too unorthodox to hold any long-lasting world view. The result was that the LSSP opted for Parliament explaining that they merely wanted to use it as a platform but became cosily ensconced in this most bourgeois of clubs.

While those who later broke away from the LSSP have all complained in varying degrees of the LSSP's failure to mobilise the Hartal for a bigger onslaught on the state the party's official historian Leslie Goonewardene offers this explanation. He writes:

'Most important of all, it was the considered view of the LSSP (as well as we believe of the VLSSP-CP United Front) that the mass movement had reached only a stage of protest against the actions of the Government in imposing the burdens it did on the masses, and not at a stage where it was aiming at the overthrow of the Government.'

External links

* [http://members.tripod.com/~jvp_srilanka/history/71st1.html THE 1971 CEYLONESE INSURRECTION - Fred Halliday]

* [http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sem/IR/research/cstpv-old/Lostrevo.htm SRI LANKA - A LOST REVOLUTION? The Inside Story of the JVP by Rohan Gunaratna]

* [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol2/no1/hartal.html Hartal! - Colvin R de Silva]

References

*Wesley Muthiah with Sydney Wanasinghe, "We Were Making History : The Hartal of 1953", young Socialists, Colombo, ISBN 955-9150-03-0 / 9559150030
*James Jupp, "Sri Lanka: Third World Democracy", Frank Cass, London, 1978.