The Sinhala only act, why it came about
This is a response to The Sinhala only act, why it came about, what went wrong, and what it led to
Since the 1930s, the Swabhasha movement had begun in Sri Lanka. It was inspired from India’s own Swabhasha movement. At first the idea was to adopt both Sinhala and Tamil as official languages.
However, Sinhala people had apprehensions about the adoption of both the languages and they wanted Sinhala to be the sole official language. The reasons:
Reason 1: Protection of Sinhala language, cultural identity of Sri Lanka
· Unlike Tamil, Sinhala is the native language of Sri Lanka which is unique to this island. Sri Lanka is the homeland of the Sinhala people.
· Sinhala language historically evolved in the country and it used to be the official language of ancient Sri Lanka. Not just the Kandyan kingdom even Jaffna kingdom used Sinhala language when entering into agreements with outside powers.
· It was spoken by the majority of the people. The population that could understand English was even less than 10% yet English continued as the official language of the country.
· And most importantly Sri Lanka’s Sinhala heartland was subjected to demographic engineering by the European colonizers. During the period of colonization, millions of Indian immigrants had settled in Sri Lanka and most of them did not speak Sinhala. Therefore, the Sinhalese had legitimate fears of losing their homeland, cultural and linguistic identity. These fears were expressed by none other than J. R. Jayawardene in 1944..
“Language, Sir, is one of the most important characteristics of nationality. Without language a nation stands a chance of being absorbed or of losing its identity. With language, it has a chance of living for centuries. It is because of our language that the Sinhalese race has existed for 2400 years […] we should prepare for a national official language.”
· However, the Tamil nationalist leadership objected to it.
· But prominent Sinhala language loyalists campaigned for making Sinhala the sole official language of the country. They later formed the Language Front or the Bhasha Peramuna which stood for making Sinhala the official language.
So, by the time Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, the Swabhasha problem had not been solved.
Reason 2: Majority of the people in Sri Lanka did not speak English. But English continued to be the language of administration. It was necessary to change that.
Look at this table
In fact, more Tamils were conversant in Sinhala than in English.
Reason 3: The Anglophile Elite
Even though Sri Lanka gained independence, the same Anglophile elite used to control Sri Lanka. Therefore, the independence was not converted into a victory of the public. Most of them wanted to continue the same policies as the British did. Despite securing independence in 1948, the Sinhalese continued to suffer language-based inequalities.
But 1956 changed it. Therefore the 1956 victory was also called the Bamunu Kulaye Bindawetima in Sinhala.
Look at the response from Anglophile elite’s cartoonists
Reason 4: Unemployment crisis
The above table will show that the percentage of people who were conversant in English language was small. Therefore, only a small minority of the country had access to government civil service, the largest employment provider in the country.
However, as a result of the Free education and spread of education to villages, by this time Sri Lanka had a fairly large number of Sinhala educated young men. The government HAD to provide them employment.
By making Sinhala the official language of the country, the then government could singlehandedly solve the employment issue and it led to the improvement of the living standard of majority of the native people of the country. Every Sinhalese, except those who belong to the English-speaking elite of the country benefitted from the act.
Reason 5: Dravidian Threat
Since the beginning of the 20^(th) century, Madras Presidency (modern day TN) saw the emergence of ultra nationalist Dravidian movement. The aim of the movement was to bring all the Dravidian language speaking areas into one country. Some of the Dravidian leaders had even stated that they would occupy Tamil speaking areas of Sri Lanka.
Dravidian/ Tamil nationalism from Tamil Nadu spilled into Tamil speaking areas in Sri Lanka. Branches of DMK was set up in the Indian Tamil community of Sri Lanka in Kandy. The Jaffna politics was totally driven by the Tamil nationalism that spilled from TN. The main claims of Sri Lanka’s Tamil nationalists were, 1. Sri Lanka was originally a Tamil speaking Dravidian land, 2. Sinhalese are Aryan invaders, 3. Politicians like Chelvanayagam threatened succession.
The year 1956 is important in South India as well. It saw the exponential rise of Dravidian nationalism and politics (Tamil nationalists in SL were affected by it), anti-Hindi agitation and regional identity building. This led to the reorganization of Indian states along linguistic lines. Dravidian movement in India did not succeed because non-Tamil Dravidian leaders like Telugu and Kannada leaders thought Dravidianism was simply Tamil supremacism. However, Dravidianism aka Tamil supremacism could finally secure power in Tamil speaking region of Madras Presidency.
As a result, Sinhala leaders saw the rising Dravidianism in Sri Lanka as a threat. Therefore, they wanted to take action to safeguard the Sinhala nation and identity.
One of the main proponents of the 1956 Sinhala Only Policy, K. M. P. Rajaratna said
1956 වසරේ සිංහල භාෂාව සමඟ දෙමළ භාෂාවත් රාජ්ය භාෂා ලෙස සැළකීමට මාරාන්තික විරෝධයක් දැක්වූ අයවළුන් වූයේ තැපැල්, විකාශණ හා තොරතුරු අමාත්ය එෆ්. ආර්. සේනානායක හා ඔහුගේ පුද්ගලික ලේකම් කේ. එම්. පී. රාජරත්නයි. එම අවස්ථාවේ දී රාජරත්න විසින් ඉන්දියාවේ ප්රජා සමාජවාදී පක්ෂ ප්රධානියාට ටෙලිග්රෑමයකින් දන්වා තිබුණේ, “සිංහල ජාතිය විනාශ කර සිලෝනය හා දකුණු ඉන්දියාව එකතු කර විශාල තමිල්නාඩුවක් නිර්මාණය කිරීමේ දෙමළ වෑයමකට එරෙහිව සිංහල ජනයා සටන් වදින බවය”
(source - Wesley Muthiah and Sydney Wanasinghe, Two Langauges one Nation – One Langauge – Two Nations, The Lanka Sama Samaja Party on the State Language, A Young Socialist Publication, 2005, 4)
These are the less talked about but very important aspects of the 1956 policy. Therefore, you cannot understand 1956 event by a mere chat gpt answer. It was not a mere calculated political instrument by Bandaranaike. If it was not for him, someone else would have led the movement in a future date.
I will talk about the impact of 1956 later.
Posted Jul 6, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC